Seldom Seen Farm

Here’s baby Laila. . . !

You ever have one of those days? I’m sure everyone does. And Tuesday started out innocuously enough, with a long list of things to do. Kelly and I have not been managers of employees for two years. And getting back into it has been a challenge. Keeping everyone busy and on task occupies at least one person’s time, and makes accomplishing anything tangible a trial. So on Tuesday I was doing an ok job of keep the crew going, while trying to get a seeding and ground preparation done. And then the truck wouldn’t start. . . which isn’t usually a big deal. The battery terminals on the diesel sometimes come loose, but this time the battery connection wasn’t the problem. Probing around the starting system under the truck I noticed the starter motor bolts had worked their way out. How this happened, I can’t say, but we hooked the truck up behind the tractor to get it to the shop for a better diagnosis.

I drove the tractor while one of the part-timers steered the truck. Everything went well until I heard the tow strap break. So now the truck is sitting in a three foot deep drainage tile hole. Wowzers. . . the truck sat at an unnatural angle with the back right up in the air, and the grill below the level of the ground. Not a happy moment. A trip to the barn to get chains, and twenty minutes later we’re rolling again. Then the power steering on the tractor went out. . . I’ve had a cronic problem with this for better than three months. The gasket won’t seal right, and is impossible to put in place. That allows air to get into the hydrolic system and renders all hydrolic systems useless until fixed. (power steering, front end loader, and three point hitch)

So now it’s fix-it time. The volt meter said a trip to Autozone was in order for replacement truck batteries. I got the starter rebolted and locked tight while Kelly ran to town for parts. The next fourty minutes was spent lying under back wheels of the tractor using the only angle I can get to see the hydrolic filter. Clean surfaces, mount gasket, assemble filter cover. . . gasket slips out of place. . . repeat. . . repeat. . . repeat. . . hydrolic fluid dripping on me the whole time.

By then it was time to run CSA deliveries and train the new delivery person. We dodged rain in Broad Ripple and again in Fishers, and I hoped to get home in time to finish up. By the time we got back to Brownsburg it was pouring something awful. Then back at the farm I was greeted to marble sized hail that had been melting on the ground for thirty minutes. Seems it was close to golf ball sized when it fell from the sky. Most vegetables don’t particularly like hail. . . or at least I don’t like. Things tend to get shredded.

So we’re a little short on some produce this weekend. The spinach took the experience very hard, and continues to be depressed and anxious. We’re considering putting it on Paxil. The lettuce took a hit but was salvagable, but there were easily 15-20 pounds of hail ripped lettuce on the processing floor Thursday after washing. I had such high hopes for the bright little baby chard. . . we’ll see how it recovers.

Jolene Ketzenberger put together a wonderful article that appeared in the June 3rd Indianapolis Star.

The far west side of Indianapolis has undergone a bit of change since the 70’s. The landscape is more than dotted with close to fourty year old ranch houses. In the past twenty years Avon and Brownsburg have exploded with subdivisions. From what I hear, Avon was barely a dot on the map in the 50’s, but you would wouldn’t know it now with the strip malls that stretch from 267 to the Marion County line.

Seldom Seen Farm occupies about 20 acres on a 160 acre parcel. The south half of the property is Washington Township (Avon), the north is Middle Twp (Pittsboro), and the western property line is Center (Danville). That larger parcel is part of a penisula of agricultural ground that stetches east, nearly to White Lick Creek. From an aerial photo, you can see the ‘burbs creeping in.

Yesterday I had a chance to go a totally different way. From Danville north and winding back to the farm from the north west. It had a totally different field. Instead of passing suburbia on my way home, I was passing unmaintained fench lines and grass overgrown from a combination of too much rain and too little time to mow. Winding back to the farm, you would think we were thirty miles from the nearest state road out in Fountain County (way west). Maybe that route will become one of choice for the future. I would rather think of the farm as being out in the boonies than about to be swallowed by another vinyl village.

What the Veggies Lived Through this Week:

The warm weather and (light) rain has been a cure-all for the past water logged weeks. There is still some damage that the plants will hopefully grow out of, but the dry weather allowed us to get caught up on cultivation and plant for the coming summer. The greenhouse tomatoes continue to look awesome, and I keep babying them with foliar feedings.

Continue Reading »

I found myself on hands and knees in the potato patch this week wondering what was going on. Potatoes were planted six weeks ago as March made way for April. Still, we have nothing to show for the 1600 seed potatoes we put in the ground. Among the varieties of potatoes we planted were Yukon Gold and Red Gold. But as I dug where they should have been, there wasn’t anything to be found. Maybe I should have put my seed potato money in bouillon instead of cultivars. But that would be too unfarmer like. From my point of view a 40 year old tractor is a sound investment, and new potatoes are just too good to pass up.

The soil was still a little chilly back in March and we got ahead of ourselves. So now we’re hoping to replant and make a go of potatoes again. I didn’t buy a potato digger just to let it sit idle in the barn all summer.

What your veggies lived through this week:
With all this rain, I’ll focus on happy thoughts. The greenhouse tomatoes look great. They’re knee high and deep green, with flowers that opened this week. So let images of juicy, vine ripe tomatoes run though your noggin. In other news. . . The rain continues. . . making it difficult to plant and impossible to till. While the spring crops are in, we’re waiting to get in a significant number of warm season crops and flowers. While the rain is welcome, it could come in smaller amounts or at least give us a ten day window of sun and warmth. . . at this point I would love to be running irrigation.