Compost Happens

It was a busy and productive day today. I spent the morning starting more seedlings: broccoli, brussels sprouts, thai basil, and chile peppers, bringing the total to 260 seedlings now. With the warm weather, the greenhouse has been heating up nicely. Yesterday, I opened the roof vents for the first time this season and resigned myself to losing all the ladybugs I'd released in there to take care of our aphid population (which they did quite handily). Today, as I opened the vents, I spotted a good thirty ladybugs happily pairing up at the peak of the roof right above the greenhouse door. Hurray! More ladybugs on the way.

By lunchtime, even with the vents open, it was 90degF in the greenhouse, so I went inside to consult with my husband about tilling. I checked the soil, and it is frost-free and ready for tilling down to 18 inches. This prompted us to take an excursion out to Clark Farm in nearby Danvers to check out their organic compost. We met and immediately hit it off with Bill Clark, who has lived his whole life on that farm and started selling his own strawberries at a roadside stand there when he was five. We bought eight cubic yards of compost on the spot, and he delivered it to our microfarm about an hour later.

Queen of the Compost

Alex puts his back into it. The shadow is of the photographer, our eight-year-old daughter Annelise.

Loving the Farm Life.

Next week, we'll work on getting a tractor in to till the soil, and then we get to work on building raised beds. We have a secret weapon lined up to help us: middle schoolers. More on that when it happens.