{"id":121,"date":"2011-03-01T15:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T15:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/?p=121"},"modified":"2011-03-01T15:27:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-01T15:27:00","slug":"when-were-not-gardening-im-reading-about-gardening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/?p=121","title":{"rendered":"When we’re not gardening, I’m reading about gardening"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or, in this case, farming, which to me is the ultimate hard-core act of sustainable living.\u00a0 A few weeks ago I read a great memoir called The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love<\/em> by Kristin Kimball.\u00a0 She was a NYC writer in a rent-controlled apartment who met a self-taught farmer while on a writing assignment, fell for him, and move to upstate New York to start a farm from the ground up.\u00a0 The book covers the good and the bad, talking about the fun of making your own cheese with the worry about money when your bank account reads nearly zero.\u00a0 She doesn’t romanticize or sugar coat the hard work that she and her fiance (now husband) put into starting a farm from scratch, but you get the sense that she truly feels its worth it – she’s traded the security and lifestyle of NYC for a simpler life where they grow their own food and were able to develop a year-round CSA model that provides a complete diet to their members\u00a0– they have bees, chickens, pigs, cattle and dairy cows.\u00a0 They even use draft horses to plow the five acres in which they grow vegetables.\u00a0 It got great reviews online, and I picked it up thinking, “Even when the garden expansion seems overwhelming, it will never be as much work as this.”\u00a0 Heck, we don’t even have pets, never mind dairy cows that need milking or pigs we have to slaughter.<\/p>\n

There’s a plan to start some of the seeds this weekend, requiring a trip out to pick up some new supplies.\u00a0 J has some new things he wants to try, namely grow lights.\u00a0 We’ve already been using covered trays and seed mats for heat.\u00a0 This year we also have a new baker’s rack,\u00a0assembled and waiting in the basement.\u00a0 We’ll have more trays of seedlings this year, based on the expanded, ambitious garden plans, and it will be easier to move them from their daytime home on the sun porch back into the kitchen if we have the rolling rack.\u00a0\u00a0The tentative plan is to start the eggplants and peppers now, staggering the rest of the seeds (tomatoes, squash) based on our target planting date of Memorial Day weekend.\u00a0 We’re currently debating whether to put the peas, beans and cucumbers directly into the ground or not.\u00a0 We did decide that the corn, pumpkins and watermelons are going directly into the ground one to two weeks before our big planting weekend.\u00a0 J is planning on creating furrows in the garden and we’re going to buy hay for insulation during the germination period.\u00a0 In the past we’ve used weed block, but last year’s heat and dry weather shredded the material and we ended up weeding once a week anyway.\u00a0 We’re going to try and keep the weeds down with the hay and some good old-fashioned hoeing.\u00a0 I also think it’s an excuse for him to buy some other piece of equipment to attach to the tractor for the plants in the open field.\u00a0 Did I mention that we might need to build a new and larger shed this year?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Tonight the alpine strawberry seeds are going in the freezer – in order to\u00a0mimic nature and what they would experience\u00a0if they were outside all winter it is\u00a0recommended you stick them in the freezer for 4 -6 weeks prior to planting.\u00a0 I have been reminding myself for weeks that I need to do this, and finally decided tonight was the night; it will be easier to remember the date I did it since today is the start of the month.\u00a0 Depending on the rate of germination, I might sow them directly into the raised beds that have yet to be constructed, or I might start seedlings in about a month.\u00a0 My research shows they can be somewhat susceptible to frost, so they’ll be going in the ground around Memorial Day either in seed or seedling format.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

A\u00a0lot of\u00a0this is guess work and trust in others’ research and experiences.\u00a0 Our favorite phrase around here is, “It’s an experiment.”\u00a0 So far it’s worked out fine (except for those blasted pumpkins!) but I can’t help but feel at some point there will be a failure.\u00a0 We’ll see.\u00a0 It’ll probably be those strawberries I’ve spent so much time thinking about.\u00a0 They’ll probably get frostbite in my freezer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or, in this case, farming, which to me is the ultimate hard-core act of sustainable living.\u00a0 A few weeks ago I read a great memoir called The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love by Kristin Kimball.\u00a0 She was a NYC writer in a rent-controlled apartment who met a self-taught farmer while on a writing … Continue reading When we’re not gardening, I’m reading about gardening<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sharing_disabled":false,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[64,14,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3f8I6-1X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}