11.23.09
Posted in Projects at 10:38 am by Farmer
 No More Trenches but still a muddy mess! |
Normally the Sunday morning after market is spent with a relaxed morning eating a hearty breakfast consisting of eggs and potatoes, spending an hour on the internet reading the news since we don’t have TV reception, reading books and perhaps doing a load of laundry. No time for chilling out this past Sunday because another storm was expected and we wanted to get the greenhouse trenches filled before the storm. So we drank some coffee and were outside by 9 AM to install hydrants and fill in the trenches. We used the shovel to fill in dirt underneath our water lines in low spots so that the PVC wouldn’t break when dumping in front-end loaders full of mud. It was difficult filling the trenches with the front-end loader because the dirt was muddy globs that wouldn’t “flow”.
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| It is exciting that we now have power and water in each greenhouse! This project has been on our “To Do” list for years because we were hoping to have all the greenhouses up before running power and water to them; however, things didn’t work out that way, because we want to have the wood boiler installed so that we can heat the two greenhouses already up, we roughed in power and water to the two greenhouses that are not up, but at least this portion of the project is done for the future greenhouses.If we didn’t get such a deal on the greenhouses we probably would have simply gone the hoop house route because they are cheaper not needing all the gadgets; however, each of the greenhouses purchased came with vents, propane heaters, horizontal air flow fans, and exhaust fans. So even though we don’t use all those gadgets often, we are installing them, probably just because we have them. We do use them in the early spring and fall when the weather fluctuates so much but other than that we hope to just use natural ventilation with roll-up sides.
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 Check out the water hydrant and wire for electricity in our greenhouse! |
 Season extension with tomatoes, kale and swiss chard! |
We planted a late crop of tomatoes, swiss chard and kale in this greenhouse hoping that the wood boiler would be installed. The temperatures this November have been unseasonally warm with only a few nights dipping below freezing. So the tomatoes have not yet died from a frost and we hope to have the wood boiler installed next week. Imagine canning salsa in December! |
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11.20.09
Posted in Projects at 7:50 am by Farmer
Look at the irrigation lines and drainage pipes from each greenhouse in the trench! There is conduit for electricity that is hidden!
The trenches finally drained enough for us to finish running the power, irrigation water lines and drainage pipes. That took a little longer than we expected but we are ready to fill in the trenches so perhaps we can then access our compost pile. We didn’t realize how frequently we use the compost pile and have been saving compost in bins since the trenches were dug a couple weeks ago.
Today will be our last harvest for Market of the year, except we are considering selling at a couple holiday markets, so YES we are excited about sleeping in until 6:30 AM or 7 next Saturday! We enjoy the change in seasons where we can drink an extra cup of coffee in the morning, work a leisurely pace knowing that the weeds won’t be overtaking the farm, and simply CHILL out. Both the soil and the farmer get the much needed rest during the winter season. On one hand I envy the farmers in CA because they can grow all year long generating more income from the farm, on the other hand, I feel for them because I guess they don’t have downtime like we have here in the mountains. (We don’t have downtime, just a more leisurely work schedule compared to our core season, so it feels like downtime.)
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11.16.09
Posted in Nothing in Particular at 8:16 am by Farmer
So we didn’t quite complete running our irrigation pipe and our electricity before the rain came last week and we are thankful of that!
We weren’t planning on tying our drain pipes running along each of our greenhouses into a main pipe because we didn’t see much water coming from the pipes along our greenhouses until this last rain storm. Because our trenches were open, we discovered another “wet weather” spring and will route that water into the drainage pipe from the other spring discovered while digging trenches.
The farm is still a muddy mess and we are waiting for the water to drain away before we complete running irrigation pipe and electricity. In the meantime, our horses and goat have been escaping so we are fixing the fence which should have been done last June. Our neighbor Arthur was able to catch them Saturday and put them in his hay pasture and they were in heaven with all that green grass. We need to re-seed our horse pasture but to do that we need another pasture in rotation. Always something other than what is planned to be done on the farm!
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11.09.09
Posted in Projects at 9:48 pm by Farmer
This past week Alvin had Randy use his trac-hoe to trench for supplying each of our greenhouses with irrigation water, electricity and hot water lines so we can heat them using a wood boiler. Randy was amazing at running the trac-hoe and was able to trench right up to our greenhouse frames without touching the frame thus saving us a ton of work digging with a shovel! |
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The farm looks disastrous right now with all these trenches, so the wood shed project is now on hold, and we have our work cut out for us laying water and conduit and pulling wire through the conduit to supply our greenhouse with electricity before the trenches can be filled in and HOPEFULLY we can fill the trenches before our next rainfall.
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So while Randy was trenching, we ran into another underground spring, which means we need to fix a few drain lines that were installed by our forefathers. Alvin tells stories of the entire flats of Spring Creek being a “swamp” until our forefathers hand dug trenches and used pine trees and rocks to route water away from the fields and into the many branches of water that the Appalachians are blessed with. Once trees are buried they petrify and are just as good as the plastic drain pipes we are using today. |
| We have found a few wood trenches in the gazillion farm projects we have undertaken since farming this land and have replaced a few with 4 inch plastic perforated drain pipe.Once we have the water routed out of our trenches, we will then run our electric wire in conduit, then we will place a foot of dirt over the conduit, after which we will run our irrigation lines from our well house. You might notice from the photograph that our trenches are 3 feet deep which meets code in our area for burying electricity. |
We will be using 1” PVC water lines to supply each greenhouse with water for irrigation. Currently we are using a hose that runs from our well house to the greenhouse which freezes and provides a great chew toy for the rodents so it will be nice having PVC running to each greenhouse! Once the PVC is glued, we will put another foot of dirt in the trench so that we can then place the hot water lines from the wood boiler so that they are a half foot deep. |
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| We are excited about the wood boiler because that means we might have fresh greens the entire winter and hope to extend our CSA season by 2 weeks in the spring and 4 weeks in the fall! We normally are able to eat from the greens in our unheated greenhouse until January before it is just too cold for things to grow. We hope to provide our neighbor Patty with greens all winter because she has a cancer and is juicing kale and swiss chard as part of her “raw foods” treatment. We know of several folks who have had cancer tumors with their tumor shrinking considerably after adopting a mostly raw foods and organic diet. I do believe in the power of food for keeping people healthy! (Several folks we know had been given a life expectancy of a few months and that was a couple years ago – their Dr. is amazed and not sure why – GO ORGANIC!) |
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