Stratheden Farm: The Blog

My legs hurt, and, frankly, so do my hands. Must mean yesterday was another long day in the garden for me. We've had more rain than sun of late so we gotta make dirt while the sun shines.

I finally finished the fourth bed in the raised garden. What takes so long is separating the soil from the sod we dug up. At first I was saving the sod to help an erosional area (done!) and now I'm using the grass parts in the compost pile. Lots of good mycillium in there and plenty of worms. We also figured out what to do with some existing (ugly) raised beds against the west-facing retaining wall. The heavy clay soil in them turned pretty easily so I just worked in a whole lot of vermiculite and some compost. I hope the melons I planted will be happy. We'll have greens out of those boxes too, at least until the melons take over!

Mr Fuzzy spent most of the last two days working in some compost and planting his garden. We've got corn, beans, melons, cucumbers, and tomatoes to go down there. Today we expect to get that bit finished.

He was having some troubles getting the plow to turn over correctly so he called our Yankee Neighbors for advice... Mr. Fuzzy realized that he'd always used at least a three-row plow and thought maybe there was some trick to a single moldboard plow. Turns out the trick is a spring that's missing from our tractor. Looks like our next rainy day will see us to the New Holland dealership in Meadows of Dan. There are three eateries in the village so we'll make an afternoon of it.

So, our plow problem diagnosed, the younger Yankee neighbor, we'll dub him "Taciturn Yankee," went ahead and showed us how he does it... with four or more passes with the cultivator. You learn something every day around here. That day we learned the best plow is not a plow. In less than an hour Taciturn Yankee made us four raised beds each about 25 feet long and neat as a pin. I would normally have taken over about three dozen cookies as a thank-you but The Bronx Babe (that would be Mr. Yankee Senior's wife) is a cook to beat all cooks and her son will be well supplied with tasty morsels.

Any suggestions on a good "thank you" gift? He's a really nice guy to have thought to bring the cultivator and to have just done this without our asking.