What We Did Today

It's all fun and games when I can sit down at the computer, after a shower, with a cup of tea and tell about it.

We added more raised beds today.

It was an exhausting day, but in the, it-feels-good-to-move-around, instead of sit-in-the-chair-all-day and stare at the computer, way. It's that good old-fashioned tired. You know the kind.

I smiled at the radishes poking up. They are so quick to grow.

Getting back into the groove of farming, (growing our own food, in addition to growing for market) is not a gradual step. I've primarily been in an office, in meetings, and organizing events, workshops and such for the last  year.

After three (or 15) days of convincing Captain Strong Arms that my spinach would come up - it finally began to come up. Phew!

 It's the softness of winter that gets me. It'll be a good while before I build up the strength and endurance I had and it won't come easy. And then, it will be the heat of summer that gets me. Oh for the love of farming.

Back to the Farmers' Market in just 6 weeks and three days.

I am looking forward to getting back the the farmers market - there's a reward in that unique to anything else one will ever do. Tomorrow? Meeting in the morning, meeting in the afternoon and meeting in the evening. Farming will have to resume on Wednesday, for me, thank goodness Captain Strong Arms takes good care of the farm when I'm home and when I'm not home.

What to do with your raised beds at the end of December

Of course it would be ideal to say that at the end of harvest, the raised beds were cleared and prepped for winter. Alas, if you're anything like me, they are not. So, what to do if you've procrastinated with the best of us?

First - dig in.

Clear all the debris you can see on top, removing spent plants and any leaves that might have blown in when fall came our way.

Now is a good time to get an assessment of your soil done, too.  Contact your local Cooperative Extension office for further instructions on how to get your soil tested for FREE.Ideally now is the time to do this, because when spring arrives, the offices will be very busy and your results will take longer to come back.Whether you intend to plant some early cool crops or wait to plant the main summer crops, the results of your soil test will determine what it may need if anything.

I was pleased to see this worm in the dirt!

The hardest part of this is cleaning up the piles of your labor. Currently mine are still where I left them. I had to come inside and devour a bowl of homemade version of pasta e fagioli soup leftover from yesterday.

And so dear fellow slackers, there you have it.

And, photo-bombed, bigtime, by Bob. Thanks, Bob.

And then, here came the dogs:

And this one, in particular, was very serious....

And another dog is not quite so serious....

Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt.
- Barbara Kingsolver