November Hill farm journal, 156, a chronicle of the potager

 I realized today while in the potager that it has almost reached the initial vision I had of it way back when it was still just the far end of the “dirt paddock” with gates leading to front and back pastures. The gates were attached to the perimeter horse fencing, and in order to go from the barn to either pasture out of the main paddock, the herd had to go through the gates at that very edge of our property. 

I wanted a buffer zone between horses and neighbors, and I wanted some screening as well. I don’t know when the idea popped into my head that we could move the gates up closer to the barn, and to get that end zone buffer, I could fence off a section of the paddock and use it for my own purposes. The dogs were tearing up our seasonal vegetable garden in the back yard, and the notion of an outlying potager was born.

This is how it looked the day we had the fencing off of the space done:

It was fairly barren most of the year because of the hoof traffic going through on a daily basis. Once we fenced it off, it began to fill in with various pasture grasses and other volunteers. My goal initially was to let the ground heal from the traffic, and use some cedar pieces we had from a dead tree to create vegetable beds. I also tried to use things we had on hand - old tomato stakes, hay bale twine, etc. I prepared these beds by putting down cardboard, compost, a layer of fallen branches picked up from the pastures, and then more compost. All our compost comes from our “grandfather” manure pile, so we have access to very mature compost almost all the time. 

The first year was a simple vegetable garden but we got a huge amount of produce. And when working in the potager, right from the beginning, I often had company.

Redford is shyer than Rafer Johnson, but he has attached himself to me since Salina died and he almost always leaves the herd to come to wherever I may be working when I’m outside. He’s not one for being “snuggled” but his company is very sweet and I get the sense that he would help me if I needed it. 

That first year and on to the next, I added things to the potager as I had time. More vegetables, and a few natives. The first two natives I put in were American hazelnuts, one on each of the back corners of the space. My hope is they’ll grow large enough to act as screening and as they mature, will provide some nuts for us. One of my most memorable dinner party desserts one year was raspberries from our garden on top of homemade roasted hazelnut ice cream. I’d love to recreate that with our own hazelnuts one day. One hazelnut thrived the first year and the other seemed to die, but I kept it in the ground through that winter, watered it as if it were alive, and in fact, it was. They are both much larger and doing well. Almost as tall as I am now. 

The second year I considered putting one of our bee hives in the potager and placed the empty hive there for a month. I know people keep horses and bees in much closer proximity than we do without any issues, but I kept wondering what would happen if the bees became territorial in the potager. I eventually moved the hive boxes down to our main apiary and as of today, we have 5 thriving colonies, which is another update I will do in the next few weeks.

Next I put in a small native pollinator bed, an area of coneflowers, and a trellis for climbing aster. You can see that even a small blooming native flowering plant will immediately attract pollinators! We had some visitations by our resident brown bunnies, who mostly went for the lettuces. For some reason they began to obsess over the young climbing aster so we wrapped the trellis with chicken wire to protect it. You’ll see just how successful that climbing aster is these days. 

All the native flowering pollinator plants have done quite well in the potager. I put some African basil and bronze fennel (not natives!) in one of the veggie beds and we had quite a showing of swallowtail caterpillars and chrysalis. They devoured the fennel and the bees love the African basil. Since many of the vegetables we plant for produce are not native, I opted to only plant native flowering plants in the potager instead of using non-native cutting flowers as is commonly done. We enjoy our seasonal vegetable garden and many of our favorite summer meals depend on the fresh from the potager produce we grow. We also belong to a local CSA for a larger variety of vegetables that I don’t make the effort to cultivate. 

The third year I added in a few elements that are not living but made the space more appealing and offered a place to sit. I enjoy the space quite a lot. It’s peaceful, so full of growing things, and I enjoy being right in the middle of the horse pastures where the equines are often close by grazing and sometimes lining up hoping I’ll let them in with me. 

