Almost Memorial Day Weekend, No Really, It Is

As you can see by the title of this post, things are not as they should be in Farmville. It is almost Memorial Day weekend and we have unsettled weather with a chance of hail tomorrow. If this is going to be the new normal for Sacramento, we might as well rename this place "The North Pole" and let Santa set up a satellite operation here. By now, we should have at least had a couple days with ninety degree highs and many more in the eighties. The upside to this unseasonably cool weather is the broccoli did very well. As you can see in the picture, nice and large without trying to form flowers. The cool weather has also been kind to the sugar peas, potatoes, onions, and garlic. Sometimes the first heat wave in May freaks these guys out and they struggle. The tomatoes, corn, melons, peppers, and cucumbers are growing super slow and my fear is they are not acclimating well for when the heat does decide to visit us. One thing I learned a long time ago while farming is since you can't control Mother Nature, you might as well get completely stressed out and get hammered on cheap beer worrying about it all. Just kidding. You have to just keep an eye on things and be prepared to take care of what may come with a sudden upswing in temperatures. Usually this means keeping the plants well watered when the hot weather arrives but another aspect is keeping the bad bugs controlled. Insects' entire existence is temperature driven, so when it warms up, their populations can explode within a couple of days.

The patience with the crooked rows of corn paid off. The picture above gives the complete illusion of straight rows that had to have been planted with some sort of laser-guided system. What really happened is they grew enough and I learned to take pictures far enough away to make it look this way. Those four rows have been divided into one third blocks, with each block planted two weeks apart. Hopefully this results in a very long harvest window so we can enjoy corn all summer long. I won't waste time repeating what has already been discussed under the previous sweet corn post, but know there is no better treat than to have fresh picked corn for dinner every night, if that's what sounds good. No hassle with going to the store, just go back there and pick a few ears.

Since Memorial Day weekend means crowds everywhere, the plan is to get a lot of things done with the project. I figure that the more I get done this weekend, when I don't want to be part of the big crowds enjoying the great outdoors, the more time I'll have during the upcoming weekends. Then I'll be able to do things without the crowds. The word is the shad running up the American River are unusually big this year. Some have been catching four and five pounders. Once it quits snowing in the mountains, the water in the creeks might warm up enough for the trout to realize they are very hungry. All of this could lead to some pretty good fishing during June and July. I'll try my best to not let the Farmville Reality Project become an orphan to the fishing, but no guarantees.

Progress Report...

Unfortunately, this will be a weekly update with no pictures to share. Things have been so busy, I haven't been able to get out there and snap some pictures. Everything is coming along as planned, for the most part. The project has encountered one small set back, but nothing earth shattering. The herb garden had to be abandoned. Long story short, the septic system has some issues and it looks like a contractor might need to dig a few trenches smack in the middle of there. Since everything planted was fairly small, I told my landlord it would be no problem replanting everything over in the main site. I was able to salvage a few of the plants but for most of the other stuff planted there, it made sense to head to the nursery and get new plants. As of this evening, all has been replanted or replaced and none of my future meals should have anything significant missing.

One of the biggest reasons for being so busy these past few days is Kevin Jr's transmission repair and replace. I know everyone is hoping I report the truck is screaming up some dirt road right now as I type this update. The reality is we spent the past few evenings after both of us finished work putting things back together. Today was when we got the super-humanly, oversize transfer case mated up to the transmission and then connected all of the other stuff necessary to get the truck moving. After all of this, it sat there and did nothing. Needless to say, we were both extremely disappointed. I'm not well versed in the type of transfer case in this truck but I think it might have a busted chain. If it has to come back out, it just might destroy both of us mentally. We beat ourselves silly the past couple of evenings putting it in. It weighs about five hundred pounds and the weight is not balanced very well due to the odd shape. Oh well, we'll work on it tomorrow after work and see where that leads us.

The one thing that is unique about the growing season this year is how cool it's been. This weekend, the third one of the month of May, had high temperatures in the sixties with rain. Not exactly the best thing to get corn, melons, and tomatoes convinced that this is their time to flourish. As I was rototilling late Saturday afternoon, you could see the unsettled weather coming in from the West. In a matter of a half an hour, the sky turned dark gray and the rain beat down for thirty minutes. At this point, I don't know if anyone is sure we are going to get any Spring like weather or not. My hope is Summer doesn't drop on us very hard. So far, all of these plants think a high temperature of seventy five degrees is as warm as it ever gets. If we get the Summer thrown at us full bore in early June with hundred plus degree days, they are in for a rude awakening.

