TORNADO!

A tornado crashed through the Prairie Farm area on Sunday, May 25, my birthday in fact. Good reason not to take things personally. The storm broke trees and at the farm, twisted and ruined one of the hoop houses. The hoop house had just been moved to the new location. Members had just planted the new tomatoes in the ground. In no time flat, the hoop house was destroyed. Neighboring farms lost sheds and barns. No one is hurt, the rest is just stuff.
On Tuesday morning 10 neighboring farmers showed up and in only 2 hours the damaged hoop house was removed from the other hoop house and disassembled. A new hoop house has been ordered and order will be restored to the farm. The tomatoes that had been planted have been moved back to the green house and will have to wait about 10 days to get back into their new home.

Cold Potatoes and Oobleck

Surely Dr. Suess was a farmer. How else would he have invented the book, "Bartholomew and the Oobleck." The weather has been cold and wet for a while now and the delay is showing up both in the field and the greenhouse. It seems as if this climate was conjured up by wizards from the dungeon. Warmth is not enough for plants to grow, they must have adequate light as well. A cooler, clammy greenhouse is also a good place for disease and other problems. A few days ago, a mouse ate all the summer squash seeds out of the soil blocks. There they were, all piled on the corner of the tray. I set a trap and the next morning, some more seeds were missing right next to the trap. Hmmm. Dashing out between rain storms, I managed to get some peas, spinach and beets planted. Sometimes getting them into wet, cold soil doesn't really get you actually ahead but it works wonders for the farmer's worry level. We even got in about 4 rows of potatoes. When planting potatoes, I try and warm them up for a while ahead of time to break the dormancy of the potato. This way, once it is in the cold ground, it has a better chance of starting to grow. The colder, wet weather has set the garden back about 10 days. The weather in the next 2 weeks will determine if we can catch up.