Quick Garden Update

We are in the middle of harvesting and selling and this weekend we start canning. Its a great time of year and there is nothing finer than going out into your garden and harvesting something for dinner.

The corn patch. Its coming along but again due to the weather its later than we expected.

We planted an heirloom variety called "Country Gentleman" which is a super sweet white shoe peg variety and I am not real happy with it. We got spotty germination and it seems to be rooting kind of shallow so its prone to blow down but we will see.

We have sunflowers all over the farm, some planted like these on the edge of the corn patch and others deposited through bird seed and they all seem to thrive.

This type has a red flower and multiple heads per plant but wont give us much in the way of seeds.

We have baby sweet watermelons coming along like this one as well as passion melons, cantaloupe, butternut squash, lemon squash, pumpkins and gourds.

I mentioned last year that we almost cut down these small trees that we thought were weeds until we were informed they were Mulberry bushes. They are loaded with berries and we have found a few more so we may try some type of jam with them.

We have Day Lillies all over and though some have been in bloom for about a month our bigger Day Lilly gardens are just now blooming. Once the bloom is off we will divide this garden and greatly extend it.

The terraced planters we built this spring have done very well and we now have the wood for the third segment. This problematic slope looked barren to us before so we are happy with the outcome.

And speaking of sun flowers, look at the size of this one. Same variety as the ones by the corn patch but this one has the benefit of being in a raised bed and a much more fertile soil mixture.

 

We have enough cucumbers to make pickles but they seem to be hot sellers so we haven't been keeping to many. We have both green cucumbers and a yellow variety and of course no one wants the yellow ones (even though they taste great) so we will probably use those to can pickles and relish. Lesson learned.

Beets, onions, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, peppers, and mustard greens in this shot.

We find Broccoli hard to grow here and we aren't sure why. We do have some but they don't seem to be the big robust florette's we envisioned so we will replant for the fall garden in a month or so.

This mild weather hasn't helped ripen the tomatoes which need warm evenings and hot days to ripen. Last night, as in the night of 1 Jul, it was 54 degrees here which was a record low. We are still enjoying it though and we know the tomatoes will ripen soon.

We also planted an heirloom variety of sweet peas and again had spotty germination but they have finally come on and are very popular with customers who seem to prefer to come and pick their own. So far, they have been so popular in fact that we haven't gotten to eat any ourselves let alone can any. Another crop we are expanding for the fall garden.

We planted a few zucchini plants thinking it would mostly be just for us as we like breaded zucchini fries (with Parmesan cheese on top right out of the fryer) and we like to use the blossoms for various dishes but we have been selling the heck out of them in the store we contract with...who knew?

The cabbages have done well this year and are steady sellers. We will have enough to make saur kraut but our efforts last year was an epic fail so we aren't sure we even want to try. In the mean time we enjoy a lot of cole slaw!

We sell a lot of beets, we eat a lot of beets, and we are canning beets this weekend. In fact, a couple nights ago we made Borscht in the Ukrainian fashion..good eats. We also grow and sell two varieties of carrots and they are super sweet. We like to actually harvest them a little smaller and then either lightly steam them or use them raw in salads and as an edible garnish.

The sweet onions have been very successful and we sell them as fast as they are harvested but we also like to use them ourselves. They are sweet enough for an onion sand which...and I am not kidding.

And finally for this post, our experiment with growing potatoes in the tires we had in the barn has been a qualified success. They matured earlier (due to the extra heat) than the potatoes that are still in the conventional rows but the limited space they had didn't allow them to reach their full potential. These are Yukon Golds and they too are big sellers but we also really enjoy them so its a struggle to part with them! They are a soft skin potato that is very creamy and I can make a meal just eating them with a little butter and salt.

 

So that is what is happening on the farm garden wise. We work every day selling, harvesting and of course tending to the plants which in my case means weeding. We don't use herbicides in the food gardens and weeding is accomplished by hand or with a weed eater (works pretty good actually) and we just tolerate a certain amount of weeds and don't get too wrapped up in it. But you cant let it go, if we skip a couple days of weeding it goes wild in a hurry.

 

 

An Evening Walk

10 June; kinda hot and muggy but the evening is breezy and drier. We took a walk around the place and saw  turkeys, ducks, a deer, rabbits, turtles and a few other critters. We werent able to get pictures of everything but the turkey had younguns as did the duck and we heard the yipping of coyote pups close by, its that time of year. (Yup, I used "younguns" in the above paragraph.......making my professors proud there eh?)

We tried candy sweets this year and they are so sweet you can eat them like an apple. Your either an onion lover or your not....we love them.

