It's The Dirt | It is all about how we live here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens: Intensely, simply, creatively, lovingly for God, with others.

Cat On a Cold Tin Roof

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Lanny

I was sick recently. Just now recovering and recovery is slow. I don’t cough very much anymore but I can’t work long and hard, if I try, my legs get shaky and I just want to lie down wherever I am and take a nap.

Both Bet and I were sick at the same time. And for the same reason.

Dirt had been sick in April and we had avoided getting what he had for quite some time. But then we had a stressful week and were slammed at the end of it with Super Crud. Fever, chills, exhaustion, fatigue, pounding grey-matter exploding headache, coughing coughing coughing. I woke up on Monday, May 6th sounding like Shohreh Aghdashloo, luckily by the next Monday I only sounded like Demi Moore.

We drank a lot of tea, some of it a bit unusual but very good. Slept a lot. Then slept some more.

I spent a lot of time looking out my bedroom window watching the weeds grow, it was painful because, as usual, I was already too far behind in my work, and the weather, especially that first week, was the finest we have ever had in May.

But weeds weren’t the only thing I watched.

Both Bet and I were a lot like a cat on a cold tin roof, no place to go, in no big hurry.

So we were easily entertained by the view from the window. Mostly The General entertained us.

Birds during mating season often are challenged by their reflections in a window. The General was obsessed by the male red-winged blackbird in my bedroom.

The General? He marched up and down his parade post and he has beautiful epilates that clearly indicate his rank, so of course he is The General. And he has a lovely supportive wife. She came by one day to see this male bird whom her husband was protecting their home and family from.

All she saw was a buxom female redwing trying to horn in on her territory and her man. She was miffed. She told The General that he better not return to parading up and down and whistling for her. He didn’t come back for a couple of days, but then he couldn’t resist. Besides he knew that the female his wife saw was really a big tail-feather kicking male that just dressed up like a woman to trick her.

So back he came. I began to really feel bad for The General, I couldn’t figure out why he was picking on my windows.

Birds are attracted to clean windows, it’s my big excuse for not washing them in the spring, and my bedroom window is no exception to the “don’t wash” rule.

Even though my windows were dirty prior to The General’s rampage against the Intruder, and the mess he made himself, he still persisted in “seeing” the other fellow. I wanted to be able to see out so I didn’t want to put something outside my window to convince him he could leave and go eat and make fertile eggs. I decided to try the reverse, clean the windows, and put up my window screen to deter him.

So I rested hard and then got up and gave my window my all, and then slept for four hours after I was done. At one point, towards the beginning of cleaning the window, I felt so good to be up and out that I thought for sure I was all done being sick. Not so much.

You can see how well that whole screen deterant worked.

The General made quick work of my clean window, so I’m not bummed that by the end of my big cleaning stint I just didn’t care that the screen was dirty, I just put it in cob webs and all. At first I was a bit miffed at how tired I was and that I was going to have to take it out again or live with it.

Well, The General took care of that for me, this is my window just after a few minutes of his harassing the intruder through the clean glass. I’ll be re-cleaning after nesting season is over.

I’ll be back later with more Sick Times At the Farm. But it has stopped raining heavily and it’s time for my three hours of half cracked work, I’m just a cat on a cold tin roof, not movin’ very fast. But out I go.

Categories: Health, Weeds, Wild Birds | 1 Comment

My Life is a Laura Numeroff Book

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Lanny

I’ve been trying to change some habits. One of them is the habit of sticking things in the back pockets of my work jeans. When I wear my rain pants over my jeans it makes it hard to access the whatever that I stuck in my pocket. Stabbing pains taught me long ago not to stick stuff in my front pockets, now I’m trying to self-train on the back pockets.

I was doing really well getting myself to not stick things in my pockets, and it sure has been cutting down on the amount of odds and ends I fish out of the bottom of the washin’ machine. Besides, I can’t stick all the things I need during the work day in my back pockets, even if I used both of them and then the weight, well let’s just say, I would definitely have issues.

