I did it!

It took way too long and was a ton of work, but I finally did it.

I overdid it trying to finish up last night. My arms and back ache, but in a good way.

The new garden plot has been entirely double dug. 25 feet by 30 feet. 750 square feet.



Here are a few pictures. The dark patch in the upper right was the part that I actually worked on today. The patch of white near the bottom right is where I had a tarp laid out with the dirt of the first trench, so the grass that was under it has been dying.



I think tomorrow I’ll hit the hardware store and buy some 2x6 boards and put a border around it, to make it easier to mow around if nothing else. Then I need to actually decide what to plant!

It was a good experience that I will never forget, but a rototiller is looking awfully good right now.

A Long Answer to a Simple Question

A friend of a friend, Wade, who responded to my last posting in my personal blog rather than here said: “In regards to your wheat post, you had a comment about wooden tools and double digging. Bear in mind that breaking through sod like you're doing was probably fairly uncommon. They were probably working fields that had been worked for generations. Even if they were kept fallow for one year, that's not going to produce the sort of root system that your lawn has. This is my opinion, no basis in historical fact. :)”

Wade is probably right here, depending on which part of the Middle Ages we’re talking about. My recent interests have really shifted away from the High MA to the early, Dark Ages period. Late Antiquity really. 500-900 AD. This is the period where Germanic, Celtic and Roman practices of settlement and cultivation are co-existing and mingling, and with the decline of the Roman administration, these methods are free to adapt to local conditions, rather than be dictated by Roman fiat. It is a time where people are thinking smaller -- no longer are there massive legions to feed or Imperial cities to maintain; smaller regions are figuring out what resources and manufactured goods they need, who will provide them and how they will be transported.

This period lays the foundation for all that comes after. Here, complex systems are created that have to answer these simple questions:

• Who are we?
• What do we need to survive?
• How do we make what we need? If we can’t make it, how do we get it?
• What do we want in addition to what we need (and how do we make/get it)?
• How do we all work together to make that happen?

So, with that in mind, there are a few things to consider. First off, many early communities throughout Northern Europe (in Denmark, Germany and the Low Countries) continued a millennia-old way of life based on mobile settlements, which either packed up and moved along every generation or two, or that gradually shifted their boundaries, and moved, amoeba-like, around their territory. This had been common from the Bronze Age through the Roman Age and, although it was going out of style and the movements decreased in frequency, it continued even into Late Antiquity. The point being, that these people would be breaking new ground.

Secondly, even later in the medieval period, as populations increased, many villages expanded, either by adding new fields to their properties, or by creating dependant communities nearby. Often this new arable land was made from land thought inferior and not worth the trouble only a generation or two before. While these people are more likely to have access to plows and iron tools, it is worth keeping in mind.

Also, my experience is probably special, in that my backyard is completely free from tree roots or any thick vegetation. I can only assume that was was removed a century ago as the neighborhood was forming on the, then, outskirts of the city of Everett. I have noticed a thin layer of charcoal just above a layer of clay about a foot under the current level of the soil. There have also been small pieces of charred wood down there. A forested area would certainly require a mattock or axe to deal with roots.

So, yes. While the Medieval farmer might not have needed to hack into virgin soil very often, when he did he would need (or be greatly aided by) metal tools.

Spadeing the yard

So.

The double digging continues apace. At a slow pace. I’d really wanted to finish by the end of February, but here it is and I’m only about 80% done. Between weather and increased job responsibilities, I just haven’t had the time. (And yes, I know that in days of old, rainy days were thought to be best for working in a garden, but I’m a soft modern American, and while I did dig in the drizzle, I wasn’t going to during a full-on rain.)

While out there digging, I have had the opportunity to connect with my neighbor, something I never did while I was a sit-in-front-of-the-computer homebody. He is a Ukranian immigrant, and raises homing pigeons, which is pretty neat. He keeps trying to get me to grow tomatoes and has all sorts of advice on how to do it.

Anyway, one day while I was out there, Alex asked me if I’d like him to sharpen my shovel. Sharpen a shovel? The idea blew my mind. But it makes sense -- less resistance makes for an easier thrust through the dense soil. So I asked him to do it, mostly just to see if I could feel the difference. And boy, quite a bit of difference. It is much easier to make the initial thrust down to cut the sod, but I feel the improvement most when I undercut the sod, jamming the entire shovel horizontally through the roots of lawn.

After I thanked Alex, he also suggested spraying the shovel blade with WD-40 (definitely not a medieval technique, but it did arouse my curiosity), which I tried once but it didn’t seem to make any difference. One morning I went out to dig, only to find the yard covered in frost. It was not the first time that has happened, and it doesn’t have much of an effect on the digging (the sod cuttings seem to stay in one piece a little better). But this time, the caked on dirt from my last session was frozen onto the shovel, giving me maximum resistance and making the digging nearly impossible. The frozen dirt did not want to scrape off either, until I resorted to hosing it off.

But things are moving ahead. I ordered seeds this week, and will post my planting plan later in the week.

Double Digging

When I’m done writing this post, I’ll be going out to “toil in the fields,” the phrase we throw around the house to mean that I’m going to work in the garden.

