Wild Ginger

Wild Ginger is everywhere down in the hollow.  It's usually found along the sides of the ridges and back up in the draws.  I just started foraging for it after giving it many months break.  The taste is somewhat different than the regular stuff.  It has more of a clove and medicinal taste.  Yesterday I harvested 70 roots for a restaurant.  I'll be delivering them tomorrow along with a ton of Skunkyo Semi-Long Radishes and a paltry amount of Purple Mizuna.  The Purple Mizuna is a whole nother post.

Below is one of the areas where I was digging the ginger plants up at.

Goats

The goats in action

Pictures. Lots of them

I got my camera.  Lots more pictures to come!

Old Gourds

Wild Ginger

Loomis Mountain Mint

Multiflora Rose

Sassafras

Sweet Shrub

Radishes are under the remay.  Sugarsnaps next to them.

Music Garlic

Here's some wild sorrel that has bolted.  When a plant has bolted it means it has gone to seed.  

I know the picture is blurry.  I'm getting a good camera this weekend.  Then the pictures will come fast and furious.

Bukowski and writing

Bukowski said this about writing.  This is the way I feel about farming.

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.
— Bukowski

I live to weed

The wild arugula has been weeded now.  It badly needed it.  The wild arugula is under remay which is a floating row cover.  The remay protects the arugula from flea beetles which can devastate arugula or any other leafy brassica.  Remay lets air, sunlight, and rain in.  It also offers some frost protection depending on the thickness of the material.  Sometimes when you put remay over something you tend to forget about it a little.  You don't see the weeds growing.  So you lift it up to check on the arugula and you are taken aback by the forest of weeds growing.  So then you have to do some hand weeding.

Weeding is something that people dislike for some reason.  I however love to.  The plants definitely thank you.  Weeding for me is meditative.  I kneel or squat down and focus everything on the weeds.  Getting your hands dirty, busting clods of dirt off weeds, and seeing the row of arugula take shape is awesome.  Getting my hands in the earth, getting them dirty is therapeutic.  Weeding is Zen like.  

Past time

Yeah I know.  I'm such a slacker about updating this.  I'm going to make it a point of posting something everyday.  Whether it's my own writing or from around the web.

The winter was very tough here.  The first killing frost didn't come until Christmas.  Then January and February were really cold.  And then March was warm!  I had not done any serious gardening in the winter time before.  I know now what it takes to grow during the winter here.  More row covers,  hoops under the remay, and I definitely see a high tunnel or two in the future.

Spring has been strange.  What little we have of it now.  It's been warm and wet.  Unusually warm.  But everything is doing well.  This year there is more growing.  There's Skunk-yo semi long, French breakfast, and icicle radishes, Bleu de solaize leeks, Sugarsnaps, Mammoth Melting Snowpeas, Green Arrow peas, Bright Lights Chard, Red Russian Kale, Tyee and Long Standing Bloomsdale Spinach, Montebianco Fennel, Bouquet Dill, Jantar Cilantro, Chioggia Beets, Bachelor Buttons, Wild Arugula, Calabrese and Arcadia Broccoli, Des Vertus Savoy and Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage, La Ratte and German Butterball potatoes and Music Garlic.  The radishes haven't seemed to like the warm weather we had in March, but are otherwise doing fine.

My dad and I built a little mini-greenhouse on to the side of the shop.  Aunt Lillian's, Lilliput, Orange Banana, and Aunt Ruby's German Green tomato seedlings are doing well.  As well as Jimmy Nardello and Padron peppers, Anise Hyssop, Winter Savory, and Wormwood seedlings.

The animals are doing well.  We finished up a new goat shelter for the goats dow by the mulberry tree.  The goats love their new area.

There's so much going on right now.