The journal begins

Welcome to the Peters Creek Farm journal. My name is Diane and somewhere along the road of life, I went from being a city girl to being a farmer's wife. I'm sure more details of this journey will emerge as the journal progresses, but in a nut shell, I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio and I now own and help run an 140 acre working farm in Ashtabula County, Ohio with my husband Mike who grew up on a vegetable farm in Marietta, Ohio. By day, I am a small animal veterinarian and the rest of the time I get to play on the farm. Mike tends to the vast majority of the actual farming, but I do raise laying hens and meat chickens as part of the farm business. Then there are the dogs and cats that live on the farm that need cared for too. Safe to say that I am in charge of all things animal related.

There are many reasons for starting this journal. First, it gives me a place to keep sort of a diary of what happens here on the farm. On of my most favorite books is Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac". I absolutely love how he goes through each month of the year and writes about the changes that occur on his farm. Well, I am no Aldo Leopold, but in my own crude way, I hope to be able to keep track of the seasonal changes on the farm. I decided to put this journal online because I thought there might be some interest to family and friends who are always asking me "how are things on the farm?". Online journaling sure makes it easy to share with all. Some of Peters Creek Farm customers may find this interesting as well. I know there are others out there besides me that enjoy reading other people's blogs, so for my fellow bloggers and blog readers, I offer this journal online. And last, this journal will be a record of when things happen on the farm this year so that we can compare to next year and the years that follow. It will help us plot out farming practices for future years and be an easy reference for what worked and what didn't.

I was hoping to start this blog at the beginning of the farming season(i.e early spring), but in truth, there is always something happening on the farm. Some months are busier than others, but something is going on none-the-less. So for what it is worth, the journal begins today. I'll go back and tell some stories from early season from time to time, but most of the entries will be the here and the now.

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My first story of country life goes back to just the day before yesterday. I came home from work and Mike says "You just have to love country living" then procedes to tell me about his day. About 20 acres of our farm is planted in vegetables which we sell as farmer's markets and in a CSA program. June is the busiest planting month and Mike has really been having fits with the weather. Abundant rain has put planting way behind because the soil in the fields has been too wet to work. We have some veggies planted like onions, early sweet corn, beans, peas, turnips and beets. All the plants that get started in the greenhouse are still waiting to be planted. Wednesday's job was to pick up the flats of vegetables that were being grown in greenhouses owned by our neighbor Betty who lives on the next road over from our farm. She had the flats loaded onto haywagons. Mike would drive the tractor over to Betty's house, hook up a loaded wagon and drive it back to our farm. Then one or more of the kids that works for us would unload and Mike would pull the empty wagon back to Betty's. On one of the trips from Betty's to our farm, the mailman, who we know very well, was coming down the street and flashed his lights to get Mike to stop. Betty had called the mailman to let him know that she was missing one of her cats and thought that it may have stowed away on the wagon that Mike was driving back to our farm. Mike looked for the cat, but didn't see it. Later, Betty let Mike know that the cat must have jumped off the wagon right near her house and had come back home several hours later with a mouse in its mouth. This is just a typical occurence out here in the country. Everyone looking out for everyone else. The story sure made me smile.