Go take a look at My Photo Gallery (Click Here) for a few photos taken this quarter

Spring and Summer quarters were so easy. The plants lived inside, and then the sun came out and I got to work outside every day and put my feet and hands (and sometimes my face too… oops) into the soil. When the weather wasn’t great, I could sit and read some of the many books I found that interested me. This quarter, the weather was terrible almost all the time. I didn’t get all my plant starts in the ground, I barely got the garlic and tulips in, and I didn’t get the gardens covered or planted in cover crop. There was a lot of “If I didn’t have to work, I could have done it.”
I got really bitter over this quarter. I took a biology course, and while fascinating, the faculty you work with really does matter. I would have much rather been on the farm, or taking other courses with faculty I know, but remote has been the way I’ve been able to take classes for the last year due to my work schedule and having kids. I’m one quarter away from graduation, but there’s a lot more I would have liked to do.

I miss my farm, because even though I live on it, and I’ve been working on bits a pieces of it all year, I haven’t been able to fully enjoy any bit of it in quite a while. I went in full of plans and with so many expectations, but I was let down by a lot of people I needed help from, and it’s kind of opened my eyes to the reality of next year. I made a huge addition this year, but I likely won’t plant anything in it if I am not going to have the help I need. I’m thoroughly struggling with farming, and I’m feeling really discouraged.

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I left off at that point last night, and had a couple conversations about how I was feeling discouraged. I realized that I just need to make it MY plan, not someone else’s plan, and make it to where I will have everything I need to make it work. I need to take back my garden!

I feel like I made a good start at this with planting things that I wanted this fall. I wanted to plant them last year, but was discouraged with being asked if I really wanted to give up a piece of my garden for that long. Y’know what? Yes, I do want to give up a chunk of the garden for over 200 potential heads of garlic next year, and 2/3 that number of garlic scapes in the spring. I planted the tulips I wanted.

I got this.

I’ve spent my entire planning process trying to appease someone else, and it’s time that I plan the way I like to. Back to the drawing board.

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Week 10!

I’m going to list every quote I loved from “Rooted” as well as a screenshot I found rather interesting.

“Forest walkers had a 102 percent increase in calming parasympathetic nervous activity—after just fifteen minutes.” (82)

“A journalist writing in the Atlantic states the goal of forest bathing clearly as a “means to an end, and that end is better health.” Human health, that is. The health of the land, trees, creatures, and ecosystems is rarely mentioned in the nature-healing literature.” (85)

“Yet not all aloneness is equal. It is important to distinguish between positive solitude and unwanted isolation.” (105)

“Bring little in the way of distraction, perhaps a notebook for exploring thoughts, but maybe not a book. It is our own minds and visions we seek, not those of others.” (107)

“As long as we frame a worldview with language that refers to the wild as a commodity, it will be treated as one.” (153)

“If you do this, the tree being hugged “will be nourished and bloom like a flower.” Is someone around to see you hugging the tree? This is the part about not caring what others think. Tree-hugging dirt worshipper? Thank you, yes.” (181)

“..(the human brain, it turns out, reacts similarly to the ding of a text message or the wail of a siren as it would to the growl of a bear behind us in the woods: as a threat, demanding a constant state of alertness).” (194)

“Time in nature is time in the presence of essential death. Leaves to soil, lemmings to owl food, deer corpse to winged vulture flesh, and our own bodies one day to… to what?” (205)

“I wondered how long it would take to feel a sense of mossy rhizomes reaching into my skin, the first loosening of bark-into-soil. It turns out not long at all—unsettlingly not-long.” (209)

The whole death list on pg 210

“All shall be well, in whatever tangled, unknowable, difficult, beautiful way that wellness unfolds.” (216)

I will explain my feelings on each quote I’ve listed from this book in my paper, posted in reports.

I was asked if I’d seen “Church of the Wilderness” and when I went to look it up on Amazon, I scrolled down a bit, and look at what I found under “Frequently purchased together”

I have now read 2 of the 3 of these books, and based on the fact that they’re together like this, I think I may have to read this one too! I had a little chuckle about it.

