Catching Up

It seems hard to believe that we haven't posted since 5 June but we have been on overload. We are in the middle of the season where growing, harvesting, and selling collides with fund raising for the various charities we belong to and just in the last month we have worked a Junior 4H Fair, a draft horse obstacle course challenge, and this past Saturday I got to light off the fire works for the community 4th BBQ and gospel sing. All those years blowing stuff up comes in handy sometimes.

One of the things we have gotten done is some signage for the farm. We have been advertising some, we have brochures published and distributed, and we are now selling from the farm and through a local store. Sales have been slow but steady and our biggest sellers are not ready yet (tomatoes and corn) so it should only improve.

The font is from the 1930s which we thought was fitting.

 

This is a temporary set up and we have the materials to do a sign that identifies specific produce etc. It will be wood and old fashioned.

 

I saw this on a picture from the 1940s and had it reproduced. The signs are aluminum and should last a good while.

 

The new greenhouse is working out well and we now have shade cloth on both greenhouses.

 

We have customers that come and pick what they want and then we harvest it for them. In this case he wanted beets, onions, a cabbage, red leaf lettuce and mustard greens.

We have also had customers ask us to make containers and pots full of plant starts, bulbs or cuttings they purchase from us. They bring the containers, we set them up and give them some tips on successfully growing them.

 

The grape vines should be producing another bumper crop. We have planted some additional vines that will be productive next year and the big outlay for the vineyard will be this fall.

With on farm sales you have to behave yourself because we have a lot of visitors but we live here and from what some people are telling us they like to come from the city and see an old fashioned quiet country farm....and clothes on the line is part of that. We just try not to have anything too risque!

We sell flowers, bulbs, starts, cuttings etc and we have a lot of examples in our own gardens. Color is important to us and we enjoy the flowers for that color and for the beneficial insects that they bring.

This has been a very mild year (it was 54 last night) and we are enjoying it but some of the plants are really almost a month behind. These Lillies should have bloomed at the beginning of June.

Just to show some variety of what we have...

The sweet smell of flowers, when they are outside, is intoxicating to me.

Notice the varied colors, shapes of the petals...

and the incredible variety of pistils and stamens

Even the stark white of this Hydrangea has a particular beauty.

 

But it hasn't been all work and no play. We live a few miles from Route 66 and have an on going passion for traveling that route and seeing all that it has to offer. Traffic is usually light or almost non-existent, and there are still some operating attractions. For Fathers day, Holly and Judy took me to the Wild Animal Safari in Strafford, MO which is on Route 66.

They have two parts to the place, one you do a walk about and see Lions and other animals you can feed and the other is a driving tour where the animals will come up to your car and you can feed them. We thought it would be a 10 - 15 minute drive but it took us 2 hours to get through the thing and it was a blast. This Ostrich stuck his head right in the car and grabbed some feed right out of the bag.

Poor Holly had this Zeedonk chase the car and not let her go. It was hilarious and every time we would stop for other animals he was at her window wanting a treat. We finally got away from him by dropping some range cubes on the ground and making a run for it.

Its a nondescript place and to be honest it looks run down from the road but it was quite nice and a fun place to bring a family.

You would think that living on a farm we would have our fill of animals but ...no.

This little guy seemed lonely and liked to have his neck rubbed.

So that almost catches us up. The three of us like these road side attractions and this one proves you cant judge a book by its cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring is in Full Bloom

Just a few shots from around the farm of the glory of spring.

Judy had planted several things when we first moved here in her yard that this year have just taken off. She has Lillies, Dogwood, fruit trees, Wisteria, Mimosas, Clematis, lots of Roses and a host of other plants that have filled her garden. Rose the Farm Dog likes it too.

So many projects!!

Spring in full bloom  and the smell of the flowers is great this year. Holly and Judy have put a lot of effort into making this look like this.

We have a lot of fruit in the orchard like these peaches...but we are still within the frost danger zone so????

We probably have 30 or 40 grape vines and they are all loaded with grapes like this one on the arbor...might be a good wine making season.

We have lots of Peonies around the farm and buds like this beget...

Flowers like this. We have several colours and most havent bloomed yet but when they do its a rich display of colour and fragrance.

We have many Iris beds but this one on the front of the house is the most impressive. We have the traditional blue, blue and white, pure white, salmon, purple and ......

