July

This fluctuating weather is making us crazy. The excessive rain and then heat have things blooming early, ducks happily digging in mud, and plants growing out of control. I genuinely can't keep up with pruning and containing my tomato plants. Some are growing into all three surrounding tomato cages! Our little tomatoes, pictured to the left two weeks ago, have a hundred tomatoes on each plant. Which is just about enough for me to snack on while weeding, pruning, and harvesting a few to bring inside.  I've also got an abundance of cucumbers flowering and growing all across the garden. It truly is a beautiful thing! I certainly won't complain about too many edibles.

Sully meeting Charlie for her 6 month photos

Our ducks, which we purchased in late May are really growing up nicely. They grow much more quickly then chickens, so we were a bit unprepared. They've been outside since week 3, it's certainly warm enough outside for them. They share space with some of our very spoiled chickens in the "little kid house." This is where newbies go and our most spoiled hen, Sully. It's a tough life for her here on our little farm. 

Our neighbor purchased a great duck house for our ducks, so once it's fixed up a bit, they'll have their own space and safe house to sleep in. Here they are growing out nicely, and enjoying their kiddie pool.

Besides an abundance of fruits and veggies, some amazing flowers are in full bloom. We've had flowers since april it seems, but these I've been really looking forward to. A lily, calla lily, and morning glory growing in among my tomatoes.

May flowers, bring fruit

April showers bring may flowers, and with those flowers come delicious fruits. We've got strawberries turning red, blackberries with big beautiful flowers and fruits just showing, tons of raspberries, and a bush overflowing with blueberries!

Our extra big blackberry plants

One of our nice ripe strawberries

Beautiful raspberry vines growing wild 

Other then the flowering fruit plants around the property, the gardens are doing exceptional for this early! We've had some very hot, sunny days. The nights are warmer, and our plants are really beautiful. 

I got a few pictures to show off how proud we are of these plants :)

Potatoes in an old, cleaned up hot tub 

Mom's rows of kale, spinach, peas, beans, and cauliflower. 

Enormous Caulifower

Wild, green garlic that we are very patiently waiting to be ready to enjoy!

A tomato plant popped in as well. Seems this soil really just had great seeds in it from last year. We've got escarole, tomatoes, and lettuce that are popping up in surprise places. No complaints here! We love the edible surprises. 

A few more weeks and we'll have all sorts of snacks to pick. For now we'll enjoy the strawberries and leafy greens. Gotta love backyard snacks : )

Fall Activities part 1

Well we had TONS of great veggies and fruits this summer. What we don't grow ourselves, we buy as local as possible. I'm talking road stands around the corner. There are some great secret spots down by us with inexpensive, organics that you can buy in bulk. We go a little crazy with freezing and canning these delicious treats.. Tomatoes, salsa, peaches, apples, tomato sauce, apple sauce, and grape jam are all canned throughout the year. We have eggplant, asparagus, broccoli, eggplant, peaches, beans, peas, and leafy greens frozen. Good thing we got a bigger chest freezer!

 One of our batches of peaches

 Top left shows most of our canned goods. The other two pictures were random baskets we picked this summer for meals. It's hard to not miss these days. Fresh berries, still warm from the hot sun.. Crisp peas, a pepper you can bite into like an apple, cucumbers you don't even have to wash to enjoy! Who can beat that!? My mouth is watering just thinking about all the great tastes of summer!

Mum saved lots of seeds from our garden for next year. All of our melons did wonderful this past season.

 Jen invited mom to sell a few things at a nice event at her work. She set up a table, took local apples, honey, and apple sauce. We brought one of our dogs, met interesting people, and really enjoyed ourselves. There was also a great group called Howling woods farm. They rescue and care for wolves and wolf hybrids. It was very informative and we got contact with these amazing creatures!

 This wasn't our best summer for being on top of our garden.. I know this, but it was still a beautiful garden. Here's two shots of different angles. The first shows a line of our enormous sunflowers all lined up against the chicken pen. When these started to die the chickens would fly up and pull the flowers down. They absolutely LOVE the seeds. 

Gardening on this lovely Tuesday off

What a beautiful, HOT day today! Just came in for a quick lunch and wanted to post a nice update of our wildly growing garden. We picked some of our greens and some of our delicious (out of control) snap peas. Yum!

  We spent a few hours out there this morning cleaning up a bit. Boy were there some weeds! If we're being honest though, there still are quite a few out there. I was trying to do things one space at a time while Mom ran around pulling weeds where ever she walked. I'm not sure who was more efficient.. But here's my wheelbarrow full of weeds for our very spoiled hens. 

