Day One on the Farm

Technically, it's not Day One; it's more like Day 850 or something. But today was the first day I was officially no longer part of the rat race. That's right, no more alarm clocks for me. I don't need an alarm; I've got roosters and a cat that wants to be fed VERY early in the morning. Sleep? Bah. I'm a farmer now.

So, Friday was my last day of office work, and I spent the weekend with the boys doing stuff. We split a whole bunch of logs on Saturday, after which Tanner was confirmed in the Catholic Church, which was quite the big deal. On Sunday, I cleaned all the straw off the garlic that we put down last year before the snow came. The garlic is doing well.

Today, the big project was getting the potatoes planted. We were storing the potatoes in the basement over the winter, since we didn't get around to eating them all. We were told last year that storing potatoes with apples would cause them to sprout like crazy, so we made sure they weren't anywhere near any apples over the winter. Here's the result:

Charming. So much for the apple theory. And these ones were just the ones inside a bin; the ones that were out in the open air? They had beanstalks growing out of them. Apparently, those can still be planted. So, I cut up a whole bunch of them, keeping the sprouts on, and planted them in between the rows of garlic.

My second major job for the day was putting cardboard down in the pathways between the garden rows. This will keep the weeds down, as well as reduce the amount of dirt I get on my clothes. Because fastidiousness is obviously an important part of farming. Here's the results of my work over the past couple of days:

There's a lot of garlic in there; those are 50-foot rows, garlic on both sides, four garlic bulbs per row, planted about every eight inches or so. We're going to have more garlic than we know what to do with by the end of the year. And I love it.

The garlic has done well under the straw, so it's going to be a good crop in October. There's still some residual straw on the beds, but that's fine; it'll have no effect on the garlic.

And yes, we have a lot of dandelions on our property. Turns out that they aren't just weeds; they're useful in adding essential nutrients into the soil. Not to mention, my wife makes jelly out of it; we call it 'poor man's honey', and people seem to like it. We'll be selling some this year.

So, that's the start of this crazy farming journey. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.