Like I said, I was doing pretty well.

Last weekend it seemed as if there was something wrong with our only toilet in the house (heck, the only one on the farm unless you count the travel trailer.) Finally by this last weekend Dirt couldn’t take the slow and uncooperative toilet any longer. He had tried everything.

So out it came from in the house, onto our driveway and the maneuvering to dislodge the problem began. Not being dressed in hazmat clothes, I stood back.

Next thing I knew this sailed up the driveway to my feet. “So how long have you been missing this?”

Well to tell you the truth, never, ‘cuz I always make sure I have several spares for when I misplace the one I have in my hand, or down the toilet as the case may be. Drat! Just when you think you’ve cured yourself from a bad habit, you haven’t.

Or is it really “drat”?

You know how it is when you have a really really old house, that needs some severe updating but you are too busy (and poor) to do it like you’d really like? You’d like an actual shower where there is none at all, and change out the tub for a big soaking tub in a bumped out bay window area that over looks the pond (that one is really your husbands wish) and a huge sink to bath grandbabies.

But because your house is old, actual bad things start happening, like leaks and drips and patches with linoleum, then rotting floors that you have to cover with area rugs until you can afford the time and money to do the project. But eventually what started out as a little something now grows into what is in the above picture that you covered with a board and the area rugs. You do after all, live in Roy.

You know you really need to do the project but it just keeps getting bumped and bumped and pretty soon you have to admit that the Big Project is not in your near future, a repair for safety and health sake should be, but you really want to wait until you can…

Then you do something dumb like drop your marking pen in the toilet and your husband has to take up the toilet to get to it. When he takes the toilet up he can’t bear to put it back it is so corroded with iron and iron algae from over the years, nearly thirty years since you first rented here and who knows how long before that. The tank lid has been chipped for years and it is green, it matches the tub and the sink but it is green. (You never really minded the green but your husband hated it)

And because your husband hates it any way, he packs you into the car and you all rush off to the big box store and bring home a lovely new commode, in a nice faded iron algae color called “bone” . But when he sets the new commode on the floor, to make sure the s-curve clears the water valve, he, and you mostly, can’t take the thought of that floor one more minute not to mention all the minutes between now and three years from now when you might have the money to really do things up right.

So back the the box store you go to get some subflooring and some inexpensive vinyl flooring to at least make it all livable until you can do it up right. And now in the middle of spring, cold wet overworked spring, you have to go clear across the farm yard to potty, and you’ve decided to paint the walls as well, which because they are paneling is no small chore, and all this finds you in one big whopping project, in the middle of your busiest time, but the project still isn’t the big one you want to do.

All because you forgot you were trying to keep things out of your back pocket!

Categories: Farm Make Over | 6 Comments

You’ve Seen Hints, Now It’s True

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Lanny

You’ve seen this on the side board, and saw hints on FB. You may have known it’s what we’ve been working towards, you may remember the side board has been saying we were working on something.

Well now we are ready to go. The Harvest Baskets of VF&G are gonna roll out the first week of July! Celebrate Independence Day by eating good food, real-ly good food.

Coming soon in July

The first season of VF&G’s Harvest Baskets!

In May!

Weekly baskets of seasonal, local produce

Grown and packed fresh by our gardeners

Paid and picked up by you weekly

I n July, August, September and October.

Each season’s baskets packed with the seasonal produce that we grow

here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens with local affiliated family farms.

Looky here at the poster I made for FB…

That expressive baby is Ruby, she spends a lot of time on the farm, and knows just how good the food is here, so she’s our “poster child” for our Harvest Baskets. The page under Eggs and Produce (tab up top of this page), Harvest Basket Membership, explains how our memberships work.

We aren’t a CSA, if you know what those are, if you don’t, don’t worry about it, we aren’t one. But we did steal an idea from them, prepacked weekly boxes of produce that customers pick up. Our difference is that you pay for produce only when you pick it up, not a lump sum at the beginning of the season.

