Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, potatoes, salad turnips, red radishes, beet thins, carrots, cucumbers and/or zucchini and herbs Field Notes. No frost yet! Usually by this time we have had at least a nip of frost. Soon we will start the “big dig” and getting roots in the root cellar for the winter. Ken is still picking all those summer crops and clearing space. Once we have …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots or beets, and herbs Field Notes Ken cleared up areas of the garden and fields and transplanted several flats of greens since last week. As the days shorten he fits in all the harvesting – there are still tomatoes, cukes, summer squash, and other crops that require regular and frequent picking. With the heat he tends to get …
Last Weekend Ken took a couple days to attend a natural beekeeping workshop in nearby Amery. He learned some , was glad to see how many other people want to have bees without chemistry. He now has more tools for his bee “toolbox.”
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, zucchini, onions, garlic, parsley, and a new crop of winter kohlrabi Field Notes. Ken is clearing space. He is clearing out crops and plants as they finish and making space for fall plantings of spring greens. He is in planning mode as we get ready to move the mobile high tunnel off the tomatoes and onto fall greens. …
Although we are still busy, once in a while I take the camera with me so I can catch a few elusive fall photos. Here is the field And here is the mobile high tunnel And our drive It is a beautiful time of year, isn’t it?
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has tomatoes, potatoes, celery, cucumber, zucchini, onions, garlic, carrots, melon, basil and parsley Filed Notes. Ken is always thinking ahead! Monday he started moving chicks and chickens. He has several batches of chicks at varying ages. He is making room for the newer hens in one of the portable coops. The young roosters – cockerels – will go in the north coop. He has moved the larger …
For a few years now Ken has been working with a heritage breed of turkeys. It has been a real challenge. They really are closer to wild and would prefer to roost high in trees and hatch out a clutch in tall grass and get outside the fence and roam. Even with Oscar on duty there have been losses. This year we seem to have a good mom; she is keeping the bunch together …
Ken has been perfecting his broody hen management this season. The result has been several hatches of chicks. At first he put them together, but it seemed the older ones were picking on the younger ones. So now he has several small outside enclosures with chicken wire and fiberglass fence posts. There are the tiny chicks There are the chicks that a renegade hen hatched out …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, kohlrabi, onions, garlic, peppers, sweet corn, parsley, and basil. Field Notes. The tsunami of tomatoes has crested; early varieties are about done. Later varieties are still going strong. It has been an interesting season – cooler nights meant later hot weather crops and heavy dew meant more work to prevent molds, fungus and blights. Ken has moved up those seedlings pictured last …
The decades old expression here is, “By Labor Day the pigs become hogs.” We have raised feeder pigs for decades. They are a great help on a small farm. Each year Ken has a tilling project so he grazes them sequentially. On any given year they might expand a garden space, dig out the quack grass outside the garden, or clear a fence line. They eat garden culls and many things people won’t …
