Spinach!

Yesterday I learned how to plant spinach, and planted the whole green house with it. We heavily seeded the spinach because we will harvest it while still very young, so there is no need to worry about it being too crowded. After the spinach is finished we will re-till the greenhouse and plant tomatoes there.

I have been learning a good deal about farming while here, it’s great. I am reading New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman; this is a brilliant book that I highly recommend. The farm manager calls this book one of his farming bibles, which I can see why. However we do not follow all of the practices recommended by Coleman. I asked Noah about this and he said it is because when he got here there was already equipment for another method of farming; the idea you go with what you’ve got. Also, he said that he did not learn to farm that way. If he had, we would have soil blocks. If he learned to farm with a tractor, we would have one. Noah learned to farm with the tools we own. This is not a judgment of anything, just interesting to see how different people can effectively feed their community.

The confusion from the last post has been cleared up. We now have a clear definition of our roles on the farm and the time expectations for us. C and I will focus on the gardens and have a small amount of animal responsibility. We will have about 4 hrs (combined) of animal chores. Our only other responsibility is managing the chore schedule that the animal manager creates. This means if someone cannot do their animal chores on a given day they will call us and we will find substitute or do it ourselves.

The first boil, alluded to last post, has not happened yet (too cold). But we are planning on boiling on the next above freezing day.