Category Archives: farming

CSA Week 7 News – White Cat & Kingsbury Veterans

July 21, 2015 QueSehraFarm Leave a comment

Happy CSA Day everyone!

it was kind of a hairy trip bringing a 8x12 porch home on a 4X8 trailer, but we made it. — it seemed sketchy bringing a 8×12 porch home on a 4X8 trailer, but we made it, thanks largely to the guy who gave us the deck’s awesome scheme for getting it loaded easily

We started off the week with some Craigslist freebies – 80 some gallons of potting soil in nice lidded 5 gallon buckets, some sturdy pallets, a hose reel (for winding up and storing drip tape lines), and a nice wooden 8×12′ deck – which temporarily serves as a little raised area off our bedroom door, and which will eventually serve as ~half of the platform supporting the free 12×17′ screen porch we scored a few weeks back – making a bug-free hangout area to eat meals and sit around outside in.

so much free potting soil! (in the white buckets. the black garbage cans are filled with cafeteria kitchen trimmings, for compost)

WWOOFer Ariel left to continue her journey Westward on Saturday after the Farmers’ Market harvest was done, and then on Sunday three new WWOOFers and a dog joined us – Alabama Spencer, and “the Brazilians,” Lucas, Cristiane, and Neo the Dog – who are actually from Montreal, although the originally came up from Brazil. They have wonderful accents.

Amusingly, now all 6 people at the farm (the 3 new folks plus Reynaldo and us) ALL last WWOOFed at the same farm down in Texas – Habitable Spaces, where we stayed for two months this winter and built the earth oven.

Reynaldo went down there shortly after we left, and then The Brazilians and Spencer came and went, before continuing on their respective roadtrips across the USA, before all converged on our farm. We enjoyed catching up on the goings-ons down at Habitable Spaces – all the dogs and cats and animals, and the good people we’d met there, as well as the progress on the garden we’d helped build, the pizza oven, the bottle-brick shower-house, and everything else.

We haven’t seen the bear lately, but we’ve had a new furry visitor hanging around, scoping out the compost, and hiding out up in our oak trees.

Reynaldo spotted it first, skulking up the driveway – but the next morning when he asked us about a white cat, we half-suspected he’d seen a possum. Or a ghost. But then the neighbor reported a sighting too, and then Kristin and I got a good long look in our headlights – bedraggled white critter with a black blotch face … Kristin got out of the car and tried to talk nice to it – and of course it fled. But that thing ran in a way I’ve never seen a cat move, launching into the woods in a burst of flat, arcless springs, wasting zero energy on unnecessary vertical lift. It was the way it moved, not its wild fur or stunted frame, that made it perfectly clear how fully feral it was.

The next sighting was as it ascended a tree with the same uncanny speed, after Widget had spotted it. I tried talking nicely to it to demonstrate we were friendly, and Kristin left an offering of dog food down at the tree’s base.

We haven’t seen it since.

In the field, things are moving along nicely – it seems amazing how quickly things have blown up and outward – the squash are all monsters, taking over neighboring rows like the Blob, burying the paltry little okra plants, weaving through the pea trellises, climbing up the fence and shorting out the electric deer defenses … it’s pretty wild, I’ve never seen them so vigorous.

I think the regular rainfall we’ve been getting is a large part of it, in addition to the additional organic matter (hay & compost) that we’ve been working into the soil where they’re planted. We ate our first potatoes, beets, rutabaga, and eggplant of the season – early harvests ahead of the main crops.

The beans are doing much better than last year – the Mexican Bean Beetles did much less damage (possibly thanks to the bug juice we sprayed), and we stayed on the weeds better this year. The cucumbers surprised us today with a bountiful crop ready to harvest unexpectedly, putting out far more than we expected, with many more on deck.

