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!!!!!!! :)