May Is Cool

In spite of the coronavirus, life on the farm is actually lovely right now. Spring is cool this year (for the South), and it seems to me the flowers and vegetables are better than usual. Here's my lovely elderberry tree!

Each little blossom will be an elderberry.

I want to make jam so badly.
Last April, this tree looked like this:

Isn't that amazing?
This spring, I cut off five more exactly like that from my tree, and now I have five more starts. I want elderberry to be one of our prime products on this farm in future -- lots of jam, lots of syrup perhaps.

Sugar sweet peas are bearing.

We'll pick some flat ones for salads and stir fries. The others I'll allow to mature, and I'll freeze peas again for the winter.

Speaking of freezing ... I've put two gallons of our strawberries in the freezer so far, and they are still bearing!

Perhaps we've mastered strawberries?
Lettuce:

Last year I told Adam I wanted a small bed dedicated to just plantain. I use it to make an ointment. It's a weed that grows in the yard, but it gets mowed down. He was tired of me saying, "Wait! Don't mow there! It's plantain!" I wasn't sure how a weed would perform in a bed to itself ...

... but it's doing rather well! 

I'm kind of a nut about growing herbs. It's ridiculous; I grow way more herbs than we could ever eat, and I don't even like eating some of them. But I love growing herbs. I have no idea why. And I can't help but make a video now and then about my herb beds. It's a little like showing off your children to others and saying, "See how he's grown?!" Anyway, here is the current video. Welcome to my herb beds:

I have a few basil in little pots that I'm taking around to friends. I have two more lemongrass plants to put in the ground somewhere. And only five Matt's Wild Cherry seedlings germinated, in my packet from Jonny's Seeds -- quite a disappointment! Soon I'll be moaning about the heat, but for how, I'm loving working outside in the cool May weather this year. Blessings to all of you, friends!

Coronavirus Farm

I'm not entirely sure, but I think we're in the third week of "stay-at-home" life. Adam has been sick, not with Covid-19 it turns out, but with Mono. In addition, both mowers and our weed-eater were experiencing springtime refusal to operate, and new parts were ordered. Today, at last, we mowed. 

The beds in the house lot: herbs and some flowers

In the herb garden by the house, I put some itty-bitty basil plants out today.

This is the only annual I plant in my herb beds. The old herb bed looks a mess, but it's chock full of lemon balm, tarragon, cilantro, oregano, thyme, and a bit of mint that I rip up regularly.

The two teepee affairs are for sweet peas.

This horrible mass of weeds is actually many daffodils, whose greenery I must give a chance to yellow so they will bloom next year. My eucalyptus tree died there. Soon a huge tub of cherry tomatoes will sit there.

Weedy pasture:

The buttercups are blooming in the pasture.

In the veggie garden, the peas are lovely!

 We have a resident black snake living behind/inside the metal liner around this bed. He introduced himself to me yesterday.

The strawberries are hiding under a cover.

I picked four yesterday.

We're eating as much asparagus as we can. I'll freeze the leftover.

asparagus bed

I'm digging out the bed for okra, which I should sow soon.

The soil temp needs to be warm for okra. It grew so well here last year I'm doing more this year.

My year-old elderberry gave me five little elderberry starts this spring that I've put each in her own tire bed.

We'll see if they decide to live.

Tiny little thing.
What else? I'm awful with flower beds, but a little clump of Sweet William and something-else-I-should-remember, are blooming. See the encroaching grass, vetch, and onions? I'm more interested in my herbs.

And I put 3 lemongrass plants in the ground. There's a Sedum a friend gave me a cutting of.

I put it in the bed and it lived! You never know.

You'd think, being stuck at home, that we'd be vigorously addressing our 4 acres and being productive. Adam is too sick and tired to do much. And honestly, I'm giving myself a pass on the usual guilt-trip of productivity and accomplishment. The world seems fractured, living is scary, the immediate future is woefully uncertain, and I find it hard to focus on much. This is not despair I speak of, just stress. In God's hands, our lives are safe and we will be well. But if the grass grows high and the asparagus goes to seed, I will not worry over it. Don't you either. Much love from the farm!

Beginning Again

We're paring down our garden this year, but I'm happy to report that things are starting well. We've had abundant rain and continue with cool temperatures in March. That means the peas are looking good!

 I have a long bed of peas on this trellis, with plants on both sides of it.

The asparagus was up before we had a frost, so it got zapped and is now coming out again.

I planted spinach and lettuce because Adam said he wanted both. They went into the end of the bed with the peas.

