Shorter blog post here, but I wanted to share my final two days on my first farm before I head to Antwerp and onto the next farm.
Thursday was spent continuing work inside the greenhouse. While the previous day was spent planting seeds into small plastic compartments within trays, Thursday’s work was focused on creating our own containers for the seeds. Specifically, we used a technique called “soil blocking.” Essentially what we did was make boxes out of dirt for the seeds. Using a tool that looks sort of like a soil stamper, we would push the apparatus into a wheelbarrow full of mixed soil, compress the soil down inside the boxes, and then push the soil boxes out onto a tray. I guess the soil blocking tool could be better described as a soil syringe. We also added little block inside the soil blocker that left an indentation in the soil cubes, leaving us a spot to place the seeds.
We used the soil blocker to plant a variety of seeds – primarily pumpkins. The pumpkins will eventually be planted in between the rows of trees in the food forest, providing ground cover. We also used the soil blockers to plant cucumbers and squashes.
On the other side of the greenhouse (just one table over), I worked to transplant peppers (New Mexican hatch chiles) from the seed trays to larger pots. We were given an assortment of sizes of pots, so some seedlings got nicer real estate than others. I replanted the chiles over the course of Thursday and Friday.
The cheese I had bought in Amsterdam finally made its way over to the communal fridge, and it really was good. The supreme cow cheese was the consensus favorite.
On Thursday night, Van, Zoe, and I played a game of Rummikub (Zoe has a travel set) and my copy of Okay Play/Cinco Linko. It was a lot of fun; we should have started game nights before my last night on the farm.
On Friday, I didn’t do too much farm work in the morning since I had to finish up packing before heading out in the early afternoon (there were electricity issues in the house due to the kitchen construction, so my washed clothes didn’t make it into the dryer until the morning). After I finished packing up, but before I headed out, Kley wanted to take advantage of the sunny weather (which greatly differed from the steady rain only hours earlier) and got some photos of Van, Zoe, and me on the farm. We took some photos in the food forest, and Kley got some photos of me on top of some logs we cut up and trees I planted. Hopefully the trees will grow to full size and I’ll get to see photos of them!
Finally, I want to say thank you to Karen, Kley, Van, Zoe and everyone else I worked with on the farm. I had an amazing experience, and look forward to return one day (maybe for the Burning Pan festival…) and see all of the trees fully grown. I’ll also wear my Red Lock t-shirt with pride!
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