Yellow Iris'...eve see one of these? I have to admit I have always liked flowers and we grow copious amounts here on the farm. Currently the poppies are blooming, the Clematis are blooming, the Dianthus, and many more flowers. Sorry if you live in snow country...

Flowers in the Garden

We all like flowers here on the farm and have carefully nurtured the flowers that were already planted when we bought the place and we have planted many more. We admire the English garden style that mixes flowering shrubs, flowers and different foliages in a meandering billowy non-linear fashion rather than a formal look and we plan to add to our garden every year (we are only in our second year here). We are also aiming for dual use when possible so we have lots of day lillies which can be eaten, they have an attractive and easily maintained foliage, the flowers are beautiful and attract butterflys and bees which helps pollinate our vegetable garden and the fragrance on most varieties is rich and sweet and wafts through the air as we walk around the yard. Similarly, the marigolds we plant throughout the veghetable garden repels unwanted pests and brightens an otherwise green landscape and the sunflowers we plant provides a flowers and seed for the birds.

There is just something so peacefull and calming about flowers which is why we have them at funerals and send them to the sick or to someone you love. As we walk through our gardens and smell the sweetness and listen to the bees buzzing around and watch the butterflys flit from stamen to stamen its hard to be depressed or angry. We plant for succession and have something in bloom all year long starting with the Forsythia, Lilacs and Crocus progressing to the Iris and Rose bloom and on into fall with the Autumn Crocus but this period of early summer has given us a rich variety of color and fragrance.

We have many Mimosa trees we are nursing back to life after the previous owner cut most of them down (grrr) and they have an interesting wispy flower and the peculiar habit of the leaves on the tree folding up at night.

We have three Hollyhock gardens and though they are just about played out for this year they are spectacular. Ours have grown to about 7 feet tall and they are just loaded with blooms though the wind we have had has taken a toll on them this year.

And we have lots and lots of Day Lillies including this garden. Our friends Jack and Rene gave us all of these day lillies out of their own garden last year and they have just thrived.

Day Lillies come in a seemingly endless variety and gardening with them is an addictive hobby.

They have thick petals and very pronounced stamens and attract butterflys and bees in swarms.

Some are low to the ground, some mound and some are very upright and can get 4 foot tall or more

And they are very fragrant....you can smell these flowers all over in our back yard.

We just enjoy the variety

And we have Geraniums, Poppies, and Honeysuckle in back of the well house

Honeysuckle is also very fragrant and we have several patches of it but this particular one gives you a dose of fragrant Honeysuckle as you go through the grape arbor and right before you get to the big Day Lillie garden.

And we have Oriental Lillies interspersed with more Day Lillies and some small Mimosas

Lots of colorfull Petunias

Old fashioned Day Lillies in back of the wood shed

Hydrangeas, Day Lillies, Holly Hocks and Clematis along side of the house with Hybiscus getting ready to bloom.

We have planted a Day Lillie grden with Butterfly bushes next to a water source for the butterflys. We will eventually replace the ungly blue tub we use for water with a natural stone pond and a solar powered small fountain for the butterflys and birds.

The Camas Lillies are about played out but added some nice color out front.

And of course the unique and ubiquitous (to the Midwest anyway) Coneflowers...loved by butterflys.

More Petunias greet visitors at the front door

Along with Crysanthemums starting their colorful bloom

And we have planted Trumpet Vine for our Hummingbirds

Judy's Salmon Poppies didwell this year and I suspect we will have a great many more next year as they are colorful and hardy here.

And another addictive hobby is the cultivation of Knock Out Roses

They provide a steady bloom unlike traditional roses and come in a wide variety of flowers...some very fragrant and some not

Pansys greet visitors to Judy's house.

We have several varieties of Marigolds throughout the vegetable garden and we enjoy their color while we are tending to that garden.

We never could grow Sun Flowers in Alaska and we like the color, the height, and the seed they provide for our winter bird feeding.

We plant them at the end of all of our vegetable garden rows.

We have 6 or 7 Clematis vines all in a flowering state right now

We have purple, lavender, blue and a blue and white variety and there will be more next year to be trained along some of our field fencing.

I think these are Impatiens but ???

And finally...Persian Zinnias

These pictures wer all taken today, not all our flowers are shown and we have a pasture full of natural flowers, wild roses now in bloom, Mullin, etc. I guess..we do really like flowers!