It has been quite a muddy spring so far. Humid and super green. But it is one of my favorite periods of the year. The loud symphony of bugs in the darkness of the night cut by nearby thunder every now and then, high winds and black clouds coming down in high heat of the day give a romantic experience of nature as scary and beautiful at the same time. Rain was falling really generously on us and our seeds. At the end of seeding alfalfa it started sprinkling, and the next day after planting prairie grass it rained a lot too. It’s raining now. I hope that the tomatoes and peppers can wait a few more days.

Weeds won’t wait I know, but we are trying to stay ahead by cultivating with our tractor Al (Allis Chalmers G). Recently I have been learning how to operate and maintain a bigger tractor that we got, Farmall 400. I found I like all that oil changing, cleaning, sealing and greasing stuff. It really gives a lot of good basic knowledge about how machinery works and what it should be checked for. I have learned that two most important things no matter if it is a Honda 2006 or a Farmall 1954 is to be always up to date with engine oil and radiator fluid, and then comes other stuff too, the oil filter, transmission oil and so on. When I don’t know something I have a few people to call who are really good farm mechanics. What else to want from life?

Maybe more experience to gain. When I went to look at the Farmall, it was spitting milk-shake-like fluid from a bolt hole of what is – as I know now – the transmission housing. Everybody would know that it had moisture in the old oil and it should had been flushed and refilled with 15 gallons of a new oil, which is quite a big chore. Well, I didn’t know. Or when draining an oil sump, the engine should be hot so the oil will be thinner and flushes better.

There is a lot to learn, and a lot of work to be done to send an old Farmall to outer space, “far above the moon”, like David Bowie was singing, “Here am I sitting in my tin can far above the Moon / Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do.”

Sowing winter rye today:

It was great to walk and sow, walk and sow, on this cloudy day. Get off of the modern human life cycle (which is mostly dictated by holiday sales and election, both of which, as a modern man, I like) and get into the cycle of nature. Soil just quietly lives out there, bearing every spring and getting dry and cold in the fall. All of it started before we came and hopefully will last after we’ll be gone.

Winter rye is called a cover crop. Something that will grow in the soil till next planting of vegetables (aka cash crop) or the next cover crop. It is good for the soil to be covered with something, so the good stuff in it will not blow away or get washed away by rain. Winter rye’s roots will help to keep the moisture, and when tilled in, it will become a green manure, a natural fertilizer.

Last night Kelly and I went to hear the Abbey Road Band, a Beatles tribute band. Four guys who didn’t look like the Beatles, but, like they said and confirmed while playing, they did sound like the legendary boys from Liverpool. Their goal was to master the original sound of the band, imitate every small detail of the Beatles performance. I enjoyed listening to them.

They started with “I want to hold your hand”, and played a lot of love songs from their earliest repertoire at first, which wasn’t what I was waiting for, a kid from a postmodern world, who would rather listen to the White Album or Sgt. Pepper’s, all the weird stuff which made the Beatles an exceptional and universal band to me. But after an an-tract, they played Rocky Raccoon, Something, Imagine, and more! So I was pleased.

The most memorable thing though was that many, many people in the audience were in their seventies plus, and when “George” asked how many of you have seen the Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan Show during their first appearance in the US, there were a bunch of hands in the air. I really regretted I couldn’t have shared that experience. Although sitting by these people, who were waving their hands, clapping and trying to pretend to be the young, noisy crowd during All My Loving, brought me closer to the Beatles than the performing band itself. These people still have that spirit of music of the Beatles, of who they were as charismatic individuals, what they said, what they looked like, and I could feel it.

Have you ever thought about a journey of a tomato? I can’t think of any other vegetable right now, because we have a lot of tomatoes, harvesting them a lot, polishing and stocking, and thankfully selling some too.

I was pruning tomato plants, we have a lot of heirloom ones which need pruning, and one medium size tomato ended up in my hand. It was round and perfectly red, with no chicken pocks, nor scars or splitting, just an idea of tomato, like Plato would say.