The tomatoes seem vigorous and happy, with many green tomatoes on the plants – we spotted the first red ripening one yesterday, so more should be on the row soon, if we can get a couple of hot nights (this week the nights have been cool, down in the 50’s, which stalls ripening). The rows of pepper plants look healthy but many aren’t flowering much yet, which we’re going to address with some Epsom sale foliar spray, in hopes that a dose of Magnesium will kick start them.

We weeded several rows and weed-whipped the raspberry patch (that we started from free Craigslist plants last year) into shape, mulched a bunch, transplanted out some fall broccoli & Chinese cabbage, watered the baby plants that needed extra, and bug hunted for cabbage worms, potato beetles – and vine borers.

We’re now past hunting for the vine borers’ eggs, because the ones that slipped past our duct-tape patrols have hatched and burrowed into the stems to feed and grow. Instead, we hunt for their “frass” – the sawdust-like excrement that the extrude from the stalks of their squash victims. Kristin spent an hour or two last night stalking through the rows with killer intensity and a razor-sharp fillet knife. Where frass was spotted, she would slit the plant open and scrape out the disgusting oozing excuse for a worm out, preventing it from killing the entire plant later in the season, once it was fat enough to block all nutrients from the roots. She got almost a dozen of the little jerks.

It was a good week.

Week Seven Box

Purslane – The tastiest and most nutritious weed on earth. If you have a garden, you may know and hate this stuff – but give it another chance! We’re not just trying to fob our weeds off on ya’ll, I swear – this stuff is amazing, and we eat it regularly.The taste is similar to spinach a little, but a touch lemony. Purslane aficionados prefer eating fresh young plants, especially young leaves and tender stem tips. Use it in salads or on sandwiches instead of lettuce or pickles. Purslane can also be cooked as a potherb, steamed, stir-fried or pureed (but it tends to get a bit slimy if overcooked.) It can be substituted for spinach in many recipes. We like it as a fresh side salad, and WWOOFer Reynaldo likes to chop up the whole thing stems and all and make it in eggs, and WWOOFer Ariel added at the very end of a veggie sautee to good effect. Let us know how it works for you!
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Read more about this globally-popular plant here and here – and recipes here.
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Garlic – We are sad and sorry that this is the only head of garlic we have for you this year. We were SO excited for what we thought was going to be a great garlic year – we used a local bio-dynamic seed crop, carefully created a rich soil bed with lots of compost, and mulched it thickly last fall … but then the voles moved into the patch and overwintered there, transforming our expensive, and much-anticipated crop of garlic into baby voles and grandbaby voles. (This lineage beneath our feet in the field is why the wild White Cat needs to be our friend and hang out.) We have a defense plan for next year – we’ll be planting the entire garlic bed within a trench of buried hardware cloth, and cover the top with still more of the same …
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Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage – great for cole slaw or homemade sauerkraut. We like sauteeing it in butter, since we aren’t big fans of traditional boiled cabbage, but your tastes may vary. It’s the easiest veggie to ferment, just add salt!
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Pickling Cucumbers – Not just for pickling – they are great for eating fresh, but they’re also the ideal kind for making pickles. (The slicing cukes – which are no good for pickling – will be coming soon.)
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Summer Squash Zucchini – A couple green types, a couple yellow, and the big boxes got Pattypan ones as well – the things that look like Pac Man ghosts.
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Onions – you know how these work.

Green Bean Medley (even though some are purple, they’re still “green beans” … )
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Herbs – Mint & Oregano – you can tell them apart by the smell! Mint’s great for tea or as flavoring in a dish. Oregano would be great sauteed with your zucchini. It dries well, so you can hang it somewhere dark and dry and then use it later.

If you can't fix it, feature it. — If you can’t fix it, feature it.

CSA, farming

Farming is War – May CSA Newsletter

May 18, 2015 QueSehraFarm Leave a comment

the News

We’ve been kept incredibly busy dealing with a series of challenges that have given us much to do … and plenty of opportunities to practice saying “que sera, sera” and letting go of stressing over potential dooms!

