2019 - The Farm

TrentL · Apr 25, 2019

Had to patch stable roof today

Good view

Hard to do roofing one handed tho, had a minor disagreement with the rain flo mulch layer yesterday. I decided I wanted my finger bones in one piece, it disagreed with me. Was adjusting it for 5' mulch and one of the big 1" carriage bolts was stubbornly refusing to go through the hole, got a good swing on it with a 10 lb sledge, bolt sunk and got my finger between the sledge handle and 3/8" plate steel edge.

Redid the splint after work yesterday (had to keep working even with the broken finger), and set the bone that night

Broke the little bone right behind the fingernail. Had it iced tonight, this happened yesterday, managed to set it straight. Splinting with a 6 ga wire and electric tape at the farm, works well enough

Managed to get it set straight at least

Barely any range of motion, hurts like a motherpucker.

This is iced, so swelling down, nice and straight

Gonna have it in a splint for at least 3-4 weeks

Orekoc · Apr 25, 2019

Ouch!

podz · Apr 25, 2019

Ouch! Kind of reminds me when my wife smacked herself in the shinbone with my handheld sledge last summer. Not funny!

nmlarson · Apr 25, 2019

+1 on the OUCH!

Take care of that one. You don't want to lose sensation in that digit.

PtMD989 · Apr 25, 2019

Son of a Bitch [emoji2959],back to 0 days without an injury.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ruid · Apr 25, 2019

Is it ironic that it's called a stable but it needed fixed?

m1hagen · Apr 25, 2019

Damn Trent, you need to catch a break, wait scratch that.

Devv · Apr 25, 2019

Sorry about the finger, let it heal!

TrentL · Apr 26, 2019

Devv said:
Sorry about the finger, let it heal!

No can do, got too much to get done. Had to work without a splint yesterday, was doing more harm than good getting hung up on everything.

Got the 90x90 greens patch tilled yesterday, lettuce and berries flame weeded and straw laid out, rest of weed block tarps up exposing nice weed free rows, it's go time for planting today as soon as the sun comes up.

TrentL · Apr 26, 2019

First fatal weed I've seen at the farm.

The last lesson of Socrates, and go-to plot hook for Shakespeare...

Got enough of it growing wild at the farm to kill half the damn state.

nmlarson · Apr 26, 2019

TrentL said:
First fatal weed I've seen at the farm.

The last lesson of Socrates, and go-to plot hook for Shakespeare...

Got enough of it growing wild at the farm to kill half the damn state.

Sooooooooooo, pray tell, why on earth are you touching it with your bare hands?

Devv · Apr 26, 2019

Salad?

Joking aside, what's it called?

Harry_Dangler · Apr 26, 2019

Poison Hemlock

BigCedar · Apr 26, 2019

Hey Trent. Just wanted to swing by and tell you that before I decided to log in for the first time in 6 years I did a decent amount of lurkin here in the glog section.. Well, your 2018 grow and this years were one of my main go to's. Your 2018 was incredible from start to finish. What an undertaking. Also, you sir are a dying breed.. Work ethic like yours is on the brink of extinction. I was really feeling for you when sales weren't happening and money was drying up. You always seemed to stayed positive and pull through even in the tough times, nice work. Those superhot rows for acres and acres were quite the sight to behold. Stunning. Your glog so far this year has been just like last years. Unbelievable. The plants, the greenhouse, the variety, the sheer numbers, the record keeping, the equipment upgrades, the whole deal man. Absolutely crazy. I would love to help you out with sales this year when pods are ready! I really wish you and your family the best with this season, with the farming and the selling! My hat is off to you sir. Bravo :clap:

Brandon

TrentL · Apr 26, 2019

Only worked 15 hours today that is an improvement. Tired. North field was disked, got new hoses made for the ancient POS disk so it would fit my tractor, greased all 14 zerks on it, picked up 120 bales of straw from another farm and stocked it in the stables, raked 1/3 of an acre that I'd tilled yesterday, measured out and marked rows (30 of them) and walk paths, watered plants, spread straw, planted out 2x 90.5' rows of cabbages, spread some blood meal on the garlic patch, got all of the old ground cover from last year loaded up to remove from the property so that nightmare is finally behind me, and I'm probably forgetting a bunch of stuff like feeding chickens and stuff.

Got my ass kicked all damn day by 30+ mph winds for 15 hours straight.

I don't think I took any pics today, except for my worn out thumb, which no longer unlocks my phone (none of my fingers do and I'd coded all 10 of them).

You can see my busted finger there too, no splint, damn thing kept getting hung up on everything and hurting more than without it. So it went in the trash and I just tried to avoid bumping it on anything.

Which when you are loading and unloading 120 bales of straw is quite fucking impossible, so it's hurting a bit tonight.

