Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Rain, Rain, Rain

It seems like we've had rain every day for the past two weeks. We haven't had 2-3 days in a row to really dry things out. The water table at Starbird Farm is at least 6 inches above where it was last year at this time -- which puts it just about at ground level. The lane into the gardens is still under 2-4 inches of water. Weeds are taking over everywhere. I haven't been able to do any good with a hoe and of course I can't get anywhere near the garden with a rototiller.

Now I am going out f town for a week and now the sun will probably come out and the weeds will really grow. It's not looking like a good gardening year.

Unfortunately, this will be our last year at Starbird Farm. Chris, the fellow who leased us this 1/4 acre plot now wants to SELL the plots for $24,000 each. That seems a bit expensive for a piece of land you can only get to 5 or fewer months of the year, is under water much of the time and is full of canary grass. Half that amount would still seem steep.

The upland acre we are tying to buy still hasn't settled. It is a short sale and our purchase has been "kicked out" of the system twice now, for no apparent reason -- this after it has been accepted by the seller and their bank. It's definitely too late to get a garden in this year there and I am fast loosing patience with the whole process.

I haven't talked about this here, but I am also looking at the possibility of some large scale community gardening/teaching/foodbank farming on a 400 acre piece of ag land that is owned by the City of Everett. The area is known as the Marshland Subarea and is immediately south of Lowell River Road east of Everett. Part of this land has been brought within the city limits, although no houses can be built there because it is in the 100-year flood plain. There is a history to why this land is now part of Everett which I won't go into here, but this is land that is currently being leased to two local farmers for $0/year and which I believe could much better serve the people of Everett by being used for food raising.

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