It's been a while since I last posted, but we have been busy! Today we are receiving our first major snow, (We had a little dusting a couple of weeks ago) we have a couple of inches so far and it is a wet snow which means we will have to keep any eye on our hoop houses if we get much more. Since it was snowing this morning and the market was moved to a different location and was going to be a much smaller area and we would be limited to one table, we decided not to go to market this morning.

Yesterday Greg planted some onion, leek and shallot seeds in the greenhouse and I started some rosemary and oregano cuttings.  Last week we got the outside tomato field cleaned up and disced. That's always a job to get all the twine, stakes and cages pulled out and stacked and then we have to mow off the dead tomato vines and pull up the plastic and drip tape then haul that all away! Then we tackled the hoophouse which had tomatoes in it and got it all cleaned out, too. Also cleaned out the big green house and got it straightened up a bit. We got our new cooler completed and the sweet potatoes and winter squash moved into it. It took a while to get the temperature regulated in there, but I think we finally have it where we want it.

I've been putting soup mixes together, and finishing drying peppers. Now need to work on drying some potatoes. I'm just doing two kinds this year, Gumbo and vegetable, those  were our two most popular ones last year. We went to a greenhouse auction the Saturday after Thanksgiving and managed to get some supplies like potting soil, pots, fans, etc. Greg has been ordering parts to make over his small transplanter so that we can use it to plant onions next Spring. Hopefully it will work as it will make it much easier on the knees and back, not to mention much faster!:) While it has slowed down there are always things and projects to keep us busy, but I have been managing to do some Christmas baking and Christmas shopping (on line)! Hopefully everyone has a great Holiday Season and a great New Year!:)

We had our first indoor winter market today. It was nice to be indoors, but the carting of everything indoors and the cramped space is always a trade off...! I don't know why it is but it's hard to get the customer to follow and continue to the indoor location. No matter how much we tell them that we are continuing all winter they just don't follow us over the winter, but this is the fourth year and it has grown considerably each year, it just takes time to build it up and to educate the customer!

We have all our sweet potatoes dug. We estimate between 8 and 9 thousand pounds is what we have! So we will have plenty to sell for the winter. We are looking at selling some to a local grocery store, so hope that goes well so they continue to buy more from us!!!! We've been digging a little ginger and tumeric each week for the market. That has gone very well, but will have to dig it all before long, as we've had our killing frost last week. All the outdoor tomatoes, okra, zucchini, and winter squash was killed. We still have tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, plus our tumeric and ginger in the hoop houses. We are also covering them with row covers to help prolong them, but they will not last too much longer. We did pull 10 dozen bunches of radishes that are outside. This is a good time of year for them, they are very sweet and crisp! Also still have parsley outside.  Have been dehydrating peppers and tomatoes. Will be putting together soup mixes this next week hopefully!

We are working on converting an old brooder house into a cooler as our current cooler is not big enough to hold all our sweet potatoes! We are adding more insulation and cooling/heating system, then we can transfer the rest of the sweet potatoes and winter squash into it. We've moved some of the potatoes to our old cooler and the rest are still in the green house curing... Then when we get that all done and things moved we get to start on cleaning up the fields, removing tomato stakes, strings and plastic mulch and drip tape so we can get them plowed, then we'll need to get the hoop houses cleaned out and replanted with some greens...always something to do, never a dull minute...!:) Plus all the seed catalogs are starting to come so we will need to get our orders placed for next year before too long...!!!!!! What would we ever do if we didn't have anything to do????????? Maybe sleep!!!!! :)

Again it's been a while since I last posted, but we've been busy. That seems to always be the excuse anyway!

