Goings On

Saturday, we spent a glorious afternoon spreading composted manure in the garden and around the fruit trees.  I raked the asparagus beds.  There's still work to be done, but the beds are much improved.  We added mulch in various places.  James tilled.  I weeded and watered the garlic.

It was glorious, all but the part where I lost my glasses.  I had prescription sunglasses on, but it's hard to see in the barn and the shed, so I thought I'd be clever and keep my glasses hooked on my shirt.  I can't drive, cook, sew... I have an old, distorted pair, and they'll do until I can visit the eye doctor and get a new pair.  It may or may not have been nearly seven years since my last eye exam.  On a side note, if you're good friends with St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost items, will you put in a good work for me?  He hasn't told me yet where to look, so I keep asking.

Then, best of all, we had almost three quarters of an inch of rain Sunday night.  Everything is pleasantly squishy and the compost is soaking in.  It feels like an eternity since the last rain or snow.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

A Week Later...

We've been busy in small ways.

The barn is cleaned out in preparation for the "stuff dumping" that happens when the cold weather arrives.  We also are making space to stock up on chicken feed so when Mr. PK arrives, we won't have to make the feed run for a month or so.

Some irises has been dug from a nearby house that's slated for demolition, as well as a few lilac saplings.  We'll see what survives.  Our flower collection needs to grow to support the bees.

Speaking of bees, our rescued hive died.  James reports that the other two hives are full of honey and capped brood, so they are ready for winter.  We removed the empty hive and sealed it up for the winter.  Maybe next spring our hives will raise more queens and swarm.  If we're attentive, we can set up another hive or two.

Weeding on the neglected strawberry and asparagus beds is moving along slowly.  It's difficult with mosquitoes still in force due to the warm weather.  Still, we're making a concerted effort to catch up.

Finally, the garlic was planted today.  I saved the largest heads and planted about 30' in a double row. That's less than last year, but we have a better bed prepared and are hoping for consistently larger bulbs.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

State of the Farm

What is there to tell you?

We have plenty of frozen chickens looking for bellies to fill.  All but one frozen turkey is claimed.

Garlic planting is truly, abysmally late this year.  There has been too much for James to do and not enough evenings (he and the big kids are in taekwando two nights a week and he teaches at the local college one night a week).  The plan is this weekend.  It's a good thing this year's harvest was beautiful and we have plenty of fresh garlic to enjoy.

Tonight we shifted more chickens.  With hatching new flocks, weeding out the bad in old flocks, and needing to retire a chicken tractor, we've had all kinds of moves.  Four of our oldest hens are now in with the teenagers. Unfortunately, we had to butcher Aragorn, our best rooster, because he was tearing up his ladies.  That's a no-no in a land where roosters are expendable.  Sadly, a juvenile rooster perished shortly after being introduced to his own flock.  I don't know why, since he didn't show signs of injury.  Our oldest chicken tractor will hit the recycle pile this winter, and next spring James will construct a new one.

The summer's downpours did a number on our soil fertility, and I'm not sure how many strawberry plants survived.  They're currently invisible beneath the weeds, and I haven't found a good weeding routine.

The weather is (finally, slightly) cooler.  There's plenty of clean up this fall in preparation for a smaller farm next year.  We may not raise any meat chickens and instead focus on turkeys.  There are big trips in store for next summer, which makes the garden hard to keep.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Weekly Recap

Maybe if I make an effort to recap our week, I can get back into the habit of blogging.

There's always (always) weeding to be done.  And lest you think our property is perfect and we've got it all together, behold just one rock...  The kids decided to decorate the top with pulled weeds, but there are still plenty more to tackle.  We have come a long way, but, please, don't be too impressed.  I don't take many pictures of our messes.

What's sprouting?  Radishes and summer squash are sprouted.  Strawberries and cherries are forming.  The garlic is now waist high.  I didn't even know garlic could grow so tall!  I certainly hope this means we'll have splendidly large bulbs in a few months.  The rhubarb is finally looking healthy, although watering it regularly remains a challenge.

What are we planting?  Tomatoes are two rows down, a million to go.  (Not literally.  There are still eight flats sitting on the deck awaiting my attention.)  I've also planted herbs and flowers.  The basil seeds are high on my list for some soil and water.

What are we harvesting?  Asparagus and eggs are keeping us hopping.  We're trying new laying boxes to foil our egg eaters.  Thus far, I'm disappointed in the lousy boxes, but our efforts are to make them work.  Our two sheep are at the butcher, so I've cleaned out two of our deep freezes while they're empty.  Soon enough, with sheep and chicken, we'll be full again!

