Turkeys, Wind, Row Covers, and Seed Cleaners

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. As is their usual, the turkeys arrived amidst a snow storm and a power outage. They've wasted no time in stressing us out. They sure are cute and easy to forgive, though. That won't last long as they get uglier every day.


*chirp*

With the snow came very strong winds. It did things like blow an entire roll of row cover into the big field. I'd even weighted the roll down, but a strong wind laughs at those sorts of efforts.



This is our vegetable field at the beginning of May. At the beginning of May, I said. Or did I take that photo in January? I'm not sure anymore. You'll see my lovely pregnant wife in the middle of the photo cinching down the row cover over our seedlings.


The field in May. I think.

This little guy is kale. If it can shake off the snow and grow tall, we'll know just how super kale is.


Kale and snow.

Besides blowing a roll of row cover into the field, it also whipped around the stuff we had covering our seeded beds. I'm guessing the constant back and forth action rubbed the surface of the bed, filling in our rows of germinated radishes. All I can hope for is those plants to find their way to the surface again.


Radish wondering where everybody else went.

Despite major delays in seeding the big field (I did get the green manure winter peas in before all this), the upshot is, we've had time to knock out some of the indoor work that usually gets put off in the mad dash of the spring onslaught.

One such task was getting the seed cleaner up and running to clean the milk thistle and heritage wheat we grew last year. Our scale is too small for any custom cleaner to bother with, so we have to clean it ourselves. I've accumulated a couple of cleaners that don't work yet, but I also borrowed one that I finally got going. Here it is in action yesterday. I can't even express how excited I am by this. So, I'll just leave it at this: I am so excited.


The cleaner.


Milk thistle seed bouncing across the screen.


Chaff being blown out the back.


Clean seed!