Video tour!

What a weekend

We just got back from a HUGE weekend at the farm. Alex has been in Maine for 10 days now, and I was a part of the last 4 full days of marking, digging, planting, mulching and watering 1200 elderberry cuttings. Whew! Also, we welcomed our first real visitor/laborer to the farm this weekend-- Epps! 

Epps was a really good sport about planting all day in the rain, and
cooking amazing fresh tuna at night

This was really our major weekend of planting. 1200 elderberry cuttings had come in the mail (you can really ship anything) and we needed to plant them because they would not last long in that box. Cuttings are exactly that, stems cut from the parent plant that -when planted- will grow roots and eventually grow into a plant itself. Needless to say, the elderberry cuttings were not that impressive looking. 

We essentially planted 1200 weird bean sprout-looking-twigs this weekend. The sprouts are white because they had not seen enough sun and hadn't gotten enough chlorophyll :( 

This is how the farm started out on Friday. Alex and I had marked out the 12 rows of 100 plants earlier (as described in previous post) with the flags, Alex had dug the holes, and now we went hole-by-hole planting the cuttings. We were not alone! Mark and Katie, the farm owners, in addition to 5 other special helpers over the course of the weekend came to make this crazy plan possible!

On Friday, they planted and mulched about 100 cuttings. So many plant-holes... 

I don't have any pictures of what came next, because we spent all of Saturday planting in the rain. Fields were muddy, shoes were caked, pants soaked, hands covered in mud... but anything for the mighty elder, right?? It was an intense day of farming, but by the end of it we had planted 650 cuttings. We switched to full-on planting to make sure we'd get them all in, and saved mulching for later since it was raining anyway. Sunday we planted another 250 cuttings, and started mulching. 

Mulch would protect our little elder-twigs from weeds, and hold in moisture.

It never did clear up the whole weekend, which was a bit sad for us, but great for the elderflowers. They like cold and wet weather, so we were actually very lucky because we could plant them and not worry about trying to water and save them immediately. That would have been a mess. 

Steaming mulch

Monday and Tuesday were full on mulching days. There is not much more to say about that. Tedious, redundant, but important, or so they say. 

Mulching in the background

Aside from the elderflower extravaganza, there were some exciting new developments in the garden. Our beans are sprouting! And the radishes are coming up!

Beans!

Radishes! Taste very good already

Ok, this is an extremely close up picture, but they are still getting huge!!

Our first baby kale salad from the garden

So that is the story from this weekend at the farm. 1200 elderberry cuttings planted and mulched, and the garden growing slowly but surely. As you may have noticed on the right hand column of the blog, I started a Twitter for closer-to-real-time farm updates, in case these weekly posts just aren't cutting it, and you're going crazy not knowing what's going on at ole Karnak. For now, we are taking a short break in Somerville before heading back up. Projects on the horizon include setting up the drip irrigation system, finishing planting the garden, and grilling! But the initial major project of getting Karnak really up and going has come and gone. It's finally an elderflower farm!

An elderflower cutting Mark, the farm owner, had planted last year. If only ours will look this great! 

The Farmers Return!

Greetings farmblog followers! How is everybody doing? You may have noticed that we haven't posted anything here in a few weeks. You may be wondering why, although you probably know that we were on a two week vacation in Israel!

Overlooking Old Jerusalem.

We had a great time in Israel, and I even got to ride a camel!

Ever seen somebody do this before?

The highlights were endless-- we attended Mia's cousin Ori's Bar Mitzvah, floated in the Dead Sea, visited Tel Aviv and Haifa, ate copious amounts of schwarma, and even went camping in the Golan Heights!

Zavitan Falls, our hiking destination.

But after all this, it was time to return to our summer farm-away-from-home, Karnak Farm.

Mandatory six-inch letter farm vehicle identification.

Several of the crops we planted before leaving are off to a great start:

Little Radishes

Wheat, Barley, Oats

And several more crops went in this past week, for which we used our handy garden seeder:

The seeder digs a trench, drops a seed, covers it with soil, and pats it back down, all in one pass. What a great machine! We planted all our beans this week: favas, garbanzos, fancy french green beans, black beans, pinto beans, and jacob's cattle beans. Why so many beans? Because they're delicious and nutritious, and they store well (because they'll be dry).  

But the big project this week is planting 1200 elderflower bushes- our main tea crop, which will cover over four acres. A lot of preparation has been involved in this. First we must mark out 1200 spaces for the plants:

The measurin' stick.

Farmwasser hoists the flag

Then, we have to dig the 1200 holes! For this, we use a gigantic, self-explanatory machine called a "post hole digger":

Can you tell how it works?

Afterwards, the plant is planted in its plant-hole, and a thick layer of mulch is added to keep the soil moist and weed-free. Here is what one of them looks like:

The Mighty Elder

Then, you water it, and voila! Only 1199 more to go! Thankfully, we will have plenty of help this weekend, thanks to several of my friends (all of whom are named Alex) that have volunteered to come and assist with the planting. Think we can do it? Only time will tell! I've drilled about 800 of the holes so far, so it might just be possible to get all the plants in by Monday. We'll let you know how it goes! Until next time, we leave you with another amazing sunset at nearby Pine Point Beach, where the clams I just ate for dinner were harvested (you can see a guy digging them in the middle of the picture)

Come visit, seriously.

