Why we do what we do



Checking on the wild berries!

 Now that we are in our third season of marketing our produce at the local farmers market I thought it best to give some history of our farm, and why we do what we do.   About four years ago my wife and I decided to be more conscious of the food we eat and where it comes from.  We began with a small garden and shopped at the farmers market in the summer.  We also tried to supplement with grocery store organic products but this was beginning to be a bit expensive for our budget, and did not fit well into our desire to eat more locally produced foods.  As a natural progression we wanted to grow as much of our own food as possible in a chemical free, earth friendly manner.  Then it hit us!  "There have to be more people in our situation",  those who desire a healthy locally produced product but feel it is to expensive for them.  This lead to our decision to start a farm.    We strive to raise our products free from pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers utilizing bio-diverse farming methods, crop rotation, animal manure, and compost.  We also raise as many heirloom fruits and veggies as possible, excluding all GMO crop varieties.  We feel holding ourselves to these standards is important to our family, community, and the the well being of the planet as a whole.

As our farm grows we hope that you will grow with us.  This blog will not only chronicle our growth, but serve as a tool for our customers to have access to us, and as an information database for "how to" gardening, cooking, and all around simple and frugal living.

Summer garden update...

We have been very busy lately with the garden and market.  After a weird spring, things seem to be coming along nicely now.  Even our spring stuff didn't do too bad.  Right now we mostly have scapes and rainbow chard.  We might have a few radishes to take tomorrow but we won't know until we go up to the farm tonight.  I saw some ripe berries the other day so I am hoping we will have some.  At least enough for us ;)  We also had some new potatoes last week which were sooo tasty.  Everything homegrown tastes better than the store bought stuff!  We have been keeping up on the weeds pretty good this year.  Honestly weeding our garden is like trying to cut your lawn with a pair of scissors.  It is so big and there are just soooo many weeds.  So it doesn't look perfect, but it isn't too bad either.  Here are some pics of the garden...

None of the pictures really do justice to the size of the garden this year.  It is twice as big as last year.  It actually goes down smll hill so there is quite a bit you can't see in this picture.

These are the peppers and okra.  Usually peppers don't do well at the farm because of the soil, but this year we put down some compost and they are already bigger then they have ever been before.  The okra was started waaaay too early but is really doing great.  "They" say okra doesn't do well when transplanted but these are doing wonderfully.  We have already harvested a handful so hopefully we will have more when we go up today because everyone in our family likes okra.  We use newspaper and straw as mulch to help keep in the moisture and discourage weeds.  When you mulch like this you get a whole little micro world of beneficial bacteria and bugs that help the plants and soil.

Here are the potatoes.  You can't see most of the plants because of the straw, but there are quite a few of them.  We are trying some new varities this year so we are excited to see how they do.

Here is where we direct seeded our squash plants.  We are doing successive plantings all the way up the length of the garden.  We have pumpkins, summer squash, winter squash, cucs, and watermelons here.  We planted them waaay closer then we should have because we really lacked the space we needed.  We probably won't be able to get to anything once it all starts growing!

Here is the tomato patch where we have just shy of 200 different heirloom tomato plants.  We started them way to early as well and I really thought they would all die they were so sickly when we put them in the ground.  I actually bought about 10 more plants from our favorite nursery so I could be sure we would have tomatoes for ourselves.  Thankfully they all look great!  Alrighty enough chatting, lots to do before market tomorrow!

Whoopsy!

Oops I haven't posted in awhile!  We are super busy with the farm and market right now.  Both are going great.  The garden looks awesome.  I just harvested our first new potatoes yesterday, along with some okra.  I fried it up with some garlic scapes...yum!  I also made a garlic scape pizza this weekend which was awesome!!!

It amuses me that my kids are growing up in a house where taking pictures of your meals is pretty normal!  LOL!  Market has been going really well.  Not only have we been selling a lot but we have some pretty neat stuff at our market now.

Don't these look like little Easter egg candies?  They are actually Quail eggs and are super tiny and cute!  I think my kids will really like them boiled.  I might get around to that today.  We spent all day at the farm yesterday and I got some good pictures which I will try and post later.  Here is a picture of our market a couple of weeks ago.