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Looks like the high tunnel will stand up to a fair amount of heavy snow, slides right off.  

Here she is, no name yet.  Maybe Echo, or Asia, or Joey?

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The soil temperature in the high tunnel seems warm enough to germinate spinach seed, so I sowed a short row last Thursday; lets hope I'm getting better with the six-row seeder.  My plan is to get the spinach picked before its time to transplant peppers or eggplant in June.  I'll do another half row of spinach in a week or so, and then it will be time to get the early potatoes planted around the first of March.

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At this point in the season I think we’ve learned what is a good cold weather, low light crop for our location, and what is not.  Despite a slow start last Fall, our high tunnel and winter harvest (yes, very Eliot Coleman) has been a huge success. We're in USDA zone 7, I suppose, with an average winter low of 0 to 10F. We’ve had nights below 10 this winter, but not many, and under the row covers inside the high tunnel it’s stayed considerably warmer. Still, even under the row covers the plants freeze, but without the wind and snow to damage them they’ve done well, thawing each morning as the tunnel warms. Some varieties have fared better than others. I was going to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, but I’m not sure that really tells the whole story, so I’ll put them into three categories: great, good, and not worth the trouble.

Great (no freeze damage)

Spinach, Arugula, Chard/Beets, Mizuna, Cilantro, puts on new growth even in the lowest light. Kale – Toscano and Winterbor, great for harvest, but little new growth. Carrots – Napoli, great for harvest, and a fair amount of root growth. Mache – A very slow grower, and it may not be worth the trouble.

Good (very minor freeze damage)

Salad Turnips – Tokyo Market, Hakurei, Radish – Shunkyo, Crunchy Royale, Daikon – Oharu, Miyashigie, Rouge d’Hiver – Romaine Lettuce, Tokyo Bekana, Curly Endive, Komatsuna, Pak Choi

Not worth the trouble (significant freeze damage or too little growth)

Sylvesta - Green Butterhead Lettuce, Flashy Trout Back – Romaine Lettuce, Radicchio

Rouge d'Hiver

Purple Mizuna, Daikon, Turnip, Cilantro, Tokyo Bekana

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It's January, and there is still a lot happening in the high tunnel.

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I’m new to vermiculture, raising worms that is.   I got started last March, thanks to a friend willing to part with some of her worms, thanks Lib.  At this point my bin has too many worms, so I hope to gift some soon.

This is how the bins normally look, stacked one inside the other.  The top bin is for worms and fresh food, always covered, worms are shy and don't care for light. 

Most of the time the middle bin is empty, but now I'm moving the top bin to the middle, worms and all.  The old middle bin, now empty, moves to the top position, and gets fresh food.  The top and middle bins have holes in the bottom to let the worms climb up to get the fresh food, and the holes let the worm juice flow through to the bottom bin. In a few months most of the worms will have migrated to the top bin, I'll harvest the worm castings, and the middle bin will be empty again.

The bottom bin is the sump for the worm juice.

More than five gallons of undiluted worm juice.  Good job worms!

Fresh eats for the red wigglers.

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Buttonhooks are handy tools.  Yesterday, my old cow Gert (Gert is the brown cow in the photo below) got a piece of wire wrapped around her hoof.  I’m not sure when or how this wire ended up in the pasture, but it must have been some time ago.  The wire ran around her ankle twice, went under the wraps and down between her toes, under the hoof and up the back of the hoof, looping again through the wire around the ankle.  I was amazed it could get that way on its own, and it was not going to come off easily.  My squeeze chute is currently at its other home, so I had to crowd the cows into a pen, and get Gert locked in an alley.  Of course the leg with the wire was on the inside of the alley, and I had to get down on the ground and work from under the fence boards.  After she got tired of kicking each time I touched her hoof, I was able to work the wire loose, and unwrap it with the buttonhook.

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I'm looking forward to longer, and warmer days.  We had a low of 16 degrees inside the high tunnel this morning, but the vegetables stayed warm enough under their row covers.

Here's a warmer shot taken late last summer.  Our bull Nabisco is spending some quality time with the Longhorn cows next door.  I think there may be some belted Longhorns running around the pasture next spring.

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Carrots were my first attempt with the six-row seeder, and I think it worked out okay, but just okay.  I need to do better with the starts and stops.

Spinach was my second use of the seeder, and I still had problems at the end of the row.  I'm still getting growth in the high tunnel, despite the short days and cold nights.  These pictures were taken a little over a week ago.

