Expansion

We have exciting (though daunting for us) news here at Solace Farm - our house addition is finally underway!  There have been numerous delays, the norm for the construction business I know, but since we're only hiring the foundation dug and built (cinder-block) and then we're doing the rest ourselves, every month it got pushed back was extra-frustrating.  Also, it's going to be our winter intern housing (assuming we finally get one or two that stay more than a day!) so we need to have time to finish it - not just externally dried-in against the weather, but livable inside - before the cold weather hits.  But, there's now a big hole in the backyard, with a concrete floor poured, and they were supposed to start laying the block wall today - although I think the rain may change plans, hopefully it'll be better tomorrow.  Once the foundation is in, Caleb will take a week or so off work, and we'll get the walls and roof up.  When we built the original house, we got the roof on in a week, so surely we can do that on an addition only half that size!  Of course, we had help from friends then...

We also spent some time cleaning the garden this weekend.  I think I mentioned that my tomatoes are dead.  Actually, the cherry tomatoes look pretty good, but the large ones were awful - they either got blight, or I actually think they had been so thoroughly stripped of all leaves by the hornworms that not only were they struggling to stay alive, but the tomatoes themselves had vicious sunscald.  It looked like blight - yellowish tomatoes, splitting and rotting before even ripening very much - but the plants themselves were just starting to put out new leaves and even a few blooms, and blight usually kills the plants first.  I think this is basically sunburn on a very large scale, so widespread it looks like a disease but isn't.  It was a bit sad ripping out plants that were finally starting to grow again, but there is just not enough time for them to bloom, set fruit, and ripen it before frost.  Even if a few made it fast enough, it's not worth that whole bed being tied up until then.  With it empty, I can add compost (which we did) and replant for fall within the next couple of weeks - at least in theory :)  

We did some weeding in the hoophouse, but mostly that is waiting for the corn to finish drying, and then we'll pull out all the spent corn stalks as well as the dead squash vines.  There are still several squash that are finishing maturing on those vines, so they can wait a bit longer.  The whole hoophouse is basically waiting to finish - the watermelons are hitting their stride, the okra is chugging along, and the sweet potatoes are going strong.  Once the corn and watermelon are done, I'll pull everything but the sweet potatoes and start replanting fall and winter crops.  

Finally, I had a separate garden bed that I planted to barley this spring, but it was totally commandeered by sunflowers.  They were so thick that they were at least 10' tall, just packed in.  These are the small-headed kind that branch and flower all the way up the stem, but these were tall and straight with just a few blooms on top from being so crowded.  On the plus side, they had pretty well shaded out the ground, and there were relatively little weeds - until the sunflowers started finishing and dying back, and the weeds were starting to gain ground - literally :)  We pulled them all, filling the truck heaping-high - Caleb dumped them out in a pasture on an exposed mudbank that the goats use as a jungle gym - hopefully the brush will help stop the erosion there.  As soon as we can, we'll cover the bed with feedsacks (we didn't pull the weeds, so the sacks will be a barrier) and put a few tractor-buckets of our new supply of aged sawdust on top.  

We have a hard time finding garden-ready soil amendments, or more accurately good soil itself, around here.  The biggest problem in our gardens is keeping dirt in them - with the raised beds, it's a closed environment, so we can really see the loss of soil as it converts to produce, and it's about 4"-6" a year, at least.  With about 3000 sq. ft. of outside garden (not to mention the 2100 sq ft of hoophouse), that's a pretty big demand for soil, so we get anything we can to add to the garden, mainly horse bedding and sawdust, but also shredded paper, our own grass clippings from mowing, and homemade compost.  We got 3 dumptrucks of sawdust this weekend - it's not the best thing for a garden when fresh, but this is fairly aged, and the once it breaks down, it's organic matter like any other.  

Overall, I feel pretty good about the garden this year.  I didn't have much variety, but I've done a decent job taking care of what I had, and I'm being better than past years about purging things when it's time, rather than waiting for that very last possible tomato, while the previous dozens rotted off the vine, inoculating my garden with tomato seeds for the next 30 years, and I end up late starting winter plantings.  I'm getting excited about planning and planting the hoophouse for winter now, it's like spring all over again...