Plow Monday

Plow Monday, the first Monday after Epiphany, is the traditional day in Europe for farmers to restart their farm work. 

Our garden isn't large, but I think of it as my miniature farm. Normally, it's too wet at this time in the Pacific Northwest to do any digging, but many other tasks are possible, and it's good motivation for me to have this set date each year to start my “farm work”.

I got a lot of good permaculture information from Amy of the Ten-Acre Farm.  Amy says,

"January is one of my favorite times of year because I love the opportunity to start anew, make new agreements with myself about how I will spend time in the garden, and determine what kinds of experiments I will run to continue learning and improving."

 

Agenda for today & this week: 

1. Journal query

2. Tool blessing ceremony

3. January harvest

4. Garden planing

5. Daily garden visits

6. Make plough pudding

1. Journal query:

Plow Monday is the day I like to fantasize and plan changes in my garden: I map out the rotation of my vegetable beds for the year, look through my Garden Journal notes from last year, and make a list of ideas - new garden projects, and new things to plant. My query every year is:

How can I make my garden a better sanctuary for my family, more comfortable for friends, a greater learning-experience for my grandson, more mysterious and secluded, more of a visual treat, AND easier to keep up with?

Last year we made a huge whole-garden re-design: We took out an old apple tree, re-fenced the duck yard, moved all the vegetable beds, built a large walled bed in the front yard and a patio. And all of this was a response to this query!

This year we will get to refine and improve.

2. Tool Blessing Ceremony:

Before farm work starts on Plow Monday, a ceremonial plow is blessed at church, then paraded through the streets to collect money for the parish.

Today I clean and sharpen my garden tools and oil the wooden handles. While I work, I focus on the purpose and history of these tools: All the planting of food that they have helped with, and the pruning of trees, and the trimming of grass. 

I clean the dirt out of my storage basket, and put everything away again in better order.

I make the act of cleaning into a blessing: “Bless these tools to do their work”.

3. January Harvest:

Amy of Ten Acre Farm says, always harvest first, because the goal of all of this gardening is to harvest fresh, healthy food for your table. So to make sure that happens, prioritize harvesting over other tasks.

This winter, all I have in the garden is spinach, beets, collards, and parsley, and I plan to harvest some of each today.

4. Garden Planning:

January is the perfect time to get my plans for the year in order. This is actually a pretty time-consuming project, so I will schedule a few times this week to work on it: 

1. 
   Choose What to Plant: Make a list of what we like to eat, all the standards, plus a few experimental crops. (I'm thinking about planting oats this year!)
2. Update my Planting Schedule: Once I have my list of plants for the year, I'll do a little research and determine the date to start each thing I want to grow, and put it onto my planting spreadsheet.
3. Update my Monthly Checklists: I'm going to use the monthly Ten Acre Farm permaculture garden guides to update my own check lists.
4. Start a new garden record book: I used to keep better records, but somewhere along the line I stopped. This is the year I'm going to keep track of garden successes and failures—dates when I notice certain pests, and when I add soil amendments, for example.

4. Daily Garden Visits:

I've been out in my garden less since winter started. But even in January, the garden offers me connections with the earth and sky, the seasons, and the Spirit of Creation. My heart fills when I visit my garden even for a few minutes each day, to see the buds poking up and watch the changes in the trees.

Here are the tasks that will inspire me to step out into my garden this week:

• Harvest first.
• Visit a different garden bed each day with clippers, and cut dead plants and weeds (leave roots to feed the soil). 
• Take my camera out into the garden to collect images. 
• Check the bird feeders and refill them.
• This is a good time to prune the plum tree, the grape, and summer flowering bushes like the lilac and hydrangea.
• Rake up the last of the Hawthorn leaves and berries, and move them to mulch the paths.
• Keep applying leaf mold to beds (but leave the pumpkin bed bare so as not to provide protection to overwintering squash bugs).

5. Make Plough Pudding:

This is a steamed meat pudding traditionally made in Britain on Plow Monday- very rich and yummy. See the recipe here.