A Picture can be worth a thousand words.

It is hard to describe the phenomenon we have experienced introducing children to gardening at Mountainside.  Phenomenon is a bold word but children are really into what we have been doing and Josh is a really good teacher.  Today was the last day of Bar-T Harvest Clubs for the Spring.  School is winding down, summer camp is gearing up and during the final days of the school we will be hosting 5th grade and Middle School end of the year parties at Mountainside.  The staff will be stretched to the maximum hosting these groups so the Harvest Clubs are shutting down.

So the last group of children came to Mountainside today to pick some lettuce, wash it, put it in a vegetable spinner, and bag the green goodness to take home.  The farmers markets to date have been a little disappointing.  Everyone is after our mushrooms which is great and we need to harvest a lot more in the future...but, as beautiful as our mixed greens, tennis ball lettuce and Nancy lettuce (that is actually a variety) are, we are not selling much.  Our hope is that our parents will see how beautiful and healthy the lettuce is and we hope to have our summer campers take it home with them on the bus.  The pictures below tell the story better than I can.

                                                                 edible pom poms

                                                       tennis ball lettuce great for wraps

Mounding Potatoes?

So here is the deal.  With this farming thing I am learning something new every day.  Some days I learn several new things.  I would never have admitted this when I was a teen but I love learning even at 58 when you think you know everything.  The difference between crochity 58 year olds and 14 year old "know it alls" is that 58 year olds forget what they know faster than they know it.  Enough for the tangent.

So yesterday Josh hooked up this small disk apparatus on the back of my tractor.  Big tractors have disk things that cover 15 feet at a time.  We are a small farm so ours was just two feet.  He instructed me to drive the tractor dead center over our potato plants (which are growing very well) with the disks on either side of the plants. The disks pushed dirt up to and nearly covering the nice green plants.  The task would have been a lot easier had Josh planted the potatoes in a straight line. It was easy to center the front of the tractor over the plant but the disk was 8 feet behind the front and he constantly barked commands to me to "go left" or "hard to the right".  We are going to work on straight planting for next year.

Ok so it makes sense that you mound the potatoes. They grow underground and no one cares about the leafy plant above the surface.  I did not know but kinda figured that potatoes have a leafy stem above the surface.  How else would you know where to dig?  It also makes sense to nearly bury the plant under a mound so that the root vegetable can grow and is easy to harvest.  All very understandable but still new to me but I did not know what the disk thingys actually did
until yesterday.  Another new thing I learned.

The big revelation came from Josh.  I am amazed on how much he knows but I want my readers to do some research on this fact.  He told me that Potatoes that get exposed to sunlight can turn green and become poisonous.  Really!  I asked him twice if this is true and he emphatically said yes.  Potatoes can be poisonous?  How many Irish people had to learn that lesson the hard way.  If any of my readers can refute this information I would like to hear from you.  Josh is a graduate of West Virginia after all so we can't take this information totally on his word alone. He knows a lot mind you but I do not want my blog to be like Wikipedia.

Racing to get everything into the ground

This past week we planted over 2 acres of sweet corn that were kindly donated to us by my good friend Mike Dixon from "Seeds of Life Nursery".  While Jason Wood was planting 50+ acres of field corn we strategically selected the acreage closest to my house for the sweet corn.  The neighboring deer can make short work of sweet corn, so our hope is that my here-to-for useless dogs might be able to ward the corn predators off when they are not napping.  It is notable how very expensive sweet corn is.  It comes in small bags that barely large enough fill to bottom inch of a corn planting bin.  Each bag is $50 and is comparable to opening a bag of chips that contain more air that chips.  Since the corn was planted on Monday we have yet to see any appreciable rain.  In fact we are getting off to a very dry start this Spring which does not bode well for the hotter months to come.

We also laid 8 plastic covered rows, each roughly 200 feet in length for our pumpkins, watermelons and lopes.  Marlo Leafty,  another generous friend, lent us a plastic row layer (I know that is not what it is called) that enabled us to prep the rows in less than an hour that otherwise would have taken a full day and back straining work and shoveling.  The plastic inhibits weeds from taking over the rows so that we grow only what we want.  The cool thing about Marlo's attachment is that it lays down irrigation line in the center of the row at the same time.  Even if the summer is dry we will be able to get the plants the water they need.  Last year we enjoyed Josh's amazing yellow watermelons which were planted on less than 100 feet in our garden.  We should have 5 times the number of melons this summer.

