June Has Arrived

I can not believe it is June 6 already. Seems things should be picking up in the garden, but it really has been a slow start. Peas are still only about 6" tall.




The only things visible from afar in the garden are garlic and rhubarb.





Other farmers are saying the same thing about the slow start. Oh well, what can you do. Be patient I guess. While we wait, you can still enjoy the musings of farm life. Here's what's been going on the past couple weeks.

May 27
Planted 14 rows of winter squash. The 1st batch of potatoes have poked up through the soil.

May 29
Started planting in our second production garden at Tammy's house. Carrots, beets, cabbage, broccoli, and daikon radish went in as seeds, also cauliflower sets went in. Hoping for a crop of those this year - last year cauliflower was a failure.

May 31 - June 1
Planted summer squash, cukes, melons, more corn, endive, sugar beets, sorghum, quinoa (3 new crops to try - should be interesting), and okra (not sure what it will taste like, but it's pretty dried)

June 2 - worked on second production garden at Tammy's. Corn went in there, more potatoes, carrots, and beets. All the onions and leeks are in there, as well as more lettuce & spinach. Those will get planted often to keep a supply all early summer. The lettuce gets bitter in August so we take a little break. We plant again the end of the summer for lots of fall lettuce.

June 3 - set out peppers. Planted more spinach, lettuce, and mesculen. Corn, beans, and winter squash plants are up.

June 4 - chickens everywhere you look. There are 50 chicks in the chicken tractor at Intervale Road. 25 will soon move to Robin's house. We are each raising them for meat.

This is on top of the 35 layer birds here, 10 at Robin's, and 20 at Mom's.



There are also now close to 20 chicks in the nursery at Mom & Dad's

They are incubating our own fertile eggs to raise more laying hens (the roosters are good at something other than waking us up in the morning).

The rooster chicks s will have a special "operation" when they are a couple months old so we can raise them into capons for meat (capon meat is fairly hard to come by these days, but is more moist, tender, and flavorful than that of a hen or rooster). More eggs have gone in the incubator - this will be an ongoing process. Not sure what we will do with them all yet - we have thoughts to maybe sell the meat.

We still have all the tomatoes to set out - over 200 plants shouldn't take too long :-)

Weeding - it's already begun. Despite the fact that plants are smaller than our fist, the weeds grow faster and need to be taken care of so they don't pull nutrients from the soil that the plants need.

There is also a goat around the farm these days. Dove has been with us for almost 3 months now. If you would be interested in some raw goats milk, I'd love to talk. I get a gallon a day, and it is best fresh, not having to sit for several days for a pick up. So I would be looking to space pick ups, not have them all on the same day.

As always, email or call if you have any questions.



Thanks!





The Farmers 8 Daughters