Last year I planted a small plot, about 115 square feet of red spring wheat. This year, using the fruits of that field, I’m going to plant a much larger plot of about 600 square feet.

The 'before' picture

Last year, I prepared that plot in the spring by mowing the grass short, covering the area with newspaper, spreading manure and topsoil over the paper and planting onto that. That technique was neither historical nor did it work particularly well. The weeds were able to push through the newspaper, the wheat roots were unable to penetrate the newspaper and firmly anchor themselves and a nearby tree seemed to create a shadow over about a third of the plot that little grew in.

So I wanted to try something different. What I wanted to do was to plow, but that was unrealistic because of the small area that I do have and the costs associated. So, I decided to do the next best thing: Double Dig.

What is double digging? Essentially, you’re turning the soil by hand. You dig a trench and set that earth aside. Then you dig another trench the same size, adjacent to the first, filling the first trench with the dirt. You keep doing that over the entire plot until you’re left with just a trench, and then you fill that hole with the dirt you set aside from the very first trench.

The initial trench

It does several things. First it turns the soil. The sod from the top of each fresh trench goes in the bottom of the trench (and I’ve been being very careful to deposit the sod upside down) and is then covered by 8-10 inches of dirt. It loosens the soil and de-compacts it, making it more suitable for planting. And thirdly, it plows under the grass, allowing those nutrients to return to the soil.

The second trench and the filled first trench

Is it historical? I don’t know. Nothing I have read so far has mentioned it, but I have yet to read anything that specifically discusses Medieval or Iron Age agricultural techniques. I suppose that is a huge oversight on my part and I should really do that before next year. But, there is nothing about the technique that couldn’t have been done, since all it requires is a shovel and a strong back. And a lot of time.

It is very slow though, at least for my city-living, unathletic, desk-job of a physique. It tales about an hour to do two trenches, each 18” wide and 15 feet long. The first day I put in four hours straight of work and it left my arms and back aching for several days after. Since then, in between bouts of bad weather and the holidays, I’ve been putting in an hour here or there and today I should get to the halfway point.

Three trenches

My experiences? It’s hard work, but I enjoy it. Maybe it’s the novel aspect of it, but I’d much rather be digging than running on the treadmill. It does strain my 40-year old back, which is probably good for it. I do wonder how historical it might be in this one area: I have read in several places that wooden tools were the norm for the Early Middle Ages. Even if those wooden shovels were iron shod, I am a little dubious that they could withstand the abuse that I throw at my steel one. Stomping on it to cut through the sod, jamming it into the dirt, prying/lifting the heavy, damp soil . . . The wooden handle has survived so far, so maybe, but I don’t know. It does at least make me wonder.

Near the end of that first, four-hour day. Six or seven trenches.

OK, so off to work. But before I go, here’s two pictures of me, in my costume, toiling in the fields.

A New Year

So here it is, 2010. My biggest regret for 2009 is that I let this blog slide into no-use in the last quarter of the year. I will try to do better this year.

So a quick little look back and look forward. I’ll come back to each point eventually, until I’m all the way caught up.

I bottled the batch of mead I was making on Sept. 1st. Tasting at the time made it out to be very sweet and not overly alcoholic. I also started a batch of Blackberry wine (with the donation of blackberries from my neighbor). I know they’re not medieval (Blackberries are a New World plant), but I’ll continue to mention it here because it’s related, at least tangentially, to the other wines.

I went to a meeting/seminar held at the local community garden about planting winter vegetables. They handed out fava bean and kale starters which I planted. The kale didn’t survive the transplanting, and the beans were never able to produce beans before we had an early frost and they immediately turned black and died.

My birthday, a few days off from Michelmas, was wonderful and I was surrounded by the best of friends. They gave me a medieval send off, complete with gifts of gardening implements, a cheese-making kit and and a pair of linen trousers and leg wraps.

[Hmmm. The link for the winningas doesn't seem to work anymore. Maybe they've stopped carrying them? Or maybe it will work again whne they re-stock?]

Decked out in my Anglo-Saxon costume, complete except for shoes and gloves, I started getting the backyard ready for the planting of winter wheat. The plan was to double dig (that subject gets its own post) about 600 sq. feet of the backyard. I got maybe 1/6th of it done before exhausting. After that, rain and life hit very hard and I still haven’t finished (but I’ll go out a bit and work on it more today if the weather holds). So no winter wheat this year. Spring wheat again!

[Pictures will come later. I'm such a tease....]

I tried making cheese twice, with difficulties both times, but I do right now have a very ugly-looking blob a wax wrapped around some proto-cheese sitting in my kitchen. Hopefully it will turn out. I did manage to make some ricotta as well, and used some to make Libum with. I came out very good, a little more sour than with the store-bought cheese.

The plan for 2010 is to make more cheese, more wine/mead/beer, and do a lot more gardening. I will have sextuple the area of wheat planted and last year’s field I want to plant with beans. I’ll try some other veggies as well, but I’ll have to find a way to use them in food that I’ll actually eat. A garden plan will certainly be forthcoming.