But pain in finger is kind of muted because every damn thing else hurts bad too

TrentL · Apr 27, 2019

BigCedar said:
Hey Trent. Just wanted to swing by and tell you that before I decided to log in for the first time in 6 years I did a decent amount of lurkin here in the glog section.. Well, your 2018 grow and this years were one of my main go to's. Your 2018 was incredible from start to finish. What an undertaking. Also, you sir are a dying breed.. Work ethic like yours is on the brink of extinction. I was really feeling for you when sales weren't happening and money was drying up. You always seemed to stayed positive and pull through even in the tough times, nice work. Those superhot rows for acres and acres were quite the sight to behold. Stunning. Your glog so far this year has been just like last years. Unbelievable. The plants, the greenhouse, the variety, the sheer numbers, the record keeping, the equipment upgrades, the whole deal man. Absolutely crazy. I would love to help you out with sales this year when pods are ready! I really wish you and your family the best with this season, with the farming and the selling! My hat is off to you sir. Bravo

Brandon

Thanks man, been working my ass off, so good to know it's inspiring folks.

I tell you what, I can't believe people pay money to go to a gym. You could work at a farm and get paid to get in shape.

I'm now 100% convinced that 97 percent of farming is moving heavy shit from one spot to another. The other 3% is watching every plan you make, get screwed up by mother nature.

I will be sorting out what plants get destined for isolation grow this next week (2-4" of rain coming so my planting out and field work is going to grind to a halt after tonight)

Once I get isolation plants picked out I'll update the inventory and get the online store inventory up for live plant shipments.

They will all be hardened off and ready to go in the dirt as soon as you guys want. Chinense are getting huge in their 4" pots, they were ready to plant out (size wise) a couple weeks ago. Most are 8-12" tall and forked well, many are blooming already.

Annuums are small-ish, but growing fast now that they've found their legs in the 3" pots.

The last of the shade cloth comes off tomorrow. The trial on peeling that back worked perfectly; I hardened off 5200+ peppers and 5,000+ tomatoes/greens/brassicas/etc with zero sunburn except on about 12 plants which were in a corner and caught a half day sun too early. I can't move around 5200 pepper plants. But the sun moves across the sky.. so opening apertures in the shade cloth let plants get hardened off to UV without moving them around. (Good thing greenhouse was oriented E-W.. if I built it N-S I would have been screwed lol)

That 4" dripline on the chinense in 4" pots works AWESOME. My watering schedule on those 3,200 chinense is simple. Every 4 days I plug a wire in to trip the solenoid for 3 minutes. That's it. So easy. I still have one aisle to plumb in - takes over an hour to spray all of those down with a hose, so damn hard to get water through the canopy. So inconsistent too, takes 2 more hours to spot check those plants and water ones missed by the hose. Gotta pick up every damn pot,

The starter tray misters, not doing as well as I'd hoped. They do a fantastic job watering but the nozzles are getting screwed up by the manganese and < 25micron iron particles in the water. I have 4 of 30 not quite working right now, do more dripping and sputtering than misting...gonna have to take them all off and put them in the ultrasonic cleaner with some simple green sooner or later.

TrentL · Apr 27, 2019

nmlarson said:
Sooooooooooo, pray tell, why on earth are you touching it with your bare hands?

Hell last year I took a bite of a flower bud to see if it was parsnip. That's the most toxic part of the whole plant. Tasted like shit so I spit it out.

Had no idea I was eating the deadliest damn plant in North America. People have literally died eating birds, which have eaten hemlock seeds.

I about crapped myself when an ag science masters degree buddy ID'd it when I sent him pictures asking "what the f--- is this invasive sonofabitch???"

Poison Hemlock out-competes EVERYTHING.

DWB · Apr 27, 2019

TrentL said:
You can see my busted finger there too, no splint, damn thing kept getting hung up on everything and hurting more than without it. So it went in the trash and I just tried to avoid bumping it on anything.

Which when you are loading and unloading 120 bales of straw is quite fucking impossible, so it's hurting a bit tonight.

But pain in finger is kind of muted because every damn thing else hurts bad too

Deformed fingers aren't cool Trent. I have two of them but at least I still have them. 3 hour surgery and 20 hours in the hospital after I dropped a tractor on my hand. I had an amazing ortho surgeon who saved everything.

Please take good care of that finger.

TrentL · Apr 27, 2019

DWB said:
Deformed fingers aren't cool Trent. I have two of them but at least I still have them. 3 hour surgery and 20 hours in the hospital after I dropped a tractor on my hand. I had an amazing ortho surgeon who saved everything.

Please take good care of that finger.

I lost count, but this is my 14th or 15th finger break. It'll be fine. Most have been broke more than once. Only one (left ring finger) has escaped damage. Also broke every one of my toes at least once.

Unless there's secondary symptoms I don't go to the doc for broken ribs, fingers, or toes. Went a couple times as a kid but learned quick enough how to set my own digits. Been involved with martial arts since 1985, so lots of broken bits along the way

tsurrie · Apr 27, 2019

Oh man... this is like watching a movie when the martial arts master tells stories to a kid. I'm reading all of this with my eyes wide open and jaw down. Try to keep that finger safe and the others too. Good job but you should get some help or you're gonna get too old too young.