Claire wanted to work with my today. The weather promised to not be so hot as to cook her little blonde head so we packed up some tools, seeds, water, a pound of summer sausage, and headed out to the Ness farm shortly before noon. Lance was outside working on his yard and we went over the new Honda front-tine tiller he had bought for maintaining the garden. To give it a try-out, I used it first to cultivate between all of the rows of corn I had hand planted. It worked pretty slick, even grinding out the cockleburr plants which seem to never go away. Don’t know if it killed them, but it did grind the roots down to about 4 inches below the surface.
Once I was done with the corn cultivating I took the weed whipper to the southwest section of the garden, of which the far south side they are planting in perennial fruits, and I had put about a dozen hills of squash on the far western edge. There are a lot of volunteer Arikara sunflowers in there, and I was careful to not chop them down too. No reason to not let them grow. The whole area was going to be squashes and a little shade is good for them. Claire kept me supplied with water and even raked up some of the weeds once they were down.
The area is about 60X90, though it is not square. More of a diamond shape. When the weeds were finally all down I went back to the tiller, using it to grind down deeply, and pile up the dirt. When I was about half-way done making hills in the area I looked up to see a guy hauling a manure spreader across the adjoining cut hay field, heaped up with manure, towards the garden. Turned out he is the neighbor who has 35 horses and no where to put his manure any more. I had him dump one load in the garden there, and he put 4 more loads just outside of the garden. It would have been nice to have it really early in the spring. It is 2 years old so we could have tilled it in early spring, but he had been unable to get to his manure pile due to how much rain we had earlier in the year. The manure is mixed with probably 50% bedding material and we are going to do the paths with it, and side-dress the corn and other heavy feeding plants.
Lance came out while Claire and I were planting squash and told us it was time for a beer break, and to see his chickens. His are 2 weeks old now and were down in his machine shop. It was hot in there because he has had to keep the door closed so his yellow lab (Emmet) did not help himself to the chicks. Apparently he does not take direction as well as Piper does, but he is still a puppy (well, a 70 pound puppy) and they are still working on getting him to only go after certain birds instead of all birds.
His chicks are looking good. Once Lance has their coop ready our Partridge Barnvelder roosters are going there to finish maturing, and then Lance will pick out one for himself, and we will eat the other ones. His coop looks pretty incredible. He is building it on a trailer frame so he can haul the whole thing around, and back it into his barn’s lower level in the winter.
It really was too hot to enjoy drinking beer in the tool shop so we headed back out to the garden. Lance grabbed his 4 wheeler and a trailer, loaded it up with shovels, a wheel barrow and some cardboard. While Claire and I finished planting Lance started working on the paths; putting down a layer of cardboard, and then about 4 inches of the manure/horse bedding over it. We are hoping this keeps the weeds down for the summer, and give it even a manicured look.
When the evening was finally to the point that I needed to get Claire home we had planted 48 hills of squash, 30 water melon, 10 Gnadenfeld melon, and 30 determinate tomatoes (Principe Borghese and Big Dwarf) the entire area had been weed-whipped, and there was a good start on getting the paths done.
Claire was dropped off at the house at 730 pm and I headed over to Frank’s to pick him up and head to the Minnetonka garden. We worked until it was getting dark watering and weeding things there. It is looking fantastic, only needing some replanting of beets (eaten or never emerged) cages for the tomato plants, and more twine on the trellis. I had brought what twine I had left to finish the trellis but I ran out again. <sigh> I started the year with a 2500′ roll of twine for trellises. It ran out when I was 2/3 of the way done with the trellis there. Another trip to the hardware store, another roll of twine, and more trellises built. A lot of trellises. I guess there is going to be more than 5000′ of twine in my trellises this year. The second roll is now gone, the Minnetonka garden trellis is not done, and I still have to do the two 80′ trellises down at the Red Wing garden.
Frank and I kept at it until he was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, then we headed back to his house for some gnosh and conversation. My feet were really dragging by then, but a Stella Artois, liverwurst, crackers and cheddar cheese (aged 2 years!) was good to get into me.
On the way home I stopped at David’s to tuck in the chickens for the night and say hi to David and Rebecca. Patti and the kids will be there on Sunday, building the outdoor chicken run so they can get out of the coop and start foraging outside. I will be back out at the Ness farm working on the paths and manure spreading.
