How we fared in the new garden

As the summer winds down it’s time to report on the success and not so successful garden transformation. When I started this project I wrote about the permaculture concept. What I didn’t state or write about was the other concept the garden beds are based on. The concept hugelkultur is a method of burying logs and wood into very large beds. The wood breaks down over a period of time and provides nutrients to the soil. There are some very important factors to take into consideration when deciding to go this route. First and foremost is the understanding that wood will suck the nitrogen from the soil and deprive the plants of the valuable nitrogen. Picking the right wood can make all the difference in the world; it is best to pick wood that has started to decompose and stay away from walnut, cherry and other hard woods. Hard woods tend to take a very long time to break down. In my case I used dead wood found in our woods with some stages of decomposition happening. The other important factor is that I did not bury the logs in my soil in the same fashion as a large hugelkultur. Instead I framed the beds with the large logs and filled the beds with large sticks in various stages of decomposition. The idea of the wood in the beds is to hold water, provide air pockets for roots to grow and eventual break down of organic material. To compensate the nitrogen loss I used horse manure, compost and large amounts of mulch throughout all of the beds; our mulch came from hay. Hay is interesting in that most hay is not cut when it goes to seed; it is cut before it goes to seed thus the problem of the hay sprouting new seedlings is not really that likely. Weeding the garden was not a problem and usually amounted to picking one or two weeds every so often. Even if you do not build your own hugelkutur you should be using mulch in your garden or planting companion plants that will hold back weed growth. Both of these methods will also help in water holding for the plants and in some cases help to resist pest.

The tepee or three sisters

So…how did we do? Let’s start with the “teepee.” The concept for this area was the “three sisters.” The three sisters are where corn, squash and beans are planted in the same space, each provides important nutrients to the other and they are exceptional growing companions. In my case I planted sunflowers instead of corn; sunflowers are acceptable in this concept. The beans climb the large sunflower stalks and produce beans as they grow up the stalk. The squash fills in the space below and help to hold water in for the rest of the plants. I also added flowers in some of the nooks and crannies of the log walls; this produced areas for pollinators, bees.  In addition later in the season I added cucumbers and peas. The harvest of this area will be okay but not great. I have about 7 to 8 butternut squash, several cucumbers and have picked about three pounds of beans. The peas we ate as we picked them! We just could not resist the pea’s sweet raw flavor!  Overall I am happy with the bed but know that I will have to feed this bed a lot of nitrogen over the winter season and I am considering moving the tomatoes to this bed in my crop rotation plan. I will be researching what will be the best follow in the rotation plan.

The next bed contains our parsnips, assorted salad mix and spinach. This bed also has a patch of fresh thyme. We have been eating the salad mix for the past two and half months and we consumed all of the spinach. The parsnips are looking good and I will harvest them in December. I will cover them with a heavy amount of mulch and when it is time to harvest I will brush away the snow and mulch and harvest. We did this last year and they were awesome; the sugars in the parsnips really took over and they were excellent! The bed itself was small and again little to no weeds! One of the greens found in the mix was mustard; mustard is an awesome plant to have in your garden as it acts as pest control for the plants.  The other added benefit to having mustard in the garden can be found in its ability to work as a living mulch. I have to admit I did not plant the mustard with any of the benefits in mind; in fact it was quite unintentional. Yet, the mustard grew with the salad mix and ended up adding some excellent beneficial cover crop, pesticide and tasty addition to the garden!

