Just another Day on the Farm

Clove Current.. Garden 2015

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

Called clove currant, this is not a black currant except in color. It ripens much later, is bigger and sweeter without the black currant muskiness. The yellow flowers in spring are spicy sweet and the bush is large (5′-6′) and open and has lovely fall color. The Crandall selection was from a wild stand of ribes odoratum found by a farmer west of Newton, KS in 1888. He developed the strain, which had extra sweetness and larger berry size

I am thrilled to be adding in six clove current bushes to the farm this week, it was a gift from a fellow gardener, and I am very grateful Thank you again for such a wonderful gift!

I will be giving them max spacing in their row as I would ideally like them to produce very well indeed. I understand that they can be tipped to make more, are natural spreaders and also can come true by seed, very hardy to our area.

I am greatly looking forward to seeing what they will do as they settle in and start producing.. I love the idea of a current the size of a large gooseberry or grape..

This is the first time I have ever had these, do you have clove currents at your farm or yard, what is your favorite recipe, can they be canned and eaten whole, do you make a current pie or fool with them.

Posted in Food Forest, gardens | Tagged clove current, Food Forest | Leave a comment

Rasberry Row.. 2015

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

we have raspberry, first year one the farm, someone gave me a red fruiting bunch of baby, they produce small, tart berries very late in the fall till freeze up..

Last year we were part of a bulk plant buy and I got 75 early bearing raspberry cane, they made us babies and now the row is 100 canes, 50 per row, double row, they produced huge sweet berries last year and are in bloom already, we should start picking late june.

This year we bought 125 med-season canes for our next row, they are in now, and a space as been left for next years order of a fall baring large, sweet berry, I am sad to say that intend to cut an clear the original free patch out.. they have done a good job but its time to move to a known berry, plus I want the area with the berries in my main garden for annuals.

The new rows are over as part a soft fruit garden on the food forest side of the yard.. yes it needs a cleanup around it but when things come bare root, getting them in the ground is the now part..

ps, hubby has me on the hunt for his blueberry row he wants, so I say to him, hands on my hips.. do you know how long it will take to pick everthing and without blinking, I hope a long time otherwise they are not reaching their production as we hoped.. snort.. ok then

Posted in food | Tagged bare root rasberry canes, large plantings, rasberry | Leave a comment

First Garden Harvest for 2015-April-May 462 pounds

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

In many area of the garden we are taking out our first succession plantings of early greens, turnips, radish, mustards, beets, green onions and so forth, we are harvesting enough that I am putting away for winter out of these harvests as well as fresh eating, and we are now putting in peppers, tomato and so forth for our hot summer crops but we are also intercropping between then, while they are all starts and between four to six plus inches high, we are interplanting out with greens, and root crops, the areas where planned so that we can weed, water from the outside, planting into what will become the walkways in late harvest season but are now root beds! If there is one thing that I have learned to love, is that you can get two, three and sometimes even four crops out the same garden space if you work it right!

As its a tracking year, so far to date, we have removed 462 pounds worth of spring harvest from the gardens for April-May. I am averaging for the critter feeds, I weight out a single load, as 25 pounds, and so I believe that we have used a total of 800 pounds to the critters in May, with a reduced 360 in April, for a total of critter feed at 1160

June is going to be a slow down month to a degree.. we will be harvesting currents, herbs, early roots, greens, peas and a few tomato*s otherwise the poundage will all be in the critter area, and the garden will be focused strongly on growing.. I know this and I am ok with it..

Working my way up to my first ton of people and critter food.. lots to go to meet goals this year that for sure..

Posted in Garden harvest | Tagged Garden Harvest 2015 | 2 Comments

Quail.. a lovely set of six young ones..

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

With the loss of so many of my good laying hens to a really bad Fisher attack, he killed for sport, not for food.. I was suddenly down by half on eggs, now I know lots of folks would have gone out and paid though the nose to get older chickens but given, I am currently raising almost 40 chicks, most laying hens, a few meat birds, it makes no sense to lay out for hens at the most costly time of the year for them.. a hen locally can start at 25 right now.

I just needed a stop gap for fresh eating eggs, for baking and so forth.. Quail to the rescue.. they are just young but will be laying hard for months to come and while they are small eggs, they work great for me, Hubby can have the bigger eggs and I will have the smaller. I know I have three females for sure, one mostly likely female and two.. huh.. anyone can guess at this time..

Plus they are funny, sweet and so cute! these guys are very well bred and handled by children and are so tame.

