Week 6 on the Farm: Soil-building and Foraging

Weather Forecast: Tuesday, highs in the mid-70s, partly cloudy. Wednesday, highs in the mid-70s, 50% chance of rain. 

We've had a lovely and productive weekend here on the farm! Not only did we get a few more plants in the ground, we had a great crew of folks show up on Saturday to help us in the orchard, clearing brush and spreading wood chip mulch. You couldn't ask for better weather to work in, but I have to confess that I'm still a little creeped out by temperatures near 80 degrees at the beginning of May. It makes me wonder what weird weather we might be in for this summer. Even though we had a lovely gentle rain here at the end of last week, one of our farmer friends in northern Indiana got hit by severe storms that severely eroded his carefully prepared fields. Our friend is now rethinking his entire field design and approach to farming. He commented that the farming methods that have worked for him for the past 28 years no longer seem viable in the face of climate change and the extreme weather events it produces.

On the farm this week we are going to continue working with the soil, both in the gardens and the orchard. On the gardens side, we want to show you how to create and maintain an outdoor/backyard compost pile. Backyard composting is just as easy as vermicomposting if you know and follow a few basic principles. And as with vermicomposting, your nose will tell you if you are doing it wrong! Compost that is breaking down the way you want it to shouldn't be stinky. 

There are a few different types of backyard composting. We've already talked about vermicomposting, which can also be done in a backyard situation. The other two common types are hot and cold composting. Here's an article that contains a brief description of each method: https://www.almanac.com/content/how-compost-hot-and-cold-methods.

We try to do hot composting as much as possible, for the reasons given in the article: to kill weed seed and pathogens and to increase composting speed. But the piles we built last fall have cooled down over the winter and now we need to reactivate them in order for them to finish breaking down into a usable form. We'll have you help us turn them this week and maybe add a little extra nitrogen in the form of fish emulsion or poultry manure to kick up the composting heat.

In the orchard, we'll work at spreading wood chip mulch to feed the soil biology and we'll take a few moments to check out blossom progression and see what pollinators we can spot visiting the blooms. Here's a 5 minute video that gives an overview of what we are trying to do in the orchard with the wood chips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umRR6HKw_KI.

After we spend a little time playing in the orchard and gardens, we'll head to the woods and fields for some foraging. We don't sell foraged foods or include them in the CSA, but we do enjoy them as a part of our own diet. This article gives a good example of what can happen when a marketplace mentality is applied to wild foods: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-urban-foraging-wild-onions-met-20150510-story.html. 

So that you will be prepared to forage with good intentions, your assignment before coming to the farm is to do a little research to get to know one of the plants we'll be looking for: "ramps" or "wild leeks". Search online and see what else you can find out about this plant. Post one "fun fact" plus a link to a recipe that you plan to make with the ramps if we find some to harvest.