Parsnips, salad mix, spinach and thyme bed

The next bed was our carrot, lettuce and cucumber bed. This bed has been an awesome producer thus far. We planted butter leaf lettuce and a wide variety of carrots. Carrots are fun to grow and you can add more to the bed if you are not getting the results early on. This is exactly what I did; we planted our carrots and some of them did not take so I sowed more in about two or three weeks later. The bed is full and I am sure we will be eating carrots well into January or later. Just like the parsnips I do not plan on harvesting them until late November early December. The sugars in the carrots will convert, making the carrots sweeter and just like the parsnips produce some awesome flavors! The butter leaf lettuce has been incredible and we have been enjoying eating it for about two months. I have noticed the bees liking the lettuce and witnessed them flying into the leaves seeking water. This creates an interesting harvesting plan; carefully cutting the lettuce away, rinsing the lettuce and getting those pollinators to fly out before my fingers reach in to pull out leaves. So far I have not been stung! At the end of this bed I put up a trellis and planted cucumbers on the outside of the bed. Probably one of my most disappointing aspects of the garden has been the cucumbers; I believe we have been hit with a fungus and have been working with hydrogen-peroxide to remove the fungus. Thus far I have not been too successful and will continue my research into what we can use that will not kill bees. A recent study found that the use of fungicides have more to do with the contributing loss of bees in North America. Pesticides are a problem but the study found that the fungicides might be a larger factor in the loss of the bees. So … I have been monitoring the situation and yet still have harvesting a small amount of cucumbers.

Above is the carrot bed with the cucumber trelis above this picture is one of  our big bushy carrots!

  

This year I decided that my love for leeks required a bed dedicated to leeks! I was worried about getting the leeks planted in time as it took me a little longer to get the initial beds built. I planted the leeks in my cold frame and managed to get them started while I was finishing the beds. I am really happy with the results! I have a nice crop of leeks coming and have picked a few to thin them out and they are wonderful in flavor! What I found was they need a good daily soaking and lots of mulch. The bed is doing nicely and once again I will be harvesting them later in the season after the first frost. As you have read in my blog; I cannot stress the importance of mulch!

Our Tasty leeks!

The next bed is our tomato bed. Last year we planted 27 tomato plants! We just cooked up our last bag of tomatoes from last year! This year we planted 6 tomato plants; I suspect I will not be using this year’s tomatoes next August! Timing had everything to do with how many plants we were able to plant this year; just not enough time to put more plants in and besides we did not want to deal with the harvesting issues of last season! Literally we stopped harvesting tomatoes as we had nowhere to go with the excess! The new bed was planted with onions, nasturtiums, dill and basil. All of the planted items were companion plants and seemed to be thriving quite well. Our dill did not take to well but not worried because we have dill popping up everywhere else in the yard! I let last year’s dill go to seed (on purpose) and the seeds must have blown around the yard! Needless to say we have plenty of dill. All of the tomatoes we have planted are heirloom varieties and all seem to be thriving. We have just started picking them and they are meaty with good flavor. The nasturtiums, on one side of the bed exploded and we have blooms everywhere. Nasturtiums are edible and have really cool looking blooms, the leaves and flowers are edible and have a pleasant peppery flavor. We used to serve them in our salads at our restaurant (The Sandhill Inn) years ago.

Tomatoes, onions, nasturtiums, dill, and basil bed

Finally our last bed, another success story, the swiss chard and golden beets has done quite well. We have been enjoying swiss chard for about 2 ½ months now. Swiss chard is considered to be one of the super foods and if anything it is super in flavor! I tend to braise it lightly with vinegar, butter, onions, garlic and salt and pepper. The beets are looking awesome (I only wish I would have planted more but due to the late planting, we have what we have) and I have tasted a couple. My favorite thing about beets is the earthiness they have when you inhale the sweet smell as you pick them. Not to mention they taste pretty darn good! I also have a few leeks in this bed as there was not enough room in the leek bed for all of the seedlings.

Swiss Chard the super food!

Golden Beets

Overall the garden has fared well. The plan for the winter is to build a couple of small hoop houses over two of the beds. This will allow us to grow fresh greens, and other hardy plants all winter long. I am currently reading two books about four season gardens and if all goes well we will be enjoying our fresh salad in the middle of winter! 