It struck me that what I was holding was an end product of a seed that came from far far away; from a tomato that grew somewhere in Iowa or Maine, and after harvesting it and saving it’s seeds, this one seed among the others, was shipped to us and stored in our fridge. Then it went into some potting soil and spent a few weeks growing into a seedling, under artificial lights and in the micro-climate of our basement. Then the seedling went outside and spent some time on a trailer, to get tough and rough before hitting the hoophouse, to feel the wind and heat of the sun. Eventually it was buried with the roots down into the soil, with poly cover over it, with drip tape by the stem.

And then it continued the trip, this time on a rough road, sometimes sandy and dry, with some weeds, mineral deficiencies, flea beetles, cutworms, few tornado warnings and 60 mph winds, tired with tomato twine a dozen times, to stay in a row, pruned and pruned.

And the plant finally burst with red and pink, like a slot machine in Vegas, showing fruits in one line, bingo! Accumulations everywhere! Viva DelaBlu tomatoes! And there it was, this one perfect tomato, that I had just picked, on a journey.

It is summer already. It has been a good summer for us so far, a lot of rain, the weather has been rather good to us. Even strong winds, though I can’t count how many, didn’t blow our hoop-houses away. The peppers and tomatoes are growing safe there. And just few days ago we got 2 inches of rain! Good deal.

Although the weather was good for growing vegetables, it also encouraged their third cousins – weeds – to grow faster and more dense. So we’ve been busy weeding, to the extent that made us want to have a tractor. And that’s going to be our next big project – to find a small tractor with some attachments for seeding and cultivating. We’ve been learning from the other vegetable growers how useful and time saving is to have farm equipment like that. We could use more time needed for other things, like pest control, cover crops (to help our soil be more fertile) and harvesting.

And there is a lot to pick. Cucumbers are taking the lead now. My mom emailed me that she’s been pickling these days. With vinegar and – my favorite kind – with salt and water (and garlic and dill too). That must be traditionally the Polish way, or in Poland’s region, cuz I haven’t found them in the pantries here.

But in the US I get to try different things, like pickled okra, with lots of paprika! The world is full of good food, and you never know what kind of pickle you’ll get yourself into, Mr Frodo. No matter where you go.

So, here I am sitting in the kitchen, on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, drinking coffee from this morning, just after discovering cabbage loopers in our broccoli. The rain didn’t discourage me from picking them off, but the thunder was enough to send me inside.

Kelly is at the farmers’ market in Blue Earth today selling lettuces, greens and strawberries. I hope she is doing okay with the rain. I was planning on transplanting cucumbers and eggplant today, but that won’t happen, it’s too wet. It is a very busy time of the season, with still a lot of planting, transplanting, and at the same time picking the first fruits of the garden, watching for bugs, weeding and irrigating.

I am becoming very fond of drip irrigation, first it looked too complicated to me, to design it for the whole garden, but with a consistent bed system it is very easy and rewarding. All I needed was some piping for main water lines, a huge roll of drip tape, connectors, a pressure reduction and filtering device, and a back without pain to connect it all on the ground.

There are a lot of pros of drip irrigation: time saving, water saving, plant health, but one con is no place to recycle plastic drip  tapes, to my knowledge. I am hoping it will change, as more people use it, along with a hoop house plastic too. There is a demand already to recycle this stuff. What we are doing is asking manufacturers if they recycle it. The answer is “no,” but the more people will ask, a change might come.

It stopped raining, so there won’t be time to make a strawberry pie. I am not a pro in that field (there is no such thing as a pie crust in Poland, we eat cakes plus yeast based pies, and babka’s, but we don’t know classic American pies), but I was hoping to make one anyways, since Kelly’s Grandma is on vacation. Maybe next rainfall.

For now, watch out cabbage loopers, I’m coming back!

Our farm is becoming more and more green. Especially now, after a few days of rain, it is more visible, when the soil is moist and black. I’ve heard that it is good for the eyes to see a lot of green—so we are in luck! We’ve got trees, cover crops (like hairy vetch and oats), emerging crops like radishes, lettuce, spinach and more plus an expanse of green grass.

We got to experience some cold weather during these wet days, and one time we had to cover our strawberries to keep them safe from the last – hopefully – spring frost. After May 15 it should be safe to plant most vegetables, but you never know, the ancient rule is to wait till Labor Day with some warm loving crops like tomatoes or peppers.

