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1/11/2018

I was mending some old mesh fencing for pea trellising the other day, and I remembered I used to do a lot of that sort of stuff: recoiling spare fencing wire, saving and straightening nails, keeping baling twine, and neatly tucking away the metal strapping from packs of timber — you never know when it might come in handy

Back then every turnip counted. Every individual carrot was precious, and heartbreak was only an insect attack or a slipped harvesting knife away. It tore me up when crops bolted. Pulling up a whole planting of fennel that was reaching for the sky — all that work, and more work just to put it on the compost

And then as the years passed there were many carrots and mountains of turnips and it didn’t matter so much. A bed of turnips unsold, a couple of rows of carrots too weedy to bother with, no dramas. Need some fencing wire? A new pump? Pea trellising or irrigation or a toolbar for the tractor? Just buy it. Too busy. No time for mucking around.

Thing is, I like mucking around. And having time to muck around. And it turns out I like it more than being super-busy with lots of money. So this season is going to be smaller, slower; every carrot and turnip will be precious. And I’ll excavate the guts of the shed for the things I need and string stuff together from whatever’s there. Gotta watch the dollars on Shoestring Farm.

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Bringing it on home...

14/5/2017

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This is an edited talk from 'Dinner with Alex' at the Port Cygnet Catering Co.

First, a bit about me. I came to farming from a philosophical perspective. After 10 years as a chef in hospitality, I had a sabbatical where I completed a degree in History, Politics and Philosophy, which completely changed the way I thought.

I read all the evidence around climate change and learnt a lot about the history of our species and our planet. I was startled at where we are, and the consensus about what is happening to our planet.

Feeling the need to address this situation, and after a lot of thought, it seemed that the best response, for me, was to live as simply as possible and do something that does not damage our biosphere, and something that would help to create a resilient community.

So eight years ago I started farming on a tiny patch of dirt with nothing but a rake and a shovel, with a dream of the simple life — I pictured myself in the garden among the organic produce with the birds singing and the insects humming, pulling carrots from the good earth…then maybe jumping in the dam.

But every year since I have expanded the amount of land I cultivate, I’ve expanded the amounts of veggies I produce, I’ve expanded the farm turnover and expanded the complexity of my business in terms of multi-locations, customers, outlets, staff, insurance, capital expenditure, costs and systems. I’ve expanded my income too…

And just a month ago, after another peak season even busier than last year, I was knackered. My partner gave me a heads up that she’s kind of tired of never seeing me, and when she does I fall asleep. I had to do some thinking.

I thought about exponential growth. Plants grow exponentially also —especially annual vegetables — days to germinate, then weeks to grow to a small seedling, then suddenly boom you have a vegetable ready to eat

But then what happens? (if you don’t eat it!). The plant makes a flower, sets a fruit or a pod, makes a seed or produces a tuber or rhizome, then it dies, contracts, the end of the road for that vegetable.

So plants have that exponential growth quite specifically aimed at death and reproduction, like breathing, a matched process of expansion and contraction. Whereas our current mode of living is just never ending, limitless unchecked growth, like a continually indrawn breath.

And that was kind of how I felt at the end of summer—tight with stress like an indrawn breath.

So after eight years of always choosing to work harder, grow more, sell more, make more, thinking I’ve been increasingly successful I’ve found that I am increasingly trapped! Trapped by endless expansion.

So I’ve been fulfilling our society’s expectation for a business: grow or die. Exponential growth. Of product, of profits, of consumption, of population. Of effort and labour.

And to think that I started farming as a response to our mistreatment of the planet, and a hope that I could show that small scale farming can be sustainable ethically, financially and ecologically…and personally!

So for a month or more now I have now been breathing out and taking a look around and trying to act more like a vegetable….thinking that there is a space for expansion, but it needs to be balanced by contraction, to even things out.

I’ve been thinking of the seasons themselves, how spring is like the seed, germinating slowly and putting out feelers, how the summer is the time of exponential growth, of breathing in, then a long, easy exhale as autumn ripens and winter settles in.

