We Are Busier than This Blog Makes it Seem

We have been working hard and accomplishing much.  Blogging has fallen to the bottom of the priority list, so I am way behind.  I'll write a quick catch-up post now and tour you around the farm. Then, back to work!

The garden is growing great!  It is so luxurious to have the entire garden space plus the high tunnel greenhouse to plant in this year. It has been kind of hard to decide what to plant where, however.  Here are the sugar snap peas,  French green beans, with a few Lacinato kale and  Biondi di Lyon chard I transplanted from the  greenhouse early this spring.

Lettuces and spinach.

I finally got all the winter crops harvested and  pulled out of the high tunnel.  The chard, kale, scallions  and leeks just would not stop producing, so I had to steel myself and yank them out anyway. The two long rows on the right are about 70 assorted tomato plants, nearly all started from seed.  The bottom center area has a few tender herbs that were started inside for early harvest plus those exuberant pansies from last fall. The bottom left corner has bush-habit zucchinis (I put them in the greenhouse for an early crop of squash blossoms.) Beyond them are sweet potatoes and a few Jimmy Nardello sweet red peppers. I still have the  back left corner to plant --I want to try growing peanuts to make our own peanut butter, but I haven't found any raw peanuts to plant yet.

We have installed 4-foot tall fence around the inside perimeter of the greenhouse to keep the chickens and rabbits out - notice the great garage sale gate Rog added for easy entrance.

Just outside the greenhouse is the new pond constructed  in the silo foundation -- our future aquaponics system.  Rog built a dock across one side. In the aquaponics system it will provide a surface for  standing to tend and harvest the plants above and to tend and harvest the fish below. For now, it is a nice place to lounge and pretend you are at the (14 foot diameter) lake and it gives the fish some shade and shelter from predatory birds.

We planted several fruit trees this spring (2 cherries, 2 pears, a plum and a Reliance peach that is supposed to survive zone 4 winters.) One of the cherries had a tasty and picturesque little crop of berries last week.

The birds gobbled most of them the second they got ripe, however.

Remember that robin nest inside my future garden shed? The shed is located conveniently a few feet from the cherry tree and strawberry bed. The baby robins fledged a week and a half ago; here is one on the wheelbarrow just waiting for the cherries to ripen.

Those birds are not going to get our precious strawberries! I covered them with netting, clothes-pinned to the metal hoops from the high tunnel row covers.  We are only getting a few handfuls of strawberries a day, but they are delicious.

We are already in the third week of our mini CSA program.  I was  worried I wouldn't have much variety to include in the first few boxes, but I am pleased with the boxes so far. Last week's box had leeks, chard, lettuce, spinach, sugar snap peas, rhubarb, a mixture of edible flowers, and little bundle of savory herbs.

Yesterday's box had leeks, sugar snap peas, lettuce, spinach, kale, garlic scapes, chives and the first few baby zucchinis. I am getting more efficient at harvesting, cleaning and assembling.

Our younger daughter Cadence is home from Prague for a few weeks (she has been attending  film school there and soon will be teaching for a year.)  She dived right into baking for the Farmers Market last week, jet lag and all. Wood Fired sourdough bread, hot out of the  clay oven.

Spinach-Leek-Walnut turnovers. She will be doing market again this weekend, then we will probably be done for the summer. Rog and I simply do not have enough time to devote to it by ourselves.

Yesterday after harvesting the CSA boxes, I was a power-washing maniac. First, I cleaned the chicken coop, shoveling out the bedding, power washing and shop-vacuuming the inside of the coop, sanitizing the middle room for turkey poults that arrive today, and spreading new bedding.  I even washed the windows.

Then, I power-washed the trailer upon which chickens had been roosting all winter in the barn- I need it to pick up a load of hay tonight and it was too disgusting to drive down the road.

Finally, I  power washed the milking parlor. I always try to keep it clean, but I wanted to see how the power washer worked on the milk board we installed last year--very sweet! I put in fresh wood chips and washed the dusty window.  LaFonda seemed pretty happy about the maid service this morning --

and she paused to sniff at and admire the new cow art I had hung on the wall for her.  I found this large, framed vintage print at an antique store a couple weeks ago and fell in love with it. (Happily, it was only $9.)

This weekend is the season's grand  opening of the farm store. I have been working hard to get ready - planting and weeding outside

and setting up displays of fun new merchandise (local art and Profound Objects) inside. I still have plenty more to do in the store - not to mention I need to cleanup my disheveled and sadly neglected house for this weekend's visit of four dear high school friends --so, I better quit blogging now and get to work!

P. S.  We'd LOVE to see you at Squash Blossom Farm this weekend for the Grand opening, Saturday and Sunday noon to 5 p.m.  Get a special discount on a Profound Object and on Sunday, listen/dance to The Nodding Wild Onions, beginning at 2 p.m.

Prairie Walk--The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Yesterday  I took the camera on a walk through our little piece of little prairie.  I was happy I had  brought it along when I came to this beautiful specimen of swamp milkweed just beginning to burst  into bloom.

