four chicken tractors, with 5 chickens each, in the apple orchard (each group eats 3 apples a day, plus layer mash, and usually a handful of chard or kale).
Farm Fresh.
A good start.
May: The garlic has bloomed, so it's only a few weeks before they are ready to be pulled and then dried before market. The shelling peas are producing enough for us (I love shell peas!), as is the asparagus. The lettuces are still tasty, but will soon be replaced with bush beans in their raised beds. The fields have been tilled and are ready for the next step: planting and drip line! The greenhouse tomatoes are beginning to flower and are about waist-high. And the peppers are looking good. The rest of the tomatoes have been transplanted into the field (again, with row covers). Even with all the false starts, we are right on time this year, remarkably enough. The tent caterpillars tried to make a dent in our orchard this year but thanks to a rigorous weekend of ladder climbing, tent cutting, and a big tent caterpillar bonfire, the orchard is looking good!
February: The orchard is pruned. Don and I grafted more Rosebrook Gravensteins, and more Asian pears, from our own stock this year. The first wave of seeds are soaking up southern rays in our living room window. The greenhouses are planted with a quick crop of peas, to rejuvenate the soil before the tomatoes and peppers are ready to move in and take over. The garlic is gestating in the ground. The onions are tucked in too. And last year's peas are rising!
January 2010:
January This week we got out the indoor seed racks, set them up in the south-facing windows, and started seeds, lots of them! Three different varieties of tomato and some basil, and chili peppers. And some zinnias. I have cleared out the hoop houses (except for the lettuce we are still eating) and am waiting for things to dry out in there a bit. We got a lot of water this winter, and the fields and hoop houses haven't yet absorbed it all, it's about 6 inches of pure mud (enough to suck the boot right off your foot!), more in some places. I lost a boot trying to pick some kale in March a couple years ago and the wee one went to get Don and he laid down a long board across the mire to rescue me. Then went back for the boot. By the time he arrived I had been on one leg so long I thought the other boot must be stuck too. But it wasn't. The annual orchard pruning has begun! Slightly over 50 trees need haircuts while it's cold and wet out. Pruning is similar to bonzai, only with huge pruning shears instead of tiny clippers. Even the same goals of balance and symmetry apply. And since I'm the resident barber of our family anyway, pruning is a meditation I particularly enjoy.
October 1 2009:
Autumn Equinox and we're still having bouts of sun (albeit shorter bouts)! Pumpkins, zukes, tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, crooknecks, chard, kale, turnips, salad greens, snap peas, and apples, apples, apples! we picked 141 pounds of Prima apples this week for market, taking another 75 pounds for ourselves (the unsightly ones) for sauce and juice. Our corn came and went and was delicious. Not enough for market this year, maybe next? This week was also Grape Week. The grape vine which had climbed to the top of a Doug fir by the time we arrived, 4 years ago, which Don climbed up and gently wrestled down and onto a trellis, has become an amazing producer. They aren't supermarket standard grapes, so we are forced to enjoy them all ourselves. I usually take a heaping collander to the school. The kids love them. And so do we, they make an amazing juice. A sip starts out like lemonade and then ends up like honey. How one taste can do that, I don't know, but they do. This year we had about 5 heaping collanders full. Yay!
Late August 2009: And in the middle of August, just as the shelling/snap pea harvest finally begins to slack off, I turn around to find the greenhouse exploding with red tomatoes, the yellow wax beans shyly dangling their wares, and the lettuces being downright prolific. The chard and kale are here, the pumpkins are here, and more snap peas are on their way! And of course there is zucchini. Zucchini seems to be summer's way of saying, "you wanted more of me? Eat this. And this. And this. And don't forget this one. Freeze a couple. Give them away. But I'm making more, and that's all I'm making. Tired of the heat? Too bad, eat a zucchini." I spend most of my day in the garden right now, and some of my evenings too. I love the work, and right now I dream about picking shell peas (which can be done twice a day in the height of an onslaught). Next week? it will be something else. August 20: Okay, the "something else" is blackberries. We are all suffering the usual lacerations and purple fingers, but we have sent 7 flats of blackberries to market in the last 4 days. That's 84 pints. Whew! August 21: Asian pears are ready! Figs are ready! August 23: Plums are ready!!
August2009: It's almost blackberry season, and we are having a bumper crop! I'm starting to put away a lot of the excess, less attractive produce (shelled peas, grated zucchini, chopped basil, blended radish/basil puree). We have had some great family pea-shelling contests lately. Still taking zukes, shelling and snap peas to market. Will report again later in the month.