And our Harvest Baskets will be designed around each customer family. How many people in the household, what you like to eat, how nice you are to my cats and old dogs…

That’s why we are asking for folks to sign up now, in May for July. So we can get to planting the garden around our customers likes and dislikes. If our customers like turnips way more than carrots? Well then, the sowing will reflect that, as much as it possibly can. I know, most of us in America are like Ruby, we love corn on the cob, but I can only plant so much, in good conscience. You need to eat your green leafies too, and don’t forget your garlic and squash, punkins for carving and soupin’, and cut flowers for lookin’ at.

Well, Dear Reader, I’ve been spending many an hour at this computer screen, learning how to make forms (even if you aren’t signing up for HB’s ‘cuz you live in Wyoming, you should check out my questionnaire form), making cute posters on PSE10, and the weather outside has been beautiful, in between down pours. Out I go to get some outside work done and pick some Cottonwood buds for the resin before they are all leafed out, to make some Balm of Gilead for a treat for my first Membership sign-uppers.

Categories: Uncategorized | 5 Comments

My “Earthday” Post

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Lanny

First let me say, that we believe that everyday is the Lord’s, every breath, every movement, every thought ought to be taken captive unto our Lord Jesus Christ.

But someone determined that we ought to be calling certain days belonging to certain celebrations. But no matter who or what we say we celebrate, whether it be St. Valentine, Columbus, Mothers or Fathers, or our personal birthday, all days belong to God. All things are made by Him for Him.

Everyday we should thank him for our birth, for our mother and our father, for amazing men of courage that went before us or saints who grabbed hold of their faith full force amidst oppression and set us examples of living.

And everyday, not just today, we should recognize rightly what the earth is and our responsibility for it.

But today is tagged by someone somewhere that “today” is Earthday and instead of being cranky or ignoring it like I usually do, this time I will put down, pen to paper, (image to screen), what we, the Vicks, know of earth and our responsibility.

From the beginning, even before the fall, before weeds and pestilence, early and late blights, slugs, buttercup, thistle, even before all that and all that we perverted for our cause, and then the new “green movement”, we were never on equal footing with the plants and animals or to be under them, we the subservient, they the lords. They were something else. We were the only part of God’s creation, for he created all that exists, that was made in His image.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Dominion is not a pejorative.

CIMG8021_edited-1

Man is the one who has turned it so. Man and woman together, twisted the words of their Creator, shortly after their creation, and ever since.

Born out of our selfishness and self-preservation at the encouragement of evil, we swing wide one way and then in our own wisdom, which is no wisdom at all, we react and swing wide on another path the other way. Missing God and His path the whole while.

Make no mistake, it isn’t the middle of the road we are to seek, not a balance between two ways of man, it is God’s road we are to walk entirely, wholeheartedly without reservation, no one foot over here and the other there. We continually twist the words of God to what we believe is our good because we lack faith in God’s plan. The plan that said:

And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.”

God has not left us on our own to “figure it out”. Even after we turned from Him in the Garden, and before He sent His son to reconcile us, He taught.

CIMG8290_edited-1

And He still teaches, each one, in his own place, can learn if only we turn our ears to hear, train our minds to understand Him and not the greasy easy speak of the Evil One that speaks breathily with a false warmth into our ear to our selfishness and pride:

Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.

When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?

Does he keep on breaking up and working the soil?

When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin?

Does he not plant wheat in its place, barley in its plot, and spelt in its field? His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.

Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is the wheel of a cart rolled over cumin; caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cumin with a stick.

Grain must be ground to make bread; so one does not go on threshing it forever. The wheels of a threshing cart may be rolled over it, but one does not use horses to grind grain.

All this also comes from the Lord Almighty, whose plan is wonderful, whose wisdom is magnificent.

Mistake free living?

CIMG8043

Not quite, not by any means. But ultimately each must learn to listen and do. Knowing full well in front of Whom we will all stand one day, at the time appointed for us, on our own witness. It won’t be in front of Brother Bear or Sister Eagle or Master Carrot. It won’t be with the support of Monsanto nor Joel Salatin, it will be alone with Christ.