And how we as a species need to heed this lesson as well, to work on slowing our headlong breath and releasing a little, breathing out and equalising.

For me I think it means that for next season the focus is not for more expansion. The focus is on working with the seasons, not pushing so hard, making a little less money and a lot more time, time for me, and Christina, and my kids, and for sailing, and for just being in the garden with the birds singing and the insects humming…maybe I'll pull some carrots just because….or go jump in the dam...

And now for dinner. Tonight we are sampling a whole swag of Autumn veggies lovingly prepared by Asher and Franca....

In this photo they are plating the salad, of mixed greens with a broccoli puree and toasted rye crumbs. Delicious!

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Fresh, local, organic.

23/8/2016

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(This is an edited speech I gave upon being awarded Tasmanian Small Producer of the Year by Sprout (less wine in this transcript; less nerves)).
Hi everyone. Thanks to Sprout for this award. I spend a lot of time plugging away by myself in a field with only the ravens for company, so it’s nice to have some recognition!

And thanks also to the person or persons that nominated me.

So, I’m going to talk for 5 minutes about the philosophies behind Golden Valley Farm.

A couple of years ago, before a market, I chalked the words ‘fresh, local, organic’ on my signboard, thinking, that’s concise; kinda snappy. But it didn’t take me long to realise that the whole philosophy of the farm is in those three words: fresh local organic.

So I’ll unpack that a bit, shall I?

So, first, fresh. The ‘Fresh’ on my signboard is about personal wellbeing. As soon as a vegetable is picked, cut or dug, it begins to shed nutritional value, so for the best nutrition (and flavour), your veggies have to be as fresh as possible. Now I want all the people eating my veggies to be as healthy as possible (that’s me, my partner, my kids, friends, customers) — and that means getting the produce out of the field and onto the plate ASAP…..so for the personal wellbeing, for the nutrition and enjoyment of each and every person that eats the produce from my farm…I strive for freshness (and incidentally, I think freshness is the single biggest factor in the current popularity of farmers markets)….and what is the easiest way to have fresh veggies for the people? Well, it is to produce them locally….which, conveniently, is the second word I’m going to unpack.

Local. Dig the carrots one day and someone you know buys them the next. Or even better, harvest and wash the salad at first light, roll down the hill to the market and people are eating it by lunchtime. So “Local” helps enormously with the ‘fresh’ part of the equation, but “local” is much more than that. Sure, buying and selling locally has measurable economic benefits for the community, but “local” also means that all sorts of non-monetary benefits come in to play. The economic transaction is the tip of the iceberg.

So for instance when I was separating from my ex-wife, I had customers hugging me across the market stall bench, while people in the queue waited. And I really needed that; the support was amazing, and I still feel that very deeply. Then there’s other times when——when selling your produce becomes more...like recently, when a guy, who I like to have a chat with, just one of those people who you seem to know, he came to the stall, and he was looking really rough. I sort of said, ‘you ok?’, and he looked at me for a moment, and said “I lost my daughter”.

And I see him every couple of weeks and we chat, and I think, I hope, he’s coping alright.

But for me, that he is able to share that with me, and I don't know what to do but reach out and touch him, and say "my friend"... what is so special is that he feels able to do that — what the tax department sees only as a monetary transaction is also a place for sharing—-suffering in this case, but there’s also so often recognition, there’s people just checking in, there’s people who may be single or lonely, being seen and known, and, most often, there’s just people you know having a chat and a laugh…and all these small happenings are building community one block at a time.

So "Local’ is about community, about the coming together of individuals to form something greater; a network of support and nurture…..and where do these groups of individuals come together?

Here, on the spherical thing we all live on. And that what “organic’ is about.
The “Organic” on my chalkboard is about opening the scope of your thinking to include the whole world, and making decisions within this awareness.

