The Bounty

Just finished getting 21 pounds of apples ready for apple butter. Sure is a long process having to put all those cooked apples through a food mill. Good work out for the arms. We picked about 60 pounds of apples yesterday. Keith hoisted me up in the bucket of his tractor. When we picked those, we moved onto the grape vine. Got some beautiful clusters of grapes. Probably will make grape jelly tonight or tomorrow night. Yesterday I was able to purchase 6 pounds of fresh rhubarb. Made some Ginger-Vanilla Rhubarb jam last night. Sound yummy or what? We’ve been dehydrating more hot peppers. We plan on grinding this up and selling our own hot pepper spice to enjoy throughout the winter months. A little something to remember the summer by. It sure is a busy time of the season putting up the summer’s bounty. It is especially gratifying to be able to pick those apples and not have to incur the cost of actually having to buying them – free fruit! We also have a couple of pear trees that are loaded. Waiting for those to size up and plan on making some type of pear jam combination.

Keith has been busy with the barn/chicken tractor. The chicken tractor will be done today and the chickens will be moved to their new home tonight. We will keep them in tomorrow so they get use to the place. The barn has been emptied out and 3 of the walls have been torn off. The salvageable wood has been used for the walls on the chicken tractor. The studs were used from the wood that was milled in January (the not so perfect pieces). I love it – sustainability in full force!

Rock Dust

We have 32 tons of rock dust being delivered tomorrow. This is one of the key ingredients to growing the way we do. We will be selling this to anyone who is interested in using this on their gardens. We still have to figure out pricing.

Clean up Day

Today we weeded out all of the raspberry plants and bush hogged around the raspberry garden. Next we removed all the straw from the garlic and placed it around the raspberry plants. We also removed all of the garlic scapes. It won’t be long now, less than 30 days and we will have garlic. We also mowed in between the blueberry plants and low and behold, some blueberries were ready. Everything is looking neat and tidy now around the farm.

Raspberry field

Garlic waiting to be harvested at the end of the month

Blueberries and Black Raspberries.

Yay…………….

25 tons of composted seaweed and crushed clam shells delivered yesterday!  Boy is the garden going to be even happier next year!

Random Shots – July 31, 2012

Look at this huge tomato plant compared to Keith.

Nicely weeded beans.

 

Beautiful calendula flowers.

And

And so many green tomatoes.

 

 

Accomplishments

Got a lot done today.  Weeded the asparagus bed, the basil and the calendula and sunflower beds.We have hired a helper to combat our weed problem.  We are making a dent and it is a great feeling.  The helper weeded today and we made a dent in some of the weeds along the plastic.  We also planted more cucumber seeds and summer squash and zucchini on plastic.  And of course, we picked blueberries and ate some too!  

We are growing a new cucumber this year.  It is called Orient Express – grows about 12 inches long.  This pictures shows two of them at the bottom and two of our standard pickling cukes at the top.  We had a farm family visit the farm today and we picked one of these Orient Express cucumbers and they ate it right there in the field.  They loved it.  So don’t we, and our dogs do too.  Guess we will grow this again.  They are very eye catching too.

Another great day – May 25, 2012

Ok just finished day 2 of a 5 day weekend. Accomplished a lot today too much too list but the highlights were – eating the fresh greens from our garden (in the picture). Yesterday, we went to pick up rock dust from a MA farm – this is part of our remineralizing the land – the color was unbelievable, a pearlescent blue/green/gray – gorgeous and shimmering color – it just glowed in the garden. I’m sure the land is very happy right now.

Pictures about the land

Tons of old fashioned rose bushes.

A very fragrant plant but not sure what it is possibly honeysuckle?

Comfrey, comfrey everywhere!

Little apples – tons of them!

Beautifully fragrant deep pink rose bush.

Pictures about the land

Here’s some various shots around the property.  Tons of old fashion rose bushes – very fragrant!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too much water!

I’ve got flats of veggies ready to go out in the garden but as you can see there is mini-lakes out in the field.  Very depressing.  Also, deer, turkey, fox and dog tracks too.  Need to rototil again and put fence up before planting but can’t even do that because it’s still too wet.  It looks like it will be a very late harvest year.