The one I will stand before is the Creator of all and everything. It is to God I answer to. And that is greater than answering to any one part of His creation. I will have to answer to how I treated his gift of soil, his gift of accountability to my neighbor, the marvelous livestock, the birds of the air, the fish in the sea.

I will have to answer to whether I listened to exhortation and admonishment to live for Him or if I caved and listened to godless poison for my own selfishness and ease. And I’ll be answering without the aid of excuse, of, “they told me…”, “I was only given…,” “I didn’t see…” “I got confused, I thought…” because ultimately God has said that He will tell each one.

He is the one who tells me how to take care of His ranch, I am his ranch hand and the care of it comes to me. Not because he needs me, but because he has called me. I have dominion, you have dominion, over that piece that that he has set for each one.

Because he is the one who made the world and everything in it. Every day, every where.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth,

having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that the should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being’

So fine, it’s Earth Day. And so far as that means:

A day to poignantly acknowledge the only true God, Creator of heaven and earth.
A day to reflect on the fantastic gift that God has given into my care insofar as it is in my doing.
A day to reflect on how I am doing on that score.

A day to gather with like minded, God-fearing, God-hearing, folks to encourage and exhort one another to love and good deeds according to what God has given each one.

If today is that and not the worshiping of creation, setting it higher than the Creator or as the creator (how crazy a notion is that?)? Then I say, have a pleasant Earth Day.

Categories: God the Father Son and Holy Spirit, Spiritual Disciplines, Vicktory Farm and Gardens, Working With Animals | 3 Comments

Soil Test #1

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Lanny

You don’t need to call an expert out to your garden in order to grow great stuff to eat and look at. You become the expert (former drip under pressure) there are tons and tons (literally by weight) of books out there in libraries and book stores and pamphlets in garden shops to help you become an amazing gardener, and if you can’t amaze your neighbor at least you can amaze yourself and your mom. If you really don’t like reading books or pamphlets, find yourself a gardening friend who will help you figure things out. Or just call upon your DNA and wing it. (Can’t say much for that last approach but I have employed it many a time.)

So first things first, is your garden ready for you to attack it? Soil is a living thing and if you bother it too soon it will get grumpy (lumpy) and stay that way all year or at least you will spend lots of time in therapy together to help it get over your impertinence. So knowing when to dive in is important. Later there are techniques you can use to make it so that your garden soil is always ready for you. But for now we’ll start here, with the basic soil wetness test.

No special tools, just naked earth and your hand.

Basically you are making a ball of soil in your hand and using your thumb, “pinching” it. If it falls apart like you see it do in the video above you’re ready to play in your garden. What are you going to do? Add some soil amendments? Plant carrot seeds?

If it doesn’t break apart or if it only splits down the middle where you push with your thumb, wait for a few more dry days to work on your soil. In other words, let it dry it out.

If you can’t even make a ball of soil, well you waited too long in the season and your soil is too dry or you are living on desert sand, I have no idea what to do for that.

Well as you can see I have at the very least one bed ready to rock and roll for this planting season, so off I go to get some work done!

I really do have many beds to work, in spite of recent record rainfall and gardening in one of the wettest areas on our farm, save the actual ponds. How can that be?

I garden mostly in raised beds, I’ve talked about it on other posts but I will cover the concept better in a near future post. But really, for now, I gotta go to the HHH to sow some flats of cucurbits, and put to soak some peas to plant tomorrow, then I need to weed a couple asparagus beds and finish transplanting the rest of my summer brassicas, hopefully there will be time to plant some carrots and other root crops today. We’ll see.

Categories: Garden Methods, Soil Tests | 2 Comments

VF&G’s Tomato Plants for Sale

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Lanny

Yep that’s what happens when you plant twice as many seeds as you need plants, you end up with plants for sale.

Unlike some of the other things that I start from seed, like flowers, tomatoes need good adoptive parents. Extra flowers I can just stick out any where on the farm and just let them go. Tomatoes need staking and tying and harvesting or I end up with more guilt than this ol’ Catholic girl can tend.