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Today was another snow day, but the snow is not sticking around long.  Cows and sheep are extra hungry in the cold weather, and they’re greedily tearing into their evening meal of green, leafy alfalfa.  Earlier this afternoon Susan and I picked the last of the outside romaine, and the first of the collards and Brussels sprouts; those sprouts have been in the garden for seven months, and the greenhouse before that, that’s an awfully long garden space commitment.  The greenhouse had tomatoes and basil, and in the high tunnel we picked a variety of greens.  Looks like another nice dinner that could not be more locally produced.

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We butchered lambs a couple days ago, always a sad day so enough said about that.  I think I'll put up some old lambing posts; they're more interesting anyway.

Today I'm spending 10 hours cooking a lamb's neck, and, so far, things are looking and smelling great.  

Here it is after 4 hours on the grill at 260 degrees.  I intended to cook it at 250, but the old Kamado wanted to sit at 260, and there was no point in fighting about 10 degrees.  I rubbed the lamb's neck with avocado oil, and a little salt and pepper.

Now we're ready to put it in the oven for another 5 or 6 hours at 250 with some herbs, fingerling potatoes, carrots, beets and onion.  And, Susan's homemade lamb stock, of course.

Four or five more hours to cook, hope it's good.

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Yesterday was not a particularly productive day on the farm, but it was a fun day.

We took a short drive to the Shasta Big Springs Ranch, and walked for a couple hours around the Shasta River, above Big Springs Creek, checking out the Chinook and enjoying the warm day.  Later in the afternoon it was back to the ranch for a wine and Asian greens tasting in the high tunnel.  Who wounldn’t enjoy that!  We sampled Mizuna, Japanese Turnip, Torasan Komatsuna, Shunkyo, and that sort of thing. While Mizuna goes well with a light Pinot Noir, I think the Komatsuna needs something with a bit more body. 

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I don’t know why I am compelled to pull the seed shells off the beet and chard cotyledons.  It’s unnecessary, and can do more harm than good. I’m better about this than I used to be; I guess I learned something from the damaged seed leaves.

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While digging the last of the Russet potatoes, I found an overlooked Yukon Gold plant that had quite a few nice spuds, including this one and a half pounder.

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Another high tunnel bed is prepped, and is waiting to be planted; I hope to get some seedlings transplanted today.  I have kale (dinosaur and curly leaf), various types of lettuce, beets, cilantro, chard, and some other stuff ready to go.  More cilantro should be ready, but I can never remember it needs darkness to germinate.  The other thing I can’t seem to remember is that some lettuce is really fussy about its germination temperature.  I’ve been planting three types of lettuce this year, Green Butterhead (Sylvesta), Flashy Troutback, and Rouge d’Hiver.  I like to germinate lettuce in good light, in ¾” soil blocks, and at soil temp of 70 to 73 degrees.  Unfortunately, Rouge d’Hiver germinates poorly at temperatures above 68.  So, I have about 20 Butterhead, 20 Flashy Troutback, and 8 Rouge d’Hiver.

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It’s warm and cozy in the high tunnel, and my first row of mechanically seeded spinach started sprouting a couple of days ago, planted back on the 5th, and they are looking good.  I planted six rows in the 30” wide bed, and spaced the seeds 4 inches a part; at least that was the plan. I’ve got a bit of a curve in the middle, and I crowded the edges of the bed, but not too bad.  To do as well by hand would have been difficult, and would have taken a very long time, at least for me.  I’ve also got a row of carrots seeded, and I’m looking forward to seeing how I did with the much smaller carrot seed.

The Six-Row Seeder takes some getting used to, and requires a finely prepared bed, but I think in the long run it will be a real back saver. Planting a 32’ row of spinach took just a few minutes, and it looks like I’ll have almost no thinning to do.

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Yesterday, we butchered 22 young roosters.  11 were Amber Links and 11 were Dark Cornish, and, even at 4 months old, I expected them to look like rubber chickens, and they did.  Today, while cutting some up for soup, we were surprised to see they actually have some meat on them, and the largest dressed out to about 5 pounds.  Still, pound for pound, it's a lot of work compared to the Cornish Cross we raise during the summer.  One more rooster to go.

I did not take any photos of the birds, or the butchering, but I did take a couple of pictures of our chicken processing room just after the cleanup.  Prior to this setup, we’d put up a plywood table with a cut out for a sink, and butcher out on the lawn.  That worked great, unless it was cold, or windy, or meat bees found us.  This is better. 

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Last Tuesday, early in the AM, and way out in the big pasture, our old cow Gert delivered her 11th calf.  This one is a very cute bull calf named Cullen; I was thinking Puck or Bean, but I guess its Cullen.  I could have even gone with Balloch, Celtic for “from the pasture”, but I guess its Cullen.  I’m sensing a name change in his future, so, for now at least, lets just call him Puck.

Puck is our final 2011 calf.  All his young herd mates were born in the spring, not sure why Gert’s out of synch.

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