The rain comes on Tuesdays as if I set the timer myself on one of the robots.  Then it warms up and dries out for the weekend.  It’s been like that for a month.  I can’t believe it.

The last couple weeks we’ve been working on a number of things, both in infrastructure and planting.  Some of the work we’ve been doing over the winter has been making the off-grid operation able to sustain human life and even field a few off-farm job emails.  Most of the insulation is installed in the field shed.  The radiant barrier needs to go in before the summer kicks in.  It’s like an Easy Bake Oven without it.  (Okay, kids, there was this toy when Dan and Drew were kids.  It was a metal and plastic toy oven with a lightbulb inside that cooked these awful cakes.  No, really.  It was for girls, but boys wanted them too.  At least farmer boys did.).  I’m working on getting a better signal so that I can deal with the off-farm job without running down to McDonald’s for the wifi.  You will be glad to know that coffee and music are fully operational.

But in the field it’s the rabbit fence and deer fence.  Deer fence we’ve covered.  The rabbit fence is simple and went in quickly too.  We just had to make sure we did it when the soil felt like being dug.

We used 4’ chicken wire on t-posts.  We tied the wire to the posts with recycled wire from when we screwed up our well pump installation.  The most important part of putting in a rabbit fence is making sure the rabbits don’t go under it.  To avoid this, we dug a trench about 6” deep.  We put the chicken wire on the posts and bent the bottom edge of the fence into a ‘J’ with the curve facing out.  Then we filled the trench back in.  This will keep the rabbits from coming under at the edge.  We also have no gate.  Not yet.  The fence is short enough for Dan to step over.  I, on the other hand, am built like Charlie Brown, so I’ll use a box or step ladder.  This is a bit inconvenient, but it keeps us from having to put in a gate right away that could provide a weak point for rabbits to get in.  Rabbit are like hackers, but with longer ears and fluffy tails.  And they are a little smaller.  And don’t talk as much.  But other than that, they are just like hackers.

I gave Dan a scythe for Christmas.  I am a romantic devil.  She nearly lopped her thumb off sharpening it.  I dressed it and she kept working.  Dan is tough.  Tougher than our dirt in August.  That is tough.

We also planted 200 basil plants in between the rows of trees in the orchard.  The rabbits won’t eat the basil so we don’t need it to have the fence.  We’re going to put tomatoes inside the rabbit fence and intersew with basil for the pest control properties.  We might even add some carrots since tomatoes and carrots get along so well.

The hoop house is a great idea that is almost there.  The size is perfect for keeping the plants warm and moist in our climate, but the irrigation system needs more work.  The robots are great once you get them tuned.  These are not tuned, and the seedling window has closed.  I’m going to go out to Peaceful Valley this coming weekend and get a bunch of seedlings to plant.  We’ll keep at the hoop house and robots, but there is planting to do.

Actually, I did.  I had been looking forward to our annual inspection and it was worth it.  Debbie was our inspector and she went through our operation.  I got to talk about our farm for an hour to someone who really likes this sort of thing.  She looked at our labels and my farm records.  Some days I can have trouble digging a hole, but by golly can I file records!  We had a great talk and Coyote House Farm got the thumbs up for another year. During our walk around… Read the rest of this article »

It’s the little things that make you happy most often.   But sometimes a big thing will do it too. We have a 600’main irrigation line that runs down the middle of our growing field with manifolds every 60 feet.  We built it in the wet season of 2007/2008.  By built I mean we dug the trench by hand, laid the pipe, tested, fixed, and buried it again.  It was good work to do while it was too wet to stuff on the straw bale field shed.  And boy, are we glad to have it now! … Read the rest of this article »

It doesn’t look good for the peach tree.  Our off season will be spent watching the cover crop grow and getting in front of the nutrition and maintenance schedules for our trees.  That and adding a new big water tank.  I’ve increased the water from 2 hours 11 minutes twice a week to 4 hours twice a week for the next few weeks. The test field is now off line.  We had a cap pop off and bleed out all the water in the 200 gallon tank.  That happened because a fix I had to… Read the rest of this article »

A thorough conversation on financials will kill all plant life within a 30 mile radius.  I can take it because I have an MBA and had my yawn glands removed as a child.  I will not subject you to that sort of TMI (Too Much Information for the humans among us) but instead go from the general to the specific in a gradual manner.  Just as you would not empty your manure pond into your vegetable field all at once, I will feed you financial manure at a rate that can be absorbed. We bought… Read the rest of this article »

We have a Heat Advisory in effect for Palermo until early next week.  That means we won’t be on ladders working on the field shed this Saturday.  I’m helping my dad move from Colusa (106 degrees.  Why would he want to leave?) to Forbestown, so I can still swing by and fill the water tank on my way back to the Bay Area. Okay.  A few things: I love the Bay Area.  I am one of a comparatively small number of people who was actually born in San Francisco and my love for… Read the rest of this article »

At the end of the week of the 13th I looked at the NOAA weather report and saw that we were going to get a bit of heat in the North Valley.  I took out my trusty EVo spreadsheet and laid in a course for an estimated average daily EVo of .25 for the week.  That gave me back new timings for the watering:  9 minutes daily for the vegetables and 2 hours 11 minutes for the trees on Wednesday and Saturday.  All watering is dripped at 4:00 am to avoid any annoying evaporation that does… Read the rest of this article »

I’ve been spending a lot of money turning a grassy field into a productive CSA vegetable farm, and my largest single expense has been developing water on the site.  We have long dry summers here, and while a few crops can be dry-farmed, most need irrigation.  My property doesn’t have a well, but my neighbors Jim & Kim have a well right on the property line that they are generously letting me develop and use.  My system goals were to get 80GPM at 40PSI over about a 1/2 acre at a… Read the rest of this article »

[slideshow id=27] Drew, Jim and I spent Saturday at the farm practicing division of labor.  My morning was spent taping up some of the tube connection points in our Freshman test field irrigation system.  Occasionally one of the inner-hose-inside-outer-hose connections, currently held together by friction alone, will pop and we’ll arrive at the field to see the evidence of an uneven timed irrigation etched as water lines in the clayey soil.  We decided to try duct tape and see how it holds. … Read the rest of this article »