I will try to get out in the evenings this upcoming week and snap a few update photos to post.

Farm Trucks

As you can see in the pictures, we have no shortage of trucks around the Farmville Reality Project. Problem is, only one of them actually runs (the white one with the camper on it, for those keeping score). Technically, the 1972 Ford will run, but outside of going to get the mail, I personally wouldn't take it very far right now. When you get right down to it, the perfect farm truck has only one requirement, it starts and runs without stranding you out in the middle of no where. We are going to make it a priority to get these to that status, but it will take some work.

The 1977 Chevy is the most recent "stray" my son has brought home. It has decent tread on the tires and the lift hasn't put it in the completely ridicules place of tipping over when going around a corner at twenty five miles per hour. It's close though. Thirty five and ten bales of hay on the back, this thing's going to be laying on its side. The reason you see jacks and tools all around it is it is in need of major repair. The second or third day he had it, the transmission gave out and he had to drive it back here in reverse. We live off of a state highway and he said most of the people he inconvenienced while driving back in were good sports. Traffic out there is used to going along at fifty five or more, so being stuck behind him going five MPH facing backwards had to have caused more than a few to consider taking up road rage. He told me he just kept smiling and waving at the people passing him. At least he could see them coming without using the mirrors. Yesterday was deemed the day to take the transmission out of this truck. With it being a furlough Friday, I made good use of the time and got quite a bit done as far as taking care of the many things planted in the project. While I did this, my son and one of his friends worked on disconnecting the many things necessary to pull the transmission out. By the time it got dark, they were at a place where it looked like it might be able to come out. A few more friends had shown up to either help out or just witness this crazy event. I decided to crawl under and give them a hand, mostly to make sure no one got crushed to death by a falling transmission with the transfer case still attached. Crazy event is probably being too kind of a description here, for the record. We had a legitimate transmission jack under the transmission, but it was missing two of the upright support pieces. There was a good old fashioned floor jack under the back of the transfer case and for good measure, we used a ratcheting nylon strap to hold the whole assembly to the support plate on the transmission jack. With some careful maneuvering and some cussing, we drug this whole assembly out from underneath the truck a little after nine thirty that night. Needless to say, we were all pretty tired and beat up a bit by that point. The really scary thing is that in a few days, when it comes back from the shop, we have to put it back in. That should be another interesting adventure.

The 1972 Ford is the official ranch truck right now. Mostly because it sits in the perfect position so you can sit in the driver's side seat and look out at most everything planted. Even without moving an inch, it is sitting in the perfect place to do this. It will run though if you use jumper cables on the battery and pour some gas in the carburetor to prime it. Beside those small nuances, it also needs a new vacuum booster and rear brakes. The engine is fine, the son and I put a remanufactered long block in it a couple of years ago. With just a few more things taken care of, this one might end up seeing some serious duty in the near future. My grandfather bought this pickup brand new back in 1972 and after various family members drove it, I ended up with it. It had close to two hundred thousand miles on it by that time. I kept it to use as a project for Kevin Jr. and I to work on and he even used it as his senior project in high school. One of these days when all the other chores are caught up, the plan is to get working on this one and get it road ready. We'll see when this actually happens. I hope it does sometime before I retire in 2020 or else it will then become an official retirement project. It doesn't matter when it gets finished though. How cool is it to have your grandfather's pickup to drive around, or in Kevin Jr's case, his great-grandfather's? That is priceless.

