You Win Some, You Lose Some

It will get up to 140 degrees.

Now that we have a had a few nice days in a row, the compost pile is starting to heat up again.  A healthy compost pile will never fully stop but in the winter it will slow down, especially in northern Minnesota, and then it takes a while in the spring for it to get started again.  The pile on this farm is huge so it takes a lot longer than a small household compost pile.  John and Lissa collect food scrapes from some local restaurants and the farm supplies weeds, grass, and plant stalks; friends and neighbors bring over leaves that are slowly integrated into the pile.  The microbes in the compost pile are no different than any other living creature...they need water. They will function best when the compost material is about as moist as a wrung out sponge and are provided with many air passages for aerobic breakdown; which is why adding water and turning the pile maintains efficient decomposition. Knowing that, John drenched the pile today and will turn it in a few weeks. 

 I learned an important lesson in farming today...you win some and you lose some.  I had to pick and compost an entire row of radishes.  We planted a row of icicle radishes which are a tasty white radish that apparently don't grow very well here.  This is the second year they have tried to grow this particular variety of radish and this is the second year they have done badly.  It was a bummer to pull them all out but it does allow more air, sun and space to the crops around it, plus we will be able to plant something else there. 

These are the only white icicles that grew

These are all the radishes that failed to grow

We planted 35 herb baskets, some will go to our CSA members, some will be sold on our vegetable stand, and some will be sold to the Green Scene in Walker, MN.  They have two kinds of basil, rosemary, thyme, parsley, chives, cilantro, and dill.  The dill and cilantro were planted as seed in these baskets and will take about a week to germinate, which is why you cannot see them in the picture.

Lissa found part of a Robins egg, they are such a beautiful blue color.and it is always nice to that the
With no more threat of overnight frost it is time to start planting outside, which we will start doing tomorrow.