So come relieve me of some guilt and get me some room. If you have questions about the different varieties just message me in your own choosing and I’ll answer as soon as I can.

Paste/Sauce Type:

Roma 6
Plum Dandy 21
Oroma 16
San Marzano Gigante 3 -3
Mama Leone 7
Beaverlodge Plum 5 Great for hanging baskets

Slicers:

Stupice 21
New Hampshire Sure Crop 12
Kellogg’s Breakfast 20

Purple

Indigo Rose 14
Japanese Trifele Black 14

Storage:

Reverend Morrow’s Long Keeper 3

Cherry:

Chocolate 16
Early 15
Oregon 12
Black Cherry 3

The numbers after the variety name are how many I have as of April 10th. First say so gets them for $3-4 each depending on variety, the purples, Chocolate Cherry, Rev. Morrow and Beaverlodge are $4, the other plum (sauce types) are $3.50 the rest are $3. Prices will stay the same until they are all gone and I’ll hold them until you come and get them when you pay me.

So there it is, I will also have a few pepper plants and tomatillo plants but I’m not sure right now what all I have, not much I know that. I didn’t really intend to have plants for sale, not this year anyway.

All tomato plants will be up potted to quart size with in the week and moved to their own little hut to stay until they are adopted. I can’t ship, I don’t even wanna think about all that would be involved not to mention the regulations. Yikes. So this info is for local folks, you know south of Tacoma, WA. Please don’t drive any farther than that, there are plenty of other places to pick up tomato plants between you and me if your farther than twenty or so miles.

Categories: Tomatoes | 1 Comment

Makin’ Room and Changing Places

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Lanny

Crowded

The Hippy Hot Hut is crowded! Packed full and I haven’t even dented what I was supposed to have in starts this year. The bench is full, and so is the north wall shelves, hanging bar and floor.

The bench is mostly propagation heat mat covered and in direct sunlight. It is the main place where seeds and cuttings get propagated. I’d like to tell you Dear Reader that it is the only place, but then I would have to hide the seeds and starts in my kitchen window.

The north wall area is warm but not as sunny as the bench it is a great spot for all the fuchsia pots and parts are sunny enough for some grown up sun lovers, but it is only slightly larger than the plants I use around the farm with nary room for increasing these for gifts for friends and for selling (Dirt’s favorite phrase).

Right now, this very week, things need to move off of the bench. I ran out of room for propagation a long time ago, it is now do or die, and some things are just plain going to have to be late.

Next year, I need to have an auxiliary house where seedlings and rooted starts can grow out at a cooler temperature with more elbow (and leaf) room. Ultimately it is better for them, better for me and better for their later seeded garden fellows.

Tomatoes Move Out!

Three hundred tomato seedlings don’t take up much room, three hundred tomato plants become a jungle!

And yes, I knew this. But each year I think I will magically solve the problem. Guess what? Problems don’t always get magically solved. Who’da thunk it!

Day before yesterday, I painstakingly separated the tomatoes that went out to the Market Garden tomato hoop house all 160 of them. Painstakingly? Because I had to decide how many of each variety I really wanted out in the MG, and then which plant goes and which one stays behind.

The ones that stay behind will get up potted and put “somewhere” until my daughters can plant them out. A few of those that stay behind will go into the empty places in my asparagus beds and other spots in the gardens around the house for quick fetching into the kitchen and snacking on while out working.

On to Other Things…

With the room from the moved tomato plants I got on a roll yesterday, up potting the peppers that will stay in the hot house just a little longer. And I had my visiting daughter up pot a majority of my petunias. I did quite a bit more after she left and I’ll finish the rest today.

Then I will finally get to seeding new trays!

And yes, I know I’m late on a number of duties, tell me something I don’t know.

Blogs & Internet Work

Speaking of changing places. I went into yet another downward blogging spiral recently when I was notified that Google Reader was going to be no more. Ugh.

So the day before yesterday I decided to figure out what to do. I believe I found the solution. Netvibes. I may even be in love with it. We’ll see.