I modified a rabbit hutch for them, give them a outside area and a protected inside area, and a total of 16 square feet plus I added in branches to make it two levels in over half of it..

Posted in Critters | 3 Comments

Juno is Home!

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

My new Nanna to be.. once she grows up a some, she has been running with a buck so it is possible she is expecting, we will see if she comes into heat in the fall or not, I will be feeding her for growth as a young doe, and that is the same as I would be feeding her for if she was expecting so its covered either way.

She will take two to three years to get to her true full size, but I am hopeful she will get close to her mothers size but we will see as her father was a bit smaller.. Very grateful she came trained to a collar and lead, makes things so much simpler that’s for sure

Juno traveled home in her bedded down X large dog crate, she was weaned last week and is a nice big solid 55 pound Miss.. she settled quickly and made sure to be turned to us so she could watch us and make eye contact.

Hubby carries her down and we put into dry lot, she said hi, and then jumped out when we were not looking, she is grazing in the pasture with the small flock and lambs, the big sweet ewe is tuning her in, so she is learning she is not top ranking.

The sweet sheep in the pasture are both cookie monsters and come running when called, it will be short work to get Juno trained to the same, she is already interested and people friendly but respectful..

We have the top and bottom hot line, we will see if we will need a middle hot line with Juno here on the farm, its possible we will.. if so, then that will happen soon, but she is trained to the hot line at her old place and we do have both the hot line and the sheep fencing, but I do not want her to learn to step up on the sheep fencing, so hopefully she will get a good Zap and learn to stay away from it..

Posted in Goats | Tagged Goat, Juno, juno the goat kid | 3 Comments

Know your land -Asparagus Planting..

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

As you know I was lead on a community plant group buy of different plants, just one more folks to get their plants and everyone will have had their plants delivered at this point and we are getting busy putting our own plants into the ground..

Sometimes you need to know your land.. you see I need to put hundreds of Asparagus 2 year crowns into the ground and if I had tried to put them into the main garden, the grass and bits of other plants would have been a never ending battle or I would have had to spend hours and hours double digging out that bed..

But as it happens just across from the main garden is a wild area that is just allowed to do its thing and there is a plant that controls that space in a way that is impressive, it takes over and nothing else grows there.. its a ground cleaner..

It has quite big roots, if cut off and allowed to stay in the ground, they harden and take years to compost, but pulled out, the pigs like them for fresh eating, and you can have clean land ready in matter of cut, pull, add compost and GO!

This is just what we did, we cut out a new section right in their thickess part but in a good spot and cleared the land in a matter of two hours, and voila, something that could have taken ten plus hours to clean, double dig and prepare was instead done in two hours.

This bed has hundred plus new two year old crowns of only male asparagus planted into it.. looked after it will produce for 25-30 years.. Yes, they got covered up, hubby was taking photos for me and he was just showing one in the ground.

We should get a average of 50 pounds per year once in full production, that will give us a good amount of fresh eating but it also means that we should finally have enough to put some away for the winter use as well., if after five years or so we want more, we will expand at that time.

We mixed dirt and well turned barn compost from the pigs to cover it, we will build up the cover with time and I am planning on laying down cardboard on the walkways edges with a top dressing of straw..

We have hit the big time folks, we are expanding the garden to the other side of the ditch.. o my..

Posted in gardens | Tagged new Aspagarus bed | 7 Comments

Stepping out of my comfort zone-Sort of

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

If you have ever meet me in person, I can talk a mile a minute and on more subjects then you can shake a stick at. I do not mind small groups but I have been asked over the past years to do public speaking, and had kept turning it down..

But when a friend asked me if I would join in a combo plant event, multi speaker day and talk about food preservation, I said yes.. and I am so glad I did.. I would maybe have a tiny cheat sheet next time, but other then missing my key start planned speech out of nerves, it went good, lots of question an answers

I have been asked to do a few more talks both this year which is good because I have been asked to speak at a large event next year, it should be interesting. I will consider this reaching a goal of mine for the year, which was stepping out of my comfort zone more and second my goal to be more active both off and on the farm in my local food movement.

Posted in Goals | Tagged local food movement, local plant group, speaking about food perservation | 4 Comments

Just a bit of Garden overview

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

I have been playing it careful this year, its been a odd spring and my hunch was that we would have late frosts and a longer fall, I have the row covers and more to make that end season longer on some things if needed but overall, I went with a number of quite short season seeds..

So I am well aware that compared to someone that went out and bought starts, my garden is just starting in some ways but given that my last hard frost was less then a week ago, it was the right thing to do for sure..