This year and this week I’m seeing the realization of the potager project. Everything perennial that I’ve planted previously is thriving. We haven’t planted as many vegetables this year, but that will change from year to year depending on our food needs and wants. I have a multi-season variety of native pollinators that bloom in all but the deepest winter months. The potager has become a home to many insects, bunnies, squirrels, black snakes, and birds who seem to enjoy it along with me. It’s a small haven on our little farm.

This year we added a third trellis and have planted blackberries there, and as you see in the photos I allow the grasses and white clover to grow on the parts I’m not yet using. I use a small electric weed-eater to keep them from taking over, but I usually leave a large area undisturbed to provide some cover for any wildlife that needs it. I’ve started a small compost pile inside the potager, incorporating any brush, fallen branches, and the occasional wheelbarrow of manure from the herd. I generally don’t turn the compost piles, as we have so much compost I don’t really need the quicker turnaround that turning offers, but it would be easy enough to do if I wanted to generate compost inside the potager for use there each season.

I’ve included a photo of the one morning this month when the potager was invaded by bandits. In the end, they did no damage, and I feel like they made their own potager dream come true that morning, aided by my forgetting to latch the gate the day before. 

There are more things to plant here, of course. I’d love to add an asparagus bed at some point, and I’ll add more native flowering plants, including milkweed to support the monarchs. I have a mason bee house that I need to install, and I have an idea to use some wire panels we have to create a sort of arbor over the bench. A couple of native blueberry bushes might be nice too. As the perennial natives grow, the screening will increase, and eventually it will be even more protected, even more the little buffer haven space I saw in my mind’s eye. 

I tend to focus on the things I want to do on the farm, and decided this week to focus at least some energy on updating the things that are mostly completed. It’s nice to go through photos and create albums, then  blog posts to chronicle the projects from beginning to end. Though we all know that anything involving living things will grow and change, and I look forward to how the potager will continue that very interesting process. This is one of those projects where I feel very strongly that I’ve made it into something much better than I found it. 

November Hill farm journal, 155

 We woke up to a break-in a few mornings ago. My husband managed to get video of the bandits:

He had left the chain off the gate between the little barnyard and the dirt paddock, and I had left the gate unlatched into the potager. We don’t know exactly when they broke in, but they were all caught red-hooved, on video, harvesting away!

Miraculously nothing was trampled and other than the tell-tale video and one manure pile, I would never have known they’d been in there. Though it did look like someone had weed-eated, which in the end, saved me some work!

This week I have started the project in Poplar Folly, labeling native plants, removing non-natives and invasives, and readying to begin marking the walking path. I had a blast doing this and can’t wait to get back down there. 

However, other gardening chores call, and I’ve been doing some Japanese stilt grass removal as well as watering (we’ve had no rain in over a week), weeding, and continuing the mulching of beds.

Bees are all good. I think our lured swarm, Mnemosyne, swarmed. We have not done any splits this year and I wish we’d done at least one since I have hive equipment in storage that could be housing a colony. There’s always next spring!

The herd is doing well. Cody’s a bit better and I’ve got three grazing muzzles cleaned and ready to go on this evening so they can all turn out together again. We’ll see if the muzzles fit properly and if so, whether they stay on all night long. 

Dogs are good, cats are good, and we’re all relieved at the break in the 90s heat yesterday and today. It was in the 50s this morning and humidity is very low. 

I still have gardening things to do today, so I’m getting back to them, but wanted to share this funny video of our very sneaky herd. 

My poem called Journey up on Streetlight Mag today

 You can read it HERE.

November Hill farm journal, 154

 I came home from the mountain house to a very hot week here on November Hill. Hot and jungle-like growth of grasses, pollinator plants, potager plants, and many chores to catch up on! 

The milkweed and butterfly weed are starting to get quite lovely:

I hope the butterflies lay lots of eggs and the resulting very hungry caterpillars eat their fill!

The sundrops aren’t as prolific this year as they were the past two, but they are still quite lovely. This full sun photo doesn’t show them off as well, but that’s when I was out there, so that’s all I have!

