The Last Seeds!
Jan. 22nd, 2018 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unicorndukeThe last seeds have arrived! Probably....
Uhh, most likely?
Well, with plans up in the air, I probably won't be buying any more seeds, unless I buy the true potato seeds but it's not looking likely this year.
I got my Adaptive Seeds order which was only three packets: Kassaby Sorghum, Sussex Flax and Purple Hulless Barley. They're a pretty cool company with some excellent seed varieties which they often grow out from seed exchanges they do with other countries' seed savers groups. It's pretty great.
My order from Johnnys also went up to my parents place, which was a colinear hoe, which you can use standing upright and comfortable and my clover seeds for the borders of the plots.
Yay stuff!
Uhh, most likely?
Well, with plans up in the air, I probably won't be buying any more seeds, unless I buy the true potato seeds but it's not looking likely this year.
I got my Adaptive Seeds order which was only three packets: Kassaby Sorghum, Sussex Flax and Purple Hulless Barley. They're a pretty cool company with some excellent seed varieties which they often grow out from seed exchanges they do with other countries' seed savers groups. It's pretty great.
My order from Johnnys also went up to my parents place, which was a colinear hoe, which you can use standing upright and comfortable and my clover seeds for the borders of the plots.
Yay stuff!
this is the ask i just accidentally posted the wrong way on Tumblr, LOL.
Date: 2018-01-23 12:58 pm (UTC)One thing I know very little about is Vermont, but that border is right there. Yesterday, the (Republican!) governor of Vermont signed a bill to legalize possession of recreational marijuana, so that ought to make some interesting cultural changes in that region. I really know nothing, though; Vermont’s a weird beast I’ve lived most of my life within a couple miles of and have never really explored.
But I mean– the Adirondacks, mostly. That’s what Plattsburgh’s got. There are 46 peaks over 5,000 feet, some resorts that are over 100 years old, some lakes nobody ever goes to, canoe and portage routes that go a hundred miles, ski and snowshoe routes, tiny lakes full of waterskiers in summer, pine forests, old logging camps, moose and bear and deer, and a college specializing in hotel management right in the middle (Paul Smith’s). My childhood best friend had a family cabin up in Newcomb (the exact middle) on a pine-black pond 50 feet deep where you couldn’t see your feet and couldn’t hear any neighbors, and we’d sit on the dock and holler old voyageur songs for the echoes and the fish would nibble our toes, and then we’d run like hell from the dock spiders the size of dinner plates who could walk on water. I went out to watch the sunrise from that dock and then turned around and there was a bear between me and the cabin. It was totally unconcerned. I was not totally unconcerned. It went away, though.
Culturally it’s a vaguely red area in a quite blue state– but so’s the area around the farm, and despite the performative GOP-ness people are generally reasonably cosmopolitan in attitude. It’s all pretty racially segregated (so is Maryland, my Southern sister has found; Georgia was much more integrated) but there’s decent cultural open-mindedness; one of my good high school friends, the Glens Falls reporter, is a married lesbian and has noted that when she got married, even local politicians who’d been fighting to pass homophobic laws [that she’d been interviewing them about; the laws never passed] had still sent her congratulations cards for her wedding and been solicitous when her wife was having health problems. It’s like… they’re hateful in the abstract but when you actually meet someone it’s easier to be polite? And the region has a long history of resort traffic; Lake Placid in particular has historically been specifically very gay-friendly. (ha I googled quickly to see if I could find any notable news stories and iloveny.com, the official new york state tourism page, has several hits including “take a gay-cation in New York!”, the phrasing of which is fantastic.) Anyway you’re likely to see Trump and NRA bumper stickers but that’s usually the worst of it.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-23 12:59 pm (UTC)Re: this is the ask i just accidentally posted the wrong way on Tumblr, LOL.
Date: 2018-01-23 11:01 pm (UTC)I honestly love hiking and I had plans to camp with my dog this summer. I never actually wanted to do that in MD because of how humid and disgusting it is in the summers. Like actually horrible and disgusting. But overnight camping and hiking and nature and shit. I love it.
Apparently when I was very young, my family took the train from New York to Montreal. I remember very little from that trip but my parents both say it was awesome.
As far as the cultural thing goes, I'm honestly looking for an area where they don't say bigoted shit to my face so that would be cool. Like, some actual other queer people existing near me would also be cool. Yeah, most of the people at work feel it's just fine to use slurs and say nasty things about the gays around me. Or they did. They don't really anymore because they think I'm dating Jade. The Eastern Shore of MD is super duper racist and stuff too. It's kind of bananas to think about how many people I talk to had family members that owned slaves. And they still live in the huge plantation houses. I've literally walked a field a quarter mile from where Frederick Douglas was born.
So yeah. Moving north is definitely a good thing for me.
I did confirm with the person that I will be taking the job so yay! It'll pay me less but be so much less stress so it's worth it. It's also working with vegetables, small fruit, tree fruit and grapes which are all things I'm interested in. I've got to go through the reference check and get the official job offer but that's pretty much formalities.
Housing is going to be our biggest issue with a cat, a dog and not a ton of money per month. We've got some leads from craigslist and zillow so I'm going to start making calls tomorrow.
This has been so so helpful for me so thank you so much!
Flax
Date: 2018-01-23 11:20 pm (UTC)Flax is grown really densely because it forces it to grow up, so yeah similar to grain should work really well. I usually poke around commercial agriculture growing to see what planting rate they recommend and then halve it to account for differences in how the crop is managed. This site recommends 70 plants per square foot. https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/publications/crops/flax-production-in-north-dakota
Most of the home sites are pretty vague so I'd say maybe 30-40 seeds per square foot and see where it goes. You don't want branching in the plants because that produces shorter linen. And they branch more when they have more room. A seed packet would be a pretty small patch of flax, maybe ten or fifteen square feet. You should do it!