Coralling our quarter horse

Before I write about this experience it should be noted, my experience with a horses is limited to the instruction of my wife, Sara. Sara has instructed me in the equestrian world and without her lessons I would have not attempted what we accomplished last night!
We have three horses at the farm, two of which we can saddle up and ride. Our youngest is a quarter horse, he has not been worked with much but we have gotten a saddle on him and Sara has ridden him for a short distance. He has become the alpha of the pasture and is downright stubborn when it comes to catching him. He will come up to us when we bring grain or he is curious. Try to put a halter on him however, that is a different story altogether! Sara had an idea to take him to another farm where she could put him into a small pen and separate him from the other horses.  This sounded like a good idea but both of us knew that catching him was going to be a bit difficult!
Sara backed the horse trailer up to our small pasture and set up a path to the trailer. Mr. Curious (his name is Babu) walked right into the pasture. We pulled the wire rope gate shut and started to work on moving him to the trailer. Sounds good so far! Well...not so much. he was not going to cooperate. Sara had a prod and whip to get him moving but all he would do is walk in the direction to trailer and bolt away when we attempted to push him into the trailer. No, I don't mean get behind him and shove, we used the prod, whip tried to get him to step into the trailer. About this time some of you may be wondering, why not put a halter on him and lead him into the trailer? Remember what I said about catching him to put a halter on him, not going to happen! At one point we had a rope to shorten the pasture and attempt to persuade him into the trailer, nope not having any of that he would just rear up and bolt through the rope! In one attempt he just broke through the electric fence as I am being yelled at for not being in front of the electric gate! Yelled at affectionately of course. So... now we had to replace the handles on the gate and both of us were hot, sweating and pissed! Our kids were standing guard to close the trailer gates and that was about all we could get from them to help. Neither one wanted to be in that pasture chasing a horse that could pummel them in a hurry. What was I thinking? Taking a break we devised a new plan; we would put the other two horses into the pasture to coax Babu back into the pasture. Once all three were in we would
separate the two from Babu and start over. This worked and we were back at it. Our dog is a healer but not trained very well when it comes to the horses. She likes to bark and run from them and Babu likes to chase her. We have witnessed Babu at a full gallop going after Spot (healer) through the pasture, zigzagging after her and believe me that dog was scared! So usually when we are working with the horses we keep her in the house. Well Sara's mom let her out. So now we have our dog ready for action and jumping into the fray. I swear, I thought I was going to blow a gasket! I know Sara was ready to blow! Well instead of putting the dog back into the house we decided to put her to work. We sent her after Babu and she did it somewhat; sometimes she herded him in the wrong direction.  Well by now the horse was sweating bullets, no literally the sweat was pouring off of him. Than the most amazing thing happened; Babu walked up to me as if to say I quit. I gently rubbed his neck and head and slowly wrapped a lead rope around his neck. He tore it from me a one point but I had it hooked around his neck and it did not come off. He came back up to me, now thoroughly exhausted and Sara managed to slip a halter on him. She also attached a small chain on the halter that would go over his hose. We were in business, or at least we thought so! Now that we had this hot sweaty exhausted horse in our hands we thought we could coax him into the trailer, not so much. After many attempts I took a hold of the lead rope with the chain and attempted as Sara did her best to coax him from behind; trust me I will forever look over my shoulder if my wife is going to attempt to coax me anywhere! Well this didn't work so I pulled him away from the trailer and made him walk in different directions, when he moved in the direction I wanted I switched up to another direction, working him hard for not cooperating. He got pissed and reared up, awesome to see unless you are the one holding the lead rope! He did this to me several times before landing on his feet realizing I wasn't going anywhere. So what do you do with a horse who will not go into the trailer no mater what? Saddle him up! That is exactly what we did. Sara got on him and rode him in the pasture. We decided we did not need to take him anywhere, we had made progress and it was enough. We also left the saddle on him over night, we are not finished with him and he also got to spend the night away from his buddies.

