Green Beans and Corn

June is here folks. This (like all seasons) has had it's unique challenges, this year it was rain, rain, and more rain...

But we are farmers, and contrary ones at that, so we keep on keepin' on. The fruit of our labors is beautiful green beans, carrots, and next week...CORN!!!

Now that the monsoon season seems to have eased off a bit we will be hard at work catching up on weeding all those well established weeds that have tried to seize the fields during all those rainy days. The rains were heavy enough to drown our mature carrots and cause their tap roots to rot, the cherries all split on the tree from the swelling, and some fungus is starting to appear. I am hoping the potatoes do well in their muddy beds, fingers crossed.

Rotted roots and splitting fruits will pass as the water levels subside and things metabolize all the extra water. We'll spray our biodynamic preps for the fungus. All will be well soon and we'll forget about too much rain, as we start to anticipate and complain about late summer droughts.

Farming is a lesson in extremes and endurance. That is why I aspire to what Eustace Conway says he looks for in a good horse, "Tenacity and a high threshold for pain." In certain African countries they hold a competition each season to find out which young farmer had just those qualities, the farmer who shows his speed and endurance at Spring planting is honored all the rest of the season as 'Tji Warra' which translates to 'Farm Beast'. He gets to wear a special hat and stick a spear like totem in his field to denote his accomplishments.

I have for years admired, not onlt a culture that honors farmers, but real farmers with real resolve and dedication. So this season, we are earning our own Tji Warra title as we compete to stay in the game yet another season.

The season has been peppered with hardship and bad weather and the reward is: cherries, green beans, blueberries, corn, squash, and other seasonal goodness. That is my kind of trophy for all the hard work, yummy farm fresh meals...

On top of everything, this season seems to be an auspicious one for babies, our hens are setting and hatching their own biddies with great success! This has further led us to observe the moon phase and signs that poultry naturally hatch in so we can be better at our own 'natural' animal husbandry and rearing.

Gotta love it when nature is allowed to be in control, when we can simply observe, when we open ourselves up and can learn from nature.

WE ARE 'TJI WARRA' !!!

Honeydew. Honey do.

Sometimes I get sidetracked with the 10 thousand myriad things around here and that derails my already overloaded mental circuitry from one project or another. When that derailment happens the abandoned project can languish in it's abandonment (for years)...

One such project is our back patio.

The patio has been an eyesore for as long as I have lived in this house, 8 years. The backstory is that there was a beautiful deck back there when I built the house. Then my chronic asshole neighbor got his buddies on the local planning and zoning board to order me to remove the deck, after it had passed the building inspection and I moved into the house, not earlier while I was building it...

I fought the law and the law won, the local bubba politics version of the law, that is. So I took the deck off the house. Recycled it into another farm structure of course. And believe it or not the day I removed the deck he called the Sheriff because I was trespassing on his property. See, the complaint was that my deck was too close to his property line. Anyway, the spot languished in it's ugly and depressed state for a long while.

Recently I had begun to address the ugly little back spot and that quickly created a situation, a 'honey do' project...

Honey Do Project: I want a new back patio.

Sara and I decided that this was a major priority and she added it to the 'Honey do list' as in Honey, do this now! So, evening as weekends, I labored: leveling the ground, building stone beds, putting down landscape fabric...



Pea gravel and washed stone fill being installed:


Well, here it is, the completed back patio on May 24th, 2009...

Finished patio with landscaping (small palm tree and bamboo):


Adobe makeover for ugly back steps:


Close up of gravel bed and small 'still life' accents along the stonework:


Ahhh, check that one big old project off the list. Now to have a cold drink on the new patio...

The 8th Generation?

Our nephew, Ashton, is well on his way to becoming a future farmer. He is is absolutely obsessed with equipment and trucks. Riding, looking at, watching on DVD, it does not matter; he loves equipment! This love of equipment has led him to a desire to help with chores around the farm. He even has his own truck, and yes he hauls stuff in the bed of it...

At first he only wanted to help "Granny" feed the rabbits. Then it was riding on the tractors while doing small jobs. Now he is even helping to plant tomatoes and put cages around them in Mom and Dad's garden...

In the photo below he is practicing using a 4 lb hammer to drive rebar into the ground...

I especially like that he is not bothered by something as natural as rain. He still wears his sunglasses when it rains...

So here's to hoping Ashton wants to be a farmer or something similar and just as cool. Let's also hope he does not 'learn' Granny's fear of bugs and snakes (So much work, so little time)...

When I'm not busy farming...

Artichokes!?

Lately we have been busy as usual on the farm. Spring crops are being harvested and summer crops are being planted. The greenhouse crops are on their way out and the field crops are soon to be coming in. As usual, it is a rainy day, so I'm catching up on blogging, paperwork, etc...

Corn seedlings a week ago...

In addition to the crops, we are incubating turkeys for Thanksgiving sales. After turkeys hatch, we will be doing the same with chickens so that we have a good supply of chicken to eat through the season...

When we haven't been busy farming I've been over at Jack's trying to finish the stone and rail fence and some other small projects...

Jack's fence, 400 feet long, 30 stone pilars and about 45 tons of stone...

Meanwhile at our farm...

The guys and I just fenced off a 5 acre paddock with 4 foot woven wire fence that will have 3 strands of electric at the top...

