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!