March/April In December

O.k., that is where my head is at after a day of planting bulbs along Cardenas Ave. I am already looking forward to the daffodils and crocus poking their heads through the last grips of winter.

Boy, another few days of rain, just what we need! I know it will pay dividends later, but yes I am still complaining.

The leaves and manure are settling in nice, so maybe we will get the clover and hairy vetch in this week - we'll see what happens. Maybe if we are lucky it'll rain this week;)

Backbone Mountain Food Farm

This past week-end two of our 5th graders visited and explored Backbone Mountain Food Farm in southern Garrett County which is an organic farm farmed largely by antique equipment and draft horse. The boys explored with the owners children on foot and by cross-country skis.

We adults were also fortunate enough to get to see their hoop houses, high-tunnel garden, mushroom operation, and many of the antique tools and draft horses. We are hoping to develop a relationship that will allow our students exposure to an organic farm that has a shorter growing season, at a higher elevation that uses many of our gardening practices such as: crop rotation, cover-crops, neighborhood plantings, and uses compost and manure.

It was fun to see a farm at nearly 2,000 ft above sea level covered in 6-8 inches of snow that was still producing greens, radishes, and carrots in their high-tunnel.

The farm is also a cross-country ski destination that also offers ski packages and lessons at affordable rates.

Thank you Backbone Mountain Food Farm for your time and inspiration.

A dry window

Mike and Mrs. Hope (Chris), with the help of Mrs. Primm and the 5th grade class, FINALLY were able to get the manure and leaves into our gardens yesterday. Chris and I cleaned out the beds of old plant material and the 5th graders harvested the remaining beets, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and fennel seeds (as well as one last scraggly ear of popcorn).

We then topped the beds with well composted horse manure and about 6"+/- of shredded leaves. We marveled at the amount of worm life in the beds and in the composted manure. We are curious to see how this combination of materials affects our pH and nitrogen levels.

We still have cool weather crops flourishing in our gardens and our onion and garlic sets are going crazy. We are planning on planting our spring bulbs next week along Cardenas Ave and planting our crimson clover and hairy vetch once the leaves get a good soaking (of snow?) this week-end.

Rain, rain go away?

O.k. enough rain for a while! The leaves are mulched, the manure is on site, many plants have been pulled, but the soil is so wet - soggy, soupy... we don't want any run off or soil loss. I know next summer I will be wanting every bit of this deluge, but for now enough already. Let things dry up just a bit.

Once it does dry up a bit we will be able to finish working on the rest of the garden and getting all of those goodies into the soil.