Updates

If there is such a thing as a "Holiday Weekend" when it comes to projects like this, I used my credit this weekend. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions about if I'm losing momentum or just plain getting lazy, note that I spent today, Mothers' Day, building and planting a raised planter bed at my mom's house. I even braved the sporadic down pours and planted cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, tomoatoes, spinach, and radishes for her garden. With that said, I did not plant anything new in the Farmville Reality Project this weekend. I did buy a few more plants that will get planted this week. All in all, this is probably a good thing. Sometimes in the spring, even when you space plantings a week apart, they all become ripe at the the same time in the summer. When we grew vegetables for the local wholesale markets, we would calculate the planting intervals carefully so when one field was finishing up harvest, the next one in line would be just reaching the optimum level of maturity. This is very easy to do on paper but when applied out in the field, it can be a very different story. We found that in the spring, if the plantings were seven to ten days apart, in the summer, we would be able harvest at optimum maturity around six to eight days apart. As you moved through summer and into fall, we would have to plant two to three days apart to end up with six to eight day intervals between fields the following fall season. Goes to show you how Mother Nature missed the memo on using perfectly linear progression when it comes to how plants should grow. This did add to the challenge and truth be told, the fun of trying to plan planting schedules. There are so many moving parts when it comes to planting schedules, it becomes mind boggling at times. Most of the ground preparation is done in stages at just the right soil moisture conditions, so you couldn't work too far ahead for the sake of convenience. If you did get too far ahead and conditions dried out, the price you paid was to have to work in a quick irrigation on the field to get it back to the desirable moisture level. Most of the time, that would ultimately result in "stutter steps" in the planting schedule because things wouldn't dry down as fast as we thought they would.

Anyway, back to this week's updates. As you can see, the broccoli is starting to form heads. Spring broccoli in this area is always a risk for early flowering. If the weather warms real quickly, the heads open into yellow flowers in a matter of days before reaching a good size to be picked. I plan to keep an eye on the forecasts and if ninety degree days are in the cards, it's best to pick the broccoli on the small side while the quality is still good. Another picture shows the Yellow Finnish Potatoes. They have grown like crazy and really seem to like the spot I planted them in. The trick with these is to keep the top parts growing so they can "feed" the potatoes growing just under the surface of the bed. If the we get a blast of hot weather and the tops get stressed, the potatoes underground will stop growing. If this happens a few times, they end up with weird knots and shapes to them. They like to grow on a very steady pace with no starts and stops. The last picture are green onions just starting to emerge. As they grow, I'll pull within the rows to thin out. These small ones thinned out are great in salads. The remaining ones will be able to grow larger and when a bit bigger than a pencil, they can be picked. Even though I slacked a bit this weekend, I hope the updates and information helps everyone visualize all of the great things that lie ahead in this project.

Also, I have added new pictures on some of the earlier posts to show the progress. Please excuse the lame state of the pictures for this post. I have no more patience to try and get all three of them in one row on top of the text. One of these days, I'll have to learn how to work with some of the editing tools for this blog site, but today is not that day.

Sweet Corn

I thought I would post about the sweet corn even though there is no picture to post yet. The main reason is when I planted the first block, a picture of bare dirt isn't exactly interesting to look at. Now that the seedlings are two to three inches tall, another reason for no picture has emerged. The second of the four rows is crooked. To non-farmer types, that may not seem like a big deal, but believe me, in farmer land, crooked rows gets you kicked out of the club. Other farmers drive by your fields and if the rows are crooked, they make it a point to bring it to your attention. My plan is to wait a few more days so they get taller and then use a camera angle that doesn't make it front and center.

The variety I'm planting is called Silver Queen. It was one of the first white varieties to get popular at farm stands back in the 1970s. It was quite a bit sweeter than the yellow varieties at that time. Today, most of the sweet corn in stores and farmers markets are what are known as super sweet types. They have been bred to have a much higher sugar content than the old varieties and the sugar does not turn to starch after harvest as fast as the old ones. The old varieties were notorious for getting starchy after the corn was picked. My dad used to tell my mom to have the water boiling already for when he would get home from my grandfather's farm with fresh-picked sweet corn. He thought this was the best way to enjoy the corn at its peak and not have any starchiness. For those that don't have the luxury to go out and pick a few ears right off the stalk, the best way to make sure it's at its peak is pop one of the kernels with a fingernail. If the juice is milky and the kernel is crisp, it's perfect. If the kernel is soft and the juice is more like toothpaste, it's over the hill. If the kernels are small and shiny, it was picked too immature.

Sweet corn is one of those vegetables that has a lot of folklore about it. When I would sell corn at farmers' markets, many people would insist on white or yellow based on having a good or bad experience in the past. They might have had corn that was terrible and if it was yellow, they would never buy yellow again. The reality is that there are many factors beside color that will determine whether you get corn that is great. The best way, of course, is to grow it yourself so you can go out and pick some while the water is already boiling and in a few minutes, you'll be eating the best corn you ever had.