Planting Garden 3

Today we got hit with a beautiful day.  The sun was shining and the sky was mostly clear.  The task for today was planting out some seedlings from the ark (it's a greenhouse type building at the farm which we'll get into more detail later.)  After breakfast we headed straight out to garden 3.

As you may recall we tilled this garden just a few days ago.  We created four trenches in the loose soil with a hoe.

Then we watered the trenches.

Then we planted the seedlings.

Rinse.

And repeat the rest of the day.

Once we had finished planting some mustard greens and chard we had to reset the hoops for the cover.  We took them down to make tilling easier.  With the hoops set up we dragged some cover over and pinned it down.  Pretty easy day.  Until we got to the last bed we were to plant.

About halfway through the bed some storm clouds began to develop over the Bridgers.  As we were planting the last few seedlings it moved in on us.  

Chaos ensued. We still had 2 beds to cover.  As we started running around to get this done Liz and Sara brought all the seedlings that had been getting sun back inside.  I ran over and closed up the greenhouse.  We managed to get all of that done without getting too wet.  And of course after we had all gotten inside the sun came back out.  Soon the rain stopped.  The three of us went out on the porch, sat in the sun, and giggled about how frantic we rushed around not ten minutes earlier.

Transplanting Tomatoes

Today we started to transplant the tomatoes.  First we had to go get them.  Laurie had some tomatoes and peppers stored at a friends greenhouse.  We took a ride down and loaded up all the young plants that were getting a bit big for their containers and brought them back to the farm.

Once the plants were back we began bringing wheelbarrow loads of the soil/manure mixture that we tilled last week.  We mixed into that some bags of potting soil as a supplement.

With our mixture ready it was time to take the tomatoes and replant them into larger containers.  Laurie told us that however much of the plant is buried will begin to root.  Some farmers will even lay the entire plant in the ground with only the top exposed.

We re-potted until lunch.  After lunch we set off to the greenhouse to pick for a small order tomorrow.   There is still lots of tomatoes and all the peppers to do, so I suspect we will continue with that tomorrow.

Ladybugs, Go Eat the Aphids

As Dave mentioned before, aphids infested some crops in the greenhouse. Aphids are tiny sap-suckers that reproduce like mad and literally suck the life out of a plant. They were the culprit of the Irish potato famine.

Aphids are the tiny grey clumps on the lettuce

Earlier this week, we sprayed the infected rows with an organic soapy-water mix that is supposed to kill them which seemed to help. But with a little internet magic, Dave discovered aphids have a natural predator - lady bugs - and there's a supplier in Bozeman. They and their larvae feed off aphids - 40 to 50 per day each. Laurie picked up 2000 ladybugs and last night it was time to release them.

2k ladybugs in that tiny sack

The instructions say to water the plants generously and shake them out close to the pest population during a cool part of the day (morning or evening). So last night, Dave released them to gorge themselves.  Fingers crossed that this will do the trick.

He's officially in charge of the ladybugs

Tilling, a crappy job

Our goal for today was to get garden three prepped the rest of the way.  The forecast once again called for precipitation but not until later.  So we made our way back to the garden after breakfast.  The first thing we had to do was spread manure across all of the area to be tilled ( the crappy job.)  Once there was a good layer spread out it was time to make a pass or two with the tiller.  For this particular garden we used both the roto-tiller and the tiller on back of the tractor.

Fellow WWOOFer Sara

Once it's been tilled we had to go back over with a rake to pull out all of the weeds and roots that had been torn up.  Doing that kept us busy until lunch.  It's now ready to plant and looks great.

Before

After

After lunch with an imminent storm on the way Laurie set us to transplant some lettuce seedlings.  A nice inside job.  We worked on that for an hour or two and called it a day after that.  With more bad weather in the forecast our days off this week were shifted to Saturday and Sunday.  So it's the weekend!!

Laurie cooked up another delicious meal for dinner.  We ate and chatted for the rest of the evening.  

Cleanin up the shop, Tractor 101, Driving tour

Canvas walls don't hold up well to freezing wind. That was the lesson of Wednesday night. The wind was just howling and blowing the trailer walls onto us. Poor Dave woke up at 2am and barely slept after. So added to Thursday's agenda: staple down the canvas under the camper to strengthen the walls. That oughtta do it.

The overhang is money but doesn't keep out the northwind

The sky was once again uncooperative for field work so instead we used the time to clean up the garage/shed into a new workspace for the veggie cleaning and packing. We moved and organized the lumber, pulled out the tractor and all the mud it left behind, tossed what we could and swept lots of dust. We regretted not taking a before picture because it was transformed into a lovely real working business space, complete with wash stations, shelving and a carpet to stand on during long veggie rinse/packing days.