With every step forward, it’s trying to negotiate a win-win-win situation, where what is important on a personal level, and what is important on a community level, is attained within the bounds of behaving ethically and responsibly within your understanding of the planet.

It is as simple as not poisoning ourselves or the planet, but it’s also about reducing food miles and thinking of the long term good in everything from choice of inputs to the packaging you choose to use. In day to day business this wider picture is easy to lose track of, so I’d like to remind everyone of a saying that may be trite but true : Think GLOBAL Act LOCAL. And I think it’s really worthwhile consciously addressing whether your business is trying to generate a win-win-win on a personal level, a community level, and on a global level.

No one’s perfect and we have to be pragmatic, and you can’t always do as well as you’d like, but you’ve got to try, right?

And hey, thanks for the award!

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Looking Forward...

26/7/2015

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I went to my accountant's today. This for me is an indicator that one growing season is turning over into the next, like a large, slumbrous person under several blankets, shifting slowly, trying not to let the cold in. It's time to settle in and assess the past year, and to look forward to the coming season. So, tax-time, how did I go this year?

The good news is that I earned more this financial year than the last. The bad news is that it was only $220. I've kind of been expecting an average year after the myriad crop failures of spring and early summer (early peas, salad mix, onions, beans weren't great either), so I have to look on the bright side: now I know how not to do those crops again.

On the plus side, the leased land is going very well, providing me with potatoes, leeks and tons of brassicas (below), that I would have struggled to squeeze into my home patch. Also, the corn came off well (phew!), and my holding crops are promising a comfortable start to the coming financial year over late winter and early spring.

Also, the Growing Vegetables workshop at the farm in March was a great success, with terrific feedback and a fun time had by all. The food was particularly good, and for me it was wonderful to be able to share all that I have learned over the last five years. (I don't mind being laughed at whilst wearing my fame weeder, guys -- laugh all you want. It works, I swear!)

The workshop was so much fun, in fact, that I am holding a series of three workshops over spring. The first will focus on growing organic vegetables, from breaking ground, to soil preparation and types of beds, as well as fertilisers, compost and varieties of produce. The second workshop is for those interested in making an income from their garden, so it's about planning your garden for ease and watering, the best techniques, and how and where to sell your produce. The third workshop is about year-round supply, whether for the home garden or for the market gardener. This is my passion: finding out when to plant what vegetables so you have a bountiful garden all through the year. If you are interested you can find out more about the workshops here.

I'm also looking forward to more people visiting and helping on the farm over the coming season. I've had a few spare days at this quiet time of the year, so I've been working on some wwoofer accommodation, based on the traditional Huon Valley picker's hut.

The hut is coming together well, and I am hoping to be able to host interested backpackers who would like to spend some time working and learning on an organic market garden.

I'm also open to the idea of people coming and helping out on the farm in exchange for food and vegetables. I've had a few people (now friends) that have joined me on a regular basis to hoe, weed and plant for a day every week or so, which saves me time, meaning we can linger over lunch and harvest a few veges as a thank you. You can contact me here.

All in all, I'm looking forward to the coming year; I've learnt a lot, have more land to play with, and I can almost smell spring in the air...

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Farm Tour

1/3/2015

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*This is an edited version of a tour delivered to members of the Huon Producers' Network on Saturday 28th February 2015

I arrived with my family at Golden Valley in the winter of 2009. It was a cold, wet winter and we built the house and began a small garden.

I was also finishing a degree at the time and once completed, I looked around for office work. Surprisingly, my degree in politics, history and philosophy did not help me in finding work around Cygnet, and to bring in income I turned to the dream of growing organic vegetables for fun and profit.

I knew very little about horticulture, and began my journey with a rake and a spade and a lot of enthusiasm. The first garden was small, dug by hand and planted a bit at random. It did work, though, and the first time I sold produce from the garden was a very happy day!

