Farm Update 10/12/2019

Winter is coming on quick and the farm/garden is getting ready for the cold weather.  The Japanese Maples have gone from green to yellow and then red in a matter of three days.  Not much of a fall season. 

I have dug a further 140 holes for tea plants and am in the process of planning the tea house and oak garden.  We have designated the three main areas for growing tea (the Doug Fir garden, the Oak garden and the Cherry garden).  These should all produce fantastic teas and each should be slightly unique in the flavor of the teas produced.

I have embarked on a new project with the deer fencing.  We have the metal posts that will go on a couple of the boundaries, and I have purchased 40 Doug fir untreated posts.  Researching ancient Japanese techniques I have decided to treat the posts in the Shou Sugi Ban manner.  This requires charring the posts and then sealing them (not part of the original technique) and the result is an organic post that will last 60 plus years.  The look is also tremendous and it should be one of the best looking fences in the area. 

The planted bamboo is doing fine and I see a number of them are sending out rhisomes which bodes well for next spring.  The pampas grass we planted earlier has done amazingly well and about half of the plants produced fronds and I suspect will thrive in the coming year.

More plants have been ordered and in the spring we will have somewhere between 400 and 1000 additional plants, which should complete the farm planting.

The biochar has been charging for a couple of weeks and I am excited to see how it performs. 

Let’s hope either the fence is complete, the fish line experimental fence is adequate, or the deer leave us alone as winter progresses.  Still lots of projects to achieve.

Check in often and order our world famous teas and catch up on the progress of the great experimental farm.

Cheers from San Juan Island.