Our new hoop house

I’ve been itching to build a hoop house for some time now. This spring I went to a permaculture demonstration on extending the season at David Homa’s impressive home and permaculture site. I based this small hoop house on his design and several of these small hoops that he had set up at his place. It’s not too complicated, cost around $100 in supplies, and took me exactly a day to construct, including digging out the sod to place the raised bed. We’re still sifting the compost to fill the bed, but hope to get some things planted and growing in the hoop in the next week or so, so we can plan on harvesting greens and some other hardy things well into the fall and winter.

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Agriculture, Garden Agriculture, extended garden season, Garden, hoop house

Summer Vegetable Stew

The girls woke early from their naps yesterday and, grouchy and sleepy, they wandered down to the garden with me. Half an hour later, their moods had improved and we had all the fixin’s for supper: fistfuls of basil, baskets piled with carrots, fingerlings, onions, tomatoes, patty pans, a few sprigs of herbs, and whatever green beans Bea hadn’t gobbled up already. This stew, from Deborah Madison’s lovely book, Local Flavors, is one of my favorites this time of year. I cut a few corners–leaving my tomatoes unpeeled and unseeded and my green beans whole, and changing the proportions of vegetables to suit what’s ready for harvest. In last night’s version, I went heavy on the sage and summer squash, and all but the shell beans, bell pepper and olive oil came from the garden.

Shell Beans and Summer Vegetables Stewed in Their Own Juices

Bea can't get enough!

Recipes Garden, recipe, vegetable stew

Our growing herd of dairy goats was definitely one of the main attractions for those stopping by on Saturday

It was an honor and a great pleasure to be included among the farms on this year’s Backyard Locavore tour, and Saturday was a perfect day to show folks around the homestead. After a week spent mowing and trimming and tidying up the place, Karl and I put out some chévre and, with the help of the Cooperative Extension Office’s excellent volunteers, took turns answering questions and leading people through our gardens, orchard, and root cellar/cheese cave/basement.

Eating locally, like so many of our major life changes, has snuck up on us: every year, the garden and poultry flocks expand, the goat herd multiplies, and I become a little more proficient at food preservation. And each year, as we weed and milk and can, we come a little closer to self-sufficiency. Showing visitors around gave us a chance to focus on what we’re doing right–instead of seeing all the projects we haven’t finished (raised asparagus beds, anyone?), we saw tomato vines leaning with heavy clusters of fruit, 100 heads of garlic curing in the root cellar, and pumpkins so big that our girls can’t lift them. The hens are laying, the broilers are fattening, and the ducks have added fallen apples and acorns to their diet. The homestead chugs along, and we are so so lucky to be along for the ride.

Master Gardener and Master Preserver Rae Belanger (and master-in-the-making Charlotte) answered everyone’s questions about jams and jellies.

Ten Apple Farm herb and smoked paprika chévre

Agriculture Backyard Locavore tour, cooperative extension office, Garden, locavore

Beans climbing in the morning light

I love summer mornings on the farm. Once morning chores are done, I love to just poke around the garden and take in the splendor in the beautiful morning light. Here are some pictures from this morning.

Broilers, finished with their morning grain, looking for more

Bee and mustard flowers

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Garden, Goats, Photography, poultry chickens, farm, flowers, Garden, Goats, Photography

The finished arbor, looking out from the orchard side, with grapes a-climbin’

This weekend we finally finished the grape arbor / gateway to the orchard, and with your help, filled in the last row in the garden. Last year we planted 2 grapes on either side of a place where we imagined building pretty much exactly what you see above… a birch frame and arch, with a ladder up the sides for the grapes to climb up and over the structure, creating an arbor and gateway into the orchard. We got the frame and the first rung of the ladder built a couple of weeks ago, which gave the grapes something to grab on to, but they soon were looking to climb higher. We’ve been working on clearing out the thicket between the garden and the orchard, and taking out a few of these small birches served two purposes, and actually a third, as the goats were happy to munch all the leaves off the upper branches.

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on Facebook with suggestions on what we should plant in the last row of the garden. We actually had an empty row and a half, so we ended up planting 3 half rows: arugula and beets, the popular favorites on Facebook, and also a half row of broccoli raab, a bitter green that we love, and that we’ve had little success with in the past, and want to keep trying to get right.

The answer to friday what to plant question: broccoli raab, arugula and beets.

Garden arbor, birch, Garden, grapes

The last quadrant of the garden, all planted except for one last row. Help us decide what to plant!

For the first time ever, we’ve planted the entire garden! This may not seem like a huge accomplishment, but it’s something that we’ve never, in the five years that we’ve lived on our farm, been able to manage. We always seem to leave a few rows unplanted or overgrown–I call them “Snake Hollows” because they act as a wildlife refuge–and by this time in the season we’ve usually given up on reclaiming them. But as of last weekend, we have everything in, from the leafy potatoes to the creeping squashes to the new, spindly peppers (we don’t have much hope that they’ll be productive, but we’re trying). Everything, that is, except for one final row, sandwiched between the newly planted bok choy and carrots. Any suggestions on what we should plant? Here’s some of what we’ve got for leftover seed, help us choose!

