Now that the weather has settled, things at the farm are growing.  Most of the Strawberries are leafing, we have Asparagus shoots, the Eggplant, despite the drubbing they took, have a couple of eggplants on them.  The original and now replacement peppers are leafing back up and even a couple of the tomatoes, that look like children from a refuge camp, have a couple of tomatoes.  Things are growing.  Things will continue to grow.  We are determined and relentless.  And if that wasn’t enough work, we got the posts for the new pig pen yesterday.  All in all a good day.  Mom did chicken chores, dad weeded and hoed, and even Aaron came out and pulled the alfalfa that has been growing all over the beet, carrot and onion patches.

 

Egg Plant (you can see how badly the leaves got torn from the hail (that isn’t from bugs)

 

Peppers re-leafing and showing some serious determination

The first shoots of the new Asparagus patch (its blurry because it wouldn’t stop blowing around)

The sad tomatoes and tomatillos.  They are having a rough time recovering.

Acorn squash with flower

 

 

About 200 row feet of Peaches N Cream Sweet corn.  It took two seedings to get them going because the first planting got washed away in the storms.

 

We have 400 row feet of onions.  They are a combination of Cabernet Red, Ailsa, and Copra with a couple of sets of Whites.  All seem very healthy.

We planted somewhere on the order of 800 row feet of Black Beans.  Despite getting hammered when they were just emerging from the ground it looks like they are well on their way.  You can see in the picture that the ground got pretty crusted over from the storms.  We have been out breaking it up pretty diligently.

 

Three different kinds of potatoes:  Reds, Kennebecs, and Yukon Golds.  All have come up  very nicely.  We are going to do our first hilling tomorrow.

This lower patch is about 4800 square feet.  It has organic dent corn for the chickens and for corn meal (the left 2/3ds) and the right side is about 1800 square feet of kidney beans.

 

This is harder to see as it is very early yet – Beets and two types of Carrots.

 

 

The hardest part of this right now is simply keeping the soil broken up.  We are still devising ways of keeping something this big erosion protected but also covered in order to build the soil.  We have some ideas but that doesn’t help this year.  I imagine that next season, the lessons learned here, will prove invaluable.

Happy Summer Solstice To All Of My Heretic Friends!!!

Farmer Jon