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A Cold Day on the Homestead

May 10, 2010   Agriculture, Cold Weather Growing, Daily Farm Life, Garden, Greenhouse, high tunnel, hoop house, Growing Vegetables, Homestead, Maine, Poultry, Small Farming

Share the post "A Cold Day on the Homestead"

I’m cold. It’s cold. Moving between the warm greenhouse and the 39*, windy, cloudy outdoors makes me cold. So here I sit, with a cup of hot raspberry tea, doing something highly unusual these days – blogging. I’m good at blurbing but not so much at blogging anymore.  I spend a lot more time doing than writing this year, a most welcome change.

Friends came over last Thursday to help us cover high tunnel 2. It took 90 minutes to do both ends and the top, great time for a very windy day. Also on Thursday, the runner ducklings and buff orpington chicks arrived.

Tunnel 1 has been full of greens all winter. It’s between seasons now as I baby along spinach and tomatoes at the same time. The spinach is coming out this week. The peas, spinach, beet greens, various other greens and lettuces, radishes and turnip are up outside. The garlic looks great in tunnel 1 and outside but I’m not sure what will happen with the plants in the tunnel. The ground didn’t freeze. The plants look fantastic but when I poke around in the soil I don’t find any bulbs. I’m leaving it in and working around it until it’s time to be harvested.

Rhubarb is ready to cut. I’ll take strawberries out of the freezer for rhuberry jam and pie. I’ll freeze what I need and send the rest as it’s ready to a local restaurant. If the frost doesn’t kill the blossoms the next two or three mornings we should have a ton of cherries in late summer. The three trees are covered with blossoms. The apple trees are also covered.

I’ve started so many seedlings again this year that they’ve overflowed to high tunnel 3 plus an additional 190 six packs of cold crops outside on a bench. The second greenhouse isn’t going to be ready for use this year. Our to-do list is longer than usual and has more big projects than usual.

It’s not going to get warmer outside today so I suppose it’s time to go back out. It’s a 30 second walk to the tunnel…I probably won’t freeze between here and there…probably. :)

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