Not all work

This last weekend was a national holiday.  Over the weekend I was thinking back to when my kids were little.   We used to spend time playing in and around the creek that runs through our yard.   These days I will go down to the creek now and then to check on how fast (or not) it is running.  Or just walking through it on my way to the pasture on the other side.  I'd like to be able to drive across.

I want a crossing here.

 This weekend I decided to play.  Well sort of.  We have a wanna-be low water crossing.  It is not cut away enough  on the other side so it silts up.  I mean it's always muddy.  I decided to try to build a sluice to drain the water from the area where we want to cross and where the silt is the worse on the other side.  I didn’t really think I could do much good.  I was just playing around.   We can drive around to my neighbor's place and go through their yard to get to my pasture on the other side of the creek.  They don't mind but it sure would be nice to cross right here.
 

 too muddy to drive through

When you cross the water it is into silty mud.  Just walking you sink in.  I had a friend last year try to bring a bale of hay through the crossing with a tractor.  He almost got stuck in this mud.  Really stuck.  BAD!  The rest of the bales he brought to me by coming around the long way through my neighbor's yard.

 way too muddy

This spring I had another neighbor go across the creek to the pasture through this crossing to help us fight a run away fire in the pastures.  He made it across only because he has a big 4 wheel drive truck with big tires.  I would like it to be easier to cross.  I'd like to be able to drive one of my trucks across.  When he left he went around through the neighbor's yard, too.  He didn't want to try to cross again.  He didn't get stuck the first time but he didn't want to force his luck.

sluice draining water

 Using a wide toothed rake I dragged gravel down creek making a small ditch.  On Saturday and Sunday I walked down to the crossing about 10 times each day.  Spent about 10 minutes each time dragging gravel, letting the flowing water help me break loose more rocks to make the ditch deeper.  Water level came down pretty good.  

You can just see a couple of pieces of driftwood on the left in the picture above where the water level was before the sluice was built.  Starting on last Monday I've been walking down to the crossing each morning with the rake, trying to deepen the ditch a little more.  It is slowly bringing down the water level so that the silt can dry out.    We'll watch over the next couple of weeks to see if I can end up with a good crossing.

Gardening section  (see fine print at bottom of this post)

It requires a shovel

So that’s my play around time from last weekend.  Since then I have been re shaping some garden beds  The above picture is an example.  The beds at the bottom of this picture are where the high tunnel was when I first built it.  This last spring I moved the tunnel to where it is now.  It rolls on pipe.  Next Spring I’ll pull it back over these beds where it started.   When I first built the beds for inside the high tunnel I made the pathways less than 2 feet wide.  Using the boards for holding the raised beds made it seem like it was too crowded when I was down on my knees in the path working.   So now that the tunnel is moved out of the way I cut down the two outer beds to enlarge the pathways making them 2 feet 4 inches wide.  It feels more comfortable to me.  This picture shows re-sizing in process.  Now the board sides are back up and the beds are ready to plant.   I'll include a picture of plantings in the next post

disclainmer:

All gardening techniques, methods, and labor described in any posting of this blog are presented strictly to make you laugh and smile.  Any educational value you attribute to any of this is solely the result of your overactive imagination and my excellent story telling skills.  Do not try this at home, unless you know what you are doing.  Any use, misuse, or non use of the contents of this blog is your responsibility, but I would love to hear about it, especially if it's funny. Hopefully this blog will leave us both laughing.  I know it makes me laugh and one out of two ain't bad.  Remember:  You have got to make your own luck. . . and I'll take luck over skill any day. Now go read another post.

Like a gift from Heaven

My Dad was born and raised on a 40 acre dirt farm out in the boonies between Springdale and Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Back when there was a between Springdale and Fayetteville, Arkansas.   He and his mom raised fruit and vegetables, pigs, chickens, etc.

