Filling up the starts greenhouse, the first planting in the field, why does the heron spend so much time in the raspberries? do mice have silver linings?

I finally got a halfway decent photo of the blue heron at the farm. I don’t know if it is actually the same bird I’ve been watching since last fall. I haven’t seen it for some weeks, but now I’ve seen it three days in a row, each time in the raspberries.

Blue heron in the raspberry patch. I hurriedly took this photo of our local blue heron through the Jeep windshield. The bird glided off a bit when I got out of the car, so I let it be. The little bit I’ve read says that blue herons find their food in or near water – their main food is fish and other aquatic critters. This one seems to prefer to stalk through our raspberry field. They do seem to eat lots of different critters from bugs to small animals. I’m hoping our visitor is working on eating the little rodents burrowing in the compost mulch we add to the raspberry beds. I don’t know how typical or unusual this particular bird might be. I’ve never seen more than the one heron so I don’t know if it is part of a nesting pair. There are no big trees on our farm, so the nest would have to be somewhere else.

We’ve also had a number of sighting of short-tailed weasels that other lucky folks have reported spotting in the raspberries. I’ve never seen them myself. I’m sure they are also enjoying feasting on the rodents. Actually, the rodents on the farm are not necessarily strictly pests. I just found an article at the New Farm website that reports that mice can eat a huge percentage of weed seeds on the soil surface.

On Wednesday we planted outside for the first time this year. The soil finally got dry enough to plant out the peas. Jaime & Juan did the planting. The peas were sprouted a bit more than I’d like, so they had to be a bit more careful with the sprouts. This year I decided to do two plantings to try to spread the harvest out over a couple of more weeks.

Thursday Enrique & I pulled six raised beds, all covered in black plastic. We use the Rain-Flo bed former to make the beds. The same day the crew planted out about 900 leek starts, filling four of the beds. This is the first time we’ve raised leeks. We chose the variety King Richard, and bought the starts to plant out.

Jaime & Enrique planting leeks in the raised bed.  Juan is hidden behind Jaime. The  straw-covered shallot and leek beds are to the right in the photo. Behind the crew you can see the dibbler - the roller that punches the correctly spaced holes.

Enrique finally finished spreading compost on the corn maze field. It rained Saturday and Saturday night, so it looks like we won’t be tilling until at least Tuesday. We’ll get Enrique started spreading compost mulch on the raspberries.

Our community garden (P-Patch) is scheduled to open this coming Friday (April 14). We need to till the garden by Wednesday, so we can mark the plots out on Thursday. So far it looks like we’ll be ready. We filled the last open plot last week. We’ll start collecting names on a waiting list for next year. Rob and the crew rebuilt the compost bins in the P-Patch this week. We use cedar posts rather than treated wood posts for the compost bins. Between the post rot and the tractor loader damage the bins were looking ready to fall down. This time we put gates at the back of the bins. The gates can be opened when emptying the bins.

On Thursday in the starts house John started some herbs (garlic chives, sweet marjoram, summer savory, sorrel), flowers (larkspur and cosmos), the second plantings of lettuce and spinach, and Cheddar, an orange cauliflower. He also started cuttings of French tarragon and tricolor sage from our herb garden. Next week he’ll start second plantings of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and Napa cabbage, as well as presprouting our second planting of peas. He’ll also start our two varieties of pak choi and our five summer squashes. This year we’re adding a yellow zucchini and Magda, a Middle Eastern type squash.

Towards the end of the month I’m signed up to take the Fruit and Vegetable Processing Short Course at the OSU in Corvallis. We’ll be learning about drying methods, picking, jams & jellies and the techniques and quality analysis involved. We’re hoping to choose a few of our crops and create some new products.

What’s playing today in the Jeep CD player?  David Byrne – Grown Backwards