Since I last posted we've been on vacation. We went to Saugerties, NY to their garlic festival! That was very interesting and of course we bought a lot more garlic to plant. So since we've been home we've shucked and planted around 72 varieties and close to 10,000 or more cloves! Yes I know, that's a lot of garlic!!! We've also been digging sweet potatoes. We have about 1/3rd done I think we have around 10 more rows to go. They are producing very well  for the most part. Was a bit disappointed in the purple ones productivity, but it was our first year for them. We may need to find a different variety next year or try them again in a little bit different spot and water them a little less?! Our strawberries we planted earlier are looking very good, much better than they did this time last year, so hopefully that is a good sign for next year?!:) I have yet to dig my tumeric and ginger am waiting as long as possible to let it get as big as possible...but will have to start digging it in the next week probably. We haven't had a frost yet, but it's only a matter of time. We are still getting tomatoes, peppers and eggplants, but they are tapering off. Pretty soon I will be able to start picking green tomatoes and freezing them.  We are still doing market and will be moving to our winter indoor market the first weekend in November. That will be nice to be under roof. The last 3 Saturday markets it has rained on us and while the cooler weather hasn't been that bad it's not fun when you're wet! Well always lots to do and not much time to do it. We really feel the pinch now that the days are shorter and only getting more so!

What a difference a day makes! Last Thursday was up in the upper 90's and then Friday started in the low 70's and then made it up in the 80's, but that was so much more pleasant to pick in then the past couple of weeks! We got some much needed rain Sunday, but sure could use a lot more! Never satisfied are we?! :)

We've been busy as usual. Picking takes two days right now to get it all done and then we still aren't getting all the tomatoes done. We've been dehydrating apples and getting strawberry and garlic beds made and ready to plant. We planted two thousand strawberry plants yesterday outside. The other thousand will go in the hoophouse so that will be the next project to get done; tear out the weeds and till up the ground in the hoophouse and get it ready to plant! We need to get the garlic bulbs pulled apart so we can get them ready to plant and pretty soon we will need to start digging the sweet potatoes and then picking the winter squash!

Market has been very good the last several weeks. We are kept busy all morning and don't get any breaks. Greg bought me biscuits and gravy from the food wagon Sat. morning as he had to carry out a box of tomatoes to a customers car and thought he'd stop on the way by, but I never got a chance to eat them! It's good to be busy, but sure makes you tired! :)

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!!!!!!!!

It's finally turned hot! August had been a very cool month with temperatures at night down in the upper sixties and low fifties and day time temps in the upper seventies! Was very nice and made for excellent market days! But the typical hot August weather has arrived this past week with yesterday reaching 97 degrees. We sure could use some rain, too. Until this last week it had been pretty green for August, but with the heat and lack of rain this week things are turning brown.

We've been busy! Our heirloom tomatoes are really going strong. We have been selling lots, but still have lots to get rid of. I'm taking some to our local food bank today, we've been dehydrating some along with also doing okra and green beans. We've also started digging potatoes, so far they are doing just so so, but we got them in awfully late and have been having to irrigate them. Our zucchini is going gang buster like zucchini usually does. I've been grinding up lots to freeze for zucchini bread! We finally got our strawberry tips last Tuesday and got them rooting. They were about ten days late in arriving which puts them further behind in getting planted this fall which affects how big and established they will be going into the winter. Let's hope for a mild and long fall!

It's been a couple weeks since I posted so thought I'd update you. We are laying drip tape in the winter squash field to get it watered as it doesn't look like we are going to be getting any rain soon. We laid one on the summer squash last week. The bean field still looks ok but it is needing rain and we won't be trying to water that field. We are picking lots of zucchini and summer squash! We have been grinding and freezing lots of it so I can make zucchini bread and chocolate zucchini bread, both good sellers at market. We are also picking lots of peppers and some eggplant. Last week we had a tray of tomatoes so those are starting to come on finally! Everyone is anxious for them! We've got all of the candy onions pulled and in the barn and those have been selling really well. Nothing to exciting just keeping things watered now! Some rain would be very much appreciated now. But that is the "joy" of farming I guess.