We left the farm when I was little but my Dad always gardened no matter where we lived.   As he got older he kind of got more into growing flowers than vegetables.  Though he always grew a few vegetables.  He really got interested in roses and irises.  Over many years I would bring home from his house an iris bulb or few and plant them around the place.  I liked the solid color ones ,  the brightly colored kind.  Pops liked the frilly delicate kind.  Well, he liked them all but he especially liked the  fancy ones.  Dad died about 7 years ago.  A couple of years ago, I dug up and moved a few more iris from Mom’s yard because we were thinking about her moving.  I picked the solid color kind.  I like the yellow and the lavender purple.   

 Pop's Iris

The other day I went up to get in the car and right by the driveway in the pile of rocks this iris was blooming.  I did a double take and walked over to it.  How did that get here?  I looked at it for a couple of minutes and then I said out loud, “I miss you, too, Pops.”   Seems like he wanted me to know that he likes what I’m doing.  I immediately thought I’m going to move this to a place of honor somewhere in the garden.  But a good friend who I showed the flower to said that I should leave it where Pops put it.  Of course.  You're right, Tom.

 Robyn, Stryker & Plato

The pile of rocks is there for a stock pile to build a stone wall.  I started building the wall a few years back.  I keep working on it whenever I feel like picking up 50 to 100 pound rocks.  Which these days isn’t very often.  I’m slow but I’m eventual.     Robyn, my middle son, is standing in front of a part of the wall that is completed.  Beside him is his very smart, well behaved german shepherd, Stryker.   Plato at his feet.  I'll carefully remove the rocks  from around the iris as I use them to continue the wall.  Sure was glad Robyn was able to come visit.

A Quick Couple of notes:

 Look what I got to have for lunch yesterday.

 this year's first tomatoes

First tomatoes of the year may not be much to look at.  May have an insect bite or two.  But I sure do like being reminded of why we like to have home grown tomatoes.  Yummmmmm

The other day I had my first ripe strawberry.  A couple of days ago I harvested 2 pounds of ripe strawberries.  But I feel lucky when I start carrying trays up from the garden.  We’re going to have a couple of weeks of tasty.   

3 3/4" of RAIN!

last year's potato patch tilled yesterday

and then rained on!

This is a picture of mud.  I’m posting it just in case I have to have something to look at later this summer to remind me of what mud looks like.   That’s the way it has been for the last three years.  Though right now we have a chance of rain everyday in the next 10 day forecast.  Whoopee!

Let it rain.   Let it rain.   Let it rain.   

Back when I was young I was working for a farmer, an older man,  who said to me, “I’ll take mud over dust any day.”   At the time the two of us had thick mud up over the top of our boots and everything from our knees up was splattered with mud including our faces and hair.  I had so much mud on my hands that I was constantly flicking them in the air trying to remove some of the sticky stuff so that I could keep working.  I remember thinking to myself that this was not my idea of a good time.  But I also understood what he meant.  Crops and livestock grow with water.  I like living where it rains.  Especially now that I am growing fruit and vegetables for more people than just me.   After all, what I sell is water.   Every leaf on every plant in my garden, every fruit that I pluck from my plants is almost all water.  Colorful, nutritious, tasty little packets of water.    I have water enough in my well to allow me to irrigate even in dry weather.  But the plants perk up after a rain.  They like it better.   Maybe it taste better to them.

Here’s hoping I’m not talking about too much rain  and crop damage a month from now.  

But for now 

LET IT RAIN!

After three years of drought rain is a blessing.   I’m also blessed to have a granddaughter on the east coast.  Isabella is the child of my youngest son, Lee and his lovely wife, Alaina.   They are kind enough to enhance my email from time to time with pictures that put great big smiles on my face. 

If you look up adorable in the dictionary you’ll find Bella’s picture right next to the definition.

