Springness

So its been almost a month since my last post. Its been a busy one, for sure, and I honestly just haven't had the energy to write anything at the end of the day the way I did during winter. But some good things are shaking down home and I want to spread the love!

Probably the most awesome thing that has happened in the past month is spring. Yes, I'm pretty sure we're not getting any more snow (although I've wishfully been saying that for two months now), and we've had some days in the 60s. The spring rains are in full force, and there are FLOWERS coming up. Yeah, remember flowers? This winter felt so long I almost forgot they existed. Things are waking up out there, can you feel it? Every morning it seems that I hear a different bird returning, and the past few nights I have actually heard some peepers partying on the back 40. Before you know it, we'll be running around barefoot catching fireflies!

But I shouldn't get ahead of myself. It is still below freezing at night after all, and what that has meant is a ton of seeds hanging out in random spots inside my house on those days and nights when it feels more like February. So far I've started kale, lettuce, stevia, cabbage, rosemary, thyme, parsley, chives, broccoli, brussels sprouts, artichokes, hot peppers, sweet peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, and tatsoi. Whew! Here's a pic I took the first day I did any seed starting. Man, it felt good to put those seeds in the dirt -- it felt like the first tangible commitment I made to working this land.

So that big bag you see in the background is something called ProMix. I bought this strange substance in a moment of weakness at my local garden supply, in which I somehow forgot that all the seeds I started in California were in a mix of compost and garden soil. The folks are the garden store told me that I could not start seeds in a mix like that -- that I need a sterile soilless growing medium in which to do it. They recommended this one, which contains a blend of perlite and vermiculite (both volcanic rocks), peat moss from Canada, and something called a "wetting agent" that remained nameless. Sketchy.

I felt terrible about this purchase -- I don't live anywhere's near a volcano, peat moss takes hundreds of years to grow and is harvested unsustainably from fragile wetlands, and there was some sort of shady secret agent involved in the whole scene. But, because I second guessed my firsthand experience of just using plain 'ol dirt I was duped into buying something I didn't actually need. Maybe it would give those seeds a better chance at germination, but to me thats not worth it. I started the rest of my seeds in a mix of clay soil from the backyard, sand from the driveway, and compost made right across the Little River in Lisbon Falls, all from Maine-grown organic matter. They did just as well. And of course they did. After all, people living in Maine 100 years ago didn't have access to ProMix, but they somehow managed to grow food for themselves.

I'm now in the process of moving my babies out of these flats and into larger containers, since they were starting to get a little big and spindly. Today was the first of such transplants, starting with the artichokes and the kale! The 'chokes are in the background and the kale are in the front. Also, the new background is a whole tray of kale transplants. Nice rainy day job.

The plastic cup that baby kale is living in right now was free, incidentally -- I found a whole stack of them in a cupboard of my new little camper. Which is probably the second most exciting development after the coming of spring. Thats right folks, I am now the proud owner of a 1970 Commanche camper that has become my new home. Currently it lives in the driveway, but as soon as mud season lets up a little I'll be towing my house out back and living a little closer to the sound of peepers than the sound of traffic. Here's some pics of the new digs.

So life is good. Got me a home and some soon-to-be homegrown food to go with it. There's lots more going on down homestead these days -- last-ditch pruning efforts, more planting/transplanting, and pretty soon tree grafting and bed prep for the veggies. Come May things are gonna be kicked into high gear, so I'll try to enjoy the relative calm before the storm. In the meantime I'll leave you with one more picture makes me really happy -- my mother informed me yesterday that something of mine was exploding in the basement (not the first time I've heard that, honestly). I went down there to discover my oyster mushrooms bursting from the seams of the milk jug of straw that I had innoculated with some spore about a month ago. Check out the first crop of the season!