More Farm and Market Pictures

I got new batteries for my camera and remembered to take it back out to the field to get some more pictures! The two pictures below are of one of our sweet potato fields. The second one shows our zucchini planted along the left side with our field of dried beans on the left of them. The beans came up very spotty as it was old seed. We have been trying to get them planted for the last two years, but weather has not cooperated with us. We may end up picking them as green beans.

 The picture below is another one of our sweet potato fields. As you can see we also grow weeds really well! Greg has since taken care of them! I think I counted we have around 32 different varieties of sweet potatoes.

 Our weekly trip to the horse barn to get loads of manure for our compost pile. You can see the steam rising from the pile on the truck! We make a trip once a week. We have two nice compost piles going. We are getting tired of scooping them off however, so we are in the process of purchasing a dump trailer to make that job quicker and easier. Should have it sometime the first of August. Can't wait!

 This was our stand at market this morning.

 We took some of our garlic that we got dug last week. It seemed to go over very well, so we are excited about that. We only took about 15 different varieties and sold out of 3 that we took. We only took one bunch of each so next week we will add some more varieties in our offering as they get dried.

 These are some of our candy onions. We just started pulling them.They look the best we've ever had them! That's some basil behind them.

 This is some of my baked goods and dried goods hanging up behind. I bake sweet breads using our produce in all of them except the banana bread, but I use our eggs in those! I bake applesauce bread, banana, banana coconut, strawberry, green tomato, persimmon, persimmon pudding, chocolate zucchini and plain zucchini. Dried goods range from apple slices, strawberries, tomatoes, tomato powder, peppers, okra and soup mixes.

 These are some of our peppers that we had today! They are just starting, this was our first real picking and we sold all out of them!

Farm Pictures!

Well I finally remembered to take my camera out to the field with me to get some pictures for this blog. It's always more interesting to see some pictures about what we are talking about. But my batteries died before I could get some taken of the sweet potato field and the winter squash field. Maybe next time...:)

Here are some pictures of our farm. This one above is some of our basil. We picked 50 bags off it to sell last week at market.

Here is our okra. It's not very big yet, but we've already had two small pickings off of it. The hoop house at the end is our new one we put up this winter. We have some early heirloom tomatoes in it.

Here are our outside tomatoes. We've been working on getting them all strung up. I have one more row to do and then it'll be time to start the second stringing! Ha! :)

Just another shot of the tomato field.

This is our potato field on down from the tomatoes. We got them in late this year so they are still growing, but they have started blooming. Hopefully they will make potatoes this year. We have around 10 or so different varieties with two different blue kinds!

This is our bed of candy onions on the far edge of our potatoes. We are excited about them this year as they are really looking good. We don't seem to be able to grow very big onions, but this year looks like we will do a lot better job than we have in the past. See picture below. It's amazing what composting and soil amendments can do!

This is our ginger and tumeric in one of our hoop houses. Last year was our first year doing ginger and it went over really well at market. So this year we ordered more to plant and they mistakenly sent us some tumeric also, so we are trying that this year as it is grown pretty much the same as ginger.

And last but not least here are a couple of pictures of the garlic we've been digging. We've only gotten one bed dug so far, have about four more to dig. We've got around 30 different varieties so hopefully there will be something for everyone's taste!

We've been picking strawberries for 4 weeks now and are about done. The outside ones aren't doing so well with all this rain. We've gotten most of the sweet potato slips planted (1,400) but still have a couple hundred to go. The problem is we've run out of bed space and need to make up more but the rain keeps us from being able to work the ground! Plus the bunnies and deer like munching on them! Greg has been spraying an egg and hot pepper spray on them, but again the rain keeps washing it away. We missed last nights chance of rain, but they are calling for more rain tonight so we'll see if we can dodge another one! I've been pulling weeds out of the garlic. They are make scapes now and have been cutting them to sell. We've gotten the ground worked in the big hoop house and trenches made so I can plant my ginger, now just need to find time. All the tomatoes are planted so now we need to get them all staked and twine strung. UGH!!! I absolutely hate that job! We put an electric fence around the okra to keep the deer out of them so we don't have a repeat of last summer with no okra! Well I need to wrap this up and go switch the water in the hoop house. Kind of ironic with all the rain that we still have to water!

