May 2024
It is May, and it feels like the world went from 0 to 100MPH overnight. The ferns are popping up, the songbirds are swarming around my neighbors’ bird feeders, and most importantly for me, nurseries are ready for their starter plants to be picked up.
I sourced most of this year’s plants from Blue Forest Plants in Duluth. This year is a year of laying foundations at Living Proof, so I’m starting out with small numbers of a variety of plants to see what takes and what doesn’t. I’ll grow those that take at a larger scale in the following years. I am particularly curious to see how the Nanking cherries and elderberries take.
More inspiring than picking up these plants was touring the small polytunnel on the Blue Forest Plants grounds. I had been considering building a polytunnel along the south-facing wall of the garage, but it felt like a daunting construction project. This polytunnel, framed almost entirely using 16-foot cattle fence panels, proves cheaper than the various high tunnel kits I’d been researching, and a lot more flexible, too.
Above you can see the early stages of the polytunnel build. After playing around with positioning I’ve decided to actually mount it against the garage to avoid creating an awkward gap between the polytunnel and the garage for snow to build up in. Instead, the tunnel will start at the top of the garage wall below the eves, and then curve down from there. I show an early photo of me playing around with that idea below. (Ignore the fact that the above photo is clearly more recent; I tried a ton of positions before committing.)
The polytunnel was the biggest change to my plans that came out of my trip to Blue Forest Plants, but of course the plantings have continued as well. Thanks again to Tony Stein for helping me with everything. Among Tony’s many skills is building small deer fences for the various plants I planted. We’ll probably need to stack them as the plants grow, and I keep a cautious eye out for a deer, anyway—if I see one of them sticking their snout down the top and slurping up my new plants I’ll have to redesign everything from the group up, but so far no unwanted nibbles have occurred.
Calls to Action
That’s it for May’s update, except to say that if you know someone who is looking for a summer job who’d be excited to help get a farm off the ground please let me know! I’m starting to reach out to a few folks but always prefer recommendations!
As a reminder, Living Proof can now be found on Facebook and Instagram. Please consider following! I’ll be posting these blog posts to the Facebook page, and sharing photos of the operation on Instagram going forward!
Thank Yous:
I’d like to thank the following folks for helping me with everything I mentioned in this post!
Tony Stein for preparing buckets for oyster mushroom growth, and building deer cages to protect my new plants!
Theo Johnson from Blue Forest Plants for walking my property, advising me, providing me with bare root plants, and encouraging me to start on the polytunnel.
Matt Mullins for editing this blog post