But fifteen dollars worth of garlic does not get you very far, and expansion became my focus. I also read a whole swag of books on organic and market gardening. My garden expanded and my techniques improved. I discovered why hoes were the essential tool in pre-industrial agriculture (think of the implications of the phrase 'hoedown'), and after 18 months I was able to afford a rotary tiller to hasten the work of cultivating soil.

And then a couple of years ago I bought a share in a tractor, and I expanded again to other parts of the farm, and this year I am leasing a couple of acres from a friend on the Huonville road, so the trend of learn-apply-expand is continuing.

Today we’ll be talking mostly about this land we’re standing on, so I’ll run through a few of the pros and cons of the block. It seems in farming there is a flip side to almost everything, but the first pro I think stands alone, and that is that this place is beautiful. It’s a lovely place to work everyday, watching the seasons come and go and the years pass and almost everyday having a little ‘wow’ moment — ‘you’re allowed to do this for a living?’

More concretely now, we’ll look at soils, water, elevation, aspect and microclimate.

The soils here (and in most of Cygnet) are a quite heavy, shallow clay — that’s why it’s such a good apple growing region, because the apple trees like having their roots down into the clay. For a gardener, clay is good and clay is bad. Clay is bad because it’s shallow, it turns to cheesy glue when it’s wet, and it’s like brick when it’s dry.

But clay is also good, because it holds onto things, especially water and nutrients, so it’s a great base to build good soils.

For water, here in Cygnet we average 700mm of rainfall a year, which is relatively dry. However, as you can see, this property has a fair amount of stored water, so I can weather dry periods quite easily.

The main garden is at just over 100 metres from sea level, and the slope of the land is quite steep. The block as a whole is so steep that of the 24 acres, I can only comfortably cultivate 3/4 of an acre, or roughly 3000m2. Again, the slope is good and bad…It's bad because I can’t use all the land, and it’s a pain in the arse to work on; one foot is always higher than the other, and everything slides downhill — water, nutrients, the soil itself, and sometimes me when it’s muddy!

But the slope is good because it means the garden is very well drained, and this is especially important over winter — on a flat block in this climate you often simply cannot farm it in winter as it is too wet. So I have very good drainage here (but remembering the clay holds on to moisture, so it’s the best of both worlds). Also, the garden is sloped toward the north, and over the cooler months this has a beneficial effect for the garden. Because of the slope, the garden actually catches more sunlight and heat than a flat block. The winter sun is right low over the hill and the slope faces that way, so I get better growth in winter here than I would otherwise.

This slope is also a factor in the microclimate— it catches the sun in winter, but frost also is inclined to slide off it. Other factors for this microclimate are proximity to the ocean, and with Port Cygnet only three kilometres away it is quite temperate. We also have the surrounding hills. The range to the west protects the garden from the strong prevailing north-westerlies, and combined with the other hills to the east they create a bit of a sun trap over summer, where the temperature here can be several degrees hotter than Cygnet — good for the corn and the tomatoes!

So there's a bit about the land itself, and now we’ll turn to the mechanics of the farm.

I could quite easily talk you ears off about so many things — soil health, fertilisers, composts, organic principles, harvesting for market, varieties and climate, poly tunnels— but I’ve decided to focus on what I see as the three key ideas that govern this farm.

The first concept can be applied generally to Tasmania and the Huon, and this is the concept of Seasonality.

Cygnet is at 43 degrees south, and this means we have a quite dramatic seasons. This seasonality is caused by the fluctuating amounts of sunlight shining on the southern hemisphere. This year, the shortest day (June 21st) is 9 hours and 49 seconds long and the longest day (December 22nd) is 15 hours and 21 minutes long, so that’s a difference of more than 6 hours.

So at the moment all that extra sunlight is giving us summer, and the soil is warm and the days are long and plants are growing like mad, and gardening is easy. But we are already sliding down the slow decline of sunlight hours now, heading for winter, when plant growth gets slower and slower and pretty much stops when our days fall shorter that 10 hours long. For us this year, we drop below 10 hours of daylight on the 8th of May, and we only start to get more than 10 hours of sunlight again on the 7th August, so for us that’s 3 months of the year —one quarter of the year — where we are dealing with very slow growth.

