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!

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!

Mother's Day Farm

Happy Mother's Day!
It's 6:00 a.m. A little sprinkly rain is welcome this morning. The pasture lies under a thin blanket of clover and buttercups still, and the pecan boughs overhead make everything lush green.
The spinach is bolting.

 The peas are coming along nicely. We "trellised" them this year using the string trellising method that worked so well with tomatoes and cucumbers. It does NOT WORK with peas! They don't like to grab onto the strings; they need something sturdier.

 Lots of lovely lettuce this year, and we've enjoyed salads many evenings.

 I bought only two tomato seed packets (Amish Paste and Matt's Wild Cherry) from Johnny seed company. They ALL germinated, and I have over 200 tomato cells, 2 plants per cell. ((sigh))
The paste plants have grown quickly.

 If I can't give them away, we'll compost the extra plants. I don't have enough room in my garden beds for them all.
The cherry tomato plants will soon be going in this bed (below) that is overgrown with weeds.
The bed covered in straw has potato plants coming up nicely.

 Adam has finished lining all the raised beds in metal. It's hard work, but will cut down on weeds in the future. The bed on the right (below) should already have cucumber seeds in it, but I'm slow. The bed next to it has spinach (bolting), collards and kale (why do we plant them, again?) and peas on the other end.

 And here is our garden friend. We've each seen him once. He's about 4 feet long, and I'm hoping he keeps the rabbits out of the garden. He's just a harmless black snack, and very docile. He's far from the chickens, so no worries there.

 I'm still painting cards. I sold 8 cards at the market yesterday (Yippee!!!) This is a chicken card I painted this week and it sold yesterday.

 It makes me extremely happy to see my little artwork walking away down the street in the hand of somebody who will do something happy with it :)

Adam and I went to Williamsburg for the last time on our annual passes. I told their gardeners, who were weeding so nicely, that they could come to my house next. This (below) is the terraced veggie garden beside the governor's palace.

 Adam planted a plantain bed for me, and it's doing very well.

 I think this is the last photo I took of Arthur, our rooster. He was a very mean, aggressive rooster, and I think it led to his demise.

 On Thursday Adam found a few feathers near the garden gate, and then a little mound of feathers at the base of a pecan tree. Arthur was gone. We never found him, so I think he started a fight with Ned, leapt over the pasture fence for a duel, realized his opponent, and skeedaddled behind the barn and over the back fence into the wide world. Poor fella. I don't miss him much; I always had to carry a very large stick around him. But his hens are now at a loss of how to conduct themselves. He was always in charge and told them all what to do!
I bought a small elderberry at a plant sale. Adam made a big tire bed for it, and it's doing wonderfully! I want to make elderberry jam.

 I sold all my basil plants at the market this year, a very good year. I saved 27 plants for my herb beds so Adam can make basil salads for us this summer. They were all started from last year's seeds that I saved.

The basil plants grow nearly 4 feet tall. I let them go to seed and dry thoroughly, and then harvest the seed heads and freeze them to use again early next spring ... to start the process all over again. When I stand in the garden in December next to those tall, dead plants, it's hard to believe they hold so much life in them. My hand smells strongly of basil after clasping the long, brown stalk and pulling my fist along it to strip the seeds off. We enjoy the bright, tasty leaves all summer, and that's good. But perhaps the most important gift the basil plant gives us is the seeds, which nobody notices. Most people would pull the dead plants from the soil and toss them on the burn pile. When you garden, consider the dead plants. Look at their tiny seeds. And think of spring!

Attacking the Garden Again

Hello, farm friends. We have been making progress in the vegetable garden. Strong wind and too much rain have slowed us down a little.

 Adam's been digging out his potato beds and now has them lined in metal like the other beds. He has white potatoes in one bed, and the sweet potatoes are coming this week in the mail.
This next area is the old compost pile (grass clippings). 

 He may plant corn there this year after he digs out worms and puts them into his worm bin.
Other happenings in the greenhouse and garden:
Tomato seedlings - Matt's Wild Cherry on the left and Amish Paste on the right:

 Basil, which I sold at the market this morning:

 Those onions I have no idea what to do with:

 Oregano seeds did not germinate well. These are all I have.

 The wind blew under the greenhouse plastic and left a mess!

 The thing growing best in the garden beds is the horseradish, sigh. We've tried to get rid of it.

 Someone gave us a nice yellow squash plant today.

I would show you the peas, lettuce, kale, collards, spinach, strawberries, and asparagus, but that means I'd have to show you how weedy those beds are, and I just can't do it. We will address the weeds after Easter. Been a bit busy around here lately, and the garden has taken second fiddle.

Hurricane Florence ripped up our chicken pen cover. Branches and leaves fell on it, and then the cords broke. Adam pulled it all off and put new netting overhead, plus a new center post to hold it all up. Old:

 New:

The netting looks like somebody's wig.

 Adam got four massive truck tires for free to use as planters for a new elderberry bush and some lavender. 

Elderberry bush:

 I've had no luck with lavender at all. These are varieties that supposedly do well here.

My broody silkie mama hatched three chicks. They are so adorable, peeping away. She is wonderfully attentive.

 They haven't yet left the end of the coop that is their brooder. Those other eggs in the photo were duds.
My other silkie hen likes to pretend she's broody. She sits in one of the laying boxes all day long, on the other hens' eggs with her eyes at half-mast like broody hens do. But if given half a chance, she's outa there, taking a dust bath, also known as chicken spa.

 There's a children's story in there somewhere.

I'm still painting the gourds I grew last year.

 The Lady Banks Rose is lovely this year.

A friend gave us a box of fresh local strawberries which we topped and put into the freezer. I'll make jam later. The fig trees are looking promising this year. Adam and I aren't quite as quick and spry regarding farm work as we were nearly 4 years ago! But we will get around to it all. Thanks for stopping by!