Like bosses in the first levels of video games, our Spring challenges started out easy enough. First, there was the incredibly dry and droughty spring – we wound up irrigating in April for the first time ever! We set up the 600 gallon rainwater collection tanks to gravity feed to a sprayer hose we could walk up and down the rows of seedlings – and since there wasn’t much rain to collect, we ran the pump using solar power on sunny days, filling them with well water.

Next came the quack grass. We’d known it was in the field and all around us, but this spring it came on with a vengeance, sprouting up in thick mats throughout the field. And so we did some research – and identified the species as one of the most notorious and loathed garden weeds on earth. The waving green blades were just the visible tip of the treacherous iceberg; quack grass forms dense mats of allelopathic root rhizomes that choke out other plants, and it spreads like a cancer if left unchecked. There is no easy way to eradicate it (you could choose to not grow any crops for a year or two while you either smother your entire garden with thick plastic, or till the whole thing every few weeks for an entire season … not options for us!)

We knew we couldn’t totally defeat it, but we had to fight it back enough to keep it off our crops and prevent it from getting worse – so we got into warrior mode and went into battle. That may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not. Each row we planted, we broadforked to loosen the soil around the grass roots. Then hand weeded out the long, ropey rhizomes – commonly up to two feet long – and if you break them and leave pieces in the ground, they will re-sprout from the bits, like the Hydra’s heads. Our hands became deeply stained black with soil, as we slowly reclaimed rows one at a time from the grassy menace.

Then came the voles. Voles! I thought they were just cute little field mice. I even saved one’s life last year. Now, I regret that – now, I want them all dead. Not moles; moles eat bugs, whereas voles eat your crops. They create crazy tunnel mazes throughout your field, from which they can launch ambushes.

meandering vole tunnel down last year's potato rows — exposed vole tunnel meandering down last year’s potato rows

They lurk, feasting on your emerging garlic beneath the mulch, and waiting until you transplant all of your kohlrabi out into the field after nurturing them from seeds. And then they tunnel right through the row and eat those lovely kohlrabi’s roots right off, leaving them to wilt and die slowly while you watch, uncomprehending … until you pull the first completely dead plant out to autopsy, and discover the tunnel where the roots used to be.

casualties of the Vole War - de-rooted kohlrabi in the hospital after being taken back in from the front (aka field) — casualties of the Vole War – de-rooted kohlrabi in the hospital after being taken back in from the front (aka field)

Voles live in colonies and reproduce furiously all year round. They worship Satan and dance upon the graves of children. After you catch one in a snap trap, they all learn to avoid them and bury them in dirt whenever you try to sneak one into a tunnel mouth. Science has shown that the only good vole is a dead vole. Unfortunately, they are harder to kill than Steven Seagal.

Our survival strategy for the Vole Challenge was threefold:

1) we dug trenches down each side of new rows and left them bare of mulch for the time being – thus cutting off shallow tunnel networks and creating barriers of openess that the secretive rodents would be loath to cross.

2) We brought mass death to one of their main lairs – the hugelkultur mound we’ve been building near the greenhouse. The buried pile of logs and branches proved ideal habitat for the beasts, and their burrow holes peppered the surface; we called it the Vole Hotel. The day we discovered the kohlrabi had been decimated by the little monsters, we got innovative. I used some plumbing and vent tape to rig up an adapter between a garden hose and the van’s exhaust. Then I plugged up all the burrow holes but one in the vole hotel, and filled their nest with sweet, sweet carbon monoxide.

Payback for our kohlrabi! Exterminating the Vole Hotel with carbon monoxide.

It worked! But there were still all the voles in the field … which brought us to:

3) we gave up on our plan of ‘No-Till’ gardening, for now. Que sera, sera! It turns out that voles thrive under the same conditions that we had created to nurture our soil, and tilling was the time-honored method to take out their tunnels and reduce their ability to decimate a garden.

So we sent out an S.O.S. to our wonderful neighbors Dave & Marcie – and they came riding in on a shining green steed, a John Deere tractor with a PTO tiller attachment – and chewed up the portion of the field not yet planted. It was disappointing to have to till after all, but it felt great to set the vile voles back enough to buy our transplants some breathing room to grow without being devoured.

