Long hoe vs short hoe and other theories

Working in the fields gives you lots of time to think up and try out theories. Today, we were laying black plastic (a great job for 4 people, one of my favorites). In trying to establish what was making some hoeing better than others, we tested a theory of whether the person using the longer hoe hoed better (apparently not). Other theories we're working on is Geoff's proposal: when you feel like you need to sneeze but it doesn't come, think about elephants. then you don't have to sneeze anymore. I tried this today, and it worked. Melissa's counterargument is that if you think about Abraham Lincoln, you also won't have to sneeze. This counter theory will be tested next...

I've been on greenhouse duty all week. This week, we moved a bunch of our tomatoes out to the pit greenhouse, the first greenhouse that Caretaker had. It's dug into the ground, and the north wall is all stones, and the south facing part is all glass panes. the sun comes in and heats it during the day and also heats up the stones so they act as a heat sink and keep it warmer at night. We'll see how warm it keeps them - it's going down into the 40's tonight, so we also rigged up some row cover to try to keep the tomatoes warm enough. The heated greenhouse is jam packed with tomatillos, peppers, lettuce and radicchio.

We have been spending a good bit of the rainy days working in the greenhouse seeding and potting on, which is one of my favorite farm jobs. we mix our own potting soil for what we pot on. Here's the recipe:
1 cup greensand
1 cup bloodmeal
1/2 cup bone meal
1/2 cup lime
1 1/4 bucket peat moss
1 bucket perlite
4 buckets compost
Mix well, add enough water so when you squeeze the mix you can hear the water but it doesn't drip out of your hand, put on some Madonna or Creedence and you're good to go!