Amberglen Farm: One Month Mark

It's been about exactly a month since we started working on the farm. And what a difference! We've removed 10 truckloads of privets and weeds, pulled up a ton of stumps, got rid of 3 cars, fixed the fence and added a gate, set up a new composter, pruned the fruit trees, hand spaded and then tilled the entire garden area, pruned and trained the grapes, set up the girls' privy screen, cleaned out and organized the shed, contributed tools, brought in furniture and rugs for the beer garden, met a lot of the neighbors, installed art and decorations, drank a ton of beer, and generally wreaked havok!

We had a few last stumps to remove. Levering out the big one by the grape was a four-man job.

Notice the green waste bin in the background. That just came this week, and it was promptly filled.

Batch proudly displays the stump.

Then we did the last bit of tilling. We worked every day last week, getting in the tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos.

We planted at the dark of the moon, and the temperatures were in the high 70s by day and still in the high 40s at night. We'd had a full week of warmer temps just before that, so the soil was warmed. We added a sprinkling of Osmocote under each baby plant. The plants had been started on Feb. 18, but that was too late for the tomatoes and peppers, and we'll start sooner next year. Still the plants are healthy and well rooted, if not as big as they could have been. I'm not sure we could have started the tomatillos much sooner, seeing how big they were when they went in. They were already starting to flower.

Here are the tomatillos lined up, ready to go in.

We put in some GREAT irrigation. RickC really knows his stuff, and the system should work very well for us, giving us more time to drink beer! First we lined out the main lines.