As we were plugging along, a nearby ranch came up the road on a cattle drive. Laurie said the neighborly thing to do is to block your driveway where there's no fence line to keep the cattle from getting separated. So we stood in the driveway as the herd passed by.

Wilsall traffic jam

The real adventure came when Laurie gave us the keys to the tractor! It was Tractor 101. It's a manual transmission so it takes a little getting used to the shifting. Dave mastered it in no time; I still need more practice. Laurie said to take it out to practice whenever we have time.

We were expecting Sara, the new full-season WWOOFer, to arrive at noon so we took an early break. Over lunch with Laurie, we could see her chickens out the front window and she said, "Why did the chicken cross the road?!" Sure enough, they inexplicable left the farm and waddled across the road.  Certainly never expected that phrase to be applicable in real life.

Escapees

Sara arrived and after a few quick hello's and a short tour, we got right to work prepping garden 3 for tilling and planting. We started to make some progress and then, of course, the weather turned. So we went back into the workspace for cover and used the time to plant cucumber and squash seeds in flats. We finished in no time with the addition of a new set of hands and tried to get back to garden 3 but to no avail. The wind was vicious.

Moving manure to garden 3

Around 3 we called it a day. Dave set off to staple the trailer walls so we don't freeze again and I did physical therapy with Boo. Wouldn't ya know it: the sun came back out and it was beautiful.  Too little, too late.

A few hours later, Billy invited us on a tour of the area as the sun was setting. Sara, Laurie, Billy, Dave and I and the dog Jane hopped in his truck for a ride to the Crazy Mountains to finally get an up-close view. We don't have any good pictures but now that we know how to get there, we'll have some soon. We headed south to the only other town in the Sheilds River Valley, Clyde Park, and then back north to see Muddy Creek Ranch where Billy works.

On the tour, we got schooled in the Art of The Wave.  We learned that everybody waves to each other when you pass by (so we did alot of waving); the two fingers up off the steering wheel will suffice as a wave or the arm straight out (reminiscent of the heil hitler wave) is popular with the old guys; if you don't wave, they'll say next time they run into you, "I waved at you the other day, you must notta' seen me"; and if you wave too enthusiastically, they think you're crazy.

When we got home, Laurie made a too-die-for arugula pesto salmon pasta dish for dinner and we put Sara on the hot seat to hear all about her.

We wrapped up dinner in time to catch the Daily Show. It's on at 9pm here! No more waiting up til midnight to watch it. Then Billy metioned casually that he played on John Stewart's show the same night he had Ted Nugent. He and Laurie have both been in bands that toured all over the country with record deals. Amazing!



"If this isn't nice, I don't know what is" -Vonnegut

Spinach, beets and dog escapes

We've finally got some dirt under our nails.

Laurie gave us a late start at 10am today (rare, she says) so we started off the day right with some unbelievably good farm-fresh eggs from her chickens. The yokes were a dark vibrant orange and sooo amazingly good. Big perk.

We had another order to fill today - 7lbs of spinach, leaf lettuce and arugula. I knocked out the lettuce pretty quickly and headed over to help Dave pick spinach. Lemme tell you, picking spinach is not for the faint of the heart. You have to pick it leaf by leaf, finding a good big leaf, cutting it at the stem and tossing it in the bushel. It takes FOREVER. And it can be demoralizing: the basket never seems full! 

Spinach leaves, painstakingly handpicked

As we were picking, I asked Dave how many leaves it might take to get us to 7lb and so he regrettably did the math: if one leaf weighs 2 grams, and there's 28 grams/ounce, 16oz in a pound, times 7 pounds comes to a whopping 1,568 leaves. I put it out of mind. Instead I asked Laurie how chickens makes eggs:

Hens produce one egg a day naturally and if a rooster gets a hankering for a lady bird, he does his thing while the egg is still soft inside of her before it gets the hard shell, fertilizes the egg and makes a chick. But mostly the hens don't get knocked up so the egg develop the hard shell, plops out, and you grab it for an unbelievably delicious breakfast (see above).


Next we washed the greens in four finger-numbing cold water rinses. Laurie heard of a great way to spin-dry the veggies (they need to be dry because dampness will make them wilt faster) without having to use the hand-crank salad spinner: a washing machine on spin cycle! So she and Dave worked their magic on her new-used washer, got it set up and going, and voila! - a motorized spinner. Should speed up drying immensely.

