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!

The Pond

I have designated this week "catch up" week on the farm blog.  Farming has been rolling right along this spring (for a change).  Last year we were still pulling up old plastic mulch in late June.  Right now the fields are completely plowed and disked and the rototiller was suppose to be in action today, but I haven't found Mike yet to ask him today's details of what happened on the farm while I was at work in town.  Although it is getting close to 8pm, he is still in the fields working.  That is farming this time of year.

Since there is so much different stuff to catch up on, I've decided to tackle one subject at a time to make it easier to check back in the archives from year to year and because if I put too much in one blog, well, it's just too many words and I have trouble keeping things on track as it is.

This is how bad the "keeping on track" has become.  Two days ago I started writing this first "catch up" blog about the pond.  I've wanted a pond for a long time.  Every nature lover out there would surely agree that a pond adds a richness to the landscape.  Food and water perpetuate life and if you have both then you are surely rich.  All this deep thinking got me remembering my college days when I used to pull out my copy of Henry David Thoreau's Walden and would read and dream about a life outside of the city.  Our farm's new little 1/2 acre pond is a puddle compared to Walden Pond, but for me it takes me back to my youth when I was learning to love and embrace the natural world.  It has been many many years since I picked up and read from Walden, and so two days ago when I started writing this blog, I thought "I bet I can find a nice quote from the book to include in the blog about our new pond".  Jumping back into the present, I got online and took to looking through the Wikiquote pages on Walden. As I was reading, I was finding out that Mr. Thoreau had some not so nice things to say about farmers.  Well, at least I don't think they were very nice.  He chastised farmers for only caring about what money their crops could bring them and not caring about how their farm fit into the natural world.  Kind of ticked me off a bit since I now live on a farm and while making money is part of it, I care very deeply for nature.  All of this led me to continue reading more from Walden and before I knew it, I had to leave for an evening meeting.  End of writing session.  And this is why I never seem to get blog posts written these days and I swear it is getting worse as I get older.

But as much as Mr. Thoreau's views of farmers got me a bit agitated, I still do appreciate his writing and what he was trying to accomplish.  So it is appropriate that I include one of his quotes to start my pond blog.

“A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”   Henry David Thoreau

Since the last time I blogged, the pond has been both dug and filled.  The two bulldozers worked in tandem and it was fun watching how efficient the guys were at piling up the dirt.

Seems like it was no time at all until the dozers were disappearing deeper and deeper into the earth.

In the end, we had a big hole in the east end of our meadow.

The next step was to take full advantage of several days in a row of rain, a nicely flowing Peters Creek, a big diesel powered pump and lots of hose.  A couple days of running the pump 24/7 and our big hole was now officially a pond.

The big pump.

The pond. Ta da!

And since this is an irrigation project first and foremost, Mike and the irrigation guy are now in the process of getting all that equipment set up.  The sand filters are up and we are waiting on the irrigation guy to return with some missing parts.

For my part in all of this, evenings such as the ones in the picture below are why I have always wanted a pond.

Irrigation project underway!

A farm project that has been in the works for at least two years is finally getting underway this week. *insert happy dance and shouts of joy here*  Since this is Mike's project and I have not been intimately involved with all the details, I am unable to recount all the boring details and twists and turns that have led to where we are right now.  I do remember standing in a cold rain out the middle of an old meadow and talking with the excavators while we planned where to dig a pond that would serve as a water source for irrigating the vegetables. That was somewhere around November-December of 2011.  Yep, 2011.  The sun has come up and gone down many times since then.  The bright red flag that staked out where the pond was to start has turned to light pink.  We would call the excavators and they would say they would be coming, but then they never would.  But we know these folks and they do a great job and we have used them before, we wanted to give them our business and so we waited.  And actually, it didn't really matter that the pond wasn't getting dug because the other part of the project was not getting anywhere either.

The other part was securing grant money to install the field irrigation system.  The endless paperwork, changes in policies, waiting for other people to do their part of the work, waiting and waiting some more.  *insert twiddling thumbs here*  There were so many starts and stops it wasn't funny.  Well actually it was funny.  You know.  One of those situations where if you didn't laugh you would probably cry.  And so the irrigation system that we THOUGHT would be in place by spring of 2012 was not even underway.  No pond.  No grant.  No nothing.  And then we lived through the drought of 2012.  Now wouldn't an irrigation system have been a handy thing to have as we watched plants wither in the summer drought?  Yeah.