Tilling, Planting, and waiting on blackberries

I have a good friend who is good at finding bargains.  He called me the other day and asked if I could use another rototiller.  Yes, I could.  A 1989 Troybilt econo horse. It is smaller than my 1977 troybilt horse so it will work better in the tunnels.  Plus it was cheap.

 tiller in clover

Here it is shown in last year’s potato patch that I let grow up in clover for a cover crop.  This shows the tiller sitting in the clover to show you how tall the clover was.  Three rows tilled.  Two to go.  The area tilled in front is after just one pass with the new (to me) tiller.  I like it when a machine works the way it is supposed to.  Garden Way always advertised their tillers as composting tillers.  It sure did chew this clover up.  I’ll let the beds sit a couple of days now, till it one more time, and then those rows will be ready to plant again.  A good piece of equipment sure can make life easier.

baby peppers ready to go into the ground

Surely it is not going to freeze or frost again.  I guess I must think so because I’m transplanting out all the rest of the peppers and tomatoes today.   Grow, babies, grow!

blooming blackberries

The blackberries  are getting close to full bloom, finally.  Took a while.   Usually we start harvesting berries the first week in June.  Not this year.  Spring sure is late.  I wonder how hot the summer’s going to be.  

Plato and short, short, short wheat

And in case you will be wondering later why bread prices are going to go up.  Here’s Plato sitting next to a wheat field.  The wheat’s about 8 inches tall and headed out already.  Tiny little grains of wheat and not many of them.  In a normal not drought year this wheat would be taller than Plato with big heads of grain.  I’m wondering if there is even enough grain in this field to cover the cost of harvesting it.  I doubt it. They probably won’t harvest it.  Wheat fields all around this area mostly look this bad.  Bad for farmers but I also pity the custom combine crews that harvest wheat from Texas and then keep moving north as the grain ripens till they finish up in Canada.  They aren’t going to have much work in Kansas this year.  Hurts us all.   It has just started raining here as I write this.  Any rain will be good (I’m sure glad to have it) but it is too late to help this wheat crop.  Maybe my creek will start running again though.  That would be good.

Flying W Cattle Drive

May 10, 2014

 Matt Goldsmith 

 I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to transport two adventurous photographers on the Flying W Ranch’s Cattle Drive May 10^th, 2014.   While a nice-sized group of people rode horses to round up and drive the longhorn cattle herd from pastures to pens I drove Matt and Sheri Goldsmith around in a 4-wheel drive Kawasaki Mule 4010.   The three of us started out down the road to a gate where we could get into one of the Hoys’ pastures.  This would be the gate that would be opened to run the cattle out on the road and down to the pens.  The plan was for the cowboys and cowgirls to ride across the pastures and meet us near the gate.   While we waited for the horse riders to arrive at the gate Matt and Sheri took pictures of the pastures and the scenery around us as well as shots of the longhorn cattle clustered  just inside the gate. 

 Matt Goldsmith 

After a little while the Goldsmiths ask me if it was safe to go through the gate and amongst the cattle.  I assured them that in spite of the big bad looking horns on the critters, this herd was docile.  I opened the gate, drove us into the pasture and Matt and Sheri began walking around the herd taking more pictures. 

Sheri Goldsmith 

Matt and Sheri taking up close photos

 Matt Goldsmith

Then Matt and Sheri lucked out big time.   I was watching the cattle as the two photographers moved around the herd to make sure that there would be no trouble when I noticed a cow that looked to me to be on the verge of dropping a calf.  I was standing there watching the cow wondering if I should point her out to the Goldsmiths. But I was hesitating to say anything because I didn’t want to say something and then have the birth take several more hours.  I couldn’t decide what to do or say and suddenly the decision was made for me. The cow dropped the calf.  

newborn calf

Sheri Goldsmith 

I immediately pointed out the newborn to the two camera wielders.   Oh boy!  Talk about a thrill!  They got a bunch of photos right up and close of this newborn calf being licked clean by its mother and pushed and prodded to stand up.  We watched the calf stand, wobble and fall back down a few times until it stood and nosing around, found where momma’s milk was available.

stand up baby

Sheri Goldsmith

The cow let the calf nurse for a few moments.  Then she slowly began moving away from the calf so that it would have to walk to follow her.  She was building up her baby’s strength.  Within a day this newborn calf would be running, not wobbling.

pecking order being established

 Matt Goldsmith 

While this wonderful photo shoot was happening, the horseback riders had swung by us and moved on out into the pasture to find the rest of the herd.  