Took a few pictures of our lush garden while I was out there to share. It's hard not to be excited about all of the veggies just starting to show up on each plant.

a little bitty eggplant coming in

A few of our quickly growing squash

 And last but not least, my favorite, the clematis with one of the violets we transplanted in the fall.

Hope everyone is staying cool and enjoying these nice summer days. Stay hydrated!

Around the garden

First off, it is one of my favorite times of the year - the roses and honey suckle are blooming out front.

As soon as you turn into the drive way, past the first field and right in front of the lake, these bushes have been there since we purchased the farm. This time of year and with very little care (they're grown wild all this time), they are just as beautiful as they smell delicious! It is just a absolutely great "welcome" to the farm and spring/summer I think.

As I wandered back to the main garden area, what do I hear? Clucking! These bad little hens are always out! A dynamic (though naughty) duo...

And here are some other great photos as well:

- Some gorgeous perennial flowers Ali bought for dad's memorial garden. We planted them, and all the plants we were given, around the farm to keep them safe and thriving until we have the garden all set up and ready for planting.
- A small patch of some of the mani mint plants we have growing. The mint was from our garden in Wenonah and was originally from Aunt Jean.
- Last photo is how the potato plants are doing so far. These are the potatoes we plants with Annah and Bennett when they were visiting in April.

Happy growing!

End of May update

The front yard, blooming beautifully

It's about time we update about the produce we have going on here.. This week is one of the last for fresh Jersey asparagus. Hurry down to get some! Next week, or maybe even this weekend, we plan on getting some Jersey strawberries in!

We cleaned up and banded some of the asparagus to sell today if you need some. But, don't worry, whatever we don't sell we'll eat, and anything we don't eat we freeze for winter. We aren't ones for wasting produce this good& it sure is great to have some asparagus in the fall or winter.

Here's Luna helping out with the packaging.

Also, on this very warm day on the farm I figured I'd snap some shots of the garden for everyone to see.. Can't wait for tomatoes right from the vine.

Our delicious greens

A couple of the potatoes plants

Strawberries looking very nice

Tomato plant coming up nicely

 One of the most beautiful flowers blooming beautifully, the clematis. Hard not to enjoy such a lovely time of year:

More Babies, More Sweetness

Sweet little Rain had her baby the yesterday afternoon. She and her new baby will be available in eight weeks, once he is old enough to be separated. Unless you are interested in Mom and baby of course! He is an unfixed male at the moment.

That's right, more babies on the farm! Thursday evening, while working out on the horse barn, we heard a fresh new lamb cry, and went to find a very new baby with her mom, Rain. A first at this farm, a white baby born from a brown babydoll. Quite the little stunner too, he is as white as can be! Neen's baby boy is just starting to get bouncy, and he is looking very handsome in his rocket sweater. He is still not named, any suggestions would be appreciated! You can see his smug little face in the last post. He just KNEW he was the cutest thing in the barn in that picture with me.




Also, Mom's one little green house got broken into by one of the dogs the other night and let in the cold air.. Bad news, almost all of the plants that were out there are looking awfully rough. This afternoon, I planted about 200 new tomato seeds, 50 of our green peppers, 50 of our red pepper seeds from last season, and a few miscellaneous squash& watermelon just to add something interesting. Here's hoping these all do well and start popping up soon with all this great weather!


Next up, we have our two other expecting ewe's, Olivia and Mellie. Liv is ENORMOUS and looks ready to pop any day now. Mellie is the brown girl who is usually pretty chubby anyway (she's Mom's favorite, so very very spoiled). Hopefully our girls give us a few baby girls now that we have the two males! We promise to keep you updated with more baby cuteness : )

I figured I would snap a shot of our proud papa, Arthur, while we were taking pictures of everyone else. He's snacking on some of the fodder that we've been growing. This handsome big guy loves it.

Repotting and preparing for our lambs

With only a few more days until the sheep due dates, we are just finishing up our preparations. The bonding areas are full of fresh straw and clean buckets. The girls, much to their dismay. all got their shots this weekend, and of course lots of animal cookies. So now we wait, hopefully we will have some exciting news and pictures by the weekend!

The rest of our time has been spent mostly preparing plants for outside. We have hundreds of tomatoes, some peppers, strawberries and flowers started now. We have all different stages at the moment, and have been repotting until we run out of room!

Here are some of the stages of growth. 

We had quite a few of the more stable plants out in the green house today. While out in Mom's little greenhouse I got some other shots of what's growing..

Nice and green, looking great : )                        Some gardenias Mom planted

Some of our strawberry plants from last year that we brought in.  The outside ones were coming up nicely until our little herd of teenage chickens found them. Hopefully they didn't pull up the whole plant, little brats. 

And of course, the beets that we're very excited about! I think they are looking great! And they taste great too, can't wait to get what is growing in the dirt.