Babu

All I can say was it was an awesome experience and despite the danger of one us of getting hurt, I would do it again. Horses are interesting creatures who have a real sense of mind and when they respond positively it can be amazing. Our hope is to train Babu into being a great horse and one we can work with on the farm.

Farming and the labor of love

The romantic vision of life on the farm is an existential vision based on the idea of the land of milk and honey. When we see acres of crops and farmers on their tractors we sense they are driving that tractor thinking about philosophical solutions to solving the world. Watching a farmer cut hay or plow under a field we may envy their stress free life. What I am learning however is an entirely different concept. Whether I agree with their farming techniques or not, I am but a novice in their world. It is easy to asess their methods when we have never tilled a field or fixed a broken tractor because we have never felt their pain. I have learned what it is like to hook your plow up when it is below zero and your hands are so cold you can't feel your fingers. I have fixed things mechanically and realized the ingenuity of the farmer. The laws of physics play an important role as the farmer devises a pully system or how to move a tree by himself. Summer time for many may mean camping, going to the beach but not to a farmer. Farmers working the plan are worrying about water, insects, and other very trying needs. The monoculture farm may be disdained versus the polculture farm and although I think the polyculture farm is the better plan I will still respect the work of any farmer. They work in an industry surrounded by those who view their work as an opportunity to profit from. Those profits dwindle quickly and leave many farmers in the lurch.
We are learning and as we learn our once rose colored glasses now see things a bit differently. Not that we haven't enjoyed the life on the farm, we have set up a campsite on the farm, or enjoyed riding our horses. Just like other families we have our share of drama and stress. As a chef I am building a bank of knowledge to share with my students as well as continue my own personal growth.
Finally I know that this farm has had new life breathed into it, and whether it will sustain itself will depend on well crafted plans. These plans are going to be dependent on not only economics but on mother nature and coming to grips with what doesn't work and what will work.

Deer in early spring in the alfalfa field

looking south towards the woods

looking west towards the woods

Farm life

As I set out for the evening chores I have had some time to reflect on the projects I started back in late winter. This year I reorganized the garden (using a management term) to better manage the soil and water. I cut unwanted trees or dead standing trees to build raised beds. I recycled cardboard to cover walk ways between the beds with wood chips. In between each bed I created swails to allow water to be absorbed under the beds. We have had a heavy amount of rain and because of my reorganization planting was late but I am happy to say we have a great harvest coming and everything seems to be working. It should be noted that during the heavy rains, the garden was one of the few places on the farm that did not get flooded out. I went up to the swails and each one held a small amount of water while the rest was being absorbed into the ground. Our son William and his friend Tyler assisted me in cutting the trees for the beds and William helped me build the beds and swails.
The chicken coop I built out of pallets is 90 percent complete.  I just need to put in the door, flooring for the egg boxes, and fence in the chicken run. Our neighbor, Barry, built the doors for the hen boxes, I did not like my design and he offered to build me a better design! He has now offered to do the same on the door and help with the flooring for the hen boxes! On top of all of that neighborly help he assisted me in cutting the roofing for the coop. I needed a saw to cut through the metal and he brought one over! Our son helped me in some of the construction and believe me any help you can get when you take on more than your schedule can handle is a gift!
Finally 51 grapevines were planted, fenced in and just need to add the electric wire (cattle will be near the vines thus the fencing).  I believe the vines are far enough away from cattle manure and will not affect them.  The. Cattle are on 15 acres below the vines and off the top side. The runoff, if any will not run into the plants or soil. This task was completed with the help of our son and our daughter, Dawson, as I have never put up a cattle fence previously we worked our way through the learning process and put it up! Okay this is where I have to share our favorite learning tool on the farm, YouTube! Yup, that's right we look up our conundrum on YouTube and watch the how to videos! When we were putting the wood post into the ground we looked up how to lock a post in the ground without concrete and found a great video using a 2X4 as a key to lock the post in place. It turned out to be exciting for the three of us as we had never put a fence like this and in the end it came out pretty nice.
In between all of this work I am still doing my work at the college! Talk about a weight loss plan; I have lost almost 20. Lbs!