 Matt Goldsmith                                                    

A fairly short time later the cow and the new calf began to move further out into the pasture away from the three of us and the herd standing around the  gate.  So we loaded back into the Kawasaki Mule and drove out into the pastures to look for more photo opportunities.  It was a beautiful day.

 Matt Goldsmith 

After a while the horse riders had brought all stray cattle back to the gate and were holding the herd ready to move down the road a few miles to the pens.   

 Matt Goldsmith

headed out the gate

Sheri Goldsmith 

At this point the new plan was that Matt and Sheri would stand in the middle of the road photographing  the cattle flowing around them as the cowboys drove the cattle toward the pens.  I told you that the Goldsmiths were adventurous.

Matt Goldsmith

I would then pick them up after the cattle and cowboys had all passed us, drive them in the Kawasaki through the herd to get in front of everyone, and let them out to stand in the road again shooting pictures  as the cattle and cowboys continued down the road past us.   

 Matt Goldsmith

I think Matt and Sheri were having a good time.  At one point Sheri was kneeling down in the middle of the road taking pictures as cattle moved around both sides of her.   

   

 Matt Goldsmith 

I noticed Sheldon, the magnificently horned 2000 pound steer, stop walking a short distance in front of Sheri and look at her turning his head this way and that trying to figure out what he was seeing.   I quickly stepped between Sheri and the steer and told her to stand up. I told her that she needed to look like a two-legged animal now. 

Sheldon

Sheri Goldsmith

Sheri quickly stood.  Sheldon immediately relaxed and calmly resumed moving down the road with the rest of the herd.  Later when everybody was back at the lodges for dinner, I heard a couple of the horseback riders comment to Matt and Sheri about how brave they must be to stand among the cattle like they had.  I heard them both respond, “bones said it would be OK.” 

I did and it was.  

 Sheri Goldsmith                     

Back at the lodge it was time to unsaddle the horses

  Matt Goldsmith

Then they have to be loaded back in the trailer for the trip home.

And it was time to enjoy a lovely evening in the exquisite Flint Hills of Kansas.

Matt Goldsmith

I do believe that everyone that participated in this cattle drive had a great time and will have stories to tell.   We welcome folks wanting to ride horses and work a cattle drive. Or if you would rather concentrate on photographing or have disability issues I would be happy to drive you around in the Kawasaki and help you have an exciting Flint Hills experience.  I urge you to check out the Flying W Ranch’s website for more events and opportunities where you, too, can enjoy the unique beauty of the tall grass prairie, good hearted people, fine dining, and with luck maybe a little adventure. 

The ranch's website is:                    www.flinthillsflyingw.com

Or contact Gwen Hoy at                  gwen@flinthillsflyingw.com

Awesome art work of Sheri Goldsmith, a mixed media oil and encaustic wax painter can be seen at her website and at shows and galleries listed on her website:

www.sherigoldsmith.com

Incredible photographs by pediatrician and award winning photographer, Matt Goldsmith may be viewed at his website and at exhibitions lucky enough to display his work:

www.mattgoldsmithphotography.com

All photos used with their permission.

Back to hot temperatures

Well, maybe cold temperatures are over.  Freezing or near freezing the last 3 days and now it's supposed to hit 90 degrees today and 100 tomorrow.  Good Grief!  This morning the low was 59 degrees.  Which was nice. I slept all night.  That was a pleasure.  With heat coming I've got the drip lines running so my babies don't get thirsty.  