But now there are the cutworms.

Cutworms are gross caterpillars that live just beneath the surface of your garden. Like vampires, they emerge to feed at night – climbing up your young tender crops and devouring them – sometimes just the leaves, but all too often chewing through their stems and killing the entire plant.

And this has been a boom year for cutworms; they have simply decimated our direct-seeded radishes, lettuce, spinach, and turnip plants, chewing them up as soon as they emerge from the ground.

Every morning, we start our day with a walk. Not a nice looking-at-nature-and-smiling-at-the-sky walk – a grim hunt through the field, stalking through the rows of transplanted cabbage, kale, broccoli, looking for the telltale chewed up holes, fallen leaves, and felled plants that indicate a cutworm has been munching in the night. When such damage is seen, we dig through the soil all around the ravaged plant, sifting and probing until we discover the culprit or culprits and squish their green* guts out. (*purplish, if they’ve been eating the Red Russian kale) In the night, we stalk through the field with flashlights, squishing the worms we catch in the act.

So far, in spite of our vigilance and the scores of squished bugs in our wake, the damage is unrelenting. We’ve lost a lot of plants to these horrible bugs – we can keep most of the transplants alive through constant vigilance, but the tiny direct seeded plants are really taking a beating. Although we planted well more than we needed, the losses are mounting, and it can be a struggle to avoid falling into despair in the face of the enemies arrayed against us.

But overall, we’re doing alright – it’s interesting, even when it feels overwhelming. We knew this wouldn’t be easy, we anticipated unexpected obstacles and setbacks – we even named our farm with this in mind.

So, we let ourselves feel whatever sadness or anxiety is appropriate for just a bit – and then gird up for battle; put on a bloodlusty grin, and wade into the thick of it – rending the destroyers and avenging our fallen crops.

Farming is war.

And fortunately, we have a great battle cry:

Que sera, seraaaaaAAAAAAAA!

some Pictures!

baiting the electric fence with sweet syrup, so deer learn to fear it

it takes a village to raise a farm! Jim Sehr, Neighbor Dave, and the truck driver helping unload the giant delivery of the future high tunnel greenhouse

the giant egg turned out to be a double yolker

heating up the hot tub - great way to loosen up sore muscles and caked on dirt! — heating up the hot tub – great way to loosen up sore muscles and caked on dirt!

hens working in the field in one of the two chicken tractors — hens working in the field in one of our two chicken tractors

new waterproof roof completed over the Albatross guesthouse, thanks to Jim!

putting down a thick weed barrier and mulch

at a local farm getting loaded up with rounds of old hay for mulch

built a chicken composter box in their yard - they can eat lots of good scraps, while mixing it up with the dead leaves — built a chicken composter box in their yard – they can eat lots of good scraps, while mixing it up with the dead leaves

relaxing in the Albatross guesthouse after a long day afield – it has working lights now!

CSA, farming, homestead

Germination 2015

April 21, 2015 QueSehraFarm 1 Comment

We’ve been back on the Farm since mid-March, getting things started for the year …

It’s been a month of preparation: hooking the solar power and rainwater collection systems back up, moving and fixing up the new guesthouse (a ’58 mobile home we got free on Craigslist), getting a new flock of laying hens, upgrading the nest boxes, turning dead trees into firewood, setting up fences, planning upgrades to the rainwater system, paying taxes, layering the hugelkultur mound, preparing for the coming 70×30′ high tunnel, and, of course, soaking in the hillbilly hot tubs.

the 1958 Gilder Albatross - our new guest cabin — the 1958 Glider Albatross – our new guest cabin

old tractor tires & former tabletop repurposed as front steps on the Albatross

harvesting dinner from the field - parsnips that survived the winter — harvesting dinner from the field – parsnips that survived the winter