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Planting? You bet! Tulips went in, and we got the garlic mulched over.

When I outlined the trench for the tulips, I wasn’t sure about my spacing. Some people plant close together for annual production, others plant further apart and let them multiply and grow. I decided that I was going to do them as annuals this year, purely because the place that I prepped for them is really close to my blueberry bushes, and I’d like to add more blueberries next year. I may try to find place for them to grow as perennials. I really enjoy looking at them.

A couple cloves of garlic got missed when we planted them apparently, and they’d started to grow roots outside of the dirt. I gave William a little trench, and he planted the garlic. That’s now “Williams Garden!”

We had a round bale get rained on, and it couldn’t be fed to the pony anymore, and was too heavy to move back to the sheep at the time, so we left it, and got rained on even more. So now it’s breaking down, and so we used it for mulch. As we were pulling the kinda slimy bale apart, steam started to escape. It had started fermenting as well. there was a yeast colony building in the middle. It was super gross to touch, but super cool to see!

We got it all covered, and then we also put an inch or two on the tulips and put a little more soil on top.

I came up with a super basic CSA plan, but I know it still needs some tweaking. I’ll have to look over exactly what was in this years boxes to know what I’m expecting too much of!

Not included on the lists are Garlic, Eggs, Mushrooms, Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Apples, and Pears which will be included as we have them.

Week 1 (June 10 – June 16)
Cabbage
Kohlrabi
Lettuce
Green Onions
Cilantro
Radishes
Turnips
Parsley
Blueberries		Week 9 (August 5 – August 11):
Tomatoes
Green Onion
Cilantro
Basil
Radishes
Turnips
Parsley
Carrots
Week 2 (June 17 – June 23):
Tomatoes
Peppers
Basil
Dill
Cucumbers
Carrots
Beets
Chives
Strawberries		Week 10 (August 12 – August 18):
Summer Squash
Tomatoes
Broccoli
Collards
Kale
Swiss Chard
Arugula
Cabbage
Dill
Week 3 (June 24 – June 30):
Onion
Green Onion
Cilantro
Basil
Radishes
Turnips
Parsley
Carrots
Raspberries		Week 11 (August 19 – August 25):
Tomatoes
Peppers
Basil
Dill
Cucumbers
Carrots
Beets
Chives
Week 4 (July 1 – July 7):
Summer Squash
Broccoli
Collards
Kale
Swiss Chard
Arugula
Cabbage
Dill		Week 12 (August 26 – September 1):
Onion
Tomatoes
Peppers
Green Onion
Cilantro
Basil
Radishes
Turnips
Parsley
Carrots
Week 5 (July 8 – July 14):
Tomatoes
Peppers
Basil
Dill
Chard
Cucumbers
Carrots
Beets
Chives		Week 13 (September 2 – September 8):
Summer Squash
Tomatoes
Peppers
Broccoli
Collards
Kale
Swiss Chard
Arugula
Cabbage
Dill
Week 6 (July 15 – July 21):
Onion
Green Onion
Cilantro
Kale
Basil
Radishes
Turnips
Parsley
Carrots		Week 14 (September 9 – September 15):
Tomatoes
Peppers
Basil
Dill
Cucumbers
Carrots
Beets
Chives
Week 7 (July 22 – July 28):
Summer Squash
Broccoli
Collards
Kale
Swiss Chard
Arugula
Cabbage
Dill		Week 15 (September 16 – September 22):
Onion
Tomatoes
Green Onion
Cilantro
Basil
Radishes
Turnips
Parsley
Carrots
Week 8 (July 29 – August 4):
Tomatoes
Peppers
Basil
Dill
Cucumbers
Carrots
Beets
Chives		Week 16 (September 23 – September 24):
Onion
Tomatoes
Green Onion
Cilantro
Basil
Radishes
Turnips
Parsley
Carrots

Planting starts again on Jan 1st, and I hope I’ve got my groove back by then!