Hello, all.
Welcome to Scrap Kitchen, where I start a farm from scratch and tell you about it.
This episode is called Snowmelt.
It was a name I came up with when I was planning this out, and that was before the snow all melted. I’m keeping the name because it fits in with what I want to talk about. But know that the snow has melted. It’s gone, it’s been gone for a while. Technically, the name is very accurate.
Right now, I'm drinking Dandelion tea, which has a very similar bitterness to coffee. It's made from the roots. I think that's kind of funny because I'm reading a book that is the first in the Dandelion Dynasty, and my logo has a Dandelion in it. So I'm very much on theme at the moment. I'm sticking to the brand this week.
Farm Updates
This week, what we've been up to on the farm (that my partner and I are managing) is a lot of cleaning and prepping for the early season planting. We have three high tunnels (well, one high tunnel and two caterpillar polytunnels) on the farm. We've just spent the last few days cleaning them all out of the dead plants and the landscape fabric that we didn't get to last year. Along with weeding them and prepping the beds. That is raking them smooth, ready to be seeded into.
In the next couple of weeks, we're probably going to plant spinach in those beds. Maybe some rocket (or arugula, as they call it here) and probably some radishes, turnips, and maybe some green onions (if we get them seeded in time). And beetroot. There’s quite a lot planned for those beds.
We've also been doing some DIY. We bought this big sheet of plywood and several sticks (planks, bits of wood) of 2x4s. The goal is to make a new seeding table. We're somewhat copying (taking inspiration) the seeding table design from Broadfork Farm (where we worked before). This consists of a box but with diagonal sides which you can put another sheet on top of it to balance your seeding trays. So the seeding table is a good height. All this soil (from the box) you put into trays, that you then put seeds into. We want the table to be a good height for the person who will be doing the seeding (to accommodate previous injuries). Ergonomic seeding. Hence redesigning the seeding table.
Aside from that, we've been doing a lot of computer work. Making posters for the CSA and updating various spreadsheets so that we're ready for next year. We're also interviewing people over the next few days for farmhand positions. It’s actually been kind of busy.
Snowmelt (off vibes all round)
I wanted to call this episode snowmelt because the snow is melting. Obviously.
But more because of how unseasonably, unfathomably, awfully, but also wonderfully warm it has been.
Recently. It's been 15 degrees Celsius. I don't know what that is in American numbers, and I don't care to learn. It's been 15 degrees Celsius in February, and that is absolutely awful!
I mean, it's lovely. It's lovely when you feel the sun on your face. It's glorious that I can have my legs out in mid-February. A random woman walking her dog sang a song at me about having my legs out in early spring, which was a lovely community moment and a little jarring, if I'm honest. But, this is our reality.
As the climate continues to change, it makes me think back to last year when we were working in really, really strong smoke. On certain days we didn't go to work because there was so much smoke in the air (395ppm). And then that makes me think about people forced to work while there's still smoke in the air. There are these horrifying pictures of the California wildfires and the migrant workers still in the field, just masked up in dangerous fire conditions. It’s just abhorrent.
I talk a bit more about the inequalities within farming (which I'll probably touch on almost every time I talk) in an interview that I did with my friend
, who writes . It should be coming out pretty soon, so keep an eye out for that.I also, this is a running theme (it's almost as if wildfires are becoming more and more common), wrote about wildfires when I first wrote this newsletter.
We're going to keep working in adverse, worse and worse conditions. Not only are they uncontrollable conditions, it's just going to be more of everything. In Rhode Island, where my dad currently lives, his friend grows a lot of tomatoes. Big up Mark Gravel, who gave me some banging tomato seeds. Mark has had loads of tomatoes just die because of the amount of rain that they had last year, or there's a lack of sun (in the UK), or there's way too much sun, or it's 15 degrees in February. All of this more, this unseasonability, is something that we have to design our farming systems around.
It’s something that we have to breed for when it comes to seeds. So if I haven't said this already, my true love, my passion, my I don't know ( I was going to say Magda-opus, but that's really corny) is seeds. I want to breed climate-resilient plants.
The best way to save a seed is to put it in the ground.
Owen Taylor and Chris Bolden-Newsome at their best on the Seeds and Their People Podcast.
‘Saving’ seeds in a special little seed bank up in fucking Norway (or wherever) is great. But they won't be able to adapt to the climate as well as if you grew them every single year and saved the strongest ones. If you want to do something, anything to make yourself and the plants around you more resilient; save seeds. Save seeds from your strongest, hardiest, toughest, wiliest tomatoes (or whatever else you grow). Future generations will thank you for it because that's what's actually going to survive.
I probably want to talk a lot more about seeds, but I'm conscious of time.
Longer-term Updates
A little update on what we're doing in terms of getting land and everything else. We sent out a couple more of our mini CVs. This is what we want. Here's our vision kind of things.
We've been looking into various funding options and we're still trying to look for land.
There are a lot of very interesting YouTube videos on how to just ‘claim land’ in the UK and I don't think we're going to be doing that. Just like podcasts, literally anyone can make a YouTube video.
We are still putting feeders out for people whose land we can use with permission. So that's the plan for now.
Yeah, that's basically all I wanted to say.
I don't want to ramble on too much on these things, but also we will be going to a conference this week. An organic farming conference in Ohio. And I'm really, really excited to be going. Bringing it back to my Core Tenats I talked about before, this will involve doing some connecting with other farmers and some knowledge sharing. Well, I'm going to absorb all their knowledge and I might occasionally say something kind of possibly helpful, but realistically, I'm going to be the sponge. Then I'll wring out that sponge for everyone else (this metaphor is getting disgusting).
Okay, well, that's all I wanted to say, I hope you all have a lovely week.
And, yeah, stay hopeful.
Enjoy this unseasonable, terrifying weather.
M
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If you missed the last update, read it here.
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