If that were not busy enough, when I finish all my other work for the day I have been spending my evenings landscaping/hardscaping our patio. Sara says it is already a place she wants to hang out. I'm happy to hear that. We have even decided that the theme should be beach/tropical, with images of marine life and appropriate landscape plants. To christen our patio we bought and planted our first plant for the patio, a cold hardy palm tree. It is still small but will grow to over 25 feet tall (in about that many years). The other plant beds will have clumping bamboo and other cold hardy tropicals...

But I digress from the subject of the farm. There is so much going on. We have ASPARAGUS! I had to shout it with joy, I love asparagus and it is ready to harvest now. Yummy, yummy, yummy... The lettuce and greens are still available at the Hillsborough Farmers' Market every Saturday, as well as our famously tasty and nutritious eggs and meats!

See you all at market!

When life gives you lemons,

make lemonade!

We are ass deep in eggs (that's country talk for surplus inventory) at the moment. We have never had a problem selling eggs, ever. But it seems that our customers are all getting their own backyard flock, or at least have a neighbor or friend that is getting some hens for their own backyard coop. Having a few hens in a backyard coop is all the rage now, it's hip to have some hens. Now our customers and our usual retail outlets are all swamped with a surplus of cheap eggs.

So, here we are, "ass deep in eggs"...

So, back to the proverb, 'When life gives you lemons (EGGS), make lemonade (EASTER EGGS)!

Sara had the great idea of imprinting flowers and leaves on the eggs while soaking in the dye. They turned out awesome, it was so much fun working with the 'art eggs'.

So, can surplus eggs become a 'Easter Egg-stravaganza'? We will see at market this week.

Come buy your Easter eggs and all kinds of produce at the Hillsborough Farmers' Market this Wednesday from 4PM to7PM, and Saturday from 8AM till Noon.

Busy, Back Soon!

"Gon out, backson, bisy, backson.", AA Milne in Winnie the Pooh.

Wow folks, it's been weeks since I've been able to blog about life here on the farm. I had to hang the "Gone out. Back soon. Busy. Back Soon!" sign on my proverbial front door for a while.

The farm is still behind schedule in many ways this season. I need to have myself cloned, it's the only way I see us ever getting caught up. How about the irony of a cloned organic farmer? The idea is totally against my personal beliefs about genetic engineering and cloning, but the thought of having several of me working on the farm every day is a very tempting fantasy right about now. My miles of livestock fencing and paddocks would be done, those long overdue range shelters would be built, all fields would be mulched, that stone/wood fence I'm building wouldn't be behind schedule, etc, etc... In this fantasy of farming and cloning, I might even be tempted to sit back in my truck, parked under a shade tree, with a cold beer in my hand, while I watch me work... (Creepy bioethics case, eh?)

As far as crops go, we are in good shape. The weather last week allowed us to plant everything that is ready to go in the ground at the moment, as well as seeding trays of seedlings for the coming weeks. The hoophouse garden looks great and is planted to capacity, I take no credit on that one, Sara has 'owned' that space for some time now is is doing a great job with it. Our fields for this season are fully cultivated and ready for some compost and mulching.

The biggest priority (for me) in the coming weeks is fencing. I must finish that cursed fence at Jack's as well as build literally miles of livestock fencing here at the farm ASAP! Jack's fence job has been delayed by the weather and then the need to simply be farmers and do what it is time to do, plant. Now, I need to get over there and finish. We'll see how it goes, March is notoriously erratic in it's weather.

It hasn't helped any that equipment malfunctions seem to be the norm lately, everything has had maintenance or breakdown issues the past few weeks. The up side to that is everything has now had it's routine maintenance prior to the start of the season. The hydraulics on Sara's tractor still leak a bit, I'm still trying to figure out how after 8 weeks they can't get a hydraulic leak fixed!? On top of that, good help is hard to find these days, my usual helpers are off doing odd carpentry jobs in this slow economy and they have decided that not working is better than farm work in the cold and wet weather.

"That's farming!", as we say around here.

We'll see how much longer we can say that around here. Seems like small farms might just get regulated out of existance here in the not too distant future. There is a proposed bill in the US House currently called HR 875. The proposed bill, if it becomes law, would create a new Food Safety department in the Federal Government. This "Food Safety" agency would regulate, license, and inspect all farms and farmers markets. The regulations as currently written favor industrial farms and not small farms, it could essentially wipe out small farms and farmers markets. It was written by the spouse of a Monsanto executive, and has the support of the new Secretary of Agriculture (tied to Monsanto).

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-s-dream-bill-HR-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090309-337.html

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-875

First Day at the Hillsborough Farmers' Market!

Today was our first day at the Hillsborough Farmers' Market! What a good day. It was a surprising thrill to be back at market...

We arrived a bit early and about the time we were set up the temperature dropped to a chilly and damp degree that was sure to deter customers. But no, the customers came out all the same on a dreary Janurary morning, and they shopped.


We had our pork and chicken and eggs, of course. Sara had grown some great golden turnips and assorted radish, both of which sold well. The surprise of the day was how well the sweet potatoes sold, I'll take more next week...

The overall highlight of the day was meeting our fellow vendors at the market. What a genuine and friendly bunch of folks. We were welcomed and made to feel right at home from the start.

So come and see us next Saturday at the Hillsborough Farmers' Market (Home Depot parking lot) 10AM to Noon.