The calendar may say it is still spring, but it sure feels like summer at Tubby Creek Farm. Summer crops are replacing spring ones, with summer squash starting this week and cucumbers likely next week. The lettuce is done until fall, as are the snow and snap peas, broccoli, and other spring crops. The farm looks more like summer, too. The bright greens of spring are gone and the fields are golden with mature grasses.
With summer weather comes a shifting of our daily schedule towards mornings and evening. We are out in the garden between 5:30 and 6:00 am and working until the sun gets high, breaking at 12 or 1pm for lunch. Then it’s official siesta time where we hide indoors and do office work, rest, or take care of non-farm life stuff. We head back out around 5pm for two or three more hours of work. As soon as the chickens go to bed at sundown we try and do the same.
I am excited for summer because it will be full of a new batch of firsts for us. We just harvested our first summer squash. Wednesday saw three ripe cherry tomatoes. Thursday we crunched into our first cucumber.
There were a few notable events on the farm this week. One was the creation of the Tubby Creek Farm Killdeer Sanctuary. Killdeer are a type of Piping Plover (bird) found throughout North America. We’ve seen them in the field for some weeks now. Thursday, I was hustling to disk the spot for our pumpkin patch ahead of the rain when a saw a Killdeer. “Get out of the way you dumb bird” I thought to myself as it dillydallied right in front of the tractor. Then, awareness hit me. I looked down and saw four speckled eggs on the ground less than ten feet ahead and right in the path of my front tires. I stopped abruptly and, apologizing profusely, negotiated the tractor and disk harrow backwards until I could turn clear of the Killdeer and her eggs. I killed the engine and radioed Randy. “I guess you’ll just have to disk around them,” he said. So I did, affording the birds a few hundred square feet of prime planting real estate. I guess we are going to have to find some other place for the rest of those pumpkins.
Rosie (our Farmall Cub Tractor) has been plagued by constant malaise all spring long. The latest bought took her out of commission last week and left her barely limping along in first gear. Through a friend, we heard about a guy who is a genius when it comes to old tractors. Last week, our friend Bill picked up Rosie and took her to the magic man. On Tuesday, she returned. All fixed. 100% better. No more coughing and skipping. I know I have claimed the tractor to be fixed before, but this time I am pretty confident the problem has been solved. Her last owner converted her from 6 volts to 12 volts, and apparently messed it up a bit.
The tractor is chugging away, the Killdeer are nesting, and the tomatoes are slowly ripening. Summer is here at Tubby Creek Farm.