Last weekend there was the annual Pick Up Sticks family event on the farm. Like every year, Kelly’s uncles and aunts and their families come to help with spring cleaning and repairs on their family farm. This year among other things a big machine shed a.k.a. „The Blue Tin House” got some new staples for a better protection against winds. Also, the idea of an improved washing station was transferred from the rough draft form to the final planning stage and hopefully by the end of May we will have a brand new place to handle our harvest efficiently.

Soon we are going to plant prairie grass and some plants beneficial for good insects in the borders of our fields. I am really interested in this project and its outcome as for pest suppression on our field. Good night, don’t let the bad bugs bite (your crops)!

It was a good month, April. As I have learned, usually the windiest month in Minnesota. I don’t know if I will ever get used to that wind, it is not easy to move around in the field the hole day with a constant blower set straight at your head on maximum speed. Particulary when planting fine lettuce seed, or kale, not mentioning ultra light parsnip seeds.

But it was a good month, with some good rain, and the lettuce, radishes and spinach have started to grow. Even the peppers and tomatoes are out, out in the hoop house. It is a real hands-on experiment for us, using high tunnels for the first year. So far everything is growing fine, but we’ve learned that we were extending the season not only for the vegetables, when we discovered something biting our tomato, lettuce and pepper leaves. According to our research it was a flea beetle. An organic method to repell these little creatures is to pour hot water over some garlic and cayenne pepper and let it sit for a day or two, and then spray that on the plants. It has helped so far.

In the end of April we recieved a lot of deliveries of fruits, like rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, but also onions and asparagus. I am hoping that pruning and trellising berries will become my hobby. Kelly says that everybody loves berries. Somehow I like taking care of them than eating them. That’s a good match!

It was a very sunny day. I think the hottest day this year. I could walk outside in my t-shirt; I caught myself covering my head from the sun’s heat and thinking that it is actually a summer day. But we still have some snow in our field. It should melt and in a few days it will all be muddy dirt.

It was good to be outside again. I am doing two things outside right now, pruning and building a hoop house. There is a few apple trees at our yard, old, big trees like Prairie Spy, but also some young ones. It is the second year I have been pruning. I read about it, went to a lecture, I even took a lesson from my friend Kevin Cane from Cane’s Orchard in Hixton, WI. I worked for him one summer when I was a student and came for the first time to America for a while. It was a good way to learn about America, nice employers, decent pay, normal hours, fresh air, exchanging cultural tidbits in conversations and free apples. I loved that job. Maybe I started thinking about farming then, hard to say.

Pruning is a ‘hard to start’ type of work. When you walk to the tree and see so many branches, look for sick ones, or those which grow in the wrong direction – straight up or down, or crisscross. But it sucks you in after a few cuts and then you just want this tree to be see-through, with some air and sun, and you can even imagine it a few months later, with leaves, apples and some noisy bugs in them.

My second project, hoop house construction, is very time consuming. I studied this topic for almost the whole winter, but in theory it is always easier to study something than actually do it. That’s why I admire all play and screen play writers, it has to be very hard to switch from the written text to real action–from thinking of what one actor could do–to– to having him do it. But so far one hoop house is getting ready, and it isn’t a one actor play thankfully, so with a little help from my friends and family, it will be covered with plastic and have – very important – sidewall vents in a few days.

All this daily work outside has a soundtrack which is wild geese flying over and honking. Every day there are dozens of them going north west (I feel sorry for North West Airlines, because it might be a pretty busy route now), once in a while there is a couple or just one flying back, south east, which is a big mystery for me, just a single goose flying back and honking, why? Where?

After a night and day of constant heavy snow and strong wind we got a winter landscape. It is time to stop field labours. Daily routine changes, outside activities are being suspended, days are shorter, allowing the farmer to spend more time with his or her family, make quilts, bake holiday favourites, smoke a pipe while sitting at the fireplace, drink hot ale, write a journal and enjoy playing monopoly with neighbours.

There is no power on this earth that could disturb a farmers peaceful, solemn and deep winter sleep. It isn’t budget planning, seed choosing and calculating, or looking for a seasonal job, not even winter conference prices, shoveling snow, season extension, jump starting plants, nothing.

Thanks for reading, have fun this winter! See you next season, except for occasional entries.