The Riley Factor #62

The Riley Factor May 19, 2010
(All the Rock Creek Farm news that's fit to print, along with unfit to print rumors, prognostications & bloviations.)

FORT PLAIN NY, May 19 -- Life on the farm has been busy of late.  An acre in field no. 3 was planted in organic barley on Tuesday.  Of course, the planting process is multi-stage and generally requires two people and two or three tractors, or switching-around several pieces of equipment.  First comes the plowing (big tractor drags several-hundred-pound blades through planet surface creating rows of 12-to-18-inch-high furroughs), followed by a few days of resting the ground.  Then roto-tilling (or disking) the earth to chop it into fine particles and smooth it out, then large rock removal (with a rock-picking bucket on the large tractor, or alternatively, and evilly, by hand) then planting the seed (via grain drill or large funnel planter/spreader), and finally culti-packing the area a couple of times (rolling the seeded area with thousand-pound ridged rollers to drive the seed underground).  --  This year, all our culti-packing will be done with our 'new' (50+ year old) McCormick-Deering Ground Pulverizer -- what a great name for a farm implement of destruction.  --  Then nature takes its course.  We'll report back and follow this barley crop this year, through harvest and use or sale -- current plan is to use it in combination with wheat and oats for animal feed (cattle, turkeys and chickens all love to eat grains).

Over the next week or two, planting is scheduled for an acre each of oats, buckwheat, alfalfa and corn.  Potatoes and other vegetables are also in the mix.  Four acres of hard red winter wheat was planted last September, planned for harvest this summer.  It is growing well in field no.1, along with a half acre of semolina wheat.

Riley and Gabby continue with their daily runs chasing Nancy-on-the-Quad for a couple of miles once once or twice a day until they drop into one or both ponds for needed breaks and swims.  The ponds have held a pair of geese and a pair of Mallard ducks of late, and the three dozen recently added orange, white and silver pond carp are doing well in the lower pond.

The Keets (French Jumbo Guinea Fowl) have doubled in size since their early May hatchings.  The Jersey Giants (black chickens) also love life in the incubator and have doubled as well.  All the chicks are still cute, according to Susan and Nancy.

And shout-out to Lizzie Miller, who joined the Rock Creek Farm staff on Tuesday.  An Amish teacher during most of the year, running a school house with 27 students in grades one through eight, Lizzie will be spending a day per week this summer working in the fields and gardens with us.