What about those chickens?  The layers are now moving to fresh grass each evening, meaning the yolks are during the delicious, deep, orangey-gold that no store egg can match.  The layers-to-be remain in our stationary pen until James has time to build a new tractor for them (and who has time in the spring?!).  Our meat chicks are busy growing too, and while on grass, don't get moved every day (yet) until they can tolerate less heat.

 We are moving along with the business of living and growing!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Time moves so fast when it is full!  Planting, children, school, the house, life...

James had a team of volunteers over to catch up on our perennial weeding.  In exchanged for their labor, we'll be donating $5 to the Lord's Diner for every man hour they contributed.  They tackled our garlic, strawberries, and asparagus beds before breaking for a home cooked meal (including asparagus, chicken, and goat raised by us).  They also laid out our entire watering system for the main garden and moved some serious mulch.

Rain and lightning called a definitive end to the evening, but not before food, fun, fellowship, and prayer filled us all.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Garlic!

Whew!  We made it, with more garlic than we've ever attempted before.

After the kids and I pulled mountains of weeds (mountains... I can only do so much when I'm nauseous!), James graciously tilled for us.  Since the soil in this section, although full of fabulous earth worms, is over some hardpan or rocks, it would have been difficult for us to plant in such a timely fashion if he had not tilled.

Russian Red

 We chose five pounds each of Russian Red and German Extra-Hardy.  Actually, I wanted Music garlic, but it was sold out and German Extra-Hardy was the substitute.  Maybe it will work well for us!

Laying out cloves for the girls to plant

 The boys and I spent the better part of several hours separating cloves, so the kitchen was rather garlicky smelling, but it was better to do that inside than out.

My garlic planting helpers

And the garlic made it in the ground!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Tour

 In between the rain storms (3+" in the last few days), I stopped to admire my view during my circuit of chicken chores...

The garlic bulbs have poked little green stems through the soil.  I had almost forgotten this were here.  It's nice to know I didn't kill them.

 The garden is a weedy, flat place after most of the trellises have been removed.  I have one row left of tomato vines to pile up, and two rows of fence.  Then, fire will take what it will.

 The asparagus is beginning to die back.  I may harvest a few seeds this fall to attempt asparagus seedling next year.  I may.  I may not.

 Hoses have been pulled up.  Most are coiled neatly for next year, but a few, pulled out in the middle of harvesting, still need some care and attention.  Once they dry (ah, I love the rain!), I will store them for next year.  I didn't realize how many hoses we had accumulated.  I suppose that happens when the movers put them in three different places last summer when we moved, and we bought more after most of the hoses were laid out.

 Our guineas and exiled (freed?) chickens are enjoying an afternoon meal outside the Love Shack.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

a Gasp for Breath in the Rush of Summer

I have used my vacuum sealer to put up to pints of dried fruit.  While I would love to put up more, the mulberries have not been so popular, and I haven't enough strawberries.  Next year, I will start drying strawberries sooner!

The {almost} daily compost bucket. We have just enough spoiled food (and eggshells) that I don't want to give to the chickens, so into the bin they go!

Onions are bulbing out fabulously.  This year, I'm striving to use onions as soon as I pull them, including chopping extra for the freezer.  Last year, too many onions spoiled through my failure to chop and use.  I know few things that smell quite as horrendous as a mouldering onion.

We are slowly... slowly... slowly beating down the weeds.  While they are still ahead, I think we are making great strides.  I'm not sure the same can be said in the battle against the whiteflies, although a judicious application of neem may help me.

The first garlic has been harvested.  The bulbs are disappointingly small overall, but they were planted too closely, in haste, by a nauseous pregnant woman.  I blame it mostly on me.  I'll save the biggest for this fall's planting (by Columbus Day).

Fava beans, why do you hate me?  Like in a past attempt, many are beginning to shrivel and burn up.  Is it the unexpected heat?

Tomatoes!  I am anticipating the first ripe ones with great delight!

A gift... an unexpected mulberry tree.  It is a weeping mulberry and quite attractive.

We also have apple trees suffering from cedar rust and peaches from oriental fruit moths.  I think our neighbor has not cared for his trees in the past, so we have work to do next spring to handle these issues!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Tomatoes hardening off...  I think we have 13 flats.

I love the sight of redbuds blooming in the spring.  I didn't know, given my ignorance of trees and the drought last summer, if I was lucky enough to have any redbuds. We have two!

While working outside today, I remembered my hat in an effort to avoid the nearly-obligatory first ferocious sunburn of the summer.  (No, it's not summer weather, but it's always the first sunburn!)

Rhubarb is thriving!

Strawberry bed

I don't see any major gaps in the strawberries, so I think we planted well.  The rain has definitely aided in helping plants establish themselves.

Peas, lettuce, spinach, and onions are planted.  Who left the shed door open?  I think one of my little helpers have come by...

