Dirt

Alrighty here, another few days to recap.

Last Thursay and Friday were spent doing similar things. Jarrod, Jeff, Amanda and I spent most of the days constructing an insulated room within the existing coolroom. The idea being that since the existing coolroom is massive and not air conditioned (it's cooled with sensible opening and closing of the main door throughout the cooler months only) but still insulated we could build two walls and a door and suddenly have our own reasonably sized room to store vegetables. And we could use a hacked window air conditioner I mentioned before to cool it.

We managed to build most of it, less the door. As before, it was a lot of fun to pretend to be a carpenter. I also spent some time calling around to electricians and appliance repair folk to see if anyone could give me advice on how to hack the air conditioner and how exhaust the heat. Eventually I found most of what I think I need to know from my friend Shaun over at Fidalia Networks Inc. who has a ton of experience with refrigerating server rooms.

Saturday was another learning day, and this time we had a talk by my roommate Tarrah on soil. A really fantastic talk. We learnt about the origin of soil, soil composition, the mineral composition of soil, soil structure, and soil life. All of what could be was applied as Tarrah had us out in the fields all morning digging holes and inspecting our soil.

Did I ever mention that I wanted to start a list of organic farming axioms? Well, regardless, Tarrah's workshop highlighted the axiom, "Feed the soil, not the plants". That is, rather than dump liquid fertiliser on the soil intending for the plants to soak it up before the next rain (where it'll get washed away into the rivers and ground water) instead, intelligently rotate crops, apply compost, or other amendments and practices designed to encourage healthy soil life which will make the existing nutrients in the soil available to the plants.

Anyhow, yesterday we spent the morning planting strawberries (just in the home garden), making soil mix, and getting the seed potatoes ready for planting. The afternoon was a frenzy of hoeing and floating row cover moving. Five hours later, and we had de-weeded the entire brassica planting. This was such a dusty job... when I took a shower last night the water ran silty brown for a minute or so.