Tumultuous weather continues here in Brush Prairie.  So what's a farmer to do?  When we're not climbing back into bed with the rainy day blues, gray weather is for doing the things that don't get done when we're busy planting in the sun.

One of the projects that's been creeping up the to do list for the last few years is to expand our green house space.  Even before Clark County Farmerette Brenda Millar of Rosemattel's CSA arrived on the scene, we were feeling pinched for seedling space in our eight by twelve fibreglass quonset hut, but now divide that by two.  So it was time.

Jim was not born a carpenter.  Unlike his brother Mike and sister Meg who can both create clothing patterns in their mind, Jim cannot visualize how to construct a finished product, so building becomes an arduous process of trial and error.  For the first two weeks Diane complained of seeing no progress.  What she didn't see is that Jim had begun and tore apart several versions of a rough foundation.  In the process of laying them out, their fatal errors became apparent, sending Jim back to the drawing board.

Adding to the complexity of such projects, everything at Hunters' Greens is cobbled from re-claimed materials.  Each window or glass door for the greenhouse walls is a unique dimension.  Every two by four is a different length and has it's own notches, cracks or rotten patches.  Putting all this together takes time, but when it's too wet to plant, cash for new materials is much dearer than are the endless hours of waiting.

Jim was just getting to the rafters when the sun broke.  The thought process went something like this:  "So, Jim you think you can just lay a two by four on top of the top plates for a rafter, think again.  Remember how you struggled just to copy the notches and angles on the Kapus Granary."

"How much pitch do you need?"  "

"You know your roof panels are eight feet long, and you've made the building seven feet wide, anticipating pitching the roof."

"It's simple geometry, why didn't you learn those formulas?"

"The sum of the square of the legs equals the square of the hypotenus.  That's all I can remember. "

"That helps a little, but what about angles.  You need angles."

"Isn't a carpenter's square supposed to give me the answer?"

"Remember when Mike came and helped you with the Kapus rafters.  He looked at your pattern, asked for a calculator, determined that the length was three eighths of an inch off, and took an afternoon to mass produce all the replacement rafters for the whole building.  This should be way easier."

"Well, it's time to consult Time-Life and Reader's Digest.  Off to the basement "how to" library."

"Aw, they just have you scribe the angle on the wood."  "

Well let's try that."

Jim had just ruined his first rafter on the final cut when the soil dried out enough to plant.  The value of time just shot up several fold.  The greenhouse rafters go to the back burner.

"Hmmm..., maybe I should just call Mike."

This season feels like we're getting off to a solid early start.  The garlic crop looks great, more than a foot tall and virtually weed free since we weeded in January.  The dry weather has allowed us to work up the fields for the spring vegetables, while we leave cover crops to continue growing on the summer vegetable ground.  The first planting of peas is about an inch high, while the second planting is just poking shoots through the surface.  We've planted some short rows of Walla Walla onions, and seeded two long rows of the sweet Mokum carrots.  We've never got carrots in this early before.  Carrots need well worked soil, and it is usually too wet to do that this early.  The catalog suggests around April 1, so we fudged it a little.

Another reason for the early start is the inspiration that having another farmer on the property has provided.  Jim has always envied how early Brenda Millar of Rosemattel CSA gets crops harvested, and this year we get to watch it happen.  Brenda's passion seems to really be for growing things, so she is chomping at the bit the minute the sun peeks out.  She already has all the ground we've allotted her tilled up with her little "pony" tiller, and is looking for spaces to interplant between the rows of existing crops.  Brenda is a much more savvy composter than we are, and uses the compost as a mulch to retain water, reduce compaction and feed her plants (which explains the lovely tilth in her garden beds).  Jim has never been much of a mulcher and tills organic matter into the soil, prior to planting.  It will be interesting to watch our two systems side by side.

It is of course the time of anxiously waiting for new members to sign up.  We're approaching half full with two months to go.

So that's the news from the farm.  We'll keep you posted.