 

After picking and washing, we made the most of the day's good weather - it's been miserable and rain is forecast all week - and planted three varieties of beets. You basically stick your finger deep in the dirt to make a hole, put the little guy in it, and make another hole three inches away. We put in a couple of rows and called it a day at 5.

Beets a cubicle.  (Get it?!)

Since it was such a beautiful day, we took off after work for a hike around the rest of the farm we hadn't seen yet. The farm is huge.  We met the horses, donkeys and the neighbor's cattle.

Risky and Dave

Pinch me: I live here!

It was momentary madness when we returned to the house to clean up and eat dinner. (Laurie and Billy had a meeting in Bozeman tonight so it was just us). Laurie has two dogs and one very skittish foster dog CJ. CJ and Jane took off when we opened the door and we couldn't get them back in the house! Jane hasn't taken a liking to Dave yet so once I got her corralled and back in, CJ took off across the road and into the neighbor's pasture.  I called after him but it only made him run farther. I thought we were doomed... "Sorry, Laurie, you leave us for one night and we lose your dog"... then it occurred to me how much he seemed to like Boo. So we brought Boo out and used her as bait. Sure enough, Boo wagged her pretty tail off on the porch and CJ came galloping back to the yard to see her.  Score one for Boo.

Off to enjoy Dave's stuffed poblano peppers and have an early night. Sore, tired and sunburned.

The farming begins

Today was our first real day of work.  The weather was crappy but we had to go on anyway.  The first thing we did was to wash and bag all of the greens that we had harvested yesterday.  We set up the wash station in one of the buildings on the farm.  It provided some shelter from the rain but left a view.  The greens went through four water rinses before they were spun dry in a salad spinner.  Then they were bagged up and labeled for market.

Laurie went into town to sell our freshly bagged produce while Liz and I remained behind.  We lounged a little bit but then got back to work putting stuff away in the camper.  It's still messy but everyday it gets closer to being organized.

When Laurie got back we headed into the greenhouse.  There is an infestation of aphids starting to form.  Aphids are one of the most destructive pests in the world.  As they feed on the plants their reproductive rate is immense causing the population to skyrocket.  Our first hurdle of organic farming.  Laurie got some organic pest soap that is supposed to help.  So we spent some time spraying the infected plants with the soap.  Hopefully it works.  When we finished that we spent a couple hours weeding.

With the work done for the day we took Boo for a walk and headed inside for dinner.  We had a salad with some freshly picked arugula, by yours truly, and some ravioli with a sauce from last years tomatoes.  Once we were all stuffed we sat around the table and chatted for a while.

As the rain drops still patter around us it's time to settle into bed.  Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. 

On the farm!

We are finally in Montana.

After one night at a hotel in Bozeman, which we didn't do anything, we traveled through the Bridger Canyon into Wilsall.  Our new home town.  About 3 miles outside of town is Crazy View farm.  We rolled up in the early afternoon.  Luckily it was a nice day with the sun shining, although there were storm clouds visible over the mountains.  


After meeting Laurie (our boss, the farmer) for the first time in person we started get settled in.  We scoped out a nice location for the trailer under an overhang next to the garage and got it popped up.  Then we started to straighten out our stuff inside - a job that will take days I'm sure.

The view from our camper

Once we were set up we were put to work.  There was an order that needed to be filled.  The first of the season.  We headed into the greenhouse and were instructed to pick a lettuce mix, spinach, and arugula.  After we had collected what we needed, we were invited to join a group of Laurie and Billy's friends in town for dinner.


The group was having dinner to celebrate the end of a long, hard day of branding their calves at the ranch Billy works for.  It's tradition to have dinner for all the guys and we were lucky to join in.


The cafe in Wilsall is nice.  And all the people were friendly. They welcomed us right in.  We finished dinner and headed back to the farm.  We stayed up and chatted with Laurie and Billy for a little bit and then headed out for our first night of sleep in the camper.

Farewell, Fort Collins

We spent more time in Fort Collins, CO, then we ever expected but what a sweet place to land. For nearly seven weeks, it was our home among some of our best friends.

We're so grateful to have crashed so long at Jess and Julia's. They are a fantastic couple with so much ahead of them in their lives together.  It was also our first experience with a Roomba (must get one!). Thank you for your hospitality!

Goodbye group hug with Jess & Julia

I'm happy to have been able to be in the same city as my best friend Marc and his dog Einstein. I'm sad to leave them both. I'm glad we got to spend quality time with you, hanging out or hiking or seeing the town.  You couldn't have picked a cooler place to live. 