So these extremes of sunlight cause our distinct seasonality here, and dictate how and when we can plant what crops, and therefore what we are able to have available to us as fresh vegetables at any given time of the year.

This awareness of seasonality is particularly important when we’re talking about cropping over winter, during that really quite dead three months May-August, and what it means for this farm is that I’ve been very busy for the last 6 weeks sowing crops that will be providing me income in July and August….

Which leads us neatly to our second key idea for the farm, which is Succession Planting.

So from here you can see the most direct example of succession planting on the farm. The corn patch. The corn patch above is five succession plantings of 8 rows each, starting from the north side (at right) in the last week of October and finishing five weeks later in the last week of November. You can just about distinguish the successive plantings from here, especially the last one (at left), in which the flowers have not yet browned off.

So why didn’t I sow the whole patch at one time? Well, apart from the fact that would be a huge job, it would also mean that I ended up with around 2,500 ears of corn ripening in the same week. And as the aim of the farm is to provide vegetables for sale to local people every week of the year, I would most likely be unable to sell that many ears in one week.

So what I have done is worked out what is the earliest I can safely sow corn and get a crop, and the latest, and planted successions over that time. This approach to succession planting applies all over the farm, so I’ll repeat it:

What is the earliest I can sow and safely expect a crop? What is the latest? Ok good then, I will sow between those times, in quantities that will provide me with a good supply of vegetables over the viable season.

Corn is a good, simple example of succession planting, as the season for it is so tight: for me in this microclimate there is a five week window for planting, which equates to a five week harvest…..each week from mid-March to late-April I should harvest 8 rows of corn, or about 500 ears.

Other crops have a much wider planting window than corn, and the planting to harvest times vary much more, and we will now take this beetroot as an example. A you can see there are four succession plantings of beets here (actually you may only see two, as the third set are tiny, and the fourth is just popping up now). The big ones were sown in December and planted in January, the next set were sown January and planted at the start of this month, and so on to the seeds that were sown last week. I won’t be sowing any more beets this season as I know if I do they will not be to a worthy harvest size before they bolt in August.

And in fact these big beet plants are the fourth succession this season, as I started sowing beets in October; the third planting is currently ready for harvest in the other patch. So you can see the idea here…I sow beets regularly over the season (seven times in total), and have a regular supply over the season, rather that just one big sowing that ripens all at once….

So that’s succession planting, which is a key part of our last focus: Intensive Growing.

So here we are and welcome to the Sunnybank patch.This has been the main garden here pretty much from the start. It started out tiny, and I took another chomp out the paddock every year ’til it go too steep. This patch basically produced my entire income for last year, turning over more than $45,000.

Physically, there are three tiers of beds, and each bed is approximately 6 metres long. Each bed is 80 cm wide, and is separated from the next bed by a 40 cm path. I have tiers rather than long beds as the paths act as catchers for all the stuff sliding down the hill; without them there would be much more erosion….as a side note, in my leased patch on the Huonville Road, the beds are 50 metres long, because the land there is relatively flat. It’s also spacious, and farming there is a very different kettle of fish to farming here. Here, space is limited, very limited, and in order to make an income of a parcel of land this size, the plantings need to be intensive.

There are two ways in which the plantings are intensive in this patch: firstly they are closely spaced, and secondly, there is rapid turnover of beds.

Without the luxury of space, the veges are planted in all close together and pretty much all the weeding is done by hand, with tool or fingers, as you can’t fit machinery between the rows of vegetables. We’ll walk over here and as we go you can see that with the bed spacing in the patch there are a variety of ways to plant, which depend on the size of the vegetables in the beds: tomatoes and zucchinis at one row per bed (and even that is a little close!), then beans and celery at two rows per bed, then carrots and beets and leeks at three rows per bed, and then lettuces and coriander at 4 or 6 rows, right up to rocket and turnips at 12 rows a bed.