Swamp milkweed is the plant Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on and usually you can find a caterpillar or two feasting under the leaves. I inspected all the leaves but did not see one --yet.   Maybe it is still a bit early. Come to think of it, I haven't seen more than a few monarchs so far this summer.

Last weekend we extended one of the pastures down a corridor to the prairie and let the cows into a big patch of invasive canary reed grass that grows precisely where I envision a pond someday.  The grass was up to their armpits but they chomped it down to the ground in two days.

Our crazy cat, Orange, accompanied  us on the walk. Last week before our family reunion Rog weed-whacked a meandering path around the prairie so we don't have to bushwhack our way through.  Unfortunately, he weed-whacked  the path wearing shorts, a t-shirt and sandals.
There is a lot of tall, healthy wild parsnip growing throughout the prairie (see that tall yellow flower on the edge of the path?) and when it it got  chopped off by the trimmer it splattered its malicous juice all over his bare arms and legs.  Now they are covered with a painful, itchy, ugly rash that is sensitive to light and will last months. It was dismaying to  discover how abundantly the wild parsnip is growing out there. Maybe it is even more urgent to tackle than our other challenging invasive,  buckthorn.

This is the area that Sara and Cadence totally cleared of sumac last  fall, now lush with healthy young sumac.  The predominant species in our prairie seem to be invasives and undesirables-  wild parsnip,  canary reed grass, buckthorn, burdock, honeysuckle, wild parsnip and sumac.  Restoring it to native prairie is going to be a major challenge.

Some interesting galls on the leaves of a tree.

Lots of tiny white pines that we  carefully protected when we burned the prairie last spring are thriving.  They must have seeded themselves from the windbreak.

A bunch of volunteer tomatoes have sprung up in the area where we fed the pigs garden scraps last summer.

Rog planted 8 small hazelnut bushes a few weeks ago at the edge of the prairie - the beginning of his nut orchard.  We mulched them deeply with old straw to buffer them from the onslaught of sumac bushes.  So far it seems to be working and the hazels are looking happy.  It be a few years yet before we are harvesting nuts.

Glorious April!

After all the ugly garbage photos in the previous  post, I  decided I better post a few photos showing how beautiful it really is at Squash Blossom Farm this spring.  This April is almost a month ahead of last year; no wonder we feel so far behind.

Cadence dug up the two huge bridal veil bushes on either side of her granary entrance and moved them  next to the loafing shed. In their place she planted semi-dwarf apple trees, a Haralson and a Zestar, which have now burst into bloom.

Our yard is full of dandelions, violets and creeping charlie.  The previous owners had a weed-free yard and would probably be appalled.  We won't use chemicals, though, and are trying to look for the positives, which are many.  The creeping charlie has turned out to be a wonderful early food source for my honeybees and for bumble bees.  The goldfinches love the dandelion seed heads. I gathered up violets to make jelly and here, Cadence is gathering dandelion flowers to make wine (stay tuned for more details on these projects later.)

Speaking of honeybees, my bees survived the winter and are thriving! Spring came so fast I did not have a chance to administer the preventative medicine for nosema (bee diarrhea).  I have inserted the apistan strips to control bee mites and  spread the  terramycin powder to prevent foulbrood. The bees had built brood cells between the layers of frames and I had to destroy some of those larval cells to get the frames apart.  I got stung twice (my first beekeeping stings)  but I can't blame the bees for  being upset about the destruction of their offspring.

Last fall I planted several hundred bulbs, including some scilla scattered around the big rock, which have been blooming over the past few weeks. I can't tell yet if the  swaths of wildflowers i planted in the woods have germinated or if those were seeds that were already there.

The tall purple allium  have budded.

We got the Willys truck  back from an expensive brake repair, only to have the other front brake break.  I go to drive it home after  the second repair--it is a truck that just demands singing truck songs at the  top of your lungs while you drive. Very fun.

Starting an Orchard

It was a lovely day last Thursday and I had the day off, so my goal was to plant some fruit trees for our future orchard. I envisioned the orchard on the sunny knoll on the southeast corner of our property - doing double duty as a future screen for the possible future high-traffic road. I believe that a couple apple trees may have once stood on this hill (Farmer?)so it seemed like the right spot.

I planted all semi-dwarf treees---a Kiefer pear, two varieties of cherries, a Mount Royal (self-pollinating) plum, one Honeycrisp Apple, one Redwell, one Honeygold, one Haralson and two Prairie Spy. The Prairie Spy were a real find--they are an older variety almost impossible to find, but one of my very favorite apples. I finally found a source via Craiglist in LaCrosse, WI, from a fellow who grafted them and the Redwell. They are only sticks about 3 feet tall now, but they only cost $5. I hope they catch up in a few years.

I was warned by John, the orchard expert at Sargents Garden Center where I am working, to watch out for deer nibbling them. I don't know if deer will be nearly as big a problem as our darn cows, who seem to be irresistably drawn to these trees and have devoured a few leaves.