Garden Bling

SouleMama has a segment on her blog this time of year showing their garden week by week.  I try to capture ours at a few points during the season to show its growth, but I thought this year, I might try to take you on a tour every couple of weeks.  Our garden has a dedicated 1/3 acre section that we have filled with 19 raised beds.  We have room yet for growth, and this year added the hugelkultur.

At the top of the garden closest to the house are two beds, the one on the right we rotate and this year has some early season fennel, beets, and carrots.  To the left is a permanent bed that has our lavender, I harvested the first batch today for drying.

Then we have room for either two more beds or a patio before reaching the bulk of the garden.  The first row has two beds, one that we cover as a mini hoop house in the early spring, has cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower in it.  Behind it in the row is the new hugelkultur which we will plant next year.

The next row over begins with our potato bed.  We have found a great way to plant potatoes is just to lay them on the top of the bed, cover lightly with straw, and then as they grow continue to bury them. When it comes time for harvest, they are all nestled in the loose straw and come out fairly clean.  The next bed in the row has green onions, horseradish, and our giant rhubarb plant.  The third row down is planted to kale, kohlrabi and lettuces.

In the next row over we have the garlic that we planted last fall that we are enjoying scapes from right now.  Then the row behind it is full of peppers and eggplant.  The third row, which we have lined the center of to prevent weed growth has sugar snap peas growing on little trellis'.

As we move to the next row, you can see where we ran out of landscape fabric last weekend when we were rocking in all of the paths.  This first bed has summer squash to the left and cucumbers to the right, the cucumbers will soon be large enough to trellis.  The next two beds in this row have been rotated off this year.  We may put a fall succession planting in one of them to be determined.

In our next section, the first bed is rotated off this season, while the second bed is planted to yard long green beans (our first attempt at this, but should be a hit when we distribute them in farm bags).  The third bed has green beans along the back, and winter squashe in the front so they can vine out towards an open area of the garden space before the compost pile.

The final row has two beds in it and both are planted to tomatoes.  We have a couple of slicers and cherry tomatoes, but we plant most of the crop to paste tomatoes for canning.

Along the back boarder of the garden is a full row of red currants, just beginning to get a little blush on them.  We have a whole area by the barn that has raspberries, blackberries, boysenberries, gooseberries and elderberries.

Finally we have the compost pile.  It never ceases to amaze how quickly the compost breaks down and is ready to use.  We have had such a cool summer thus far that we are running right about two weeks behind last year's progress.  I am interested to see how this garden season unfolds.

#100HappyDays :: Day 54

Everything is growing by leaps and bounds on the farm.  It is hard to believe that the ducks and geese are just over eight weeks old!

Our first farm bag of the season went out on Friday, the cooler weather has put us behind one week from last year, but has allowed a longer seasons growth of lettuces, cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower and fennel to name a few.  The garlic scapes are just beginning to come on too, right on time!

The challenge each year for us is keeping up with succession plantings so that produce that is pull and done, keeps coming.  Yesterday we finished the irrigation system on one such bed, full of lush baby summer crisp lettuce, kale and bok choi.  Then we planted another eight heads of our favorite salinova lettuce.  Another re-use item on the homestead, old invisible fence flags to mark where seeds went in the ground so we can identify the young growth from the weeds that will surly come through too...a side bonus, maybe they'll keep Emerson out of the bed too!

After having 10 cubic yards of flat gravel delivered yesterday, the next tasks are infrastructure ones; rocking in around the pool to make a mow strip, and beginning to cover and rock in all of the paths in the garden.  I cannot wait to see how this final touch formalizes the garden that we have worked so hard on over the last eight years.  Me and my sore muscles will post before and after pics soon.  Happy Sunday!

Bringing Our Farm to the Table

Our long weekend was equal parts farm work, research and relaxation.  We are hit with the bulk of our harvest and trying to find innovative ways to preserve it.  The nice thing about canning, is that after the upfront work, the canning process takes anywhere from 40 minutes to 90 or more minutes.  That leaves a little bit of down time to take a breath, read a book, cultivate new ideas and implement wild hairs....like my sudden desire to re-arrange the family room!

We have been fortunate in our tomato harvest this year and so far harvested 80 lbs of tomatoes which have been eaten fresh and put in farm bags, but mostly gone into 17 quarts of roasted tomatoes in our pantry.  I think that we will have one more round of paste tomatoes to can, and then onto making green tomato relish!  This is a favorite of ours and this year we are going to crock ferment it!  Excitingly enough B and I will be speaking about crock fermenting at an event on September 12th, so this crock may just find its way into our demonstration.

We have tried to grow leeks a few times over the years, with varying success.  This year was a bumper year for them.  So in our search for ways to preserve them B pulled out Julia's Vichyssoise recipe and we found it a perfect match for pressure canning.  We pulled a few potatoes out, a very small portion of another crop doing very well, and put up 7 quarts of lovely soup.   In addition to what we canned, we had a large pot left over ready for an alfresco supper last night.

We also got our seventh farm bag of the season out yesterday!  As each year goes by we get a little bit better at planning and implementing our farm bags.  We have averaged five a season up until this year.  We may get one final bag out, but the plants are all slowing down and showing signs of finishing.  This weeks bags included Kale, Potatoes, Garlic, Cherry Tomatoes, Green Beans, a Bell Pepper, Eggplant, and leeks.

Even with warm days still hanging on, we are winding toward fall.  I love this season, it is comprised of lots of enjoying the outside time to its fullest, as well as an inner pulling toward preparing the nest.

