Rich went to the Farmer's Market and I am unable to characterize his experience other than to say he is a bit of a perfectionist and highly competitive and was not pleased with the outcome.
(Other than free food and the availability of beer as it was the grand opening.)
He will have to come along and provide his own personal experience here next week.
As for the mutual part of farming, it has been busy.
Learning about organic methods:
If you have ever wondered why organic food is so much more expensive than the stuff with agent orange, grown right here in Argentina and planes-trains-and automobiled right to the Super K - it is because organic gardening is very, very, very hard work.
I am not trying to discount the world wide economy boost you are personally contributing by having your kiwis flown in from New Zealand! How on earth could they possibly be two for a dollar with all that fossil fuel burned just to get them to you? Organics? local? now that is hard stuff!
Our early crops are lettuce, radishes and chives. Rich says no one wants those.
(Maybe if we had kiwis?) -
Just to get the early crops out - we discovered that mulch was the market gardener's best friend.
Mulch prevents weeds - or at least it slows them.
Weeds are prolific in the country.
These weeds are nothing like you would ever see in the city or suburbs.
When mulch is not sufficient, you must get on hands and knees and pull each and every weed by hand.
Weeding is very hard work.
And then there's the issue of mulch - or the source of mulch.
Where on earth do you get enough mulch to cover two acres??
Well - if you're lucky enough you get yourself a nice wood chipper and make some.
A real chipper costs about 2K - no ROI there.
You could buy it!
At 3 dollars a bag, no ROI there!
OR - you could have the former owner of your farm run off and leave you with a barn full of spoiled hay - YES - that's what we have!
A barn full of mulch!
So we truck it out to the field and mulch, mulch,mulch.
Anyway, getting to the point - this organic stuff is very hard work. As for why it is important - we'll get to that some other time.
The politics of mulch comes later.
Pay the price for organics and stop grumbling about it.
Anyone interested in working a day on the farm is welcome!
Just email first.
Rich and I each have cameras now and he has the good shots from last week.
We'll get them but next week.
We've upgraded to a 56K modem so Rich can actually connect to the web in under two days - now that is progress!
Happy Gardening!
Here's a photo for my mom - she will appreciate it.
We found a stone wall hidden under brush and trees - another repair and gardening project - YES! EXCELLENT! We needed one of those.
