Garlic harvest 2013

We had a very good garlic harvest this year. The ground was wet late in the summer, and I was worried that the wrappers would rot, but that didn't happen.

 Now the garlic is all dried,

 trimmed,

  and cleaned.  Its ready for market.

If you are interested in getting some you can contact me here, or check it out at our Local Harvest store.

Garlic Planting Time

It is Garlic Planting Time at our house. This year we are putting in a lot of garlic. Most of it will be in the large 4' x 60' market garden beds. A few special types (Ontario Purple Trillum, Chesnok Red, and Elephant), along with some French and Gray Shallots are getting planted in one of the potager.

Here is the potager bed all prepared.

JJ planting garlic on a 6 inch grid.

We will mulch the whole bed with straw when it gets a little colder. The garlic will grow right through the straw. It should do just fine here where it wont get too much wind.

P.S. In the market garden bed we have about 1000 plants. Mostly Ukranian Red with some Italian Late Softneck for braiding.

OFB posted a great bit about garlic dip. Check it out for some great, seasonally appropriate suggestions for garlic and personal safety.

Leaves

It's time to plant our garlic again. Bed prep is proceeding at a good pace. The seed garlic is waiting. We have some Korean Red, Ukrainian Red, and Elephant garlic going in this fall. Last year we had a lot of problem with mulch. Some beds didn't get any and we had a lot of loss due to frost heave. Other beds were mulched with straw. It didn't breakdown over the winter and was quite a mess to work through or remove in the spring. This year the plan is to use leaves. I've used them before and there great. But, we don't have any trees, so we have to go begging for leaves. A few neighbors have offered to give us all theirs if we will come get them when ever they have them raked up. Otherwise they will burn them. The past few days folks have been showing up at odd times to inform us that their leaves are ready if we would like to come get them. The pile of 50 gallon trash bags stuffed with leaves is getting quite large. They will make great mulch, and a nice addition to our garden soil. It does feel a bit strange to be excited about hauling someone else's leaves home, but we are. Next years garlic seems destine for greatness with all this community input.

The Jury is still out

I tried Epsom salts on my tomatoes two different ways. On half I put it into the soil and on the other half I sprayed it on as a foiler feed. The leaves on the upper part of the plants seem to be opening a bit, but I haven't seen any dramatic improvement from either method.







Still, the plants are quite productive so I won't give up yet. The other things in the bed seem to be doing quite well.


The chard loves life in the greenhouse.

The peppers are thriving (as long as I can keep them from being over come by the biodiversity in the greenhouse.) The eggplant is also doing well but I seem to have misplaced the picture.

This past week, during farm camp, we got the garlic harvested. It looks pretty good. It was nice to have the extra hands, and the kids seemed to enjoy it.

Fun and Frolic

Patty and Molly frolicking in the pasture with the big goats. They spent the day in the sun and seemed to really enjoy it.




The chickens got moved out of the gardens today. They are back batting clean-up for the goats and cows. They do a better job than a harrow. They are a bit slower, but they eat the weeds and the bugs, and they fertilize as they go.

The elephant garlic jumped out of the ground this week. Guess it was holding out for a bit of heat. All the garlic looks good. I'll really have to work on marketing this year.

I started preping some of the garden beds now that the chickens have moved out. I was cruising along with the broad fork, my favorite bed prep tool (it's the two handled thing standing in the picture above) when I hit a rock. Usually it just pops the odd rock out of the bed with out any trouble, but this one bent one of the tines and didn't budge. After 45 minutes of serious digging(with a spud bar no less) I realized that there were the remains of an old farm building buried under one end of my garden beds. The picture shows my bed prep tools and the pile of concrete and stone I dug out of the last 5 feed of the bed. The next bed was no better. It does explain the dry spots in the beds last year.

A finished bed. Now that I've made it, perhaps I should lie in it.

We launched our egg hatching project today. Rowan was home sick today, so he did most of the work. I'll be posting the happenings soon. Right now I'm too tired, and I still have evening chores to do.

Alberta Clipper

The Clipper has moved through leaving bright clear skies and cold. It was 4 deg. F this morning at 5 when I went out to do the chores. The stars were so bright, the air was cold enough that my breath froze in my beard, and the snow squeaked and popped as I walked. Reminded me of Wyoming.



