I’m getting too old for this shirt

Everyone in my office was given a Deathplow shirt as a tribute to the longtime employee who invented “Deathplow” as a fictional heavy metal band. He gets credit for it, not I. He grew up on an actual farm, not a “farm” like mine. When he left the company after 10 years, we all wore these shirts on his last day.

This is really a stupid obsession. Digging two-foot post holes into hard, cracked clay with my analog tools and cussing the whole time didn’t help me pack on the muscles that atrophied when I skipped workouts. These little buggies kept eating stuff I direct sowed, reminding me that my “thou shalt not kill” policy is sometimes unrealistic. And day after day, with 3-digit (Fahrenheit) temps and sometimes 1-digit humidity percentage, it keeps not raining. Except that one time in late May we got a hailstorm that injured my established plants. It was like they were getting punched, over and over, although I covered as many as I could.

It’s not an unusual summer here, it’s just the first time in 10 years I’ve tried to crack into new dirt and plant a fence.

I couldn’t give up and leave a pathetic pile of dirt in the backyard which I’d have to explain to kids who come over to play. Besides, the OG (original garden) doesn’t have much more going on than cover crops and salad greens.

The good news about the blazing sun is it’s now powering our house because we just got solar panels.

Somehow, those direct sowed seeds and most of the transplants I nursed from seeds are growing and producing.

Holy shirt.

I planted a cover “crop” of buckwheat (soba) for the first time. I always plant legumes, because I love them and they are good soil conditioners, but that alone isn’t going to help turn this worthless slab of dirt into somewhat fertile soil. And the buckwheat addition won’t either. I’ve mixed in topsoil, vermiculite and compost about six inches under the plants that are thriving. I’ve had to water them with a hose. I can’t imagine how original growers in what is now the American West survived. I mean, I know millions of them didn’t, but many did, and I’m here today struggling even with better tools.

Author: Fire Horse

I live in Colorado with my husband Metal Pig, our son Evil Genius ("EG") and, for some reason, two Dalmatianesque dogs. One of my dreams is to show a respectable return on the investment I put into growing food in our suburban yard. We love plants but eat them too. I use grandiose terms when describing my garden, like "crops" and "nitrogen levels" but it's too small to be a farm. Maybe one day I'll hitch a miniature horse to a tiny plow and take out the turf grass in the front yard to make room for growing grains. View all posts by Fire Horse