Despite the thriving weeds and lilies around them, threatening to choke them out, the garlic is doing well.

ASPARAGUS!  I am so relieved to discover five plants survived the searing heat last summer.  Q added his finger to the picture.  I'm looking forward to the first harvest of the spring!

The Assistant and Q added their thumbs to this onion picture.  The onion have lovely new growth, and I hope they enjoyed the cold weather we had recently.  It should aid in bulb size.

Peach tree, post-multiple frosts.  I'm still not sure what will come of it.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Nap Time's Labors

Today, our mail lady dropped a "Johnny's" box on my door step.  "What was inside?  Surely not the sweet potatoes," I argued with myself.  "It's too early!"

Nope.  No sweet potatoes.  Purple asparagus.

Myself, I'm just okay about asparagus.  However, I love eating from the garden, and I have a mom who will eat all the asparagus I can grow, so I ordered asparagus crowns.  And here they were, in all their sandy, damp glory, just waiting to be planted.

Ah, tis the rub.

I am notorious for not planting starts, crowns, etc., in a timely fashion.  Once, an entire box of strawberry plants went MOLDY because I didn't plant them.

But not today.

Today, the baby was sleeping by himself in the swing.  (This kid puts himself to sleep while laying down, which no other of my children have ever done.  Who knew how un-needed it would make me feel?  But anyway, back to business!)

Planting.  Here.  Now.  In the sun and the breeze.  The day the box arrived.

So I found my rain boots (remember yesterday?), gloves, a shovel, and the box.  Soon I added a rake, bucket, and wheelbarrow to my tool pile.  There is an existing asparagus patch (*the upper left of the photo), but the rest of the "patch" was full of lilies or irises.  I love a good iris, but there were more than enough that I could sacrifice a few for the sake of edibles.  Besides, my mom was willing to take the bulbs.  Hence, the bucket.

There was plenty of dead grass to rake aside, so the wheelbarrow was duly loaded.  I'm not particularly adept at the shovel (I'll blame it on having a baby less than three months ago), so it was slow going.  I think I reached the appropriate depth, and I'm that much farther along in cleaning out this bed.  I have a 4-gal. bucket of irises for my mom.

The garlic was unburied in my raking enthusiasm, so here it is.

And, as a crowning glory for my efforts, I discovered these beautiful blooms on the peach tree.  Now for a few glasses of water and a hungry baby.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise. It's Purgatory Ranch.

Garlic Planting

I'm a little late, but had a bit of fiasco with my attempt to order new garlic to plant this fall.  The summary: the company wouldn't be shipping my garlic until early November.

So today, after admiring the asparagus for a time (we were delighted to discover an overgrown asparagus bed when we moved in), I cleaned out the weeds, grass, and dead iris foliage to make space for my garlic planting.

We love garlic, and I love that planting it in the fall leaves me one less thing to do in the spring.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Potato Harvest 2012 Results

VERY belatedly...

Potato Type	Seed Weight	Yield	Ratio
Dakota Crisp	15	58	3.867
Red Norland	5	52	10.4
Yukon	10	12	1.2
Kennebec	31	35	1.13
Viking	15	28	1.866
Misc.	10	66.5	6.65
All-Blue	5	42	8.4
TOTALS	40	293.5	7.3375

There's some monkey business with reformatting by blogger, but at least the numbers are here:

We had great yields of All-Blue and Red Norland (1:8.4 and 1:10.4).  Our leftover potatoes also produced well, especially considering that we could have (and would have) just discarded those potatoes in the compost bin.  Kennebec, Yukon, and Viking, planted in the new, less fertilized bed, had pretty lousy yields.  All told, our average was 7 pounds of potatoes for every pound of see potato we planted.  This is better than we've done in years past... we must finally have the compost about right in the original bed.

We also yielded 27 pounds of large onions.  Some rotted after our delay in harvesting, so next year we hope to do even better!

Garlic was only mediocre, but it was rather weed-stricken and less composted.  This fall, I hope to compost that bed, and on we go!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

End of the Potato Harvest and Weedmageddon

First, Weedmageddon...

I should have taken a before picture, but it was a race against time to dig the potatoes before the heat caught us. We started at seven a.m., and I pulled the last taters around nine.  Whew!

Weeds were chest high and more.  James and the weed whacker went to work!

We have some interesting volunteers growing in our mulch pile.  They look like unripe cherry tomatoes, but the leaves are something else.  There are also a few plants that look like tomatillos or... something.  Any guesses or suggestions?  (No, we didn't taste any.)

Onions in the basket on the right, garlic, remaining all blue potatoes, and tree onions in the basket on the right.  Three overflowing boxes of potatoes that will be weighed later today.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.