I also outsourced my tomatos and peppers this year, a fellow garden friend in the area is working on plants this spring and I am all about sharing, (plus she had the most amazing heritage plants so many of them) so I have ordered a whole host of new to me kinds and will grow out and see if I like them and if I adore them, I will save seeds

My early planted crops are rocking, my current seeded out are all up and going well, but we will be planting lots more in the next two to three weeks.

thanks to a friend and some bartering, we were able to come home with precut posts, she was clearing a bit of smaller woods, and I needed garden posts! Win, Win.. This is just a sample of them.. We also have been able to get a number of wood pallets for a different project.

they will have used older sheep fencing nailed on to them for a total growing height of 4 and half feet

Some of my early planted greens, beets, turnips, and strawberries in the background.. I am slowly weeding out the middle of the pigweed as we eat it.

My first rows of planted suger peas are over two and half feet tall at the moment, with my smallest peas being four to six inches tall, all the peas for the year are planted now, grow babies grow

Hay bale garden, this year we are growing climbing beans over them.. the Beans are up.. there are two sets of beans in each hole, two holes on each side and one on the top of the bale, ideally it will cover the bale in green.

Posted in gardens | Tagged Garden | 3 Comments

Mays Off-farm Trip..

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

On my to do list for this year included taking the time at least once a month to go to a local site or event and get off the farm even if only for a few hours.

We headed out to the Bog for a nice picnic lunch out..

The Alfred Bog is a little piece of boreal (northern) forest, hundreds of miles south of anything like it. Yet, at 4,200 hectares (10,000 acres), it is the biggest bog of its kind in Southern Ontario, big enough to give refuge to many plants and animals that were stranded as the warming climate pushed the boreal forest northward. This domed peat bog has been building for 10,000 years and shelters many plants and animals that are rare or endangered, some of which are of national significance. Examples include the Bog Elfin butterfly, Fletcher’s dragonfly, spotted turtle, white fringed orchid, Atlantic sedge and rhodora. In fact the bog has been designated by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources as a “Class 1 Wetland” and an “Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI)”.

Being a domed peat bog, the Alfred Bog is unlike the kettle bogs most commonly encountered south of the Hudson Bay lowlands. Kettle bogs are found typically in depressions such as those found when a huge block of glacial ice is buried and subsequently melts, leaving a pond in which vegetation has crept in from the edges until the whole surface is covered with a flat, quaking mat. Domed bogs drain in all directions from the dome and the only nutrients received come from rain and snow. The dominant vegetation in both types of bog is sphagnum moss, known to gardeners as peat moss. Sphagnum moss thrives in the interior of bogs where cool, wet, oxygen starved, nutrient poor, acid conditions prevail. The dome is formed over millennia because sphagnum moss has the ability to wick up water from below. These conditions produce a unique community of plants and animals.

Alfred Bog lies in the east end of an abandoned channel of the Ottawa River . This was the main channel of a great river flowing down the Ottawa valley to the Atlantic Ocean. It drained a glacial lake centred in Manitoba. Because of reduced flow and glacial rebounding, the river abandoned its old channel and moved to its present location. Mer Bleue, lying in the west end of the channel is Alfred’s smaller twin.

The most significant impact upon the bog over the years has been the conversion of the bog land for agricultural purposes. The first settlers in the area found the bog to be of little use for farming and an obstacle to building roads. Nevertheless, over the years drainage around the margins has reduced it to about a third of its original size.

Posted in Goals | Tagged off farm trips | 1 Comment

Rhurab Goals for 2015 – 300 pounds

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

I have set goals for a number of the bigger crops in terms of poundage, it would not make sense to do so without having a idea of what things produce. otherwise I will have little to no way to meet my goals for production this year, I am aiming for 6 tons for house use and putting up for cellar or pantry goals, and 4 tons for the critters.

Rhubarbs goal for the year is 300 pounds and I am clearly going to make it and then some.. I have 30 plants, and even only doing a half picking of the big stems on them, I am getting between seven to ten pounds per plant so far based on my weights. I will be only very very lightly picking the biggest stems from my two best plants that are being allowed to go to seed side by side.

The red rhubarb will be used for baking, canning etc, the big green-pink will be used for relish, rhubarb pickles, rhubarb juice and so forth.. This is my BIG canning bowl, that is 40 cups of diced, washed and ready rhubarb for processing.

I have firm plans to take a second picking and then some selective picking over the rest of the year.. I will do a final update in the fall on rhubarb total but my spring pickings are going very well indeed..

What is your rhubarb goals for the year..