Full speed ahead, for the most part.

Lots of pictures in this one!

The month of May was a pretty good month for the most part.  The best part is that the entire field got prepped this month.  Quite a difference from last year when we were still pulling plastic mulch up in late June.  Or who could forget 2011, the year it wouldn't stop raining, when the field looked like this on June 29th.

But lo and behold the first plow went in the ground on May 2nd of this year.

And by May 20th, the entire vegetable field was prepped and some sections were even planted.  It really helped out that we switched to using biodegradable mulch last year for the most part and only had a few small sections of plastic mulch that needed to be pulled up.

Some of the earliest plantings were the onions and shallots.  Mike had been brainstorming over the winter to figure a way to put the onions on plastic since they always grow with so many weeds around them.  He came upon a yard aerator that was on clearance. With a little shifting of this and that, the aerator is perfect for poking lots of evenly space small holes in the plastic mulch perfect for planting onions.  All this was accomplished on May 9th.

Next up was getting early sweet corn and green beans planted under plastic.  Last year Mike grumbled a lot about the learning curve of planting and laying plastic over sweet corn as the clear plastic has the consistency and tangle-abilty of plastic kitchen wrap.  This year I heard a lot less grumbling.  On May 9th we had sweet corn and green beans in the ground.  A new record!

By mid May, Mike was able to go down to southeastern Ohio to bring home the tomatoes and early broccoli that his mom had started for him in her greenhouse.  Our yearly rotation of hay wagons filled with flats of plants sitting in our yard has begun.

A few days later most of the tomatoes and some peppers were planted in the high tunnel. This picture was taken on May 20th.  They look a little scraggly in the picture because they were just newly transplanted, but today they are growing and all the tomatoes have been staked.  I suppose I need to wander back in my spare time and take a more up to date photo.  Might be awhile.

Also on May 20th (or actually the day before I think?), the plastic was cut off the corn and the beans.  At this point in the month the fields were really dry and we were hoping for a tad bit of rain to help things along.  I checked back in last year's blog and the early sweet corn is a few days ahead of last year's schedule.

Shortly after the pictures from May 20th, we started getting some rain. The last two weeks have been a lot of start and stop.  All the lettuce got planted right before Memorial Day weekend.  Then we had three days in a row with freeze warnings posted.  (Yes folks this is a fairly common occurrence for us to have frost right up to June 1st.)  For 3 days we had frost and were kind of worried about the beans and the corn.  They got a little stressed, but they did survive.  Mike was able to get a bunch of plastic laid and now we are on hold due to some fairly heavy rain this past weekend.  We've had a couple days of dry though and so fingers crossed that planting will resume tomorrow.

There is the month of May in a nutshell.  Way ahead of schedule compared to the last 2 years.  Onward to June!

Ketchup ........... Catsup

This is the official catch up blog from the past 11 days.  It has nothing to do with a sweet tomato sauce that is commonly eaten with french fries or hot dogs, but any time I hear catch up, I think of ketchup.  So there you have it.  I guess since planting is SO far behind on the farm that we are playing catch up in the fields, it is only fitting that the blog follows along the same way.  Actually I WAS going to make a post last Monday, but our internet was out from 5pm to 6am Tuesday morning.  Then it was back to work at the clinic all week and I decided to choose going to bed at a decent hour rather than blogging.

So here is the scoop on the last week and a half of farming:

Last weekend we had dry weather the entire weekend.  At least I'm pretty sure it was because I spent at least 2 or 3 hours each day on the mower Saturday, Sunday and Monday too.  I did get the yard mowed, the pasture mowed, the area around the lower garden mowed and various paths I use take walks to the woods mowed.  Whew!

The new tiller was put into action and Mike tilled up ground where the green beans and corn are going to be planted.

Plantings included about 1 1/4 acres of "soup" type beans including kidney, black, yellow eye, black eyed peas as well as some edamame.  All the onions, rhubarb, horseradish and some new strawberry plants are in the ground. A few rows of squash and cucumber seeds are planted now.  Once again, slowly making progress.

Sunday evening I was out transforming my "chicken tractors" from their winter time stripped down look.....

......to their tarped summertime look ready for the 4 week old baby meat chicks that I moved out to the grass on Monday morning.

The chicks are always a little freaked out by being moved from inside the barn where they are bedded on wood shavings to outside where they see and feel grass for the first time.  Having a combination of a tiny little brain and being what we call a "prey species" (meant to be eaten by larger animals) makes for major freak out anytime anything in their world changes.

Fortunately, they are also food driven so once I got the feeders and waterers set up in their outdoor pens, all was right with their world.  These meat birds can be a little tricky to raise sometimes, but so far this batch is doing well.  I started with 59 day old chicks and moved 57 out to pasture.

Chick moving morning is always confusing for all the animals because it is a total break from their routine.  Basically this means that no one gets to eat "breakfast" until the job is done.  The chicks don't get fed until after they are moved because that makes moving day much nicer for me.  I learned this lesson early in my chicken rearing years.  Those early years I would finish the move to pasture and have brown spots of chicken manure all over my shirt, shorts and legs.  Now all I have to show for my efforts are a few scratches from the chicks' VERY sharp nails and some sore muscles the next day from bending over and catching 50 something chicks.  The dogs and cats have to wait to be fed too because when I start my morning work, I am on a mission to get the job done.  This confuses the heck out of them.  Every morning when I feed the cats they are all eagerly waiting by the food bowls.  By the time I finished moving the chicks on Monday, there was not a barn cat to be found.  I guess they decided they'd better go out and see what they could catch themselves.  Molly, the 14 year old Brittany, had the same idea.  While I was getting the chicks settled into the outside pens, she was out coursing through the grass.  She's always been pretty good at catching voles and moles in the yard and I am amazed how well she still hunts as old as she is.  I looked over just in time to see her snatch up a vole and in under 30 seconds it was devoured.  We got Molly from an elderly couple who lived in town when Molly was a year and a half old.  We laugh at how well she has transformed herself from a city dog to a farm dog. 

I was also able to start letting the 3 month old layer pullets outside for the first time.  Actually they think everything is going to eat them too so they spend most of the time standing on the concrete pad at the doorway of the barn.  But they are slowly learning to come out and forage for bugs and weeds.  It will be several weeks until they really get this outside stuff figured out.

Meanwhile the four pet hens are on temporary house arrest since the flats of greenhouse plants have arrived on the farm and are scattered in various locations in the yard.  The hens have quite the fondness for plants such as broccoli and if the hens are allowed outside in the yard, the broccoli plants end up with huge bites taken out of their leaves.  The hens do have access to a rather large fenced in outdoor area, but they are very used to being able to go everywhere around the barns and house. Their vocalizations while standing by the pen door make it quite clear that they want out.  They will live though and in a week or two, if all goes well in the fields, the hens will be back to pooping on the front porch.

There is more to catch up on, but that is enough for now.  Darkness is approaching and I need to wander outside and close up the chicken pens for the night.  Oh and some dinner would be nice too.