Gabe Sehr: Rhizome Hunter of the Hugelkultur, Destroyer of Crab Grass

this pine tree blew partway over in a spring windstorm - we made a sling from an old tractor tire tube and anchored it back upright to reroot — this pine tree blew partway over in a spring windstorm – we made a sling from an old tractor tire tube and anchored it back upright to re-root

we got ten 2-year old hens; they provide about 7 jumbo-sized eggs a day

the hens run toward the axe on our farm - because it means we're breaking some carpenter ant treats out of a log — the hens run toward the axe on our farm – because it means we’re breaking some carpenter ant treats out of a log

Neighbor Dave doing some tractormancy on a pile of aged horse manure, to prepare the soil for the new high tunnel greenhouse

handwashing and line drying; not too bad, but the wringing part is a pain.

Cleo may be almost 15 & a bit limpy, but she still loves life on the farm

"Science," the free deeeep freezer we got on Craigslist to use as our fridge (in conjunction w/ the buried chest freezer pseudo-root cellar) - it once went down to 120 below. The alarm still works. — “Science,” the free deeeep freezer we got on Craigslist to use as our fridge (in conjunction w/ the buried chest freezer pseudo-root cellar) – it once went down to 120 below. The alarm still works.

the Albatross came with some weird plastic cabinet things; we used their sliding doors for eas,y egg-gathering from outside, with the female edge of cheap pine paneling as the tracks

Foreman Jim and Kristin starting work on the new waterproof Albatross roof

the hens, minus Broody McBrooderson who hangs out alone on her own perch, off camera

chickens considering free-ranging right up the ladder with Jim

Widget knows the River Road well enough by this point

suspected double-yolker, and the biggest egg we've ever seen. Scientists theorize this was the consequence of Broody McBrooderson eating a bunch of venison sausage. — suspected double-yolker, and the biggest egg we’ve ever seen. Scientists theorize this was the consequence of Broody McBrooderson eating a bunch of venison sausage.

We got Jim some bee-keeping gear for Christmas, and he took a class ... next thing you know, he's in a bee suit, you're helping dump a hive of bees into a box, and everyone is getting stung. Except for the man in the suit of course ... — We got Jim some bee-keeping gear for Christmas, and he took a class … next thing you know, he’s in a bee suit, you’re helping dump a hive of bees into a box, and everyone is getting stung. Except for the man in the suit of course …

Pepe, our new rooster - he's in heaven here — Pepe, our new rooster – he’s in heaven here

But primarily, it’s been all about the seeds. This is our first year starting seedlings off grid, without either the electricity to run banks of lights or the controlled heat of a modern home – so we’ve had to do some improvising.

making soil blocks for seed starting - a mix made from compost we made last year, Perlite, peat moss, lime, blood meal, green sand, and rock phosphate — making soil blocks for seed starting – a mix made from compost we made last year, Perlite, peat moss, lime, blood meal, green sand, and rock phosphate

For next spring, we plan to have a wood fired, slow-release heating system installed in the greenhouse – a “rocket mass heater” that stores heat in a clay and stone bench running the length of the greenhouse, which we can germinate seeds on and leave plants overnight when temps drop down. But for this year, there was no time to build it …

So at first, we tried propane heat. We quickly discovered that it is far too expensive to try to maintain temperatures overnight in a structure that is not really made to hold heat – the thin plastic is great for letting sunlight in and holding the heat briefly, but when there is no sun and the temps are below freezing, a 200 square foot hoophouse will quickly drain your bank account – as well as leave you stressing about a propane cylinder going empty in the middle of the night and costing you everything you’ve worked so hard to start.

the dogs grazing on the crab grass coming up in the greenhouse, long before it appeared outdoors

Cleo is over the cold & ready to enjoy the Greenhouse Effect

The first seedlings started were the cool weather crops – hardy specimens that can survive chilly air and soil, such as lettuce, broccoli, and kale. We also got some more perennials going – asparagus and rhubarb.

you've heard of Baby Kale - this is Newborn Kale — you’ve heard of Baby Kale – this is Newborn Kale …

Using a handy digital thermometer with a probe (which lets us take readings in two separate locations), we experimented with different techniques for maintaining adequate temperature, and discovered that if we put the flats on the ground of the greenhouse at night and layered them with row cover fabric, the warmth of the earth keeps the trays several degrees warmer than the rest of the greenhouse.

using cold climate greenhouse tactics similar to those promoted by Eliot Coleman and Helen and Scott Nearing

When it is very cold, we bring them up into the trailer with us, to stay toasty with the heat from our wood stove.