For those of you less knowledgable,(which include me) pumpkins and watermelons spread out and are not susceptible to deer and rabbit damage.  Since there is no need to plant the seeds in the deer protected fenced garden, we have a lot more room for other veggies.  To date; half of the fenced garden is currently planted, the greenhouse has lettuce and spinach ready for picking, the 6 rows of potatoes and sweet potatoes are already sprouting and the 8 rows of Melons and lopes get planted this week.  If all goes well, should quadruple our output from last summer with sweet corn and potatoes added to the mix.

We concluded the week with our first farmers market in downtown Frederick.  It is early in the season but we did pretty well selling mushrooms and spinach for about $250.  It is a start.

                                           

Jason with the little $50 bags of sweet corn

                                           Plastic covering attachment for the melons and pumpkins

Bring out the reinforcements

There is so much going on this time of year.  We have more than doubled the area we are growing compared to last, and there just is too much to do.  Helping hands with the MAC kids, our garden clubs who really do pitch in an work (not just learn) are all essential if we are going to be successful this year.

Yesterday we brought out the "Calvary".  Jason Wood, this kid who is rapidly becoming a good friend was out with help to get our pumpkins and melons started.  Jason is my guy with supplying me with corn for my furnace and he also dug the trenches for our rain garden project last week.  He is also the one who grows the field corn and will plant our sweet corn this year.  I really can't do very much without him.

Anyways, Josh wanted to plant the the melons outside of the enclosed garden area.  They spread out and take up so much space and we do not need to protect them from deer the way we need to with other vegetables.  So instead of one tractor we had four.  We deep tilled, disked the soil and had to bush hog the ground before we got started.   It is remarkable how farmers help one another.  Lawyers and politicians should learn how to work together the way farmers do.  Bottom line; if all goes well we will have 5 times the number of watermelons as last year and a bunch of pumpkins for our Fall fest.  Having said that the reality is that farming comes with no guarantees.  As much work as we are putting in we are still dependent on the weather and subject to insects and disease.

As as newcomer to all of this I have yet to experience the disappointment of a lost crop,  food and income.  Farming is a labor of love.  With so much effort and anticipation I am beginning to realize the sense of loss when nature turns against you.  Mountainside is not dependent on a successful crop the way most farmers are but we start the season with hope and roll the dice like everyone else.
The Greenhouse is the only area that we truly can control and the tomatoes are kicking it.  But the area is so small compared to the acres of crops everywhere else.

The farm is teeming with life and visitors

We are moving into the very best time of the year.  The unpredictable month of April is behind us and the forecast for 80 degree temps is consistent.  Jason Wood will be planting field corn this week which will include roughly 2 acres of sweet corn surrounding our home.  The reason for putting the sweet corn so close to the house is with the hope that my useless dogs will keep the deer away.  I did not know this previously but deer don't care much for tasteless field corn but will decimate the corn you and I like to eat.  More than likely I will be the one protecting the sweet corn while the dogs sleep.

The mushrooms are popping, the high tunnel is flourishing and Josh could not have enough hours in a day to do all that needs to be done.  I hope to have produce within the next two weeks which will make me happy to not need Giant for the majority of my groceries.  If only we could grow avocados.
We are finishing up our web site for the Mountainside CSA and farmers markets start on the 17th. We might actually be able to start paying the company back for all this stuff within the next 2 weeks.  Having said that, our farm operation is still very much a labor I love.

For me the most exciting goings on at the farm is all of our visitors.  Last week we had a local High School magnet program out to install rain gardens, two elementary schools doing stream studies, our harvest clubs out every afternoon, youth from the Frederick County department of social services spending the weekend, all adding to Mountainside After School club children and the local little baseball and lacrosse league on our ball fields. Oh yeah we also had a Bar Mitzvah on Saturday evening.   More and more people are seeing the potential benefits Mountainside has to offer and Summer camp is still 6 weeks away.

The High School students are part of a Magnet program that focuses on Global Ecology.  They were studying the potential benefits of rain gardens but had no place to actually try to install one.  The very best way to learn is by doing.  Of the many topics we teach, "Slowing the Flow" of storm water into our wetlands is one of my favorites.  We showed the students the conventional storm water management practices that were implemented at Mountainside when it was initially constructed and why those practices are failing to protect our watershed.  Then we dam up some culverts and trenches and we planted blueberries and asparagus.  It was a fantastic opportunity for these students with the prospect of doing dozens more in the coming years.  Included is a time lapse.

PHS Global Ecology Day 2.AVI