Gate heading into the vineyard and fencing around the grapevines

One of the beds with tomatoes, onions, nasturiums and basil on the other side.

Chicken coop built out of pallets, old cedar siding and leftover metal roofing. Still needs gutters, door on the front and flooring in the egg boxes. The run will be fenced in towards the garden and next year we will add portable chicken runs into the garden.

Creating a Permaculture Garden

 

This year I took on a very significant new approach to our garden. Earlier this year (in a Facebook note) I wrote about our new favorite word, “Permaculture” and reshaping the garden to encompass the concept of permaculture. This project has been ongoing for over the last month in a half. Weather has played a role and what could be accomplished and when various tasks could not be accomplished. One of the principles of the permaculture is to go slow and observe.  The observation has been going on for the last two years. The garden has produced in the past but through observation I noticed our soil was not improving in quality and in fact it seemed each time I tilled the soil it had not changed much; meaning I was not seeing a richer soil because of any additional composting. I noticed a significant amount of water being used to keep the plants watered. Having a well can be beneficial as you are not charged for using your water but it does not make sense to work on water reclamation as you pour gallons on to your garden.  In years past we planted what we liked but really did not give much thought on what goes well together in the garden. We probably got lucky in our choice of plants. This winter I did extensive research on what might produce a better garden utilizing the principles of permaculture.

Dawson our daughter (recent graduate in environmental science) holding an outline of the principles of

permaculture.

The design I came up with involved building raised beds filled with sticks, stones and other organic material. The beds were to be constructed utilizing logs from our woods. Through the advice of our daughter, I created swales between each bed to help collect water back into the soil.  In between each bed I secured recycled cardboard from our town recycling center (formally called the dump)! The cardboard was placed down on to the soil and on top of the cardboard I poured wood chips, I collected these from the township (they were going along the roads chipping trees that were in the way of the road). The purpose of this was to work on water retention, soil rehab, and control the growth of unwanted plants. The added benefit will be the reintroduction of worms to the soil. The area will grow with some of the earth’s best soil producers, worms! Eventually the wood chips and the cardboard will decompose and we will plant plants that will hold water, add nutrients to the soil and work as ground cover.  When we can plant the ground cover it will also be an added benefit to the chickens that are now going to be housed next to the garden. When completed we will have a chicken run through the garden directly from the coop.

 

This is one of 7 raised beds with the swale leading underneath the bed. In addition the bed is planted with plants that work well together, tomatoes, onions, basil, dill, and nasturtiums. You can see the wood chips left of the bed and we are using hay to heavily mulch each bed.

Along with putting beds in we will be inoculating fresh cut logs (not the ones pictured) from live trees. We have pretty large elm coming down in our pasture; the power company wanted it taken down as it is so close to our power line. We were more than happy to have them come in and take it down! Some of the logs from the elm will be used for inoculation while the remaining will be used to finish the other beds.

Earlier this winter I built a cold frame to start seeds in; unfortunately I did not get to those seed plantings! The good news, because the building of this new concept it has taken a lot more work to complete,  and therefore the garden has been delayed in planting; thankfully I have the cold frame, and now all or most of the seeds are planted and in the cold frame waiting for the finished beds.

The other concept I undertook, in this garden building adventure, is to create an environment within the garden that would invite back the bee population. This will be accomplished by planting flowers, placing bee baths throughout the garden and creating an overall environment inviting to the bees. In between the logs on each bed I am planting flowers and other types of plants. One bed for example has cucumbers planted between the logs and they will climb a trellis I put in front of them. In another bed I built a log teepee that will allow squash, beans and peas to climb for easy picking and keeping them off the ground. In this bed I also planted sunflower plants and flowers. All of the items planted go together and give other plants nutrients.

