The Weekend

It's been a nice weekend, weather-wise and that means things have been progressing smoothly here. Eugene, after what seems like years (but has really just been 4 or 5 weeks) has finished painting the upper roof. It is now a brilliant red and looks quite fetching. As I write, he is finishing the lower roof (see picture).

Eugene also got 5 of the garden beds tilled for (hopefully) a final time before we plant the garlic which needs to go in in the next 2 weeks or so-at least before the ground freezes for the winter. I started cleaning the grass out of the beds. Rake an area than squat down and start fishing for grass roots and shoots and toss them out of the bed and rake another area. At this point this work seems meaningless but if we keep on doing this over the next few years we will have beautiful weed free beds for the long term. this is something no herbicide in a bottle will ever do, get a garden free of weeds for the long term. the best a chemical herbicide can do is get rid of the weeds short term (and do some good damage to the flora and fauna in the soil to boot).

I got a bunch of bare wood on the porch primed and ready for painting and if the wood does not get painted this fall it will be covered for winter weather. A lot of the porch still needs scraping and a good cleaning-it is dirty up in those rafters.

Today we did education. A small group of Earlham students came out to interview us and see the new farm and ask us questions about what we do and why. They had all come out to the old farm last year on a field trip to learn about sustainable agriculture.

They asked us questions like why do you farm (and other small topics) and we answered their questions and took them on a short walk around the place and told them a bit about what we wanted to do with the place.

Hopefully this will be the first in a long line of such tours. We here at Boulder Belt feel education is key to getting this idea of sustainable and local agriculture off of the ground.