Remember when I mentioned that we had a blogger for the Boston Store at our Chili Cook-off?  Well, we are almost famous in this little write up!

Getting the Hang Of It!

I have not been able to write as regularly here as I would like.  We have been amazingly busy implementing new strategies at work, and then took a quick weekend trip for a family gathering over the Fourth holiday.

We have been very fortunate this year.  Our garden is flourishing above and beyond years' past and today we put out our third farm bag of the season!  Last year our first bag came out the middle of July!  I love to be able to look back year to year at photos.  The above photo is our garden as of July 15th last year.  The top photo was our garden this afternoon.

Most of the individual pictures and details of the farm bags along with recipe ideas are being shared over on our Aisling SmallHolding facebook page, but to summarize:  our farm bags in the early part of this season have consisted of lots of salad greens, green onions, kohlrabi, bok choi, green garlic, garlic scapes, radishes, beets, dill, thyme, lavender, sugar snap peas, and a few baby carrots.  Our tomato plants have already set tons of tomatoes, some are just beginning to blush with color.  We harvested our first few eggplant this week, the chickpeas look to be getting close, and it seems we will have a bumper crop of raspberries.  It is so rewarding to walk through this years plot and just breathe.  We seem to be getting the hang of this thing!

Farm Bag Six

 We are getting out our sixth farm bag of the season and are very happy with how our season has gone!  We are hoping to continue for a while yet to come!  This is the information we sent out in this weeks Homestead Happenings Newsletter.

Farm Bag Five

This week has gone by in a blink!  I spent last weekend at a conference, and then came back to work, school preparation and garden duties.  It has been a really phenomenal summer and I am excited contemplating a continuation of farm bags for longer this year than in years previous.  Here is this weeks newsletter.

Farm Bag Four

As the heat of August does not disappoint farm bag number four was ready for delivery.  I like to try to add little personal tidbits that come from all of the squirreling away preserving of food that we try to accomplish.  It never ceases to amaze me how quick and easy some things are, but it seems that we do not do them, always making the excuse that the task too time consuming.  I am much this way myself, but this week I was once again reminded how the most difficult thing of processing some of the basil was hauling out the food processor!  That said, it takes all of 15 minutes to pound out three containers of pesto and that was with grating all of the cheese by hand.  I have come up with a favorite recipe and now that I have made it a few times this week pesto is front and center in many of our meals.  I also included a container of it in each of this weeks farm bags.  Take a peak at this weeks newsletter to catch up on our Homestead Happenings.

Farm Bag #3 Hit's the Stands

This is my favorite time of year. It consists of daily strolls through the garden where we never leave empty handed. Shortly we will be make twice or three times daily routes that should leave us scrambling to store and distribute all of our bounty. Here is a look at what is going home this week in farm bags. The most noticeable thing is the green beans. We had thoroughly combed the vines Wednesday evening before we went in. Over night we had 3.97 inches of rain. By Thursday evening we had a bucket full of beans. Poor things, just longed for cooler temperatures and a steady shower. The vines look great, but we are supposed to be getting hot again, so I am sure they will be somewhat stunted in their production. However, The beans will come, just during our glimpses of more moderate days.

Second Farm Bag of the Season

With our now drought conditions, we are very thankful that we have had some abundant early season harvests.  I would say that one of our flaws in any given year is staying on top of watering.  Partly, in most years, due to the fact that we always seem to have intermittant rain that doesn't require us to do a lot of watering.  This year with no real rain to speak of we have been taught to be very dilligent in our hydration of parched plants and grounds.  It has truly made an extrodinary difference.  Hopefully our early season luck will spill over into the more traditional bumper crops, and that this year will be productive in ripe tomatoes for canning and eating.  After last years 150 + pounds of green tomatoes and the touch of tennis elbow that came from grinding them all for relish, I think I'd like to do overkill on sauce and salsa!  For your enjoyment, and my tracking purposes, here is farm bag number two's newsletter.

First Farm Bags of 2012

We are thrilled that our first farm bags of the season were ready to head out the door this morning!  It was really exciting to get them ready.  We found that we have better dialed in our process from last year and the gathering and separating went much more smoothly and quickly.  Each year's experience helps us to make adjustments and I suspect that no matter how good we get at it, we will always be tweaking it here or there.  I have also been working on the newsletter and this is what I have come up with so far.  We are emailing the newsletters the morning that the bags are ready.  It saves on paper, and also whets peoples appetites for what is coming.  I may expand it further as the season progresses, or do special editions to include seasonal kid crafts and canning advice.  Here's to a successful farm bag year!

Beating the Heat

This first Friday of September has been very productive.  We have farm bag number seven ready for pick up and are thrilled that everyone will be able to taste the beauty of late summer in their meals.  It is funny how I start out a week wondering if we are going to have enough, to deliver the variety and quantity that I want to.  Then, by the time we are ready for people to pick up, the fridge is bursting and I am jotting handwritten notes on my typed contents list to add on extra goodies.  This week's bag has three types of tomatoes, tomatillos, beets, eggplant, enough green beans to freeze a few batches after eating fresh, and some of the first new potatoes and peppers.

As I walked around the property last night, I noticed many of the elderberry bushes were heavy with ripe berries, ready for picking.  So this morning we also spent a little time downtown at a great shop called D P Wiggly.  We got an impromptu lesson on wine making and bought the necessities for getting our first batch put down.  The first steps have been completed, but this topic deserves it's own post, so there will be more soon.

We also canned our first jars of roasted tomatoes this season and blanched more green beans for the freezer.  All in all a great way to beat the heat on this 92 degree Friday.

Happy Weekend!