The project wheels are finally turning though.  The sand filter, pumps and various hoses were delivered last week.  While they are crucial to the project, those items are quite boring.  However this week there was much more excitement to be had on the farm when the track hoe showed up to dig some test holes for the pond.

Nothing like a big ol' track hoe to cause some serious equipment envy.  After the test holes had been dug and all was quiet, Mike and I HAD to go back to the meadow later that evening to pay a visit.

Even I was wishing we had one of these things on the farm so I could drive around and dig holes whenever I wanted.

The smaller of the two dozers that are going to be used got delivered as well.  The bigger one was supposed to come this morning, but it thunderstormed all morning long.  Even so, just having some of the equipment sitting on the ground at the site of the future pond is a sure sign that this project is finally happening.

2010-2012 Peters Creek Farm Foodie Index

Coming up on April 27th, Mike and I have been invited to be speakers at Fresh Fork Market's "Farm Fair".  Farm Fair is a "One Day Crash Course in Urban Gardening" and in addition to Mike and I, there will be 10 other speakers sharing their farming and culinary knowledge.  Definitely going to be a lot of fun.  My talk is on freezing and canning and as I was sitting down preparing for my talk this past week, I realized that I already have somewhat of a collection of canning, freezing and cooking recipes right here on the ol' blog.  The problem is that I have no index (well other than labels, maybe) to sort through the old blog posts.  So this blog is dedicated to indexing all my past postings that include anything to do with canning or freezing or other cooking or baking recipes.  Some of the posts are pretty detailed.  Others have very little detail except maybe an external link to a recipe.  If the post contains just an external link to a recipe I put that in the notes next to the blog post link.  If the full recipe is actually printed in the blog text, then there is no mention of an external link.  All the posts are directly about preparing food.  So here we go.

Rescue Mission  

     Contains the link to "To Die For Blueberry Muffins" with my minor change to the recipe amounts.

Converting Blueberries  

     This blog also has a link to "To Die For Blueberry Muffins" along with the picture of the finished project.  The fact the I blogged about the recipe twice in one week will tell how good this recipe truly is.  

Easy Like Sunday Morning

     My recipe for whole wheat buttermilk blueberry pancakes.  *mouth is watering as I type this*

Freezing Sweet Corn

     Now there is an original name for a blog post.  Bet you can't guess what this one is about?  This one is a fairly detailed write up of how I freeze sweet corn.

Greenie Beanies

     While this one doesn't include details of how to use a pressure canner, it does have step by step pictures through the process of canning beans.  As a bonus, there is a paragraph about how I freeze whole peaches.

Brownies and a Big Bus

     This post contains my recipe for whole wheat brownies.

Monday Apples

     Here are the details of how I make and freeze applesauce.  There is also an external link to a recipe for "Maple Apple Crisp"

Kicking Off Soup Season

     Basic directions on how I use an old stew hen to make homemade stock and use the stock to make chicken noodle soup.

And Then There Were Eight

     This one contains an external link for "Cream of Celery Root Soup" as well as how I loosely adapted the recipe to fit the ingredients I had on hand.

Pumpkin Puree

     Once again an original title for a blog post.  Yep, this one details how I make pumpkin puree from scratch.  It can be easily frozen to be used for pies and other recipes all winter long.

Rabbit Dogs and Easy Baked Rabbit

     Yes, another title that will leave you guessing.  This one contains my own recipe for slow baked rabbit.

Snow Storms, Chili and Chocolate Raspberry Cream Cheese Pie

     Nothing like a good old snow storm to keep me in the house making food all day.  This one has two recipes.  One for White Bean Squirrel Chili and one for Chocolate Raspberry Cream Cheese Pie.  Oh yeah!

106.5 inches (of snow) and counting

     Two recipes, both are links to external web sites.  "Whole Wheat Banana Bread" - a quick bread and "Four Grain Bread" - a yeast bread

Then in 2012 I really slacked off the foodie postings or at least any with any detail or links.  But I've already put one up in 2013.

Rabbit Ragu

     This one has a pretty detailed step by step directions as well as the external link for the recipe I used as a base.

So hoping all my links work correct.  Whew!