So the idea is to jam the veges in as close as you can, depending on the size of the plant at harvest, and ensuring that each plant has enough soil, water, sunlight and nutrients to grow strongly. Intensive.

I'll quickly juxtapose this intensive plant spacing with my leased patch on the Huonville Road (below). These are large flat acres, and I’m planting single rows of vegetables about 1.2 metres apart, so you can imagine this flat paddock with these long rows with a lot of dirt in between, and to weed the vegetables I drive my mechanical tiller along the rows. It's less vegetables per square metre, but also much less intensive time wise.

Ok, back at Sunnybank, the second way this garden is intensive is that beds are rarely empty. Currently in the garden there are 65-odd rows, and currently only 6 of those are empty (and that’s partly because I’ve had a week-off-ish this week; normally there would be less free beds).

What happens is that as soon as a bed has been harvested out, then I hoe out any crop residues and weeds left in the beds. The residues are then raked out and put on the compost windrows at the top of the garden. I then leave the bed for roughly ten days, as this breaks the lifecycle of a nasty cutworm that lives hereabouts. Then the bed is hoed over lightly, composted and fertilised, and either sown with seed or planted out with seedlings.

This way, the maximum amount of vegetables are produced from each bed in the garden, and depending on the succession of crops through any given bed, each bed may contain between two and five or six crops in a year. For instance, tomatoes are planted once, and are in the ground for a long time, but something like rocket I’ll be planting up to 20 or more times a year, constantly harvesting and finishing beds and sowing new ones.

So this is the intensive garden: jam-packed with plants, with constant succession plantings at quantities and times that reflect the season….pretty good fun!

Ok, well that's time up for the tour, I hope you enjoyed it. Now I'm off to have a cup of tea before harvesting for tomorrow's market....

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Growing Vegetables for Fun and Profit

1/3/2015

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More and more people seem to be interested in supplying some part of their income from growing and selling vegetables. I have friends who are cutting their office jobs down to three days a week so they can work in their garden and sell veggies in their office-free time. Others are realising they can make some extra income from their land. For these people, it is all about balancing what pays with what fulfils their wider vision of the good life.

With this in mind, I have developed a two day intensive workshop, Growing Vegetables for Fun and Profit, which provides the tools and information you need to move from a small-scale veggie patch to an income-producing garden, or to set up your own market garden from scratch, or anything in between!

The workshop covers all aspects of growing and selling vegetables, from the first time your spade hits the dirt, right up to when you hand your produce to the buyer. A lot of the learning will take place in the garden and on the farm, and we will explore what types of crops and gardening styles suit you and your land.

Snacks and lunches will be provided, using produce from the farm, so you will walk away replete with good food and good information!

Scroll down to previous blogs if you'd like to see news and views from the farm....

You can contact me for more information on the workshop at tassievalley1@gmail.com, or just reply to this blog.

Cheers for now,
Alex Taylor.

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Some days.....

4/2/2015

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On a stupidly busy day at the most stupidly busiest time of the year, sometimes you've just got to take time out to wonder why the box on top of the hoe is wobbling so much....

After a little light hoe-deconstruction in the 33 degree heat, it turns out one of the four bolts has come loose, while the other (on right), has sheared off....on a Saturday morning with a public holiday on the Monday, so that's no new bolts and therefore no hoeing 'til at least mid-next week...

Then the small-engine guy calls and tells you that old Attila, your faithful friend, who has worked so hard for you these past three years, is 'buggered'. Looking at around three grand for a replacement....

And the effing goats have been at the spuds and broccoli again!

Some days....

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Full Speed Ahead

10/1/2015

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Summer has definitely arrived on the farm. Zucchinis and tomatoes (above) are reaching for the sky and popping out bountiful flowers, and the pumpkins (planted in the compost windrows, below) are crawling about like triffids.

Further into the garden the basil is looking perky....