The coneflowers are starting to bloom and the button bushes are forming their tiny “buttons” so we have a lot to look forward to! The Stokes asters are out as well but I forgot to get a photo.

I am nowhere near done mulching and hope to get back to that task this weekend. I also need to put some fencing around both my shade beds, as the bunnies are snacking heavily on some of those plantings. While I was driving home on Saturday my daughter messaged that Clementine found a bunny nest near the upper garden bed and little bunnies ran in all directions. Thankfully Clem was on leash, and thankfully she listened when my daughter told her to DROP IT - she had a baby bunny in her mouth! It ran off with the others, so we presume it is okay.

The barn swallows have a nest full of babies, and a Carolina wren has a nest one the grazing muzzles hanging in the barn aisle. Lots of life happening here right now.

In the potager we have cucumbers in full bloom, tomatoes doing the same, and the lettuces and kale are ready to harvest. We have basil and parsley too. I’m very happy with the non-edible part of the garden. Everything is doing extremely well out there. And the hazelnut trees are thriving. I need to research when we can begin to harvest nuts. So far these trees are putting their energy into growing. 

A project on the horizon is to work on creating the permanent foot path in Poplar Folly so I can begin to ID the naturalized areas around the path and mark the natives that we need to keep as well as the things that need to be removed. There are some wonderful natives volunteering down there and I have permanent markers to label them so it will be easier to track things. It’s shady so not a bad summertime project!

Yesterday I watered the beds nearest the house and today I need to water the hollies and the cedars we put in, as well as give the potager a good watering. If we don’t get any rain tomorrow I’ll go further out still with a wheelbarrow full and a bucket. This is the first week in many months that there is no sure rain in the forecast, and with highs in the upper 90s, young plantings need some help. 

The bees are good, dogs living their best lives, cats are happy, and the herd are all nearly sleek in summer coats. Cody is having some issues with his hooves right now, and until the vet comes to do bloodwork we have him off the pasture and on the ECIR group’s emergency diet in case of laminitis. His hooves are not hot and I’m not feeling a pounding pulse. We’ll check insulin, glucose, and leptin levels and also do a tick-borne disease screen. I hope he is better soon. 

That’s it for now. I hope everyone is staying cool and hydrated as we move into summer!

November Hill farm journal, 153

 Our temps are going up this week into the 90s here on November Hill, and then it looks like we’ll drop back into the 70s for a few days. I’m not looking forward to 90s in May, but I’m reframing today’s heat as a great opportunity for the first full horse baths of the season. They’ve been hosed down a few times already, but today I’m going to get out the shampoo and the scrubbers and give them a proper cleaning. 

In other news we have had to put a solar charger on the Horseguard tape protecting the holly trees from the herd. The donkeys were going through the tape and one section was torn down. It’s clear we’ll need to do the same for the tape going in to protect the cedars. They’re not actually eating the tree foliage, they’re going through to eat the grass in between and around the trees, and in the process they’re pushing against the trees, all of which are still in the process of developing strong root systems. I knew this was a possibility and we had the materials to install the tape, so now we just have to power it so this bunch of hooligans respect it! They are, of course, just doing what foraging animals do. Here’s a recent photo of the  morning sun worshippers after a night of holly tree marauding. 

Fast forward a bit to the amount of spring green we have and the metabolisms of ponies and donkeys, and what you get is too many calories and too much sugar. We’re moving everyone off the front pasture so it can rest, and I decided it was time to add board fencing to the two sides of the arena still using the plastic fencing, which the donkeys climb right through. This was finished on Tuesday, and for the next month night-time turn-out is Keil Bay and Cody going into the back pasture, and Apache, Rafer Johnson, and Redford going into the arena. There’s a little grass in the arena but it’s sparse, and we can give them their hay in the hay pillows to more easily control the amount they’re eating. Since the dirt paddock and back pasture wrap around the arena, they’re all close to one another and no one will feel too stressed. It’s either this or grazing muzzles. I’m sure they were shocked to realize they could not climb through as they usually do!