We also have strawberries in a bed from last year that are spreading and blooming now.

 The tools are ready.

 At present I have 7 hens, no rooster. Yesterday they laid 7 eggs!

I try to identify which hen lays which egg. I'm not certain, but here goes:
top row, L-R: Clementine, Henny Penny, the next two are Sheena and Brownie, not sure which is which;
bottom row, L-R: Sylvie, Pepper, Ruby

Pepper and Ruby are pullets and have only been laying a couple of months. Sylvie is a silkie and her eggs are smaller.

My lemongrass starts are in pots and doing well. 

I have 3 more in water.
I'm propagating elderberry trees too! Can't wait to put them into dirt!

Last but not least, I've put my tomato seed (Matt's Wild Cherry) into cells, and some basil seeds from last year's plants into cells too.

They're on the front porch which is rather like a greenhouse. Do you see how many gourds I have sitting there, waiting to have something done with them? Sigh.

I'll put a bed of okra in later, but that will probably be it, for our garden this year. Thanks for stopping by!

Seeds

This morning -- a blustery, chilly morning -- I thought it would be fun to read my farm posts from this time last year. How fascinating to see that so many of the things we started early (January or first of February) in the hoop house, didn't do well.  Potatoes, ginger and turmeric, broccoli, wax beans, etc. Perhaps it's good that we're not starting anything in the greenhouse quite yet.

The tomato seeds we ordered arrived in the mail yesterday. We ordered fewer varieties, eliminating many types from last year that didn't perform well. As soon as I have shelves in the greenhouse, I'll start these, but Adam has to recover from his pneumonia first before he can do that work.

Reading the old blog posts reminded me of what did do well at this time year: herbs. I started cilantro, dill, thyme, and parsley in the greenhouse, and they germinated quite well and transplanted into the garden beautifully. For the first time in my life I have abundant thyme that's overwintered. Cilantro self-seeded and is popping up randomly. Today, instead of starting those herbs in pots, I decided to strew some of last-year's leftover seeds right into the dirt of the herb garden, giving it a little covering. I did this with some leftover thyme seed and some dill seed. Adam needs dill for his pickles.

One thing I need to get into the ground as soon as possible, is peas.

Adam is frustrated at being too sick to work outside. He is sitting on the couch drinking coffee and writing in his hand-crafted books. Last year he started tomato seeds under a light in the barn office, but they didn't germinate well because of the cold, and I had to redo them in March. It's important to learn from previous years on the farm. I'm glad I have this blog for that reason.

Today is perfect for packaging my two batches of soap that are in the middle of curing.

 Lots of tea tree oil soaps, some with oatmeal, 3 oz. - 4 oz. per bar.

Here's a pretty, large bar, nearly 6 oz. in size, wrapped just for Valentine's!
Keep warm out there, folks. Spring is coming!

The Fall Garden

This week Adam is working hard to transition into our fall garden. That means ripping out all the tomato plants:

 They were still bearing, but they were massacred by horn worms and other pests, and the fruit was awful-looking.

 I made one more quart of good tomato sauce from a last picking, and then the plants went into the compost.
He also removed the first cucumber bed ... nice and clean now!

He's put Wando sweet peas in these three beds. We discovered in early summer that we could eat about as many peas as we could grow, haha!
And he nourished the soil with Worm Tea from our worm bin.

"Black Gold! Texas Tea!"

The asparagus is looking fine. In the other small raised bed, and in the old cucumber bed, he'll plant lettuces and spinach for autumn salads.

Today he's also weed-eating the bean mounds. Our beans were pitiful this year, in spite of doing a second planting. Molested by bugs at first, they did recover, and they've bloomed, etc., but never really yielded many good beans.

Our pepper plants are bearing well now:

But one of them is decimated by something eating away at it. Not sure what.

Our second planting of zucchini and squash are looking quite healthy -- they are on the far left in the photo below:

 Oh -- the purpose of the photo above is also to show that we didn't rip out absolutely all of the tomato plants. We have about six plants left that are still bearing well. We kept them.
And our two horseradish plants are looking fabulous now that Adam ripped out the old broccoli plants around them:

The dogs love to play while Adam works.

But Beau sometimes tires of these antics and hides under the truck.

While Adam poured Worm Tea into the beds, I sat in a chair in the shade and perused our little farm that he's worked so hard on. He is the labor; I am the photographer, chicken lady, and occasional help. Here's a short video, complete with road noise and insects humming:

It's so peaceful sitting there. I'm very thankful for where we live.

More on chickens and hostas in the next post!