Netvibes (and trust me, I am no techie, so I could have this all wrong or at the very least all the wrong jargon) makes up dashboards for you. The dashboard not only holds blogs you want to keep up with (like Google Reader used to) but it houses bookmarks and website favorites in a very organized manner along with a bunch of other groovy looking webby stuff that I have absolutely no time and therefore no business looking at or adding to my dashboard.

From your dashboards you drive around the internet. And just like how you might have a commuter car, a family touring car, a farm truck, and a tractor, Netvibes has you make dashboards for different topics that you want to keep track of.

If I get too spread out I have a tendency to get too overwhelmed, like the opposite of being overwhelmed because I crowd everything I need to do right on one page in front of me. So yes, I have more than one dashboard but not one for every topic that’s for sure! Right now I have two dashboards, my social network and Vicktory Farm & Gardens. I reserve the right to expand my needs as I see fit!

Essentially, so far I really like it. I personalized my Vicktory Farm & Gardens dashboard with the title: Productive Performance thru Prudently Planned Practices. It is the same subtitle I’ve given our Farm Manuals. Maybe this year it will become a reality.

Categories: Blogging, Greenhouse, Peppers, Propagation, Technology, Tomatoes | 3 Comments

Can You Leave It?

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Lanny

Are you more entranced with your life and all the good things in it or the Master of the Banquet?

How often is it that we are far more concerned with the gifts rather than the Gifter?

A farm that we patiently waited to call our own, the animals that we breed and birth and tend, the children that we rear according to the Holy Spirit’s guidance, all these good and wonderful gifts, that we ask for, accept and then pet. Confident that “I have” because I wasn’t asking for it to spend it on myself, my passions.

Have the gifts, the calling, insidiously, become greater than Him? I can certainly step to the front of the line on this, all the while yapping my excuses of stewardship, honest living, neighborliness. But stewardship, honest living, even neighborliness can so often turn into something else entirely and pride is most definitely in the brew.

And yet, if here in the temporal, I gave it all away, to minister, to purpose, out of nothingness, watch, then my pride would cling to the nothing instead. For even now my pride has me clinging to these things because of their “higher purpose”, gifts from God to do for Him. The serving becomes the “thing” I skip the party for.

Every moment, every breath, belongs to Him.

Categories: Building A Future, God the Father Son and Holy Spirit, Heaven | 6 Comments

In and Out of Trouble Again

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Lanny

Vicktory Farm & Gardens’ CFO said that I had better get to posting if I want to see any more funds come my way for my pet projects.

And he wanted the post to be about him. So here you have it, the latest Dirt miracle.

How We Form A Garden

Here at VF&G it is hard to find a garden that isn’t done up in a raised wide bed method of gardening. The main Market Garden is all raised beds, sixty 50′ x 4′ wide beds. The first half of the Market Garden was put in the spring of 2010 with a walk behind tiller and many flat shovels, following the method of how we have done all gardens since before I was we. Various lengths, various orientations to N-S-E-W but nearly all 3-4’ wide.

I cannot imagine all the hours we have spent over the years carefully crafting new beds and then reshaping beds after tilling under manures, crop residue, or just changing for aesthetics. But it is always worth it. After 40 years of gardening, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can get far more production out of a garden done up in raised beds than the same square footage done in conventional single row or even wide row method. I can work the soil sooner, plant sooner, weed if I want to easier and the plants seem healthier and more productive.

Whether a walk behind tiller was used or my new wonderful Lil’ Orange Tractor that Dirt bought me in June of 2011, a garden ready to turn into beds would look something like the left part of picture above. Side note: On the right is this last year’s parsnip bed. The stick at the far end marks where the last ones were harvested, we still have about six feet of parsnips to liberate and eat.

Typically stakes are put in on both ends, connected by lovely reused orange bailing twine or a 48” lath strip is moved along as a marker, and the path digging begins.

The Problem

The other day, when I wanted to know how long it takes me to do up a rough formed bed (because after that comes the raking), I timed it. It took one hour of focused carefully paced work to complete the two paths on either side of a bed.

