June 12, 2021

We finally have been eating from our garden!  Our Swiss Chard and Kale have been uber productive and we’ve eaten sautéed greens at least once a week for the past month! Fortunately, the netting we have over the beds has prevented most of the cabbage moths from getting in, although a few did.   Before they had a chance to damage our crops, we harvested all our cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower.  We grew 8 large heads of regular cabbage (our Chinese cabbage did not fare well), 8 heads of cauliflower and 2 heads of broccoli – our broccoli bolted and went to seed very quickly! We were able to blanch and “rice” the cauliflower to use in recipes this summer.  We will probably replant the brassicas in mid-August to get a second harvest. Our first frost day is in mid-October, so we should have plenty of time.

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We are slowly identifying the tomato plants since our chicken removed all the plant markers.  Most of the plants are doing fantastically, although we did not stake them well and several fell over. They are still producing fruit, though.  I am looking forward to canning, freezing, dehydrating, and eating all the different tomato products. I hope to make bbq sauce this year!

The luffa and cucumber vines are also growing prolifically and are pulling the tomato plants over – we will have to plant them differently next year. This is what I love about gardening – it’s never really a failure, just a learning opportunity!

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We are still pretty clueless about the pepper plants. The plants all look different and they are just starting to set fruit.  I think, for the most part, the peppers will be easy to figure out. However, we planted Jalapeños and NadaPeños (jalapeños without heat). We also planted Habaneros and HabaNadas (habaneros without heat). The fruits of each look the same, but they don’t taste the same. And I’m not volunteering to test them out!  This year, we plan to make hot sauce and pepper powder, so I think we will be ok mixing the strong and mild peppers.  We will have to do a better job next year of chicken proofing our plants markers.

Our green beans are bushing up nicely and the few herbs we planted are doing great – other than the cilantro that bolted before I could get one cutting in! We’re letting those go to seed to get coriander. I’m not sure we will have time to save many of our herbs, so we will just use them fresh as needed and grow them again next year to preserve.

In addition to our garden, our farm has also been producing meat chickens.  We processed 24 more birds at the beginning of May. We were going to have another workshop since so many people are interested in hands-on demonstrations, but we were in such a time crunch. The boys and I got them all done in about 1 ½ hours before John got home from work.  Then, once he got home, we spent another 2 hours cleaning everything up.  We let the chickens air cool for 24 hours, then cut them all into pieces.  We turned all the feet, backbones, necks and other parts into wonderful golden chicken stock. We pressure canned the stock so we’ll have it all winter long.

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Next year, we think we will raise all our meat chickens at one time to consolidate the work. It takes the same time to move 24 chickens as it does 75, and set-up and clean-up for processing is all the same.  The only added time is the actual processing and packaging. With so many things going on on the farm, we think raising 75 at once will be best.

Another wonderful thing happened for our farm. We found a local tree trimmer who gives away chipped wood.  He and his wife work alone and do small projects.  He has a chipper, but does not want to have to deal with bringing the chipped wood anywhere.  He has a list of people he calls when he has a job.  If you can show up with your truck, he will chip the mulch right into the truck-bed. The chips are free!  The first 3 times we got chips, many of them were from outer branches, so we got lots of leaves. The next time, it was mostly wood.  We are spreading the chips around our backyard in the low spaces where water pools during heavy rains.  We’ve also spread some between our garden beds, around our fruit trees and put in the chicken coop. This was a huge find for us!

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In the midst of all the farm abundance, we had our rough-in inspection re-check. We had completed the items on the punch-list from the first inspection. A different inspector came out and approved everything! He was impressed that we did most of the work ourselves. 

Next step: order insulation batts, hire a spray foam insulation for the ceiling, order 2 new windows. Then we start plugging on!