This set the stage for the next wave of seedlings – the much more sensitive hot weather plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.

These seeds will not germinate well unless soil temperatures are at least 80 degrees – and once they finally do emerge, the plants don’t like it much cooler than that, either – no lower than 50. So, we started a new regimen to accommodate them.

On clear days, when the sun warms the greenhouse up in the 80 to 100 degree range, we set up the warm-weather plants on the greenhouse shelves, to benefit from both the heat and the sunlight.

During these times, the cool weather crops are moved outside, to temperatures more to their liking, as well as into the wind and more direct sunlight that they need to get, in preparation for being transplanted into the open field.

We used the storm-ravaged mosquito gazebo frame and some row cover to build them a shelter, which keeps the sunlight moderated during the strongest times of day.

For nighttime and for still-germinating seeds (which require no sun and more heat), we hung ceiling-to-floor curtains in our trailer, dividing it into three areas: the living room with its big bright windows (which lose heat at night), the kitchen in the middle with the woodstove, and the bedroom in the rear of the trailer. Rearranging the furniture allowed us to set up a big wire shelving rack in the middle zone, capable of holding almost 20 flats of seedlings. The uppermost (warmest) shelves became our germination area – the curtains trap much of the heat from the woodstove, allowing us to easily maintain temperatures between 70 and 100 degrees overnight for the seeds to germinate within, without roasting ourselves to death while we sleep in the rear.

In the mornings, we load the sprouted trays into the van and move them “downstairs” into the protected sunny greenhouse. If it’s warm enough, the cool weather crops (which spend the nights on the greenhouse floor) get moved outside into the gazebo shelter. And then when the sun goes down, we bring them back into the greenhouse, and load the hot weather plants back into the van for a trip “upstairs” to their woodheated shelving in the trailer with us.

It’s a lot of shuffling trays back and forth and all around, but we’ve gotten pretty good at the process, handing the trays off from one person to the other at the doorways, using bread trays to move two flats at once, and making it a smooth and painless habit, a simple and quick routine. And because we’re here with the seedlings full-time (last year we did our germination in Kristin’s folks’ basement), we can pay close attention to maintaining consistent moisture levels, avoiding extremes of dry or wet soil that cause problems.

Not only does it work for us – it seems to be working great for the plants. This year we have the strongest and healthiest looking seedlings we’ve had yet – strong stems, glowing leaves, high germination rates, and no sign of damping off, yellow leaves, or other signs of stressed or unhappy seedlings.

Of course, just as it gets easier and feeling under control, it’s time for the next phase of things – this week we started planting seeds out in the field – so far, onions and snap peas, with lettuce and spinach on the to-do list next.

This means weeding rows and beds, planting, and mulching … making this a great time of year to come out and help if you’re interested in volunteering; there’s a lot to do, but it’s not hot and there aren’t any mosquitoes, gnats, or flies to speak of … yet!

2015 is off to an awesome start – I know there is no certainty when it comes to the future especially in farming, and ‘whatever will be, will be’ – but I’m predicting the best year yet!

Thanks for being a part of it!

– Gabe Sehr

farming, WWOOFing, Yokna Bottoms Farm

final days in Oxford

December 20, 2014 QueSehraFarm Leave a comment

This was our third and final week spent on Yokna Bottoms Farm, in the beautiful Faulknerian land of northern Mississippi. Preparing t leave back during the first time we WWOOFed here (January 2014), it seemed weird that we might not ever see the characters here again – which makes sense in retrospect, since fate conspired to get us here again this winter.