This bed contains carrots, lettuce, and at the top of the bed I have planted cucumbers between the logs. In the far back you can see the teepee for the squash, beans and peas.

Cucumbers planted at the top of the carrot bed in between the logs with a trellis in front of the cucumbers, allowing the cucumbers to climb trellis instead of lying on the ground.

In the background you can see the cold frame (built out of old florescent light covers and an old window). Further back you can see the chicken coop which was built mostly out of old pallets. I am not finished with the coop as I am going to use old cedar siding we have here on the farm and leftover metal roofing.

As a chef I am very interested in food, where it comes from, how it is produced and what might be best practices when it comes to raising/growing food.  I undertook this project along with building a coop, planting a vineyard (small one with 51 grapevines) and taking care of chickens as research. We are undated with information today about our food, organic, GMO’s, non GMO’s and other information thus I felt I wanted to go about raising food for our house and study how sustainable growing food in a permaculture environment could work. We have been eating fresh eggs from 5 hens for about 8 months and honestly I can say, the eggs are awesome to eat. I make our mayonnaise with the eggs and no one has gotten ill. I have started making our bread on a regular basis and will be producing batches of bread to freeze, allowing me time to do the work on the farm.  All of the seeds and plants used are non GMO seeds or plants; you can actually seek out these seeds and plants when you go about planting your garden. I did not have any trouble in finding these items.

As the garden springs to life I will report on the progress and start putting in some of the recipes for the items I am preparing from the garden. In the meantime, go slow, observe, and focus on what you can accomplish now and plan for what you envision later!  

When Chefs are the Farmers

A fascinating turn of events happened in my life; one that I would have never guessed could be possible. I now live on a farm owned by my wife and her family. We moved to the farm about two years ago. My wife's mother is getting up in years and lived by herself and needed our help. Living with your mother-in-law is another story! The point about this is what has happened to us and the direction we are heading with the farm. Our daughter is graduating this weekend from Chatham University in Pittsburgh with a degree in environmental science. As a part of her education she has been using the farm as the template for her tutorial and other parts of her degree. In the last year we have spent a great deal of time understanding words like, permaculture, sustainable (as a chef I am not unfamiliar with the words but putting them to work is the learning curve) and how we might apply those terms to our farm.

What I am finding or rather I should state, how many of my chef friends live on a farm or a hobby farm, I know of at least three. We all are very passionate about food, where food comes from, raising food and gaining an inside knowledge to producing products that chefs will appreciate.

I believe, after spending sometime on our farm, chefs should spend time on a farm and get to know the process of raising food. Understanding things like soil PH or the types of grass beef will consume and what type of grass gives the best outcome. Working in the soil and smelling the dirt to understand what that root vegetable might taste like is an interesting concept! Yet, the later, is very well known when it comes to growing grapes for wine. Talk to any wine maker and they will tell the importance of soil and the flavor of the wine.

I have decided I am going to write about my farming experiences and exploits to share with my fellow chefs and even those who might be interested in reading what a chef has to say about working on the farm. Learning things like how to hook a PTO up or fixing a fence post is not quite the same as sauteing a fresh batch of asparagus or handling a busy dinner rush and yet can be just as exhausting! In the last year I have built a chicken tractor, cold frame and I am currently finishing up a hen house. Right now I call all of this therapy but I have to wonder, will it always be therapy? 

The connection chefs have today with farmers is fast becoming an important part of who we are as chefs and as always will have an impact on the food industry. Across the country chefs are forming partnerships with farmers and learning about the foods that are growing in their backyards. Utilizing these foods to create memorable dishes for their clientele is now a large part of some of the top chefs in the country. My connection with the soil will probably shape my creative thinking for food, but more importantly educate myself and my family on how we can become a part of the future of food and bring the phrase "farm to table to reality!" In the mean time it is time to go finish a hen house, build new garden beds, renew the compost, cut some logs and start the seeds!