Garden before and after...

We generally don't post too many pictures of the garden after June because by then the weeds are usually out of control.  This year is a little better then most since we have been spending so much time at the farm.  We still could do a lot more, and hopefully will be able to someday!

These are our squash we planted a month ago...

Here they are now.  Yikes!  You can't tell but we have squash and melons planted all down the length of the garden.  They are all heirloom of course and are showing really good disease resistance.

Tomatoes a month ago...

Tomatoes now.  We are really bad at staking our tomatoes so they are just laying everywhere.  This is a bummer because the tomatoes will rot if they are on the ground.  We will still get lots but next year we are really going to focus on staking!  Do you see the random sunflowers that came up from last year?

Here is our table from market this week :)

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!

Garden happenings, and our "work" truck...

So last week we planted the fall garden.  I would like to have waited a bit more but I wanted to make sure that we had some stuff for market.  It seems the bugs really go after the fall seedling.  We also started putting up more of the fence so we will have more room to make a second planting of everything...if we can get it up in time that is!  Some great fall crops are arugula, mustard greens, collard greens, kholrabi, radishes (which we will plant a bit later as they don't take very long), and turnips.  There are lots more.  This year I am trying black seeded simpson, and cilantro as well.  We also started some basil late that I was hoping to sell in the fall in pots for herb gardens over the fall and winter but they got gnats like everything else did so into the ground they went!  They seem to be doing well and I don't think I can have too much basil!

And here is the "work" truck.  I mean this in two ways, we hope it will help us do more work and it needs some work too!  Haha!  Ok and don't go getting mad at me either.  I am still into the tree hugger stuff.  New trucks are waaaay too much and most of them don't get good gas mileage at all.  This sucker isn't too bad on gas.  A huge benefit to this truck is that we can do most of the work it needs.  We don't know anything about it but my dad does and is willing to help.  Plus if we are going to move out to the farm someday we can't be taking out tractor in to get oil changes or when it starts making a funny sound.  We are going to need to do it ourselves...all a big part of this self sufficiency stuff ;)  Also more canning, and hoping that we have more tomatoes to can!  I just made the best sweet and sour sauce recipe which I will be making more of and will post the link when I have more time.  As it is there is lots to do so I better go do it!

-Mama G