July 2009: The zucchinis are in the market, and the sweet peas and shelling peas are there too! We sold white icicle radishes (lovely!) and some spicy French Breakfasts and Cherry Belles. The kohlrabis are delicious, and the tomatoes are green. (With tomatoes, green means "stop." and red means "go!" This has been confusing for our youngest, who has been raised without traffic lights. She was recently conscripted for a game of "red light, green light", a fun game with no current practical application. But I digress!) The basil is leafy, the pumpkins are huge and early. The garlic is beautiful this year but we will use a lot of it for re-seeding for next year (and eating over the winter). We have some beautful elephant garlic, and a great-smelling, good-looking hardy German variety that we started to grow last year. The raspberries and thimbleberries have arrived at almost the same time, at the end of the month. Yum!
June 2009: At the beginning of June the asparagus is just ending (it was very sweet this year), and the strawberries are on their way. The first scapes are flowering on the garlic! The new greenhouse is packed with Mountain Princess, Red Pear, and Yellow Pear tomatoes, and Super Sweet Chen Basil. The raised beds have new peas and borage popping up. And there are more peas (snap peas, shelling peas) and beans (pole and bush), radishes, kohlrabi, kale, chard, and Russian sunflowers out in the rows. As well as islands of dark green zucchini. As well as the many, many delighted weeds which I trowel out almost daily. It's beginning to feel very abundant. And if I miss a day, I'll be behind forever.
September 2008: We are averaging about 2 flats of blackberries a week, and 10 pounds of black eel zucchini. The green beans are done, but the tomatoes are ripening now. The plums were gorgeous this year! And the early apples and grapes are about to begin. In August I planted kale and some later beans, which haven't ripened yet. The great blue heron and the kingfisher are still eating tree frogs at the pond, and I am still finding tree frogs everywhere: in my hollyhocks, on the sunflowers, in the blackberries bushes, in the zucchini plants, and leaping out of the way of my garden boots anywhere I step! So I walk slowly.
August 2008: Last week we took ten pounds of Black Eel zucchini, and 7 pounds of mixed green beans to MarketPlace in Friday Harbor. This week, it was 4 pounds of zucchini, 10 pounds of green beans, and 12 pounds of Purple Dragon Carrots. In a couple days we will do another run to take just zucchinis, carrots, and beets. And a couple days after that it will be Blackberry Time! (with onions and green beans) When Blackberry Time hits, we pick hard in the morning, then rush the produce over by boat to Friday Harbor and throw it gently at the produce manager, who puts it right out. We do this about every 3 days. There is a lot that doesn't make it to market. This year there were the unattractive (but tasty) shelling peas and snap peas, which we have thoroughly enjoyed, enough chard just for us, and of course all the weird-looking carrots we can eat. Last year I did a photo display in Friday Harbor of some of the Carrot Freak Show All Stars. This year, as you can see, we had some more amazing contortionists.
July 2008: Our purple Legacy garlic has been sold, about 20 pounds (dried) in all. We kept a bunch of the elephant garlic back to seed for next year. And eat! The heat is finally here and the zucchinis are going nuts, the beans are happy, the peas are producing, the carrots and beets are looking twice as big as they did last time I turned around. The onions look great. The cilantro is big and bushy, and the sunflowers have finally opened. There are unripe tomatoes on the vines. This is the exciting time of year!
June 2008
Everything is a little late this year due to the lack of heat. It's been mostly overcast, but we've also had a lot of rain (which wiped out my acorn squash babies). The strawberries have finally come. The peas are producing, although only enough for us at the moment. The beans are on stand-by, hoping the sun will come out. We've had an abundance of parsley this year. Lots of tabuli! And our chard is looking good. The garlic are finally done! We picked scapes and have eaten and pestoed our fill. Then we picked the heads and hung them up to dry in the woodshed. They smell fantastic! Last October we planted elephant garlic and purple Legacy garlic cloves (both hard-neck varieties) in our raised beds. I have weeded every few weeks since then, adding mulch every time. I don't want to be accused of some sort of gardening arrogance, so I'll admit that I may have been the midwife, but these garlic are drop-dead gorgeous. Don and I are so proud to sell them.
May 2008:
Our grafting is complete. We grafted mostly Asian Pears on what were some beautiful-but-useless Sand Pear trees.
Golden Rocky Yellow Wax Beans and Purple Dragon Carrots Zucchini and Yellow Crooknecks
Hollyhocks by the front door
Goldy Double Sunflower in the main garden
Garden Report: The tomato starts have been planted outside and are covered in plastic.The pea starts are out: both shelling and snap.Some chard, and several rows of pole beans are planted. Carrots and beets are planted. Borage and basil and parsley are looking great. This spring we planted 60 asparagus crowns, which we ordered from Seeds of Change. We had a few crowns of asparagus that we inherited, and we have really enjoyed it, so we thought maybe we should plant some more. They are already sprouting! Our garlic are gorgeous and huge. We planted them last October, and I have weeded and weeded and weeded the beds, and Don fertilized them. The organic certification inspector (who was here May 16th) said they were the most impressive garlic he had ever seen. (yay!) We are just finishing off eating our garlic from last year and we have not found a clove that competes: our garlic are small but potent; a fully cooked one will burn your mouth!