I’ve been doing pollinator bed weeding and starting to work on getting the beds mulched for the summer and fall. I’m doing a little every day and it’s going to take a bit of time, but that’s fine. So far I’ve lost a few things to nibbling wildlife: one of my oakleaf hydrangias has been I think killed by its leaves being eaten completely off, two shrubs in the bird haven bed have seen the same fate, and something is eating my coneflower tops off in one area of the garden. I know there are a number of brown bunnies coming in and also a few deer. It’s just one of the consequences of sharing the land with all who live on it, so I’m not going to fret about it. There are some things I can do to protect these plants and see if they can come back from the heavy browsing.

Poplar Folly is a wealth of things both planted and volunteering, and I am going to have to put some energy into figuring out where I want the walking path to go and then keep that part cleared. There are some invasive non-natives which need to be removed, but unfortunately with all the other things to do we rarely get to that enough to really knock things out. It’s an ongoing battle, and we just have to what we can. 

The bees are doing well. I think Callisto, the new nuc, really took off in their hive box and may have already swarmed. We had other things going on and in the spirit of letting the bees do what they do, we let them go. Swarming is the honey bees’ way of reproducing. The existing queen leaves with many of her workers, who have scouted out a new home, and the workers left in the hive box rear a new queen to take over. This not only creates two hives in the place of the one, it also gives a brood break - a time when no eggs are being laid which means there are no larva in cells for the varroa mites to breed in. So it’s actually a good thing if you’re looking at beekeeping from a Darwinian perspective. If interested, read Tom Seeley’s work on Darwinian beekeeping. 

Clementine is doing very well. Her tumor was removed, the histopathology report was the best possible results, and for now she is not getting additional treatment other than the homeopathic protocol our homeopathic vet has put together for her. 

It’s the time of year when I have to shift into my own conservation of energy mode. A couple of outdoor chores a day during the cooler times, and keep up as best I can with the summertime jungle November Hill becomes. 

I’m also working on the new novel again, and very drawn into this story and world. 

It’s not my favorite season, but I do enjoy the privacy all the trees offer when they’re fully leafed out. I feel their protection and their company. 

And I forgot - the laundry room work is finished! Well, okay, almost finished. The ceiling is done, which was the big thing we had hired in. I have one more matching shelf to install, some hand-made tiles I found which will make a small but serviceable back and side splash for the sink, and a matching washer/dryer “countertop” (that will enable me to remove those two towels) is on the way. 

It’s difficult to capture in my photos, but the interesting thing about the ceiling is that on the recommendation of a home renovator I found online, I used Benjamin Moore Pearl finish paint instead of flat ceiling paint. The very light touch of luminescence in the paint allows light to reflect more off the surface and it creates the illusion of greater height. It’s noticeable in person. I am so pleased with how it worked and plan to use that same paint in the living area and bedroom ceilings when I get to them. 

Our contractor had to do some special work to install this bead board ceiling. It’s not a thin panel of bead board but individual boards. It was beautiful unpainted but I think even more so now. 

With the summer heat starting early and the need to do some budget tightening in this economy, I’ve called a hiatus on renovation work. I have about 8 projects to do myself that I already have the materials for, and I’m going to focus on getting those done, clearing out some storage spaces, and be prepared for the end to the hiatus when it comes. First in line will be the already bought and paid for stall windows for the barn. The installation will best be done in the fall when horses are on day-time turn-out, and when we can hopefully have some barn siding replaced as they do each window. I’m glad to have the stall windows - they will be almost maintenance free and should last for many, many years. The existing ones are constantly needing either painting or repair. 

But for now, welcome, summer! I’m going to complain about the heat, the bugs, my sweat, and who knows what else, but for today, I am feeling gracious and happy to see this season coming in.