We have taken to harvesting one or two when we need them and we seem to need them a lot so I am not so sure how many we will be putting in the root cellar. Definitely a crop we are going to expand next year. We harvested this baby at the end of our walk and it went into a savory meat loaf and some will be in a frittata for breakfast.

Our various butterfly gardens attract a wide variety of beautiful creatures. These Swallow tails are very gentle and we have had them land on our heads and stay for a good while. We are going to start documenting their sightings like we do birds.

Our "herd". Actually, with the price of beef right now this represents about $4500 worth of animal and we are just waiting for Maybelle to get a little bigger to breed them.

We discovered that the blackberries in the back woodlot where it stays dark were starting to ripen a lot quicker than our main blackberry patches we use for U-pick or than in the other more open wood lot.....seems strange but thats whats happening. It looks like we are again going to have a bumper crop and we have about 2 weeks to go before we start harvest in earnest which will be about a month earlier than normal.

This elusive cat lives in our barn and is completely wild. He seems to get along with the other cats but he wont let any human close and we infrequently get a glimpse of him this close. As long as he goes after snakes and rodents he can stay (not that we could stop him anyway...and we dont have the heart to shoot him).

To the right along the tree line in this picture we were startled by a hen turkey and her poults. The poults couldnt fly so when we came up on them (we didnt know they were there or we would have gone the other direction) the hen started squaking and they all ran down the tree line. On the way back from our walk we scared up a hen duck (couldnt determine type) and her young who for some reason was in the woods on the left of this picture. They all ran to a pond which is just through the woods in the back in this view. To top all this off a doe was laying in some brush near here and she flushed when we walked by.....we feel like we were really intruding here but it was nice to see variety of wildlife.

And so we started heading back, the upper pasture is on a hill an there is usually a nice breeze and it didnt disappoint this warm evening.

According to the Ag people we have enough pasture to support 6 to 10 cattle on pasture without supplemental feeding....but, our second year of drought has all the pastures around here producing half or less than normal and I am glad we are not stressing our pasture. Our girls have plenty, we can still put up a little hay, and we dont have to be too stressed out ourselves over the drought. We are in the process of buying another acre of pasture which adjoins ours and we are going to be leasing some pasture land from a neighbor to grow the herd.

We have ATV trails around the property to check fence lines and I must admit..just to have fun.

Here is another ATV trail and we use them daily. We are more interested in nature than anything else and we often see things on our rides that we wouldnt otherwise see.

Our isolation pasture has a whole bunch of these Queen Anne lace plants which are actually weeds but they are common in praries in this part of the world. Click on it and you will marvel at the intricacies and beauty that nature even provides for what we consider weeds.

We have many projects still hanging out there like this gate to the isolation pasture we need to install. The posts are bedded in concrete and we just need to get around to it....

Our large Day Lilly garden is just starting to bloom as you can see in this picture. These have grown so much we will be dividing them up and planting additional day lilly gardens. Part of that process though is to document the placement and colours of the various types we have in this bed and Judy is busy getting that down so we know what we have. Trust me, once they quit blooming you cant remember what is where.

Our banana trees are spreading and some of the locals are really curious about them. We like the tropical look, Mexican resterants will purchase the leaves, and we will eventually get small "dessert" bananas.

We planted 6 varieties of tomatoes and all are from heirloom seeds we started in our greenhouse. Hybrids often have more vigor and desease resistence but only an heirloom in my opinion gives you the flavour we seek.

We havent harvested any yet but most of the plants are loaded with tomatoes. Like most others around here, we have been attacked by Aphids (you can see some in this pic) and Japanese Beetles. We have had great success with Neem Oil which is an organic extract of a tree bark and in planting sacrificial plants that draw these insects away from our gardens. Hollyhocks seem to draw the Japanses Beetles away .......to their distress.

Knee high by the Fourth of July? Check.

Cabbage and Cauliflower are trucking right along and we should be able to harvest in a couple weeks. We want to try Sour Kraut...or I should say I want to try it. I can eat a bowl full of Sour Kraut just by itself while Holly and Judy think its gross. Thankfully they dont like sadines either but thats another subject!

It took me a while to get this picture because these baby birds move so fast but this nest in in an old molassas barrel we have by the green house. You get dive bombed and harrassed by the mother when you get to close but we pretty much let birds nest where they do. If nothing else we benefit from their insect gathering to feed their young.

Our pea patch is really coming on strong and looks the best it ever has. I dont know how it is for others but fresh peas are hard to beat.

We had a fairly severe storm with some much needed rain sweep through and we found this box turtle up in the orchard. We have these all over around here along with Snapping turtles and we find them worthy of much study. Click on this picture and look at the bigger shot...they are actually extremely interesting creatures.