Peppers looking good after the cold weather

I only lost a couple of tomato plants and one pepper plant to the cold.  

Everything else is fine.  

The cabbages love the cold and are starting to form heads.

cabbage 5-19-14

With a little luck I'll be picking strawberries a plenty within the week.

Last Frost, Please

Down to 34 this morning.  I was talking to my dear friend Sonda Bruce last night at 11:00 p.m.  it was still 46 degrees.  When the sun went down yesterday it was 54.  I was sure hoping we weren’t going to have a frost again.  At 1:00 a.m.  it was 41.  At 3:00 it dropped to 39.  Outside I went to turn on the sprinklers and cover with mulch the 14 rows of peppers and tomatoes.  Moon shining bright.  Me holding a flashlight and a hay fork.  It took 45 minutes.  How much fun can one person have.  At daybreak there was a light frost.  I’m sure glad I covered things up.  Maybe that will be the last time this year.

Blackberries May 2010

These two photos show how late spring is this year.  This first one is of the blackberries in the middle of May 2010.  Blackberry canes that grow this year are primacanes.  The next year they are floracanes and produce berries.  This picture in 2010 shows berries turning ripe on floracanes and primacanes grown up almost as tall as the floracanes filling out the rows.

Same Blackberries May 2014

This second photo taken this year at the same place same time of year show floracanes just almost ready to flower and the primacanes are just now coming up.  Some maybe a couple of inches tall.  Makes the rows look empty in comparison.  

Burning last year's Floracanes

Those rows look empty because I prune out all of last year’s floracanes and burn them in a pile.  A Picture for all you firebugs.  Time to go uncover peppers and tomatoes.

Local Climate Yo-Yo

When I moved here and started gardening in 1977 we could count on the average last frost date to be around April 15 to 20.    End of April, first of May, you could safely plant warm weather crops.  But the last few years. . .  Gracious!   Not only do we get freezes (plural) in May but it is immediately followed by extreme hot temperatures.    Temperatures up, down, up, down, up, down sounds like a local climate yo-yo or some kind of erratic pendulum, for crying out loud.  As a gardener and ranch hand this weather sure is pushing on my enjoy life every day attitude.  It’s all part of life’s adventure, I know, but boy, it’s keeping me on my toes.  (Thank goodness my toes move and I can feel them)  Yesterday morning I uncovered all peppers and tomatoes when temps were back up above 50.  Some looked a little stressed.  After all it was like putting them in a refrigerator for the night.  But I think they’re going to OK, if not slowed down a bit.  I covered them all back up last evening because it was in the mid 40s when the sun went down.  I usually expect to maybe get a frost if it is below 50 when the sun goes down.  Strawberries and blackberries that were under wobbler  sprinklers night before last are still in good shape.  I turned the sprinklers back on at 11:00 last night when the temps dropped below 40 again.   It was 35 this morning at 2 and 32 at 5:30.  I’ll turn off sprinklers and uncover plants as soon as it warms up here in a little bit.

blooming iris in Cartwell Too

Luckily there are blessings.  The iris in Cartwell Too (one of the movable high tunnels) are gorgeous and long lasting this year.  The first ripe strawberry sure was tasty.  We’ve spinach and lettuce galore.  And we’ve been getting about a pound and a half of asparagus a day.  Yummy!  It has a high sugar content for some reason this year so that it almost taste sweet like fruit.  Master Chef Josh Hoy says it's so good that he ate a whole bundle of it raw in one sitting the other night. 

Yesterday's aparagus harvest

But when am I going to be able to plant basil in the field?   grump.  Or corn?  It’s supposed to be warm again in a day or so. They’re even predicting a high of 97 on next Tuesday. Yo-yo    Good Grief.   Throw the average frost date out the window.  Now that I am living in the local climate yo-yo phase of my life, what I can count on is that I better figure out how to make it possible to easily cover and uncover all my baby plants with frost and freeze protection.   And maybe, I better start thinking a little more about shade cloth, too.  Mobile tunnels and low tunnels sprouting in a garden somewhere near me. . . . . is in the forecast.

