Saturday, July 30, 2011

2011 Season, Week 13

July 30, 2011

This week's harvest:

Melons!!!
* Watermelons - "Peace"
* Muskmelons - "Halona"
Sweet Corn
Tomatoes & Cherry Tomatoes
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Cucumbers
Yellow Squash
Peppers - Hot
Choose between Sweet Peppers, Okra, & Eggplant

This week's farm news:

**DON'T FORGET**
Tomorrow, July 31, picnic and swimming at the farm. Come around 2pm.
Directions here.
Please join us!!!

The heat this week was unrelenting. We didn't have any rain either, so the gardens are getting dry. Eric prepared some more ground for fall crops and planted some cover crop seeds. Other than that and keeping up with all of the harvesting and chores, not a whole lot was accomplished in the garden this week! We sometimes get nervous about investing in a bunch of planting with no real prospects of rain in the forecast. But that's summertime for you! When the sky turns dark and there's thunder around you can just about bet we'll be putting seeds in the ground! This week we did begin our annual tomato canning project. So far we've canned about 35 quarts. I normally like to put up at least 100 quarts for our winter stash, so we're off to a good start!

Saturday, July 23, 2011

2011 Season, Week 12

July 23, 2011

This week's harvest:

Tomatoes & Cherry Tomatoes
Green & Yellow Beans
Basil
Lettuce
Yellow Squash
Cucumbers
Garlic
Onions
Zucchini and/or Red Peppers
Hot Peppers
Eggplant - small shares
Assorted Melons - medium shares
Potatoes

This week's farm news:

First of all, we would like to invite all of you up to the farm for our annual swimming party and potluck picnic. It will be next Sunday, July 31. Come around two or so... Don't fret if you are running "late", just come when you can. Bring a potluck dish to share and we'll spend the day swimming at the creek and enjoying this beautiful farm. Please join us! Directions can be found on our website.

On Wednesday we hosted a bunch of folks (we never did an exact head count but we think there were at least 60 in attendence) from farms around the region for our annual "C-R-A-F-T" (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training) event. Even though it was an extremely hot day, everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy seeing what Bugtussle Farm is all about! The title of our event was "Attempting the Impossible: Creating a Farm, Family, and Future with no off-farm income while paying for the land." This pretty much sums it all up!!!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

2011 Season, Week 11

July 16, 2011

This week's harvest:

Lettuce
Basil
Green and Yellow Beans
Tomatoes
Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes
Eggplant (medium shares)
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Cucumbers
Garlic and Onions

This week's farm news:

This crazy summer is just flying by! Here we are already entering the second half of the "main" vegetable season. And, boy, are we about to hit a serious summer glut! Hooray! Finally! We are just days away from our first taste of melon. We've been enjoying tomatoes - and from the estimated 468 plants in the garden an insane amount are coming your way from now until our first frost of the autumn. Sweet corn is about ready, too! Oh, the delicious tastes of summertime!

The crew pulled all of the remaining onions from the garden this week and now they are all laid out in our greenhouse on screen tables and bread trays to dry. They were pretty moist upon harvest so we have our fingers crossed that they do, in fact, dry and not rot! Onions are pretty tricky to store in this humid climate.

We had another broody hen hatch out a clutch of abandoned turkey eggs this week! This time Jesse took the hen and poults out from the big flock and is keeping them in the barn so he can keep an eye on them. Ira has now been inspired by all of these broody hen success stories... so this morning he took about a dozen of his duck eggs up to the chicken compound and placed them under yet another broody hen! We'll see in about a month what happens!

Saturday, July 9, 2011

2011 Season, Week 10

July 9, 2011

This week's harvest:

Potatoes
Garlic
Onion
Yellow Squash
Zucchini
Cucumbers
Lettuce
Basil
Yellow Beans

This week's farm news:

The heifer calf that was born last week, "Peanut Butter Pie," had to be nursed back to health this week after getting severely dehydrated in the intense heat we had early in the week. The calf's mama wasn't moving her to the shade very well, so several times daily Eric would make a trip to the animals, move the calf to the shade, and give her some homemade electrolytes. Eric's efforts seem to have paid off as the calf is back on her feet and nursing from her Mama. Whew!

The intense heat also kicked us in the pants to get our "shade house" back in action for the season. We use this for starting all of our late summer & fall crops (that we don't direct seed in the field.) Up until now this season we've started everything in the greenhouses... But this week proved to be too hot for crops that we are trying to germinate right now - like leeks!

We ate our first cherry tomatoes this week (a bit later than usual!) so you all have those to look forward to very soon!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

2011 Season, Week Nine

July 2, 2011

This week's harvest:

Potatoes - "Kennebec"
Lettuce
Basil
Parsley
Red Cabbage
Garlic
Onions - mini sweet Walla Walla
Cucumbers
Choose between Yellow Beans, Yellow Squash, Broccoli

This week's farm news:

In the wee hours of the morning on Sunday we had two intense storms roll through the farm, leaving us with around two inches of rain. It rained hard, too... So that means another round of cultivation is necessary to "cut off the wick" and preserve that moisture in the soil. By Thursday it was dry enough to start cultivation and that's just what we did. When the sun was shining this week it was pretty intense - UV index of 11 on a scale of 1-10! - which left us farmers a little more tired at the day's end. Earlier in the week while the garden soil was wet, we started some fall (yes, fall!) crops in soil blocks - leeks, brussels sprouts, & winter squash.

We had a new calf born on the farm this week. She is the third (of three) heifer calf born this spring. We are calling her "Peanut Butter Pie". The other two are named "Bella Marshmella" and "Cookie Face"... three sweet girls.

Have a lovely weekend!