Marc, Boo & Einstein by our packed van

One of my favorite memories of FOCO will be the day Marc and I had lunch and walked around downtown, talking to the shop owners and eating ice cream. And I loved the day we made crescent roll pizzas, all of us together, making pizzas. Among Dave's best memories are the hike up Mt Margaret on Julia's birthday and the music festival FoCO MX, where we biked from spot to spot hearing all kinds of different local bands.

FOCO made a great temporary home.  Colorado is stunning.  But we're excited for our new home: in a trailer at Crazy View Farm.

We'll miss you all. Please come visit us - it's only a ten hour drive north!

Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area

For our last weekend of vacation we decided to spend it at Bighorn Canyon NRA.  It looked like a great place to stay and is close to Montana.  Oh and camping is free!  So we left Fort Collins and set off on the 8 hour drive up to Lovell WY.

After some delays here and there and a couple stops along the way we got to the visitors center well after they had closed.  By the way US 20 up to Thermopolis was an incredible drive and anyone who has the chance should do it.  So we continued on to the campsite.  It was mostly empty seeing as the weather wasn't the greatest.  We picked out a site with a nice view and settled in for the night.

The next day we headed back to the visitors center.   From there we determined that if nothing else we should go to the Devil's Overlook.  The overlook peers down 1000 feet into the canyon below.  It was breathtaking.  After looking around for a while we started to play with the echo.  So much fun.

At that point it was getting a little cold and windy so we just went back to camp.  Sitting at camp watching the wind pick up I decided it was time to fly a kite.  Thankfully the day before I had purchased a couple from a gas station.  We had a little difficulty at first but after thinking about the physics of it and retying the string it was smooth sailing.

Then some dinner and a movie before we called it a night.  Well to be fair I'm pretty sure we both fell asleep before the movie was over.  Tomorrow we head for Montana.

Blizzard in RMNP

With the help of Jess' borrowed National Parks pass, Marc and I drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park on Wednesday. The forecast was grim but since time in Colorado was running slim, we decided to chance it and hope for the best.

With the rain pouring, we overstayed our welcome at all of the visitors centers. I usually skim the displays but I scoured each one, some twice, just to kill some time out of the rain.

As always, Rocky Mountain NP didn't let us down with wildlife viewing. Herds of elk lined the grassy areas in the foothills, unphased by the weather and the cars pulled over to take pictures.

Rain quickly turned into a blizzard as we got into the mountains. It made for slow, treacherous driving and the best scenic routes were still closed for the winter.

After we saw everything we could in the park (not much), we headed back out to Estes Park and back home. After some prodding, Marc got me to go with him to check out the famous Stanley Hotel in town. It's the site that they say inspired Stephen King to write The Shining. I haven't read the book or seen the movie so I didn't really care. I was wrong. It was a cool place. We didn't do the ghost tour, just looked around, and I pictured how cool it'd be to throw an elaborate ball there.

The Stanley Hotel

 On the ride home, we listened to a great podcast of This American Life on job creation -- you know, all the politicians say they're going to "create jobs" but they don't really create jobs, they just take credit for jobs that get created while they're in office.

We got back in time to hangout with Dave, Jess, Julia and Chantel for what became our "going away"/ early birthday party for Marc party. We had pizza, drinks, cake, played a round of Risk and partied late.

Last Saturday in Fort Collins

It started off as a gloomy day.  And from what I remember it stayed that way.  As we were still sore from Horsetooth we lounged around during the day.  When nightfall came we still had no plans.  Hunger swiftly moved in upon us so we decided to head to a nearby bar called Sliders.  Dinner and a few drinks we thought.  We were soon to find out that Sliders has something special on Saturday nights.

That's right.  Goldfish racing.  And the prize, $25 off your bar tab.  Of course we had to compete.  The basic layout is two tracks, which I believe are florescent bulb fixtures, and some bar straws.  By blowing on and in the water you must get your fish to the opposite end.

Competition was fierce. 

You may notice that my challenger has already won

Unfortunately we all lost in the first round.  But it was fun.  It was fun watching everyone else race too.  After the races were over and the excitement died down we ordered another round and played some cards.  We had tried to play Apples to Apples earlier but myself, Liz, and Marc didn't meet the four player minimum.  We happened to notice another group of three also trying to play some games.  I went over and suggested that if we all got together we could play anything.  So we ordered another round and play A2A.  We all ended up having a lot of fun.

One of the funnier rounds