Second Freeze in May

 wobblers over blackberries

I was almost going to title this post “expletive deleted”.  Durn! It hit 31 degrees F.  here this morning.  I turned on woobler sprinklers  at 2 a.m. when the temps hit 38.  They’re running on strawberries and blackberries this time.  Last evening the forecast was for 36.  But because I am in a low place (the blessing and curse of creek bottoms) I can expect a little lower than the predictions.  After seeing the forecast out I went to prepare.  It took less than an hour to locate, put in place, test, fix, test again, and then I left running the sprinklers for the blackberries.  That inch and a half of rain was nice but nowhere near enough as dry as it has been.  So running the sprinklers all night on the blackberries was a good thing for the blooms that are forming and just starting to open as well as for freeze protection.  It was the strawberry sprinklers that I turned on at 2.  I had run them on May 2^nd  almost all night to protect from that bad freeze and then with the inch and a half of rain we had I wanted to limit how much more water the plants get.  I don’t want to over water them. 

 covering peppers

In a previous post there is a picture of  rows of newly transplanted peppers.  Here is a photo of the same peppers on the way to being covered in mulch.  I felt like the forecast was telling me that I needed to cover with mulch all the pepper and tomato plants in the field.  I have 9 rows of peppers out.   (next week I’ll transplant out 6 more rows)  That’s just under 200 plants out there now.  Tedious task.  One of the things I’m good at is doing tedious tasks.  It took me an hour and twenty minutes to cover all the peppers.  So about 3 a minute.  Using the cart in the picture and hauling from the bales of prairie hay placed around the garden I carefully covered up each plant.   Then I did the same for the tomatoes.  Next year I am going to try to afford enough frost cover and plastic to put the early plants under low tunnels.  This year I needed to save my plants tedious task or no.  

frosted peppers

Here’s what the peppers rows look like this morning.  Good thing I covered them.  That white color is frost.   Luckily even though we have had  blue sky over head this morning we've had  clouds to the east.  The sun has been up for almost an hour and a half and still is behind clouds.  It’s just now starting to break out.  The temp is up to 39 and rising.  This is a good thing if the plants get completely thawed before the sun light hits them it causes less damage. 

OK, here comes the sun.  Here I go back to the garden.  Damage report or not  in the next post.

The 450 cabbages, garlic and onions in the field can handle the frost. They’ll all be fine.   

Blossom Drop Prevention

Holy Moly look what I found this evening.

 One almost ripe strawberry.  Taste test tomorrow night.

Blossom  Drop Prevention 

In my years of gardening experience I have come to expect tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants to drop their blooms if the temperature falls below 50 degrees F.  Tomatoes also have bloom drop occur when the temperature goes above 95.  On a spring like this one or summers like what we’ve had the last couple of years experiencing these cold and hot temps can mean a loss of a great amount of fruit.   A few years back when I was only growing 30 tomato plants a year (last year I had 257 plants) I complained to my dear neighbor, John Wilson, a well of wisdom, that with the high temperatures we’d had the last few weeks all my tomato blooms were dropping and I wasn’t getting any tomatoes.  John told me that I should try a product call Blossom Set.  So I bought an 8 ounce  pump spray bottle at Bluestem Farm and Ranch in Emporia.  (I love that store)   The bottle said to spray the blooms and the leaves around the blooms.  With my index finger pumping away I sprayed the flowers on my 30 plants all of which were in the 6 to 8 foot tall range at the time.  I used up almost the entire bottle.  And my finger got tired pumping.   But, sure enough, in the coming days blooms began to set and tomatoes began to form.   Cool!

