i disappoint, myself

when the better part of a week goes by without writing a post i feel as though i have disappointed--not necesarily you, oh anonymous internet reader, but mostly myself.  the website is not just a process for sharing my experience with a reader, but is a process for self learning and digestion of my own ideas.  when i don't write, i don't process, and when i don't process, i start to feel like the pepto bismal commercial diagram of a human--mouth, tube, anus--stuff in, stuff out. 

and as for the reader, i'm just disappointed you are missing out on the action.  plants are exploding, chickens are doubling, crops are being harvested and sold to the restaurants--cha-ching!!--so much is happening.  apparently too much to process and write about, hence this post here. 

hopefully i'll catch up to myself and hop back in the writing saddle soon enough.

plant baby mama

when farmer root moved here from puerto rico to help me manage the backyard moon, I had no clue that his partner caro was a seasoned farmer herself.  half of our greenhouse has been affectionately nicknamed caro’s corner, as she has completely taken over our seeding and transplanting operation.  not only is she starting hundreds upon hundreds of seeds which we are preparing for the warmer months ahead, but she has taken to sourcing wild herbs and plants from around the property and propagating new plants from the cuttings.  this one’s medicinal. it’s good for scrapes and burns.  this is a tray of mint.  these are zinnias. those are tomatoes.  this is all of our cucumbers, squash, and zucchini.  these are sunflowers. 

caro, a new human mother in addition to the plants, has created a makeshift nursery, and successfully birthed the future of our farm. 

this first shot is a brand new squash seedling, still attached to its seed.

full moon farms journal

full moon farms, the umbrella organization that our farm, the backyard moon, operates under, is also the name of our mother farm over at the bent spade in watkinsville, ga.  farmer jack, hired this season to knock the hide off the ball as our vegetable farmer at bent spade, has begun keeping a journal in the dirt on the full moon farms' website.  here is his first post, with hopefully a lot more to come throughout the season. 

it's a good start

written back on march seventh by farmer jack

It’s almost Spring and it feels like farming out there.  The past few weeks outside at Full Moon make you wonder why everyone doesn’t do this.  We are working to transition the farm from winter rest to a good grow.  Motivation is high and seeds are germinating.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon seeding the third succession of greens in the hoophouse, and I feel like we have a pretty good early season crop established.  Multiple varieties of beautiful greens, red beets, and carrots have provided a lot to look at in a house of plastic.  In fact, the first of the tender greens are ready for harvest tomorrow morning. Woo Woo!

As for the fields, bed prep for our first spring transplanting has involved a couple weeks of patient process.  Back in the fall, a rich cover crop of winter rye and clover was established to benefit and overwinter the tillable dirt.  Once January turned to February, a mow and disc of this cover incorporated all the organic matter into the earth, and the last month has given time for that matter to decompose down.  Now the raised beds are ready to be made and the plants to be sown in them.  Oh the beauty of ecological transition.

I leave you with a little ‘Tractor Gospel’…

One Mother told me

not always in clover is a right man rich,

as I have been warned by ants.

Your farmer, Jack Matthews



her first day at work

if this was a refrigerator, id hang this shit right up.  her first day running food at farm255, and i just happened to have a front row seat--with a burger in hand, of course.  transitioning into farm/table life like a true champion, she just added one day a week running food to gain insight into the flow of the floor at the restaurant.  proud, i am.

plant me some potatoes, please.

you want fries with that?  waffle, home fries, or tater tots?  it’s not just school children and prisoners that get fed a daily dose of fried potatoes, it’s almost everyone.  some massive number of menus across this nation--somewhere near eighty five percent of all menus!—feature the golden brown starchy classic.  don’t get me wrong, fries are delicious.  my point, however, is about potatoes. 

you know how many potatoes that is?  cause i just got my first small taste of what that answer might be.  this week we planted a field that was just over two acres in size to potatoes—half Yukon, half red.  that’s seven rows, three hundred feet long each.  that’s two hundred pounds of potato cuttings which will yield approximately one thousand pounds of new potatoes.  if these numbers aren’t sounding large to you, you’ve never planted potatoes. 

praise gaia, jah, the holy spirit, and the lord almighty that we had some people power out on the farm to get this job done.  our internal community—a few restaurant owners, a few farmers, and a few eager hands—all came together to crush it out in “no time”.

we concluded the evening with our first monthly session of what we call farmthought.  each month an essay or chapter is selected for reading, and we gather around good food and cold beer to discuss.  farming is much more than hard labor.  it’s hard thinking, hard decision making, hard planning, and hard emotions.  it’s a hard way of life, and we’re gettin’ it done as a community—a team, a coop, a group, or what have you.  with able bodies, and even more able minds, it’s amazing what you can see get done.  

   

lying in bed. cows in the road.

it’s eight am and im sleeping in after a long, sweet, drunk reunion with good friends.  considering its frigid outside and sheets of rain are blanketing the fields, I figured the best use of my time was horizontal, head to pillow.  if I had a pressurized michael jackson sleeping chamber, I’d be in it.  rest, for me, is the sweet road to success.

it’s eight oh five and the phone rings.  the cops called.  the cows are out.  like a fallen ninja, back to the ground, i alley-ooped myself off the mattress, my feet propelling me up through the air, and landed two feet together into my overalls.  snapped em at the shoulders, pulled down my beaten leather hat to cover my disheveled bedhead jewfro, and faster than a speeding bullet i was down the road a quarter mile looking at two thousand pounds of beast inches off a sixty mile per hour thruway. 

unluckily for me, the cop must have felt he had somehow contained the situation, because upon my arrival he had already fled the scene.  a dangerous decision on his part, as car to cow could easily have lead to death for both.

this is it now.  this is the moment.  man to beast.  man becomes beast.  my shoulders roll gently forward, and the crown of my head gently back.  arms up and out, line a linebacker.  feet, shoulder width apart with gym-class-precision.  there’s nothing in between this hungry beast and a dangerous road besides me and a plastic stick. 

we’re eye to eye now--our breaths are in synch.  small sprits of warm mist billow out of his wet nose as he chomps the never eaten grass which lines the road ditch.  cold droplets splashing on the back of my craned neck roll down between my shirt and skin.  his eyes, of course, squarely on me.  short, animalistic grunts and “hya’s” flow out of me with every movement.  it’s a primeval moment for a modern man, and it brings you into a totally foreign zone.  his zone.  the beast.    

with the right amount of pressure, and a bucket of alfalfa cubes (cow crack) jon brought down from the barn, we successfully drove the two loose cows off the road, down a hundred yard driveway, and back into the safety of the herd.  a small hole in the fence is all it takes, and after two days of intense storms it’s not much of a surprise a weakness chose this morning to finally give way.   

it’s eight thirty now, time for some eggs.