Day 27

This morning and into the afternoon was swamped with restaurant harvesting including hakurei turnips, scarlet queen turnips, spring bulbing onions, easter radishes, Russian kale, arugula, strawberries, and asparagus. Hand across forehead and Whew! Daniel worked into the night and got the bike pea sheller up and running for market, just a few kinks to work out.

Getting Mice Wars Supplies

We spent the next half of the day setting up the beds in the hoop houses and planting joi choy, choy sum, and pak choy. You'd think we were starting a damn Asian restaurant (said in redneck voice). But really.
I snuck off for a sec to check on my tomato trees and give them a once over pruning. Then Daniel and Jason planted turnips and arugula; tomorrow lettuce and basil should good in as well. Hoping Cory will be better, Jason was sick on Monday, Cory last night and I think Daniel said he wasn't feeling well when we left, some stomach bug, hopefully this isn't the foreshadowing part of the post. The zucchini is growing like a champ and Daniel told us we could eat the flowers, so Erica made some for dinner with quinoa inside and it was delicious! She said it was a lot of trouble to stuff it, but if you aren't the one making it, it's great from the other side of the table (which is where I like to sit).

Edible Zucchini Flower Stuffed with Quinoa

Day 26

Wildlife Day. Not only are the mice back, we had some other helper's today! We started out the day harvesting asparagus and strawberries, which takes awhile on Monday because it's not done over the weekend. While Daniel was setting up the tractor he found a volunteer in his jacket.

Why, hello there.

After lunch Daniel took the tractor to lower field to lay drip tape and plastic mulch and Erica and I helped. One person has to wrap the drip tape around their leg to anchor it while making sure the plastic is tight and on course. The person at the other end has to cut the plastic then knot the drip tape depending on where the water source is and begin the process over again from that side. Once we were done Erica and I loaded up the transplants in the white van: Squash, Zucchini, and Cucumbers and went back to where we had helped lay the plastic. I drive pretty fast in the van because that's the pace we try to keep and I like to pretend I'm kidnapping plants, plus it's a beat up old white van and that spells uncertainty and danger. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, planting, so Daniel's spacing was a bit off, not enough room for the squash, we'll see how that works out once they grow. Erica went to Peru (before the internship) and brought back these really awesome seeds, so some of the corn from her treasure mix were planted next to the squash and zucchini...super excited to see how those turn out!

Day 25

MARKET DAY!!! Hidey Ho!

I bet you're wondering what time we get up for market, and the answer is 5am. I don't know if you've ever been up at 5, but it's chilly and dark like nature telling you hey crazy, go back to bed. So we loaded up the van with produce and headed to Peachtree Road Farmer's Market, which opens at 8:30. We made it there and set up our tent along with the other venders including ones selling herbs, honey, jams, pickling, baked goods, crepes, quinoa, organic lotions, meats, flowers and even origami. There are musicians and also chef demonstrations using Burge produce.
Our table was a success and sold out by 12:00 when it closes down. It was cool to see how excited people were to buy produce from farmers and it makes you feel good about what you do. There were kids coming up saying their favorite food was kale, and a young boy came over to by turnip greens and get a recipe for cooking them. The strawberries and asparagus were by far the most popular. I briefly got to meet the interns from last year Lauren and Luca who now farm some land close by. Afterwards we all went out to eat and celebrated our first market journey.

Our neighbors Queen of Tarts

Our sign and me in my hat ;)

Day 24

Burge blackberries

I apologize friends, this girl ain't used to working 12 hour days and it was time ta go da bed when I got home! We had to get ready for market today and harvest lots of goodies.
Yesterday, besides harvesting we had an organic orchard expert Jerald Larson of Fort Valley State University out here to look at our blackberries, blueberries, persimmons, quinces, pears etc. He gave some recommendations about how to prune them; it's important to always have a leader branch and cut the right suckers away to help the tree grow and support the fruit. Also, advice on dealing with pests including scale and blight and how to manage weeds in the orchard. The coolest thing ever was the grafting. Did you know you can cut one tree and add branches from another and the trees will become one? Didn't catch that? Let's make it more confusing. You can take an apple tree, cut that dude off then add branches from a pear tree and that tree could grow both! Or you can take a peach tree and graft it with a lemon tree maybe a slice of lime, sounds like a nice drink. But back to grafting, it's easier to graft within the same family, so an apple tree with the same or a different variety of apple attached would graft well. Here's some pictures of the process:

Whittling the branches for grafting
on both sides about an inch

Clipping off the tree for grafting

Use two branches as insurance,
cut into bark and place branches

Seal with beeswax

Damp newspaper in between

Plastic Protection for
Grafting Process

Paper Bag with four slits facing
East to West for sunlight

I feel like I just wrote out a recipe! Recipe for some sweet trees. Grafting is best mid-March to early April, so we barely made the cut

Day 23

Fixing a leak

Today I started out harvesting asparagus and kale for Farmer's Fresh, a market in Covington where we sell our produce and eggs. Once that was done I went with Cory and Jason to weed the freshly planted carrots. The seed's won't be disturbed if you lightly scrape the top layer with the hoe and this prevents future weeding.

