It May Not Be Summer Yet, But ...

I can feel it from here! At last -- warm weather! Now it's about 85 degrees. Gone are all gloves, scarves, and even long pants. 

What's the farm's status on this lovely May day?

Four baby chicks are a week and a half old.

It's hard to get photos of babies when there are two mamas and a fierce daddy standing right there!

Adam was called yesterday to come retrieve a swarm hive of bees that had settled in a shopping cart at the Food Lion grocery store. So he did.

 He used this portable nuc box. It's fitted out with frames inside, and is a perfect box for a swarm hive to start in. The bees stayed overnight ... but sadly this morning they'd decided to move on. Bees will do what they like.

In addition to mowing and watering and weeding and many other tasks, Adam continues clearing the border to the west of the house.

 He's leaving the large pine trees. There's a slender little tree in the photo, (just above the word "slender") that we wanted to identify. Here's its leaf.

It's a Washington Hawthorn with impressive spikes. Now that it's free of strangling vines and has sun on its face, perhaps it will have bright red berries and pretty white flowers as it's supposed to.
My hostas are looking grand.

 Both elephant ears and amaryllis are happy too.

 

From the greenhouse:
Tomato plants are going into the beds. All are Matt's Wild Cherry this year. We like them best. 

 I have a dozen of these to sell at the market tomorrow, plus a dozen cucumber plants, three loofah plants, and nine basil plants.

There's wedding planning in the garden too! How so, you ask? I'm growing gypsophila, also known as "Baby's Breath." You can't have too much Baby's Breath at a wedding.

 I've since weeded that bed more, once I was able to identify said flower. I sewed the seeds not knowing what it would look like.

 Next to it I sewed a small bed of chamomile. It's the ferny-looking stuff.

Here's a close-up. It's for making tea.

Everything's growing this time of year. So far, it seems only our lemongrass and most of my lantana died over the winter. I'm still holding out for the lantana though.
Oh -- if you missed my most recent Herb Beds Tour (I know -- Oh, the excitement!), here it is:

Back Log of Farm News

 Mysterious insinuations of autumn prick my senses sometimes. It's August yet, so I try to ignore them.

 Much earlier this summer Adam took everything out of a dead beehive. He's cooking down the wax for me on our hodge-podge outdoor grill.

 

Occasionally we have foggy mornings on the farm.

 I love that misty look.

 Adam's been scything that far field of tall grass again.

 

 My apologies to those of you who detest spiders. I find their sparkling webs fascinating.
Asparagus in the morning.

 Loofah vines. I now have FOUR loofahs growing!

 You can see the patch Adam's scythed -- this photo was from a couple of weeks ago. (See how behind I am?) He's done more now, in spite of the daily rain :(

 We harvested one big, beautiful watermelon. Adam ate it because I'm not really a watermelon person.

 We continue to harvest cherry tomatoes and abundant cucumbers, although some of them are ruined by bugs.

 Adam has cut and dried some potato pieces to plant. The raw edges have to harden off a bit before planting. These have good eyes.

 I brought home from West Virginia some delicious peaches (below) and lots of Wolf River apples (which you can read about here). This will help stock my larder for the winter.

This morning (Monday ... after a very LONG and exhausting weekend for me), we finally have a few minutes of non-rain, so Adam is out mowing again. I will pick in the garden, clean the house a little, make more applesauce or maybe peach preserves, tend to chickens (hoping to give away a roo this week), but most importantly -- STAY HOME. I'm such a homebody. Ain't nobody wedging me out of this place today!

Farm Chores

*Clip hens' wings. The departure of Ruby has worried me to no end. I'm feeling quite despondent about chickens in general. So Adam and I clipped Lucy's and Punkin's wings this morning, hoping to prevent them from flying over the fence. We are thick in the planning stage for a brand new coop for the babies, far away from dogs and with a small yard covered to prevent them from flying off. Speaking of the babies, they are doing fine:

The silkies are gray. I don't know what breeds the other two are.
 If they are hens, I know they will lay brown eggs, according to Mr. Bob who gave them to me.

