Monthly Summary – June 2009
Samuel Joseph; Logs and records reviewed, and summary prepared 6/18/10

General Observations: So my official one year anniversary has come and so I decided to take on the June Summary to remind myself of my first month at North Slope.  Reading the log for this monthly summary was completely different than any in the fact that every passage jogs memories into my head because I was there and apart of it.  Oddly enough one of my first tasks at North Slope was the writing of the 2008 June Summary.  So much has happened in a single year and my understanding of farming and plants has grown tremendously since that time.  If anyone remembers back to June last year, you will remember wet saturated conditions with intense thunderstorms.  Rain inhibited us from being able to plant as much as we would have liked.  June was a rough month last year, it being the busiest time, and yet rain not allowing for us to proceed with the plan.  Reminds me how much we are at the mercy of strange forces in the universe.
Equipment 4hrs: 6/2 removed starter from ford for repairs; fuel runs; 6/10 ford starter still not working; 6/17 ford running and chopper tested for cutting hay
Administration 41hrs: Payroll, errands, accounting, summaries, ordered tomato stakes, field walks, and all the while training those guilders
Infrastructure 116hrs: leaving center strip un-mowed in between BGB to promote beneficial; pool cleaning; walk-in cooler cleaned, sanitized, cooler curtain installed and turned on for full use; cutting dead trees that might fall near house; cut multiflora to widen pathway into the woods; mowing diversions, pathways, and under electric fence; general maintenance
Greenhouse 51.5hrs: cleaned out hoop house, inventoried tomato seedlings, intro to trainees about greenhouse watering particularly about solenaceous plants not liking wet leaves; cleaning and moving out to prepare for tea drying area.
Composting 25hrs: Spread on Big Garden Beds and Veg B North, cleaned up composting experiment from hoop house, sifting for seedling succession
Planting 55hrs: 6/2 finished planting tomatoes mulched and staked; 6/2 direct seeded 3 BGB with lettuce; rototill BGBs bare fallow and seed bed prep; 6/3 Sunflowers, the amount of rain inhibiting planting, 6/17 fourth succession planted into flats, Peas pulled 6/23, 6/24 corsalos planted in BGB with beans, 6/25 apple peppers in farmhouse gothic
Crop Care 42.5hrs: mulching tomatoes, irrigation, trenched tomato bed ends to help with flooded conditions, stringing tomato beds, and of course weeding (we don’t use plastic mulch so only way to control the weeds is by pulling them out).
Harvesting 220hrs:
First week: salad, kale, chard, garlic scapes, radishes, lambs quarters,
turnips, peonies
Second week: salad, kale, chard, garlic scapes, turnips, beets, peas, basil
Feverfew
Third week: salad, kale, chard, garlic scapes, beets, peas, fever few, heliopsis
rudbeckia,
Forth week: salad, kale, chard, turnips, beets, basil, scallions, summer
squash, fever few, rudbeckia, heliopsis, curley dock
Handling 60.5hrs: washing and bagging salad, washing produce, bagging tea
Marketing 79hrs:
Hopewell: 6/3 $392; 6/10 $415; 6/17* cancelled; 6/24 $340;
Total=$1,147
West Windsor: 6/6 $747; 6/13 $1,000; 6/20 $877; 6/27 $1,295;
Total=$3,919
Summit: first market 6/7 $910, 6/14 $910, 6/21 $1,560; 6/28 $1,660;
Total=$5,040
*playground construction prevented market from taking place
Special Projects 2hrs: chicken tractor, baby chick area in shoop prepared, chicks arrived 6/12, solar dehydrator drying herbs
Weather:
First week: Scattered Thunder storms, hard rain, heavy rain over night, Rainy
and cold
Second week: Rain, heavy showers, cloudy, saturated conditions, hot and
humid, severe rain storms,
Third week: Hot and humid, rain at night, rain, saturated conditions, Sunny
and hot
Forth week: Cloudy, Sunny and hot, extremely hot, 90+ degrees