If you notice there is a hole unde this guy and what looks to be a nest. We left him alone but will be watching the site to record any hatching or other activity.

And finally, the storm that swept through here came with heavy rain and 60mph+ wind gusts that snapped this tree in our wood lot in half about 20 feet in the air. We were lucky, a bunch of folks had flooding, lost crops, had big trees down etc. So that was one evenings walk and some of what we enjoyed. It was very satisfying and I hope we conveyed the breadth of animal and plant life we are fortunate to live with.

 

Judy's Place

When we decided to look for a small farm in 2009 preparatory to our retirements we invited Holly's mother Judy to join us in the adventure. Our intent was always to find a place that had two residences but that isnt as easy to find as it might seem and mortgage lenders dont generally loan on properties that have two residences so we were further limited to something we could pay cash for.

In todays climate of economic doom and gloom and particularly in this poor rural area multi-generational living situations are more the norm than not so we fit right in here. We all get along which is important but I think the fact that we each have our own place is critical (at least for us) for continued harmony and not feeling like we are burdening or overly dependent on each other. We share most suppers with Wednesday supper at Judy's place, we have separate utilities, we each have a defined yard and private space, and the fact that there are three of us working on the place has been extremely beneficial in getting this place functioning like it is as we all have strengths we bring to the farm. Its also nice that there is almost always someone here watching the farm and taking care of animals so we independently can travel a bit.

When we found this place the main house Holly and I share was actually in worse shape than Judy's mobile home but we saw potential in both and the price was right so we dove in with a vision that many did not share. Here are a few pictures of the combined efforts on Judy's place...we think its coming along nicely:

The entire farm was a blank slate with little in the way of landscaping or fencing and it pretty much looked abandoned which was good in a way because it has allowed us to create our own space.

On the exterior we have added new windows and doors, a new metal roof, covered front porch, sidewalk, back patio, planters, fencing, and lots of landscaping.

We still plan on adding a pergola over the back patio but it already gets lots of use. If you look at the before picture the back door was 3 or 4 feet off the ground and there was no back patio or deck at all.

Judy planted this garden and it has really taken off. She has Dog wood, Asian Lillies, Day Lillies, Mimosas, Rose of Sharon and other things I cant remember the name of. It also gives he some privacy.

Judy has some excellent views. This is looking from her back patio towards the shop and shows the garden bed she planted along the barn pen fence that has roses, hydrangea, clematis etc and is filling in nicely.

To give perspective, this is looking towards the main farm house from the back of Judy's side yard. We both have enough distance and designated yard we can call our own that neither of us feels like we are intruding on the other which I think is important to multi-generational living arrangements.

This picture from our back patio again shows the spatial aspects of our two homes and both households have developed sets of friends and a social life that is not dependent on each other. I mention this just to illustrate how our situation has been working well as I have had several folks with similar circumstances ask about it. Now days kids are moving back with parents, parents are moving in with kids, and even siblings are moving in together out of economic necessity. No two situations are the same but this arrangement works for us.

Judy has created a light, airy, and homey interior out of what had been a dark and depressing closed in space. She has 3 bedrooms and 2 full baths with the master bedroom and bath at one end and two bedrooms and a bath at the other. Separating them is the living room and kitchen and I really like the layout.

She has her master bedroom...

A dedicated craft and sewing room for her quilting...

And Chris keeps a room for when he is home 2 or 3 days a month. All in all its very functional and comfortable.

There was no covered porch at all when we moved in but this simple addition added a lot to the look and finctionality of the home.

Judy planted this Wisteria last year as a small twig and its now going wild. The three of us share a love of animals and the outdoors and gardening in particular.

And finally, we have a lot of cats running around that seem to congregate around the farm (the barn cats come and go) and they do a good job of keeping down the rodents and snakes b ut once in a while one shows up that is special and gets to come indoors. This is Judy's cat Piglet who showed up last winter at our doorstep when she was a couple weeks old and half frozen and severely injured. Piglet had been thrown from a car and now has permanent abraded spots on one side where she lost fur and skin, her face was broken so she has a lop sided nose and wheezes and whistles when she breaths like Jim Carrey in "Me, Myself and Irene", she is cross eyed, and her voice box was damaged so she cant meow or make other cat noises even though she tries, and she is very small and not likely to get much bigger according to the vet. For all that she is extremely affectionate, happy, and cute in an "Oh My God" sort of way that is hard to describe. She spends her days lazing in the sun and trying to catch butterflys and we are kind of glad we took her in.