More Rain.....Wonderful!!!

We are so thankful for all of the wonderful rain. We can already see the difference in the gardens from this weekends rains. Today we spent the day seeding and putting row covers on a lot of the crops. We did this even in the blissful rain. We were muddy and wet but kept on working.

JG

Better Late Than Never.

Things are coming along here on the farm. The calf is settled in and there are four new piglets on the farm. The chickens only have five more weeks left. We got the meat chickens a month earlier this year because we thought it would be one less thing we would have to worry about in later in the summer.

All of the raspberries, blackberries, rhubarb and fruit trees that we planted have survived the spring transplanting.

Andrew and his father were trying our my grandfathers old hay mower today. It seems that they figured it out. The sheep will appreciate the efforts I am sure.

Water has been our biggest battle so far this season. We have only had two good rains in the past two months. "chances of showers" just isn't doing it for us. We have been installing a drip irrigation system and doing a lot of hand watering in an effort to keep the crops from stunting or bolting and even germinating has been a problem in some cases.

Our CSA members have been very understanding with the slow start and are eager for the boxes to start. The boxes are starting July 2nd. We are all excited about the CSA concept this year. We are looking forward to meeting everyone next week and are anticipating a great season.

JG

Some New Pictures.

The sheep have been really enjoying being out on pasture. This is the first year we have used the front pasture for the sheep so they were a little hard to get down there but now they now where the good grass is and they get so excited.

The picture on the top left is of cooked burdock root. Andrew read that burdock root was good cooked to he thought he would try it. If anyone else would like to try there is plenty of it growing on the farm. Andrew found that the burdock root had a mild taste to it. There is probably a better recipe for it than what we used.

This is our newest member of the farm. He is a Holstein calf and our girls have decided that Patch will be his name.

I will write another posting later. Right now Andrew and I are going for a walk before it gets dark.

JG

Sorry for the lack of postings. These past two weeks have been very busy with all of the planting that needs to get done. May 8th we planted half an acre of potatoes all by hand. So far in the gardens we have turnip, snow peas, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, green onions, carrots, beets, swiss chard, radish and lettuces. The rain that we received yesterday seemed to do wonders for the germination of the seed. The snow peas, pod peas, turnip, radish, lettuces, beets and broccoli are all up. It is such a wonderful feeling to see the little green seedlings popping up in a neat row.

During the last week we transplanted 30 rhubarb plants that a neighbour generously gave us well as some thornless raspberry canes. We have tripled the size of our blackberry patch. There were over 100 asparagus plants planted as well.

We have started to put the sheep out to pasture in the afternoons. It always turns out to be a family affair trying to get them our to the pasture and then back in again. The girls love it and they get to help with an important job. They are scared they are going to lose one of their baby lambs.

May 17th was our fourth market day. Each weekend is busier than the last. We have been selling out each saturday. There has been a steady interest in our CSA program. Even though we are full for this season we are still taking names for next year. It is our hope that as we see how the gardens are progresssing we may be able to take on more members later in the season.

JG

Updates.

There is so much is going on here it is hard to decide where to start. May 3rd was our second market day. Everything sold quickly. Our goal is to sell enough to pay for the day and and to let frequent market visitors see that we are back for this season and that we have produce growing now.

I really love going to the market on saturdays. Now that it is our second year I feel as though I am becoming part of the vendor community. We like to buy what we can at the market during the season. The garlic we stocked up on in the fall was wonderful. It lasted until this spring and that is just because we used it all up.

The article in the Saturdays' Telegraph Journal, about the global crisis and how it effects the local producers, was a wonderful opportunity to let area residents know we exist and what we offer. The members of our CSA are all eager and excited about the program. We are exicted as well for the upcoming season.

I guess the season is not upcoming...it is here. We planted .25 of an acre today. I will be feeling that tomorrow morning. It doesn't sound like much of an area but it really is when you are picking rocks and sod. It took three of us all day to plant everything except for the peas and snow peas, this will be our task for the morning. We plan on planting our potatoes tomorrow as well.

Our apprentice started on May 4th. We are all a little nervous, but we are all getting along well and I think everything will fine.

JG

Saturday Is Market Day

I will at the Kingston Farmer's Market this Saturday May 3rd. I will be selling Lettuce mixes and will be doing some promoting of out CSA Program.

Hope to be seeing you there.

JG

More From The Greenhouse

As you can see the swiss chard is doing great. Beet greens as well as the lettuces are ready for harvest. This is good because the Kingston Farmer's Market starts this Saturday.

April 19th we started to plough our fields for this years' planting. One of the fields was tilled today. We are hoping to start seeding some of the hardier greens this weekend outside.

I have been working on the blackberry patch since yesterday. It is hard to start and finish a task when you have two little girls that want you to play with them rather that watch you work. But I finished transplanting 40 blackberry canes tonight. The root system on the plants make them very hard to dig up.

On Saturday we mulched the strawberries with straw. Because we have limited access to equipment we hand raked straw from the field where we planted oats last fall and then placed it on our hay wagon. We (the family) placed the straw around the plants. Our girls thought it was a wonderful afternoon.

JG