Spring Equinox or Nowruz the Zoroastrian New Year

The spring equinox is also called Nowruz, originally the Zoroastrian New Year.  It is now celebrated by many cultures throughout Asia and by Persians world-wide.  

Spring is coming slowly to LuckyFarm77, but the sheep are already lambing at the farm next door so we were lucky to get a pile of fresh manure to fertilize the garden.  Thanks Conner and Terah!

We harvested last year's remaining carrots to make way for the manure.  The carrots are a little hairy but quite tasty and crunchy.

The nettles have sprung up down by the bay, so we cooked up a nettle pie with the carrots and baked some sourdough bread.  We are also drying a pile of nettles in paper bags hanging in the cabin for herbal teas.

 

We anticipated that the cover for our "Shelter Logic" tarp sheds wouldn't last very long but that the frames would make excellent greenhouses.  Last winter's windstorm tore the cover right off, it was time to convert it into a greenhouse.  So we made some beds with rocks and filled with "hogfuel", which is partially composted shredded wood waste from the recycling station.  Thanks Jody!  The "hogfuel" is now covered with the sheep manure and more soil will be added from our pile at the bottom of the field.  The black plastic barrels at the end of the greenhouse will be filled with water to provide thermal mass to keep the greenhouse warmer at night.  Overall, the frame will be covered with transparent tarp and the ends will be filled in with wood frames and transparent poly to keep the ravenous deer out.

 

  

 

With the new greenhouse shaping up, this year we are getting more serious about tomato and pepper starts.  We crowded our old start table with the lighting frame into the living room.  We even bought some heating pads to give the plants an extra boost as recommended by Lelani at the Co-op Hardware.  As the plants grow the lights will be raised using small chains.

Last September, we planted 120 garlic cloves and they are already doing great.  We bought a special kind of soft neck garlic that can be braided.  But most of our garlic is the tasty jumbo hard-neck that we brought from Texada Island that we have been re-planting for many years.   Notice the fatty robin, so it must be springtime although with the cold winds and rains today it sure doesn't feel like it.

The kale sure likes the cold weather and it is growing like a hardy forest.

So do the perennial Eqyptian walking onions that are begging to be thinned and added to tonight's pizza pie.