But it took all day, due to breaks and break downs and random interruptions, for me to nearly finish enough paths to make four beds ready for raking (rain and dinner caused me to leave the little bit of path you can see in the photos above.

Did I mention I’m old and getting older, with less free labor living at home and a desire to do more than make beds? And even though I carefully took over thirty minutes at the beginning of the day and ten each time I went back after a break, to gently stretch my shoulders, I spent the next two nights moaning and tossing in bed like a dying sheep.

The Vision

One evening, when I should have been writing a post or learning more Photoshop or Excel techniques, I found a video that showed a homemade attachment on the back of tractor tiller (a small tractor like mine) and the attachment took the loose flopped soil and formed it into these beautiful wide beds with a path in between.

I’ve known for quite sometime that there were tractor attachments that went on ginormous tractors and made essentially several wide rows behind the enclosed heated, stereoed-up, cabbed tractor, Skagit Valley tulip farms are fraught with them. But to have such a thing make my kind of garden bed, behind my kind of tractor that isn’t the size of my entire garden, oh the joy, and to see how simple it was, why hadn’t we thought of it five backs back?!

The fellow’s homemade implement in the video wouldn’t have worked for our situation, his beds were only 32” wide, and hardly a foot between, not how I like to garden, but it sure was close. Dirt took a quick look at this fellows work, and a few others I found on YouTube. Then Dirt studied my tiller in operation and went about making a simpler and therefore more beautiful attachment that made beds to our specifications. Knowing of course some tweaks would need to be made before it was finalized.

The Solution Realized

First off are the bed forms. The tiller itself nearly makes a formed bed. But about a foot wider than my optimum four feet. So even when I’m tilling over an already formed bed, like when I have a green manure crop to till in, or I just want to till in crop residue and start back over with a nice seed bed, I either live with too wide of a bed for my arms to reach center, or I pull in the edges with a rake or shovel and rake.

So the soil coming out of the tiller box needed to be narrowed to four feet instead of fifty-eight inches somehow.

This grey piece of metal that my left hand is on that Dirt attached to each back side of the tiller box, shoves the tilled soil in the extra six inches each side and the pre-existing tiller flap that I’m holding up flattens it.

This is the view from my seat on the tractor as I was tilling with the new attachments in place. If you look close you can see the stakes at the end of the beds that mark the four foot bed and the two foot path in between. It is clear to see that even though the bed looks awesome there is still some beautiful carrot growing soil that is getting left behind in the path. That’s why this is the prototype.

From my seat again while tilling, this is the part of the Tiller Hiller (which is real fun to say but not really what it is) that pulls the excess soil from the path into the tiller box. Clearly its reach is not long enough and what you can’t see is, that for a freshly tilled over area, it isn’t deep enough either. That is going to be remedied.

The view from the other side. It appeared that this “sweeper” wasn’t as long as the other but what “we” didn’t know was that the tiller box doesn’t actually sit center of the tractor. It makes accurate lining up on a bed a little difficult but you learn to adjust when you’re tilling up sixty beds. But now that the precision mechanic is involved I will most likely get my tiller box adjusted to the center.

To compensate for the short sweeper and still have fun getting beds done that first afternoon, Dirt walked behind the tiller, scooping up the excess soil from the path and tossing it into the tiller box in front of the tines. I tried to relieve him at one point but I couldn’t keep up. After we switched back I noticed why, besides being a girl, I was scooping far deeper into the path than he was. Waste not, want not. I’m also the cook that tries to get every drop of batter out of the bowl and off the spatula and into the baking tin.

What was amazing, even with me driving the tractor a little slower than I would normally, to allow Dirt to move the soil in, we still set up nine beds for planting in a third of the time that it took me to make paths for four beds. And remember how smooth the bed was “raked” right behind the tiller?

That would have been another thirty minutes per bed at the very least, and it would not have been so beautifully ready for marking, furrowing and seeding or transplanting as this bed is.