Before

After that Erica and I set up the drip tape in pasture field where more carrots, radishes, turnips and arugula are hanging out. Apparently, if you take a break from watering plants they go dormant; better than what I imagined which was them going to plant heaven.

See ya suckers!

Next up we went to doctor the tomatoes in the hoop house, and they're growing up so fast I feel like a proud mama. We pruned them and it was super cool. So what you do is you find the main stem (not rocket science) then look at the stems coming off from the main guy. The ones headed up and looking perky are called suckers (can't make this stuff up) they are the ones you take off. The depressed emo-looking stems are the ones that stay on the plant, I know, go figure. Erica thinks it's funny because I keep calling them tomato trees. I tried calling them plants but in my head they are little trees.
Oh we also turned on and off the ever scary orchard irrigation and messed with a leak which resulted in four ant bites. Then we finished up with weed eating the blueberries and blackberries. My weed eating skills are not what they once were, I blanked in the part of the tutorial where you hit the weedeater to make more twine come out. Who constructed this really?
Lastly, we didn't turn off the water set up in pasture field and I just remembered while writing this which means I need to go turn off the water!

Taking work home with me

Day 22

Things started off a bit chilly this morning, so I layered up and was ready for action! First up, we harvested food for Cory to deliver to restaurants, a Wednesday ritual, including kale, asparagus, strawberries green and red, radishes, turnips, spring onions, red cabbage, golden beets, and tarragon. Our restaurants include: Eugene, Rosebud, Empire State South, and Farm Burger, Avalon, Lil Tart, etc.

Loaded up for Restaurant Run

Once Cory was on his way we threw a huge party and ate all the veggies in the fridge. Okay, maybe that last part didn't happen, but Cory reads my blog sometimes and a little fear is good for you, right? We turned on irrigation in the orchards again to find even worse ant farms, sorry guys only one farm here! We went to the greenhouse to plant lettuce (Romaine and red), purple okra, and corn. It's kinda neat if you haven't seen a corn or okra seed because they look like the plant, the corn like a kernel and the okra like a mini okra with painted on ridges.

I'm so cute and mini!

Me so corny! (I'm here all day folks)

Next on today's plate was weed eating! Something I never wished to know how to do, but do now. It wasn't so bad, I liked it even. We had to weed eat around the orchard, getting close (but not too close) to the blueberry plants. Always wear protective eye gear kids! It can be dangerous! But if you're a kid and weed eating you have bigger problems. It is nice to know if farming doesn't work out I could have a career in lawn maintenance.

Orchard and Greenhouse

Mice Wars 2012 Update: Mice-1 Kathy+Erica-0
There was an incident this morning at 5:30am involving my dresser. They have eaten poison for 6 days now, the instructions say after 4-5 days no more problems...so that's a problem.

Day 21

Asparagus, you so good!

If I tried to sum up the day in one word it would be asparagus. Erica and I harvested this morning and it was serious because it had grown over the weekend. I think it made 65 bunches (our normal is from 1-20). Some of our asparagus has been around since the farm so about 5 years and the rest was planted when Cory got here about 3 years ago. It takes about 3 years for them to establish, and establish they did, all over the place. When you harvest asparagus you cut at the crown and cover it back up with dirt to grow again.  I also processed them by bunching them together which begins by sizing them up (as seen above) and making sure each bunch is a pound each.
Everyone's allergies were bothering them today, but I think mine were the worst, good job allergies, always gotta be on top. I went to get tissue from the bathroom and a salamander was on top of the tp and I almost grabbed him. I made some sort of surprised noise and it had a minor freak out then we stared at each other. We both agreed that wouldn't happen again.
Erica and I also checked on the irrigation for the orchard...quite the adventure. It reminded me of Indiana Jones Temple of Doom when Willie tries to find the lever to free Indy and short stuff from the spikes while bugs were crawling on her. No? Well, here's a picture of where my hand went today:

Let's back up. The water here comes from the well, except the lower fields where it comes from the lake and is filtered and gravity fed.  The water to the pipes turns on and off by turning the handles in these scary ant minefield like holes. The next one Erica checked had a black widow. I feel like we were just farm hazed.
After lunch we pinted strawberries then weeded a bit before we split up. Erica harvested for restaurants, while Daniel, Jason and I moved irrigation in Jeff Cook Field and planted corn. They had finished planting the potatoes earlier (I think there's potatoes in every field now!), and the corn planting went in without a hitch.