Yeah!!!!! No rain since middle of last week! We've got two of our plots tilled and fertilized and beds made!  And we've got the potatoes planted! Making progress. We picked 106 quarts of strawberries last week for Saturday market and had green onions, arugula, radicchio, Swiss chard, tomato plants, basil and rosemary plants, along with our baked goods and dried goods.  Looks like this week we will have some tot soi and mizuna also!  We've had to put up chicken wire fencing around the greens inside our little hoop house to keep out the bunnies! Boy are they ever in abundance this year! The sweet potato slips need to be planted next as they are taking over the green house, also my turmeric and ginger are sprouting well and also need to be planted out in the hoop house. Then of course there are the field tomatoes to go out, there's only around a thousand of those....Greg is still working 1pm to 1am for the outage at his work. He said today that there were around 10 more days of that yet....

Well yesterday and today are in the 80 degree range and haven't had any rain since Saturday and things are drying out. Could work the ground tomorrow and get potatoes planted the next day, but they are calling for rain tonight, so we'll just have to cross our fingers and wait and see! We have sweet potatoes slips sprouting in the green house and my ginger and turmeric are also starting to sprout. We finally got the new hoop house filled with heirloom tomatoes and another one filled with peppers and eggplant. Strawberries are ripening in the big hoop house. We had a quart last Saturday for market! The apple trees are blooming and the outside strawberries are blooming, but they are calling for temps. to drop down in the mid to low 30's Friday night! Again we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that that doesn't happen as I really hate covering and uncovering the strawberries! Finally got the yard mowed Monday. Couldn't get the lawn mower started and had to get a new battery, then when I was just about done mowing the deck broke away from the spindle on the left side, so had to replace the spindle. We've been hauling manure every week and shuffling trucks to the repair shop for maintenance and repairs! Greg has been working 12 hour night shifts at his work for 3 weeks now, and will probably have to go for another 2 weeks at least! So as you can tell we are keeping busy and not getting much planted!

Finally some nice warm Spring weather! The Forsythia bushes have started blooming the last 2 days, daffodils are blooming, rhubarb is starting to peak through, the garlic we planted last Fall is looking good, the peach trees are about to pop out, the apricot trees have been blooming for a few days, strawberries in the hoop house are blooming and making little berries, and the grass is going to need to be cut in the next week! It's amazing how quickly things start to grow with just a few days of warm sunshine! We've planted around 2000 candy onions, and 2 bushel of onion bulbs for green onions. We've got sweet potato slips to get going and regular potatoes to cut up and cure so we can get them planted. Uncovered the outside strawberries so hopefully it will stay above freezing and we won't have to cover them back up. They should start blooming in the next week or so if it stays nice and warm. Of course now that it's warm enough and dry enough to do these things it's started to rain! It rained last night and more expected tonight and tomorrow! I've got basil seedlings to transplant and need to get more started and also want to get parsley started. Things are starting to get busy, busy, busy!!!!!!! :)

Wow! What a difference in years this Spring! At least the calendar says it's Spring, but after another major snow storm and temperatures in the 20's it doesn't look or feel like Spring. This time last year we were almost a month a head of schedule and things were blooming early and we were mowing grass already! They are calling for a warm up for Easter Sunday but then to turn cold again April Fools day. Well nature does have a way of putting us in our place and having the last say...! Besides scooping snow off of our hoop houses, we have been trying to get a little bit done. We have got our ginger and tumeric pre-started in the green house. We have tomato, eggplant and pepper plants up and going. We have Swiss chard, and various greens sprouted and ready to put out in the hoop houses if we could get out there to them through the snow and mud! (Bright side...we are getting much needed moisture!) We have potatoes and onions ready to plant, and sweet potatoes ready to start our own slips this year. Our garlic we planted last fall is coming up and looking good. Strawberries in the hoop house are starting to bloom. We haven't even uncovered the ones outside yet. So when it starts to warm up and dry out a bit things are going to get very hectic around here. This year the power plant where Greg works is having their Spring Outage where they shut down, refuel, repair and do maintenance work. It is done every 18 months and is a 4-6 week long period of lots of over time and extra work. So we will be double busy!