• Another round of radishes
• Broccoli
• Broccoli Raab
• More carrots
• More bush beans
• More beets
• Another round of arugula

Check in on Monday to find out what wins the row!

Garden Garden, planting

Pretty peas

It’s peak pea season in the garden, and we’ve picked, shelled, and frozen at least 5 pounds in the last week. The plants bounced back from the groundhog’s attack last month, and there are still pods to be picked before we tear out the rows and their birch trellises this weekend. A few more rows of broccoli are going in soon, but in the meantime, the goats have been nibbling on the empty pods and the girls have been sneaking as many sweet, raw peas as they can. When we get a chance to cook them, our house favorite is to simply steam them in their own juice with a smear of butter, and toss them with a little parsley.

Garden Garden, pea pods, peas

A weed we love: Our volunteer army of hot pink pom pom poppies explode like fireworks in the garden

From a letter to Thomas Jefferson from his daughter, Mrs. Martha (Jefferson) Randolph, dated July 2, 1792:

“…What I told you of my garden is really true indeed–if you see it at a distance it looks very green but it does not bear close examination, the weeds having taken possession of much of the greater part of it.”

The beautiful magenta poppies that we now cultivate in our garden began as weeds, sneaking in through some undigested bit of goat compost. They surprised us one year with their shock of color, and we now weed around their spiky leaves, letting them bloom where they land. We’re never ahead of the weeds around here, but sometimes their wild tangles yield good stuff. Happy Independence Day!

Garden Garden, Independence Day, poppies, Thomas Jefferson, weeding

No surprise, but so far the zucchini is doing the best of all our cucurbits.

Two years ago, we had a terrible season for cucurbits. Our zucchini was hit by a withering fungus and our winter squash was attacked by an efficient army of gray bugs that turned their leaves to lace. The cucumbers did alright, but in a fog of sleep deprivation (Bea was a few months old, and Cha Cha had just turned 2) I ruined the pickles and we had to toss gallons of them to the chickens.

Last year, when the summer started off so cool and rainy, we decided to skip it. No cukes, no zukes, no butternuts or -cups. It was a rotten year for the garden, anyway, but adding to the disappointment was the absence of squashes and melons. As tired as I get of zucchini by the middle of August, I really do love it. And a garlicky jar of pickles gets my vote any day. To paraphrase Brillat-Savarin’s critique of a meal that ends without cheese, “a garden without zucchini is a one-eyed beauty.”

So this year we planted cucurbits galore: three types of pickling cukes, a long and a round variety of zucchini, pattypan squash, butternuts, sweet melons, and some stray seeds that were lying around in a business envelope marked, simply, “winter squash.” A few melons are starting to flower (though they look pretty weak, like they’ve put all their energy into this last, lovely, gasp), and the zucchini have a handful of tight green buds at their centers. I’m sure that by fall I’ll have satisfied all my squash cravings, but right now I can’t wait for that first fried blossom.

Garden cucurbit, Garden, squash, zucchini

The remainder of last year's seeds, organized and evaluated

In between trips out to the barn to check on Toka, we’ve been trying to get organized for spring. One big task is planning the garden and what we will be planting this spring. We try to grow as much as possible from seed, as opposed to seedlings, although we always end up grabbing a seedling or two at the farmer’s market or farm store if there’s something that just didn’t start off well, or something we didn’t think of earlier that looks particularly good or interesting.

This year we’re ordering our seeds from two sources: Fedco and John Scheeper’s Kitchen Garden Seeds. Below is the list of what we’ll be planting. This list doesn’t include the seeds we’ve still got from last year (mostly squashes and greens) or our potato selection. We like to visit the Fedco tree sale in person in the spring to collect our saplings and pick out our seed potatoes, and that’s the plan this year. Last year we planted several rows of potatoes with the last wrinkled potatoes remaining in our root cellar, and had very good results, but because of last year’s blight, we want to start this year with a clean batch of seed potatoes.

This year we’re trying to experiment with companion planting, and we’ve added an abundance of flowers to the vegetable patch. We’d love to hear from you, what you’ll be growing this year, and any thoughts (or tips) you have about what’s in our garden.

FEDCO

Multicolored Pole Bean Mix
Beer Friend Soybean
Spring Treat Yellow Sweet Corn
Halona Muskmelon
de Bourbonne Pickling Cucumber
Amsterdam #2 Carrot
Scarlet Nantes Carrot
Red Cored Chantenay Carrot
Danvers Carrot
Purple Haze Carrot
Harris Model Parsnip
Lincoln Leek
Arugula
Shuko Pac Choi
Broccoli Blend
Pingtung Long Eggplant
New Ace Sweet Pepper
Flavorburst Sweet Pepper
Heirloom Tomato Mix OG
Jewel Mix Nasturtium

JOHN SCHEEPERS KITCHEN GARDEN SEEDS

Hero French-Crested Marigold Mixture
Royal Russell Lupine Mixture
The Irresistible Cutting Flower Garden
Gourmet Rainbow Radish Mixture
Sugar Ann Snap Peas
Touchstone Golden Beets
One Kilo Chinese Cabbage
Totem Belgian Endive

Agriculture, Garden Garden, planning, potatoes, seeds