Sunsets and scallops

We just got back from another great weekend at the farm. Alex was at the farm from Thursday, but I was able to take a bus to Portland and join Sunday afternoon for a couple of days. This weekend, we tilled the fields and even started planting! We drove the tractor up and down the fields to create drive rows, and Alex tilled most of the land to get it ready for planting. It was a cloudy and kind of chilly weekend, but a good time to plant right before the rains. No matter the weather, you can always count on Karnak for beautiful sunsets that literally last for hours. How did this farm get the entire sky?! We are so lucky.

When you visit, get ready for some beautiful sunsets.
This farm has a lot of sky!

Another great aspect of the weekend was the food. Driving back from Portland, we bought local Maine scallops and shrimp from another roadside store, and they were amazing. Cheap, local, fresh, perfect.

Mmmm... dinner in Maine

And this morning, we even started planting! Yesterday we had created seed beds by driving the tractor back and forth over a few rows. And then we measured out the rows, dropped in the seeds, covered them in dirt with a rake, and flattened the rows with a board to pack 'em in good. Easy as that! We planted radishes, collards, arugula, and kale. Slow process, but we will not be direct seeding the entire garden, and for now it is still fun!

Planting arugula

Alex will be returning to the farm Thursday, and continuing to plant and ready the fields. And then we are off to Israel for two weeks! Another adventure! When we return maybe our seeds will have sprouted?? We will also very likely return to a huge 8 foot fence around the farm, but that is a whole different story as well. Until then, we will just have to keep an eye on the seeds we started in our house in Somerville.... they're growing!! 

At least we will have plenty of habanero peppers

The season begins!

Well everyone, things have officially gotten started at Karnak Farm. We arrived Saturday morning, and quickly got to work. Our tasks included setting up the house, and starting to prepare the soil for planting. This is how we are planning on splitting up the fields this season: 

• Two acre chamomile pasture
• 6 acre elderflower orchard
• 1/2 acre vegetable garden
• 1 acre fallow for next year's garden

Each of the four sections will require different treatment and preparations. Before we plant the chamomile, we must first create stale seed beds-- sections of land that are completely free of weeds. Chamomile is a perennial flower, meaning that we will plant it once, this summer, and it will grow back essentially forever. Once chamomile has established its dominance in an area, it will choke out weeds from growing, and provide us with up to three harvests of flowers each summer. The two acres should yield between 500 and 1000 pounds of dried flowers each season. But the first step is getting rid of all the weed seeds in the area-- this is accomplished by repeatedly chopping up the top few inches of soil in each bed using a rototiller, pictured on the back of the tractor below:  

Basically, the rototiller is a box that you drag behind the tractor that contains about six rotating blades, positioned perpendicular to the ground, that can be lowered up to six inches into the soil. The blades are powered by tractor's engine, and are very effective at aerating and breaking up clumps of soil. Look at the difference below between the untilled soil and the area which Mia is driving over:

The elderflower orchard will be treated a bit differently than the chamomile section. We will first till the top few inches of soil. and then plant white clover as a low-lying ground cover that will not compete with the elder bushes. The half acre food garden will not be planted all at one time, so we will till that land as needed, before each crop is planted. The acre of fallow is the land that we are planning to use for next year's food production. This year, we will plant a mixture of peas, vetch, and oats in the area, and periodically dig the plants back into the soil using the rototiller. We will be using this mixture of plants  as a green manure- a crop which is grown not for food, but rather to to enrich the soil by being tilled into the ground in the fall, providing nutrients for next year.

Besides the field preparations, our work this weekend included setting up a temporary, makeshift compost bin, and putting together Ikea furniture (guest bedroom pictured below):

So, that is about it for our first weekend at Karnak. More updates to come later this week! For now, we leave you with a taste of what's in store if you come to visit this summer-- namely, the neighborhood lobster shack, which cooks your food for you, for free! Hungry?

First weekend at the farm

The original Karnak

It's almost May and we are heading up for our first weekend on the farm! Not much to say just yet, but we are hoping for good weather, lots of green, wireless at the farmhouse and are just very excited to get this whole thing rolling!

A few things to know. Karnak Farm was named (not by us) after a temple in Egypt that is aligned with the stars. That's all we know.

We're the only farm in Maine to
grow elderflower for tea!

Our farm is in Saco. Five minutes from Old Orchard Beach and a quick two hour ride north from Boston on the Downeaster (there's internet!) We have big visions for this farm. Apart from 12 acres of herbal tea and vegetables, we are envisioning a fruit tree orchard, farm stand at the end of the driveway, trails in the woods, and a haven for retired circus animals (good idea Al!) We'll be at the farm for the next 3-4 days, so we'll post soon with first weekend adventures!