Thistle be fun

Everyone gathered around the Truck, ready to work!

This WILL be fun! Today was our first day back at the orchard after a couple weeks away from campus. The rain was steady, but of course so was our determination to take stock of our situation and get some work done. One of the challenges of managing a piece of land is that there are almost always too many things you would like to have done and seldom enough time or people power to do them all. In times like these (most of the times, that is), a farmer must return to their main objectives and goals and, given the circumstance, deploy their limited resources in order to prioritize their end goals. Luckily for us students, our instructor Mike and farm manager Torin have been doing all the hard thinking about what our best next moves are... all we have to do is show up (Thanks Torin and Mike!). The day involved many odd tasks along with some serious invasive plant control. We started off with a little safety demonstration with the weed whacker and lawn mower, followed by a reminder not to destroy the diesel tractor engine by putting gasoline in it.

Our farm manager Torin, demonstrating the lawnmower

After the demo, we broke into a few groups. Stark and Will went off to fold up the black plastic sheets that had been covering one of our fields. My understanding is that our cover crop didn't seed very well in that field, which left it open for weeds to creep in. Rather than leave our soil bare to be cultivated by wild plants that disrupt our crops, the soil was covered to inhibit weed growth. Judging by the looks of the field, that plastic did a pretty good job. Now we just need the rain to hold off so we can get in there with the tractor!

Stark and Will folding up black plastic

One of the goals that has been predetermined for us this year is to have comfortable lunchtime meals. To that end some of us got busy building our new picnic tables.

The picnic table building team!

Uninvited, yet welcome member of the picnic table building team.
Slugs are not welcome in the strawberry patch.

We have a bit of a blackberry problem in the orchard. This of course is an invasive plant that will completely take over without diligent attention paid to it. We all grabbed a set of pruners and very thick gloves and got down to business cutting them away. If we get to them early enough then the blackberries will not have time to photosynthesize and will continuously spend energy trying to grow shoots. After a little while (I've heard 4 years in one case) the blackberry root nutrient reserves will deplete and die; rendering them defeated. Looks like we have a little ways to go yet before we can celebrate any victories.

Jessica and Lindsay clearing blackberry under the big old pear tree

Will having fun while clipping blackberry

Everyone enjoying lunch at our newly built picnic tables!

Nic tells us all about "Canadian" thistle

After lunch we talked about another invasive plant, Canadian Thistle! Interestingly, Canadian Thistle is not native to Canada, it was brought here from Europe/North Africa. Its a spiky pesky plant that reproduces by seed and through its root system. Once it is established it is very challenging for an organic grower to get rid of, because the roots and seeds can spread far and wide. Since it so happens that we have a few varieties of thistle out in the orchard we went on a hunt to search and destroy their above ground vegetative structures.

Stark celebrates the Thistle funeral.

In case any of the readers are interested, you can see Emmalee using the Wheel Hoe to get at the thistle in the above picture. I put a couple more pictures of it below. Essentially its an extra wide stirrup hoe that you drive with both hands and get more area done faster (in theory). I had a bit of a hard time using it and I'll bet there is a trick to it that I don't know about. We also have some pretty heavy clay soil out at the orchard, which doesn't make it much easier. Ill have to find a pro to teach me the tricks of that trade.

Wheel hoe

Wheel hoe blade close up

To finish off the day we all gathered around Will's experimental mulch plots to do some weeding in preparation for the start of the season. My understanding is that Will is comparing living mulches (such as rye) to wood chip mulch and seeing how they are both suppressing other weeds in the orchard. By the end of the day the rain had let up a little, and I think we all felt fairly accomplished. It will be one week before we get back out to the orchard and we will have a new situation and set of priorities to focus on. Hopefully we all ended this day with a minimum number of soggy feet! Mine were unfortunately not amongst the dry...

Weeding in Will's mulch trial bed