It worked.  Thank you Mr. Wilson

my current spraying rig powered by an ATV battery

Reading the ingredients on the label of the Blossom Set I saw that it had (if I remember right) .00006% of cytokinin.  I searched for blossom set concentrate instead of the RTU (ready to use) 8 oz. bottles.  No luck.  The rest of that year I bought several bottles and sprayed after every rain or once a week if it didn’t rain until the temps came down to more moderate levels.   My tomatoes produced consistently the rest of that summer.  

As life turned out over the next couple of years I expanded my garden by many fold.   I was soon doing 100’s of tomato and pepper plants.  The 8 oz bottles weren’t going to cut it. Fortunately I located a company in Maine that sells a product called Seacrop 16.  It is a seaweed extract that is naturally high in cytokinin. I mix 4 tbsp in a 16 gallon sprayer.  I use it as a foliar spray.  The extract helps the plants tolerate both low and high temperatures.  

This week our low temps  have been and are expected to be for the next few days in the  low 40’s.  I pulled out the sprayer from winter storage (more about that on another post) and sprayed all the field plants the day before the temps dropped below 50.  Three days of cool nights and so far the blooms look fine.  If this cool weather continues I’ll spray again in a day or two.

 

 flowers still viable on baby tomato plants after 3 nights in the low 40s

I’m convinced that this extract helps me get the earliest tomatoes I can and helps me keep up production all summer long even when the weather is scorching.  Which it does in Kansas.  This year I have also started using the Seacrop 16 for watering in seeds and transplants.  Oh, and I’m spraying the strawberries with it to help them  be more tolerant of the cool weather, too.  One almost ripe strawberry will soon be buckets of ripe strawberries.  I've already told you i'm excited.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Three special people in my life.

A lucky day for me today.  I got pictures of my three grandkids in California.  Frank, Mila, and June are the children of my oldest son, Austin, and his dear wife, Angela.  I, of course, want to show off pictures of my grandchildren.  They are so cute who could blame me.

Garden Layout

 Eastern area of garden

My vegetable garden is made up of raised beds 3’ wide by 35’ long.  Between the beds there are 3’ wide pathways.  3' wide beds because I can easily reach half way across.  35' long because when I have to do a task (seeding, weeding, harvesting, or whatever) 35' looks like a doable distance to me.  3' wide pathways because that gives me enough room to squat, kneel or maneuver around without feeling cramped.  

I have made the beds in groups.  Across the bottom of the picture above you can see 7  beds.  5 of spinach and 2 on the far right of onions.  I consider that one group.  The picture looks south.  South past this first group is a mulched pathway that runs east and west and then another group of 7 rows, these of peppers; and then a grass driveway and another group of peppers; and then a mulched pathway and a group of 7 rows of cabbage.  And then further on south are two more groups of cabbages.  6 groups of 7 beds in this area.  Other groups not pictured are made up of different numbers of rows.

 From where I am standing when I took the picture there are 22 more beds to the right of me that can't be seen in this picture and 39 beds behind me. And then a bunch more beds where the two high tunnels are.  3 inside each tunnels as seen in this next picture and more beds around and to the south of the two tunnels.    

Cartwell Too

(that's what i call this high tunnel)

118 beds total this year to play in. Add to that a large blackberry patch, a couple of small patches of raspberries and a few fruit trees.   How lucky can a person get!

My garden is in a creek bottom with rich deep topsoil, excellent tilth and is high in organic matter.    Plus I am blessed to live on top of an underground river that allows me to pump 20 gallons a minute from my well all day long, day after day if I need to. (such as during the hot drought ridden last three summers)   This gives me the opportunity to care for a nice variety of plants in sufficient quantities to help me make a living.  Pretty good gig.

  

My job description:   I help life forms grow that feed on sunlight in order to process water and minerals from the soil into colorful, tasty, nutritious containers that I will call artisanal fruits and vegetables when I harvest and sell them to people.  People who get sustenance and great pleasure from the consumption of said tasty morsels produced by those marvelous living sunshine powered factories we call plants. 

 I’d call that lucky.