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.