Cherries!

2012 cherries

This year the fruit stayed on the tree and the cherries look really good!  Not many yet, but I think it needs another year or two to get going strong.  I think a few might be ready for sampling later today.

June

It's been half a month since the planting season began.  We have eaten asparagus and now the plants are all fern and just something to look at for another year.  We are still getting strawberries, probably double what we got last year and they are sweet and large.  The Cherry tree has some red fruit on it, but I consider it practice fruit and don't really think about harvesting for another year or two.  The snow peas have pods on them and we should be eating those by the end of the week.  And as almost always, the collards, mustard and arugula keep giving.
We are grateful.

This week the seedlings all had a burst of growth.  My bean plants look strong and plentiful, about a foot tall now.  The potatoes that we planted all seem to have grown a bit too.

I think soon the bare earth will be covered in green leaf and the lush feeling and sight that this place becomes in the summer will have returned.

Mother's Day, Time to Plant!

It's Mother's day and here in the north east it's the traditional time to start planting.

Here are 3 "volunteer" potato plants, & some kale that just got
transplanted.  In the 3 pots are apple seedlings
that were started a year ago, or so.

The strawberry plants are looking very happy this year.

In the low tunnel the lettuce has come up.

the orange tree has it's sunblock on!

Snap peas are doing pretty well.

I dumped a bunch of squash seeds on a windy day and they ALL seem
to have sprouted.

Transplanted squash volunteers.

The terraces.

The main plot got expanded a small bit this year
and some new fence.

Apples to be, we hope. (winesap)

Peaches to be, we hope.

a row of pinto beans seedlings and the grape.

cherries to be, we hope.

pretty little flowers.

Happy Dog.

Silly rabbit.

In order to make room for this years crops we had to clear out what was still in the ground from the winter.  We still had a few carrots in the low tunnel.  Carrot soup, slaw, cake, salad....

Carrots! Planted last fall.

You can see how rocky our soil is by the funny shapes of these carrots.  We also did not thin them the way some people might so many were competing for space and nutrients in a small space.
I prefer the taste of the orange carrots to the white ones, slightly, and they all probably would taste sweeter if we'd picked them sooner.

Butter!

A cold weekend but, very Springlike and getting warmer.

Found a new Blog site and was inspired:   

 Eating From the Ground Up   or http://www.eatingfromthegroundup.com/

 Eating from the ground up is kept by Alana who also has a new book,

"The Homemade Pantry"  

that I am looking forward to reading. 

A blog entry of hers inspired us this weekend!

We get raw milk from a local dairy and this weekend we made butter. Mmmmmmm!  

With the buttermilk, a product of the process we made pancakes! Mmmmmmmmmmm!

We also ran into a possible Chicken connection while at the dairy.  Soooooo, today I will be putting some finishing touches on the coop I built last summer.  Then I have to figure out where to put it????

While picking up the milk we got a Lilac.  

I don't have a real strong need to buy and plant things we can't eat, but my wife appreciates pretty and smelly things, (not to be confused with pretty smelly things, like me after digging holes to plant new trees)

I planted one of my apple saplings that I started from seed.

 The Little apple is on the north side of the low garden and will someday not only give fruit, I hope, but a nice bit of privacy from the road.

more non edible, but pretty flowers, (Flocks).

Mother's Days is a few weeks away and that is the date that is said to be safe to plant in this region.  In this age of new weather patterns every year it is always a guess, but then agriculture is based on faith, hope and educated guess work isn't it.  Trial and error as well I suppose.  Peace.

The hard sell..... NOT!

Just a comment about my work for the past 3 or 4 seasons of selling produce to people of the local communities:  I am not a salesman.  This is not my job.

I look at it this way, I help the farmers get good whole food to the community.  I want the farmers to have a good life, a decent income, and help they can rely on.  I think of farmers, and I am not referring to Industrial agriculture, but mixed use small farms who serve locally, as noble people.  In farming, there aren't allot of guarantees, so I try to be one part of their occupations that is dependable.  After all, they provide sustenance for the community.

I help the people of the community get good whole food.  I try to help people increase the quality of their lives by starting with the most essential part of it.  I appreciate people who want to eat good, tasty, healthy food enough to think about it and come to a local farmer's market.  I enjoy sharing whatever information I have, or just a humane exchange in the morning.

I am here to help, the farmers, the community.  This is what I can do for my community.  This is another way to serve myself while serving others.  I prefer shopping at a farmers market to a big corporate owned grocery store.  So this helps to make my world more like the world I want to live in.  Selfish, yes, you bet, but that doesn't exclude it from benefiting others too.

Local food
   Immediate, local, Responsibility
   Support of local people and the local economy (independence, security)
   Fresh, seasonal, culturally significant and unique
   energy responsible/reasonable
    shopping an enjoyable community experience

Corporate/industrial food
     Absentee owners, Corporate greed
     LOTS of packaging
     energy irresponsible/insane
     out of season, culturally homogenized, designed for shipping
     shopping a chore
   
I think it is an easy choice but we each make our own decisions.  Every penny spent in a big grocery goes to some corporation that has a primary mandate to make money.  Know the name of the person who grows your food and your probably doing pretty good.

Bon Appetite!

ED 2012

This is kind of sad in a way.  We did a half mile sweep of the road, from our house west and this is what we got.  Only one other house on the road in all that distance and a pond on the other side of the road.  It isn't like we live on a main highway or that people would just wonder on to our road.  So to me this means that the debris left on the side of the road is probably put their by people who pass this way often.  Who would want to drive past this stuff everyday?  What kind of person lives like this?  I will say no more on that.

