Encore! Last year’s foodshelf project was so successful we’re doing it again. Once again Dana Jokela from Sogn Valley Farm has helped with planting and tillage (more on that later). Here are a few photos of the progress to date. It’s already been an “interesting” season. More details below the photos. First, take a look at the lovely progress so far:

Here’s a bit of what’s happened so far.

Adventure 1: We planted corn in early June but . . .  seed corn maggot! Since we’re organic and can’t use treated seed the critters ate virtually the entire planting. Must have gotten lucky last year but this year we had to change plans quickly and start the corn plants in Dana’s greenhouse then transplant them (like we do the squash).

Adventure 2: Carrots need water to germinate. We planted when the forecast looked promising but . . . it changed. Dana loaned me a drip tape and I ran hoses out to the field. Then I had to soak the 2 rows repeatedly over several days which required moving the drip tape back and forth (only about a foot as you can see in the photos). This went on for about a week . . .

Adventure 3: The squash plants got transplanted right before the June heatwave. Had to move the drip tape from the carrots over to the squash. One drip tape (about 650 feet long), eight rows of squash. This required moving the drip tape every 3-4 hours so every row would get water every couple of days. Kept this up (through the nights – hooray for headlamps!) until the heat wave broke.

There’s more, of course, but it’s already been quite a season. We’ll see how it goes from here . . .

Thanks for reading. Further updates soon!