All the animals made it through the night without a problem. I have three really cold chickens who didn't go into the coop. I'm not sure how they survived. I guess they huddled together in a little snow nest. I hope they learn soon.



I'm glad we have the 5 inches of snow cover. My least cold tolerant garlic is up 3 inches and I haven't mulched it yet. The snow should have protected it from the worst of the cold. When it melts this weekend I will have to get some mulch on the bed.



The fireplace is installed in the living room. I should get the chimney through the roof today. It will be nice to have some non-electric supplemental heat. It will also be nice to have the additional living space. Our three bedroom house should be big enough for us but right now we really only use about half of it. After the holidays I hope to get the third bedroom finished. That will make a big difference for all of us.



The kids had fun sledding yesterday. If it warms up a bit this afternoon I'm sure they will do some more sledding and maybe attempt the first snowman of the season.

Fast and Furrious Fall

Wow! I haven't had a moment to sit and write in such a long time. I probably don't have time now, but i need to. A lot has happened since my last post. We had a very nice party for Connie's 40th birthday. Lots of people showed up. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your p.o.v.) I was too busy to take any pictures. We also celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Garlic Planting Week.

We planted about 4000 cloves which should give us a nice crop to work with next year.

Our big project this last week has been getting another room finished in the house. We finally have the living room almost livable. Next week we will finish installing the fireplace and a little trim work and it will be done. Hopefully the fireplace will help us keep our heating costs down a bit. Winter is looking a bit scary on that front.

We have also been adding to our goat herd and getting everyone bred. We have three new does, Daizee, Ginger, and Darby, and a buck here on lease. We should freshen six does in the spring. That will give us lots of milk for making cheese and to share with our herd share members. We will also have 12 - 15 new kids to enjoy this summer.

DARBY

DAIZEE

GINGER

May (our Dexter cow) is back from being bred. Thanks to the folks at Kristy Knoll Farm for letting us have the services of one of their Lowline Angus bulls. We should have a nice calf sometime in July.

The new chickens have started to lay. It is lots of fun to find the green and blue egg mixed in with the brown ones. Now that we are getting lots of eggs again we are hoping our customers will come back. Some people stopped coming when the chickens started to molt and our production went way down. I'll have to manage the timing on the new flock better next year.

Garlic blossoms, goats, and good times

We have been busy these past few weeks. We had two of Connie's sisters and their kids here for a few days. Everyone had a great time. The kids especially enjoyed playing with the new baby chicks, milking the goats (a big hit with the sisters too), and squirt gun fights.





We had lots of fun cooking out, sleeping in the tent, and getting rained on.







We also made a new sign for the farm to let people know we had eggs for sale. We had several people stop after we put it up.







The cousins left on Saturday, on Monday we started Cub Scout day camp. A whole week of herding six first grade boys through various camp activities. It was fun, but I was exhausted by the end of the week.





It took us most of the next week to recover and get things back in shape here. The various farm projects are moving along. The baby chicks are growing fast, the older chickens are laying up a storm, and the goats and cows are trying hard to keep up with the grass. The gardens are taking shape (I have more bed space than I can deal with this year). We have tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, chard, lettuce, onions, beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, and garlic. There are a lot more things I had planned on planting but I ran out of time. I'm trying to concentrate on getting things ready for fall. I can't believe how fast the time is going, this past Friday we were clipping the garlic flowers. Soon it will be harvest time. We had to put up the "Sold Out" sign on Saturday. We ran out of eggs. It's nice when things start to work the way you planned.





clipping garlic blossoms









Julia is planning on taking one of our goats to the fair for 4H this year. Goat beauty and show training are new things for us. She is very dedicated to brushing and walking them daily.

As I was moving fence for the goats today I found a red-winged black bird nest. The parents were fiercely protecting the giant clump of grass where the nest with its four chicks was hidden. The goats and cows had grazed all around the clump, but not one leave inside had been eaten. I had been planning to mow the area now that the animals were finished (the grass had gotten a bit ahead of us) but I think I will wait. I haven't seen many red-wings in the area. I think they don't have much luck reproducing because everyone mows. I know they aren't a key species, but they help a lot with the bugs and I like to see them.