Tomorrow I will recycle what I can and then it's off to the transfer station with what's left, as well as our semi-annual house trash trip.

Earth Day 2012 local clean up!  Litterbugs prefer Marlboro cigarettes
and Budweiser beer, as well as vitamin water and energy drinks!

Later in the day I hope to plant an Apple sapling that I started from seed a year, or so, ago as another marker of Earth Day.

Around here everyday is Earth day, (Duh!)  but today we get to be a little more vocal about it and clean up after other peoples mess.

Asparagus!

We've had about 4 meals from the Asparagus patch this year.  THE BOUNTY!!!

Seedlings of squash, tomato, peppers, savory, cantalope and more have all popped up in the low tunnel.

Sprung!

     As Spring has Sprung, and even felt a bit like summer yesterday, Green is becoming more and more visible.  Saw the first Skink yesterday and the first Garter Snake this morning.  Hiking in the woods becomes a bit of a concern, as we need to start to keep aware of the Copperheads, and rattler's.

One of the things I really wanted our place to become was a menagerie of edible plants.  It is getting there, partly because we have become informed about what is edible that grows wild and partly because we just let things bolt and throw seeds everywhere, rather than compost them.  It does make weeding more challenging in that I tend to let things grow a little longer to see if they can be food or not. 

Collards, collards, everywhere.

 Our one lone tulip
(Damn autozoom!)

Apple Blossoms

Young Apple trees

Fig, just uncovered from it's winter coat

Fig blossoms and little fruit!
(Damn autozoom!)

Little Figs!
(Damn autozoom!)

Kale plant that wintered over is now sprouting leaves.
We'll probably just let this one bolt.

At the foot of this Birch last year we
planted a bunch of wild edibles

Snap peas sprouts

The Dogwood trees make nice borders for
the little place.

Rock Climbing and compost gathering

I have gotten all the leaves off of the beds.  I left a layer on them over the winter to help keep the erosion down.  For this years amendments I am adding compost from our property.  I found that in areas where the leaves have sat for years with out being raked away, a lot of the place, the soil under the top layer of leaves is a few inches deep, moist but not wet, light, fluffy, dark and usually full of worms.  It is composted leaves.  I found that a section of rock wall at the high point of the place is a really great place to boulder, that is practice rock climbing.  So I am taking the compost from the base of this cliff in order to expose more rock while getting good earth for the garden beds.  The wall is about 12 feet or so high but it has got some good moves on it.

Rock climbing and gardening go together!

 The first of the asparagus has shot up!  We really need more plants.  We get about enough for one or two meals each year.  Kind of makes it a very special treat.

One of the first Asparagus shoots!

 The first strawberry blossoms have arrived as well.  Lets see who gets more strawberries this year, us or the chipmunks.

First strawberry blossom

Flowers of all kinds have bloomed.  It is a little bit early but a welcomed sight.  I had to mow the grass for the first time yesterday.  The smell of fresh cut wild onions.

Early Spring Improvements

It is still to early to plant, but it is a good time to get some of the physical things in order in anticipation of the growing season.  In truth, I think I should be in the seed starting phase and as usual am late to get started.  It takes up a bit of the inside of our little house to do it and I am want to give up the space.

What I have done is to pull out the "chicken wire" fencing from around the main garden on the down hill side, as well as the boards that formed a bulkhead to hold the garden in place.  The stone wall just down hill of the garden is now going to act as the bulk head, thus giving us a little more room, and elevation, and letting me get the wood out of the ground that might have been a lure to pests.

new section of stone wall.  Bulbs looking very green in March.

 one of the first things I did yesterday was to take down a section of wooden picket fencing and begin to replace it with stone wall.  The stones for the wall have been accumulating in a pile over the past year and were now at an amount that seemed sufficient to start the build.

new section of loose stone wall.

I have a lot of rock on the property.  I chose to build loose stone walls where ever I could because the pitch of the property is so steep that the force of water running down hill would eventually overcome any structures attempting to hold it back.  The loose stones allow for some moisture to get thru preventing hydroscopic tension, but still hold the earth in place.  My walls at this spot are also allowing us to build up the level of the garden beds to some degree.

It is kind of nice to have the fencing down, though it feels a bit exposed, more so because I just cut back all the big grasses that lined the property where the road is.

All is still very brown/grey here, but a warmth has set in that speaks of green and rebirth and Springtime soon to come.  Next week is the Vernal Equinox so we are actually getting there.

Low Tunnel, revisited

A person at the Farmer's Market asked about our low tunnels so I thought I'd post some pics for her.

I made this tunnel out of reclaimed automobile garage/awning that got crushed by a fallen tree, some reclaimed wood, and some thin mil plastic from the hardware store.  The plastic lasts about 2 or 3 seasons and the structure has supported almost 2 feet of snow.

In the summer I leave the framing up but pull off the plastic.

For the late fall/winter we typically grow carrots, chard, kale, arugula, onion, and what ever odd veggie that we might want to try.

The area is 15 feet long by 10 feet wide with doors at both ends that we use to ventilate it on warm days.  We almost never water in the winter because of the condensation that accumulates and falls like rain if we shake the frame.

Low tunnel Fall 2011

This picture was taken as we were setting it up for the coming winter.  We have 2 long beds with a path down the middle.  The beds are each about 3 feet wide, the sides we can stretch across to weed and harvest with about a foot between the outside walls and each bed.

2010 Low tunnels in summer. Note the orange tree in a pot on the stump.  This year we got 19 oranges from this little tree and they became marmalade.

Low tunnel and really low tunnel in the foreground, 2010.

Boat shed that looks like a High tunnel.

White carrots for the white rabbit?

carrot from the low tunnel February 2012

Sweet tasting!