SNOW

Snow, snow go away! We've had two major snow storms within a week of each other and it is still snowing today! I'm not sure how much is out there but at least 12" with another 2-3" expected today. In the first storm last Thursday we had damage to one of our hoop houses. It partially collapsed on one side. So we had to get out and push all the snow off all the hoop houses. That's a total of 4 now! Then in Monday nights storm we went out at 2:00 a.m. and cleaned off the hoop houses again. That took us 2 1/2 hours! Not fun! It was a very wet and heavy snow, but only around 4" this time. So we've been doing a lot of scooping and shoveling of snow. I figure our old deck will be the next to collapse as the snow from the roof keeps sliding off and it is now up to the deck railing! It is very pretty to look at but sure makes getting around to do chores difficult. But we will keep on chugging along! :)

Well lots has happened since I last posted in May. So sorry that seems like eons ago! We went from strawberries straight into a drought and then over 4 weeks of above 100 degree temperatures. We planted over 6,000 winter squash seedlings, planted out around 500 tomato plants and 200 okra plants, 700 sweet potato slips and 350 lbs of seed potatoes. We ran water every day, 7 days a week. Everything got 1 1/2 hours water every other day. Our blueberries did not amount to anything, they were blooming during one of our late frosts. Didn't think it was that bad at the time, but we were wrong. We got a few blackberries, and since we don't have water out to them the drought and heat dried them up on the bushes. The deer kept the okra and my sunflowers mowed off, so finally had to put up an electric fence around our 2 rows of okra, then we were finally able to get some okra, but the plants never did grow very well because of the...you guessed it the drought and the heat! The winter squash only produced a 5 gallon bucket of squash because of the...drought and the heat! The potatoes did about half of what they should have and the same with the sweet potatoes. The heat we believe was the main problem, we could get water to most things, but the repeated 100 degree heat days was just more than the plants could take. The tomatoes were the only thing that did really well for us, but again while it was so hot fruit did not set, so we had our early flush and then after the weather cooled back down they started to bloom and set again. In fact we just had the final killing frost last week. So today I stripped all the green tomatoes and any that were any good off so we can start cleaning up that field. I've been grinding up green tomatoes and freezing them. I use them to make bread and cake to sell at market. This has also been a very good persimmon year. So we've been picking and processing persimmon pulp and freezing it. I already have over one hundred 2 cup bags worth in the freezer. We are going out this afternoon when Greg gets home to finish picking the rest of the persimmons. We also had quite a few apples this year from our orchard, so as well as selling them we have been making and canning applesauce and drying them. We also dried a lot of tomatoes. .

Well what can I say? I'm going to try to start posting again! We are still here and we are still farming and growing produce. In fact we've been selling all winter at the winter market in Columbia. We are picking some arugala and swiss chard. We also take sweetpotatoes, dried goods like apples, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries and soup mixes.I am still baking breads and persimmon pudding. We also have frozen strawberries and frozen persimmon pulp that we sell. We have built our fourth hoop house this winter. Greg has been busy ordering seeds. I went yesterday and picked up some of our potatoes and onion sets. We've got a few flats of tomatoes, swiss chard, peppers and eggplant started in the green house. We've been hauling horse manure every week to add to our compost piles. So not much has changed still the same things going on. I hope to stay on top of this blog better and get back into the groove!