Rain! Rain! Rain! (and lots of May pictures...)

For the past three weeks, we've been having scary flashbacks to last summer's drought.  At the farm, only a half inch of rain fell during all of May... until this week, when two inches pounded down.  While the rain was a bit rougher on the baby crops than ideal, we are not going to complain!  It's supposed to be tapering off today and tomorrow, and then we hope for some good drying weather so we can get back in the fields, where our crops, cover crops, and pastures are growing like crazy! Weeding and rock-picking the brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, kale, and collards).  The white fabric is our insect pest excluding row cover.

Pasture, oats, rye, and windmills--on blustery days, it's all very ripple-y and gorgeous in the wind!

 

The rain brought us a real feeling of relief.  We have the capacity to water all our fields, but it takes a long time--irrigation after a three week dry spell runs to 3 or 4 hours of extra work a day.  This recent rain will basically give us the time equivalent of having an extra person in the field!  Even with irrigation, the crops don't seem to grow quite as well as they do from real, actual rain.  We can already see a jump in growth out of the peas, greens, and broccoli!

Early May pre-rain shot of garlic with baby onions in the background--everything's a lot bigger now!

Third times a charm!  This is one of our pastures where the grass seed just keeps not germinating.  Fortunately, it's starting to come along now (and this rain will help greatly!).

 

We've been laughing a bit because the weather for much of May has been poster child weather for days that you shouldn't transplant crops--dry, hot, and with battering winds.  Yet when plants need to go into the ground, sometimes you have to put them in on these terrible days!  We shifted our schedule to start transplanting around 3 or 4pm many days, and stayed out there to water crops in by flashlight as late as midnight.  Starting late means the plants will get the cool evening to settle into their new homes (and it's often less windy here at night), and watering each newly planted crop heavily helps get the roots to make good contact with the soil (and gives each plant a supply of water for its first few days).  It also leads to groggy farmers in the morning...

Thanks to our great volunteers--John, Mary, and Ben--who helped us plant onions, potatoes, and more.  Thanks too to everyone else who's come out to the farm to help plant these past few weeks!

Heavily watered in baby broccoli (before they get tucked away from flea beetles under their row cover blanket).

 

So far, all of the 2014 strawberry crop is planted, the potatoes are in, and all the spring crops are seeded.  We did lose a couple beds to poor germination (and one to the row cover blowing off one windy afternoon and our nemesis the flea beetles invading the arugula... but more on them next week), but all the transplants that went in under May's non-ideal conditions seem to be doing great!

Even our canine supervisor is dusty.  Pre-rain (and pre-bath) picture...

First working of potato field using a new tillage tool we are borrowing--it breaks up compaction and makes the soil much easier to work!  (Thanks Robert for letting us borrow this!)

Matt working up the potato field with the scarifier.

Wild apples... great for critters and for our fall cider making!  Last year's cold spell destroyed all the blossoms, so we are enjoying their blooms even more this spring.

Happy hens--they are a little obsessed with us so it's hard to get a candid shot (or to move around the field without almost stepping on them!).

 

Odds and Ends: Germination, Spring, Supplies, and a Mulch Layer!