Trust me, although my girls always knew that is what I meant when I said I wanted the beds raked out smooth, even I could never have raked them up that nice.

One More Teensy-Weensy Problem

We did walk out of the garden that evening with a bit of a disappointment, or so we thought.

The six beds that will be going here including the current parsnip bed to the left of the picture is slated for tomato production. It will be the first time I will be moving away from a four foot wide bed.

I watched and marveled at a video on basket-weave trellising tomato plants as they grow. It makes a tomato hedge and so the beds would need to be two feet wide not four feet. I figured it all up and taking two 4-foot beds and turning them into three 2-foot beds, I only lost a few plants worth of space. Well worth the ease of trellising the tomatoes instead of staking and saving half the crop from rotting on the ground. So I’m going to try it this year, but that means instead of the four 4’ wide beds I was going to make, I now need six 2’ wide beds. And me with a tiller that makes these perfect four foot wide beds.

The mental agony of thinking about having to hand dig those five paths and hand rake the six beds, now that I don’t have to for the other beds, killed me. Until I slept on it and looked at it again. The idea came from when Dirt and I first headed out to the garden to try his handy-work out.

If you look at this picture of the first bed we made with the new attachments, you can see that there is an un-tilled bed right behind Dirt. It won’t be tilled up for quite sometime as it already has a pea crop growing in it from a fall planting. I had carefully tilled right up to its edge about a month ago to prep this area for spring planting cole crops. After all I was just going to shovel out the path like I have done for forty years. But now with the attachment, in order to “sweep” the loose soil from next to the bed behind Dirt, he had me go right up to the edge, moving the soil westerly, then again, until my bed edge lined up with the proper stake.

With that in mind I solved my tomato bed and laziness issue. I’ll just carefully take a swipe with the tiller so that the “sweeper” is right up against the edge of the first two foot tomato bed and work on over until all the tom beds are done! Ta Da. In my head it works perfect, ran the idea by Dirt, he agreed that in theory it should totally work, I will be tilling some of the soil several times, something I hate doing but… there is that spot where two interests intersect, optimal healthy soil and optimal healthy back.

The attachment? A labor saver and a time saver? Oh boy you betcha! The only problem that remains, I can see that from the seat of my tractor I envision more gardens being put in!

Categories: Bed Making, Dirt, Tomatoes | 5 Comments

How Shocking!

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Lanny

Not really, truth be, the opposite of shocking.

It is vacation time from teaching for Dirt, that means picking up where he left off on big projects.

On that list, the electricity in the Hippy Hot House was at the top. Up until now my electricity has been delivered via drop cords, several. Not very efficient and when water is present, a little nerve wracking.

Since part of putting in electricity means going behind the plant shelf on the north wall, the shelf had to be moved, plants and all. Before all was put back the shelf got redone from my emergency do up.

Sometimes emergency do-ups stick around a lot longer than they should. I never lost a pot off of the shelf and I talked myself into how handy it was that the water could run right off the shelf away from the wall. And it even tilted the pots toward the sun.

But really, I was only trying to make myself feel better for the shoddy job and the lack of desire to take it apart and do it again.

So now I have a fixed shelf and electricity! Two, two, two things in one! It won’t be long now until I have a water heater in my HHH and I won’t have to heat water on the wood stove to water my seedlings with.

Dirt is awesome and it is a huge blessing to have such a handy husband, who by the way, is also handsome. But we had a bit of a laugh over this job. When he started it a couple of days ago he told me that he had his wires crossed at the garage where the power originates from.

Yesterday, as he was finishing up, picking up tools and sitting on the step that leads into the Market Shed, I told him what I thought about having a handy husband.

I told him that I realize how lucky I am, how fortunate it is that my husband knows how to do a lot of things. Then I told him when I thought about that I also realized that it could be a bad thing, because it appears that I have a handy enough husband to do things that could also accidentally kill me.

…He’s on vacation, doing things he enjoys, he got a chuckle out of my observations.

Categories: Dirt, Greenhouse | 8 Comments

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