A couple of farming films for a cold winter's day

I just found this great documentary film website called Snag Films www.snagfilms.com. "The future of food" addresses the issues around genetically modified and genetically engineered seed and, subsequently, food. "Ladies of the land" highlights four women that have dedicated their lives to "goats, grains, and greenbeans."

Enjoy!

Crops over the Winter

Our cover crops and over-wintered crops are holding up. Everything looks tired and frozen and the pansies look especially frozen! It will be interesting to see what happens as things start to thaw out in a few weeks.

It is exciting to think that we will be watching the groundhog in Pennsylvania soon enough who will be telling us about the rest of our winter! It is tough being a skier and gardener - do you hope for more or less winter!?

Our new garden spaces are littered with wind-blown tree debris, and some of the raised-bed lumber will need some TLC. In a few weeks, as the thaw begins, it will be time to start the chores (or labor of love).

We were teased a day or so ago with things to come and experienced temperatures in the high 40's. Remember a few short of months ago when we thought high 40's were cold?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said -

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." MLK, Jr.

Winter Dreaming

With the garden fully moved, we dream of the full potential of our new gardening spots. Plenty of room - an empty canvas waiting to be painted, and created. An expression of color and habitat and food - for us, for insects, for birds...

The seed catalogs are arriving, and the planning charts are being developed. The last frost date plotted, plant dates coordinated and grow room prepared.

Ah, the excitement that 20 degrees can bring!

October, and now November

It has been a very busy last 45 day or so. We finished harvesting the garden - tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, fennel, basil... all very prolific and tasty. We transplanted the entire pollinator garden, and moved all of the food production raised beds. The crews from Civic Works on Ricky Meyer's day of service were a huge help moving soil (and worms and spiders) to the new gardens and our GSB families were instrumental in the design and transplanting of the new pollinator garden.

In our new gardens we have planted white and yellow onions, garlic and pansies to overwinter. We have also planted cover crops in some of the other beds - annual rye, hairy vetch, and crimson clover. We included some 30 day radishes in the beds and canoe garden. We have also planted about 300 tulip and daffodil bulbs between our gardens and the church garden next door. Come on bees and butterflies.

We transplanted strawberries during one of our last E3 Fridays and still have some strawberries and lemon balm to move...

Happy gardening!

The move is on!

We have started to move the garden. One bed has been moved completely, and two other bed's pallets have been removed. Unfortunately the pallets that were underground started to crumble after they dried in the air. We won't be able to salvage as much of those as we had hoped. We hope to find a new home (chipped up) for them or maybe use them for fire wood - we will see.

Saturday October 2nd will be the biggest day of moving with help from Civic Works during the Ricky Meyers' Day of Service. Come out and join us.

We are also going to start to plant our winter crops. We will be doing onion sets and garlic again, as well as some swiss chard, and some 30 day radishes. We will also try to sneak some carrots under the wire - just because we can.

Harvesting and prepping for the move

Yesterday the 5th grade harvested 1/2 a bushel of winter squash (mini pumpkins), a peck of tomatoes, a peck of hot peppers, as well as sunflower, and dill seed. We cleaned out three of the 5 raised beds and discarded all of the harlequin bug infested cabbage family plants, we also weeded all the beds. There is a lot of basil to be harvested and more hot peppers that need to turn red.

We saw many other insects, mainly beneficials and saw many worms - a good sign. We will start to dismantle some of the beds for the move this week. We will also do more hand picking of the pests.

The canoe garden has bokchoy and a regular head cabbage that is getting munched on by cabbage worms. I have picked no less than 15 of these pests off of these cabbages. we have also seen cucumber beetles and harlequin bugs on the cabbage - there are only 11 plants! Ugh! i wonder how much a floating row cover would help?