Farm Journal
Monday, March 22, 2021
Yesterday we hosted our second workshop, on grafting fruit trees. Jason Geise taught it, and I think it went really well. I certainly learned a lot. Luckily no one sliced their fingers aside from me …
Continue Reading#Seed Starting#Pruning#Wild Plants
Saturday, March 20, 2021
On Friday I got serious about making soil blocks. I decided it wasn’t worth the time to start seeds in 3/4” blocks and transplant them, so I’ve gone straight to the 2” blocks. I think I figured out t…
Continue ReadingFriday, March 19, 2021
Started messing with soil blocks today, which I plan on starting seeds in. I made up Eliot Coleman’s micro block recipe, which is used for 3/4” blocks primarily to germinate seeds. Then you transplan…
Continue ReadingThursday, March 18, 2021
Got to work pruning the sprawling pluot at the orchard entrance — this one was tough due to the multitude of crossing branches and the fact that most of the buds and flowers were concentrated near th…
Continue ReadingWednesday, March 17, 2021
Started processing the manzanita that were uprooted or broken by the snow over the past week. I still don’t quite understand how it happened. It looks like a big animal uprooted them. But they were s…
Continue ReadingTuesday, March 16, 2021
Another rainy and snowy day yesterday. The rain tank is holding water now, and that baby is filling up fast with the snowmelt. As is the pond, which nearly filled up overnight. The ducks escaped and…
Continue ReadingSunday, March 14, 2021
No real work got done on the homestead this weekend. We received another dump of snow on Friday, then had farm school on Saturday and a little shindig with the cob oven building crew on Sunday. Peach…
Continue ReadingFriday, March 12, 2021
Well, we got around 7” of snow overnight and during the morning. I’ve never seen the trees droop so much. I spent some time pruning, but its hard to prune when you can’t feel your fingers. The snow …
Continue ReadingWednesday, March 10, 2021
It was cold and rained slush today — every time I tried to go outside and get to work pruning hail pelted me. So not much got done yesterday. Finished pruning the big overgrown pluot out front — we r…
Continue ReadingWednesday, March 10, 2021
We finally borrowed an orchard ladder from a neighbor this week, so time to get after it on the pruning front. Even having gone through the pruning class recently, looking at our huge gnarly trees wi…
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