I have a sweet friend who offered me a couple of full-size laying hens if I want them. I'm befuddled about where exactly I'd put them, and how they would integrate into the situation I have ... which is less than ideal :(
*Tend to baby chicks. I put some sand in their pen yesterday. This morning I added a little dish of layer pellets to their food choice. They've been pecking at the sand and one silkie was taking a dust bath in it. So cute!!
*Mow. Adam is mowing. This time of year, Adam is always mowing.
*Beehive check. The new swarm Adam caught on Monday has stayed in its hive! Yay!

He wears a hat/net now over his head, but no other gear.
He was not stung once.

*Garden check. I walk around the garden each day several times. This week I put my 25 basil plants into a bed. People had stopped buying herbs at the market, so I figured I'd better get them into some dirt.

Tomatoes are doing well. We're getting a good crop of Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes:

 A few large ones are looking good:

Cucumbers are particularly fine this year too:

We've picked about a dozen cukes so far. Adam made pickles.

 Slim bush beans are starting to bear.

 Watermelon plants in their tires are spreading far and wide! Tiny melons have appeared under the blooms.

 I'm happy to report that the sweet potatoes Adam put in are growing fabulously. We hope for a good crop. I love sweet potatoes!

 My luffa -- I know it's a silly plant, but look at it go! Those posts are about 8 feet tall, and it's now flopping over the top.

It's blooming.

So that's the quick garden check.
*Then I put two dill plants from their pots into the herb bed. The more pickling cukes we grow, the more dill we need.
Now I move on to laundry and other homely chores. Have a lovely day and try to keep cool!

Ninety-five and Counting ...

That's right -- 95 tomato plants so far in individual pots.

 I'm running out of small pots.
Adam offered to sift his homemade potting mix, removing the twigs, pine straw, pecans, and pine cones. Now I have this luscious stuff to pot with:

 And it's absolutely free. Better than store-bought potting mix. I'm tickled!!
In addition to the Ninety-five, I have this flat of Brandywine and Mini-Orange tomatoes, sprouting nicely. What shall I do with ALL these tomato plants?

 I refuse to get myself into the pickle of last year: tucking leggy tomato plants along fence rows and in random available spots in the garden. It was a nightmare of tomatoes! This year I shall choose my favorite 65 plants, and I shall sell or give away the rest with nary a pang! I can't keep them all!
This is my biggest tomato plant thus far, supposedly a Beefsteak variety. Three of them look quite strange. They smell like tomato plants, and their structure is like a tomato.

 

But their leaves are large and smooth, almost like a bean leaf. What's up with that? (I just google-hunted and discovered that some tomatoes have what's called a "potato-leaf," a smooth-edged leaf. Potato-leaf tomatoes are always heirlooms, not hybrids. Cool!)
Elsewhere in the garden, the peas are coming along a treat, as they say across the pond.

 

And the radishes are just beginning to show some swollen root. We'll be eating them soon.
Adam's potatoes are doing great! This year I suspect potatoes will be a big success after our "learning opportunities" of last year, haha!

long potato row -- as they grow up, Adam covers their stems

 We revised our greenhouse window. The temperature-controlled device that opened it automatically wasn't working well; it only opened it about a foot. Since the opening was at the bottom, it didn't efficiently release heat, which rises. So Adam changed the window, putting the hinge at the bottom.

 

He rigged up a rope that I can easily pull from inside the greenhouse, lowering or raising the window just as I like. I loop it around a screw to hold it.

And since its open at the top, it does a better job of letting the heat out. Plus, it can lay all the way down on the ground! Sometimes the homemade option is a lot better!
Do you remember the two pepper plants we dug out of the garden last fall and kept on the front porch/greenhouse all winter? Bless them, we put them back in the garden, leafless and pathetic except for their drying-up red peppers, still hanging on tenaciously.

I thought, "Well, they're dead." But I do like to give plants a chance if I can. Then I noticed this:

One of them's coming back! Yippee! Not that I eat hot peppers, haha! But I enjoy seeing plants demonstrate the zeal for life that all God's creation seems to have.
Our strawberries have not come up at all, and we're wondering if the whole bed died.
Our horseradish is amazing.
The asparagus is gorgeous.
The chickens continue to thrive. Little Snow is slowly insinuating herself into the flock.
The bees are fine, but the swarm Adam caught did not stay. They often do that. Bees have their own preferences, like us all, and will find a home they like.
That's it from the farm! I hope your April is humming along nicely.