Widget does not think the chickens deserve all of the bread.

A year later, we’re not thinking about how weird it is that we may never see the Yokna farm and its cast of human, canine, and kitty characters again – because we assume that someday, we probably will.

mixing up worm castings, chicken manure, and dirt into a batch of potting soil for the strawberry project

potting up dozens of little strawberry plants we dug up from a crowded and un-loved patch of field, with Jeff

Gabe chewing through wicked blackberry canes with the flail mower

Kristin bashing low-hanging branches from the pines to make way for the flail mower’s passage

Cleo & Faith in their hours-long staring contest

you can guess how Faith earned her nickname, "Scarf" — you can guess how Faith earned her nickname, “Scarf”

Faith does not mind that Gabe is allergic to her. She may even prefer it.

This week we visited Richardson Farm – a startup operation founded by former Yokna intern Nate, who we’d met last year. He is leasing some really interesting land along a lakeshore, and has big plans for what he’d like to get growing and built there. For now, it’s been fulltime work just getting a liveable shack to stay in, a small greenhouse built, etc – things are starting to come together and it’ll be great to see where it goes from here,

and old treehouse failure decorates the woods of Richardson Farm

Another former Yokna Woofer, Reynaldo came to stay at the Farm over the last few days to house & dog sit for Doug, who left for a few days of family time in New Mexico with the ‘old boys,” Merton and Shivas. We hadn’t met Reyndaldo before, but we’d enjoyed his work – he’d done a great painting of the old farm truck and Missy, which graces the living room wall of the house.

While staying in the house, he’s working on a new piece – a vortex-looking spiral which is steadily resolving into an amazingly well colored and rendered hay bale.

When not housesitting here, Reynaldo is WWOOFing on the nearby Canebreak Farm – another up and coming small organic farm. We went to check it out with him – I wish we had a photo of the sweet bamboo cane thicket growing along one edge of the field, where the farmers hope to one day clear room for tables and chairs – a dining space for the Asian farm-to-table dishes they hope to serve from the produce they grow on the land.

We made cornbread and went to a Chili Cook-Off, where most o the entries included Yokna Bottoms veggies, and longtime Yokna Farm staff Betsey took home the prize … but we felt like the biggest winners, with all the delicious food we got to eat.

At the house, we've gotten into doing crossword puzzles for the first time — At the house, we’ve gotten into doing crossword puzzles for the first time

Tomorrow, we leave for Habitable Spaces in Kingsbury, Texas first thing in the morning!

we got matching fortunes when we went out to eat at the local Noodle Bowl ... pretty fun on the heels of last year's Cookie Coincidence — we got matching fortunes when we went out to eat at the local Noodle Bowl … pretty awesome on the heels of last year’s Cookie Coincidence

farming, WWOOFing, Yokna Bottoms Farm

another Yokna week

December 15, 2014 QueSehraFarm Leave a comment

The second week at Yokna Bottoms Farm was as expected – we worked throughout the weekday mornings, and the rest of the time ate, relaxed, and explored our surroundings in beautiful northern Mississippi.

There was more deja vu from our time here last year, as we dug drainage ditches and continued the pine-tree clearing project (with a new and improved chain rig that Jeff put together), and plenty of hay mulching.

sorting old peppers into keepers and compost

Jeff tests the deer stand we cobbled together from scavenged materials – which we put up on the edge of the field in hopes of harvesting some venison from the cover crop fields

digging ditches to divert waterflow off of the dirt road down to the field

The dogs, of course, are loving it here … although the Yokna Dog Pack lost one member since last year (Nathan moved out with his dog Ella), it gained a new one unofficially – “Grey Dog,” the neighbor’s year-old giant puppy – plus, there is a stray that sometimes hands out with us by the field, which brings the total up to eight … plus four cats and a shifting cast of primates …