With Sunday being Cinco de Mayo I want to make sure everyone is still aware we are having the Fiesta de Siembra de Patatas starting at 1:00 until we are done. For those not fluent in Spanish, we are still planning to have the Potato Planting Party on Sunday from 1:00 until done. The forecast for Sunday looks quite nice but at the time of this writing we are experiencing a substantial rainfall. So even if the weather looks good on Sunday the soil may be too wet to plant; please check the web site before coming out.
We are still taking orders for 2024. Wish it weren’t so but here we are. Spread the word!
We are still taking orders for ‘Shrooms, Coffee, and WinterShare. We also have an EggShare waiting list. If we get a few more EggShare orders we will get another case of eggs.
Herb/Veggie six packs should be ready the week of May 13th or 20th. Stay tuned.
Farm News
It was Holey Week this week on the farm. What is Holey Week you ask? It is the annual event where we acknowledge the tremendous contribution the gophers make to our farm. It other words, it is the annual fixing of the holes the gophers put in the underground irrigation lines over the winter. It is an event with all the usual ceremonial incantations and recitations found in the many other Holey Weeks of other cultures except our incantations are typically four letter words.
I’m not sure what gophers find so appealing about chewing holes in the pipe. We drain the lines in the fall so there wouldn’t be any substantial moisture in there. I can’t believe high density polyethylene is very tasty, though to be fair I never tried it. Yet every year we spend hours and hours of time locating and fixing the holes. And these aren’t insubstantial holes either. We’ve found some that are eight inches in length and half a pipe in width! I can only surmise that as the gopher is digging a hole from one place to the next he is determined to follow a specific path and anything in his way will have to removed. If only the University of Minnesota football team could follow their mascot’s lead!
This week’s search was especially frustrating. It seemed every time we found a large hole, fixed it and then retested the water pressure there was still no pressure. While investigating we’d dig up another hole two or three feet down stream from the last hole. This went on for probably thirty plus feet of what was formerly a solid poly pipe. There was much incantation during this process. If we knew ahead of time that there were this many hole in proximity to each other we would have just replaced the whole thirty feet. But we haven’t figured out how to determine where all the holes are first before digging and fixing them. As we fix the holes the water continues down the pipe and reveals more holes. And digging up the whole pipe would be time prohibitive, and exhausting as well.
In the end we replaced most of the thirty feet with a few splices along the pipe. It was a project that took us all day with three people searching, digging, and repairing. All because gophers are so inconsiderate. On the bright side — there is always a bright side, you just have to figure out what it is — the other two legs did not have any holes as far as we could tell.
Other than fixing irrigation lines, we did get around to putting some plants in the ground last week. So far we have peas, beets, Brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli, onions, green onions, shallots and of course the garlic from last fall. We also put lettuce in the hoop house. If we can get some dry weather (looks unlikely for a while) we’ll put in other cool season crops like cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, Swiss chard, leeks, more hoop house lettuce, and I’m sure some other things. Though we love the rain, we do need some extended periods of dryness to plant the crops.
That is all for now. As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, jokes, brain teasers, and anything else you find interesting.
Joke of the Week
How do you keep Gophers out of your backyard?
Put up a goal post!