....and the successions of carrots are popping up nicely.

The first leeks of the season are enjoying the company of my inaugural attempt at celery (on left, below),

While elsewhere on the farm, the sweetcorn is looking lovely (fingers crossed!)....

...and the first rows of peas, now spent, are making way for next week's planting of overwintered beets and turnips.

The next six-to-eight weeks on the farm are crucial, as not only do I have to keep up with the weekly succession sowings, and the busiest time of the year for harvesting, I also need to sow and plant all the vegetables that will tide me through the winter. Fortunately I have my first ever WWOOFer coming tomorrow to help me out.

I also need to make time to enjoy the fruits of the season...

And if I just scrummage around in here for a moment....yes....here we go....

The first tomato!

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Field of Opportunity

7/12/2014

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With all the available space taken up at my place, this year I am leasing land from a friend on the Channel Highway north of Cygnet. What you see above is the first crop to go in on the new plot: 500 row metres of spuds. The spuds are dug into the rows and then the soil is pulled over them from either side with a hoe. That's 1 kilometre of hoeing today, and I'm very happy to say I didn't do it alone.

The fine fellow in the photo is Michael , who I met through my market stall and later through his interest in buying one of my Jerseys. He didn't buy the cow, but somehow ended up planting spuds with me today, despite being way over-qualified for grubbing in the dirt. Thanks Michael!

Next week I'm having a contractor rotary-hoe over the the rest of the acre in the photo, into which I will be planting leeks, broccoli, cabbage and garlic over the course of the next few months. Next season there will be another couple of acres to play with alongside the one above, which should keep me busy.

Oh, and Jezebel the Jersey cow was bought by a lovely family new to Nicholls Rivulet, so I'm happy to have lost a cow and gained a friend or two....

5 Comments

Pulling Garlic

17/11/2014

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Growing garlic always seems a bit fraught. It's a speculative enterprise, plugging the cloves into wet soil in the dying days of autumn, watching anxiously for them to poke their heads up, dashing out to hoe between the rows on the few days over winter when the soil is dry enough for the hoeing to be effective. Then later there are the hours of hand-weeding between the lanky plants, watching for signs of of blight and rust. Finally in spring, I'm like a mother hen, checking every few days to see if the plants are beginning to bulb up, and when they do there's a constant refrain in my head....are they as good as last year? Will the harvest prove worth the eight months of effort?...and on the other hand, can I sell them all...did I plant too much?

This year the anxiety was compounded because I planted the garlic much later than usual. In previous years the crop was planted in March or April, but this year, due to one thing and another, I didn't sow the cloves until late May, and so I was expecting a late harvest of smaller bulbs this year.

But to my surprise, I am beginning to pull the garlic a month earlier than last year, and the bulbs, for the most part, are of good size. The reasons for this bounty are unclear to me, but I'm not complaining!

I did notice, though, as I worked down the rows, that there was a noticeable difference in the average head size from bed to bed. The garlic was planted in three tiers of beds; the top tier are the oldest beds (head at left, above), the middle tier of beds are a few years younger (middle head) and the lower tier of beds have only been cultivated for 18 months (head at right).

Happily, this result is telling me that I am on the right track...the larger yields from the older beds mean that soil health and fertility are growing over time.

Once the garlic is pulled, I load it into the tractor bucket and ferry it up to the shed, where it is laid out over old bed frames to dry and cure.

Last year I had some rust issues in the wet late spring, so I removed the stems at harvest to cure the garlic faster; this year I am leaving the stems on with the intention of making plaits and rosettes from the cured crop, hopefully in time for Christmas.

And looking forward, I will again be saving the biggest and best 250 heads of garlic for next year's seed. I think I'll plant the 2015 garlic through the silage mulch in the tomato beds, which should save hours of hoeing and weeding through winter. I have thought this would be a good idea in the past, but as the tomatoes only die back in mid-May, I thought it would be too late to plant the garlic then; now I know better....live and learn, eh?

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