Updates from (and about) the Farm

Well folks, there's been some news. Aside from the fact that the farm is growing (like) weeds faster than anyone can imagine, it turns out the Farm is actually for sale. More specifically, the consumers' house is for sale, and along with it, the farmland. The blog may focus more on my plans to release small rodents into the consumers' house and undo the work of Jim the Critter-Gitter, just at the moment they try to show the house... Okay, seriously. I'll still update the blog until the farm is sold, and I'm still going to do some planting. But the big stuff (tomatoes especially) will find other homes. As you can imagine, I have many Feelings about this situation, but mostly I'm excited for the consumers to get central heat so I can visit them in the winter.

And without further ado, because I have got to get some work done today, here's a whole host of updated photos, including (!!) the salad stuff for my dinner tonight. Last year at this time, we hadn't even had the idea for the Farm yet, and this year dinner is already grown. Amazing.

Peas

Dinner

Broccoli

Chard

The Oak Leaf Head Lettuce, and a few carrots I thought hadn't germinated. Really? I couldn't get those things to grow last year no matter what I tried, and now, NOW, they want to grow in the lettuce. Nice.

Spinach

Strawberry with first blush

More berries

Green beans in one row and a row of surprise seeds for H.


And now for the awesome green onion flowers...

It's the First Day of Spring...

...the Obamas are planting a garden on the White House lawn, and it's snowing here in the tundra.

Luckily, the seedlings haven't noticed much. Here's an update!

It's hard to get the camera to focus on tiny rainbow chard seedlings, so I highlighted them for you. (click for a better view)

Cauliflower seedlings all in a row. Note how my labeling strategy has improved astronomically since Tomatofiasco 2008...

The Green Oakleaf Lettuce looks healthy



Don't blink or you'll miss the Romaine lettuce. It's there. I swear.


And finally, from the world's best spring care package, and directly from Massachusetts, my next weekend planting project!

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 37F
Yesterday's low: 20F
Warnings: Just because the calendar says spring doesn't mean you should start growing immediately if you are a strawberry plant, fyi.

I'm so excited!

Not only has it started to feel like spring here in the tundra, but there have also been a ton of farm-related developments. I was supposed to do a whole mess of work before I posted these pics, but seeds started sprouting today, and I just can't wait! So, here's a sort of photo-essay of recent events. Then I'm getting back to my other job...

There's still a bit of snow on the farm (and all the stuff I never put away. Bad farmer!)

Here's the planting set up. Note the fancy new gloves H&N gave me for Gowerukkah, which worked perfectly.

The Farm Dog watched carefully over the process and piped up when she thought I was doing something wrong...


Planted on March 15th: rainbow chard, oak leaf lettuce (heads), romaine lettuce (heads), and spiky kind of cauliflower (I really will post more about that soon)

And today, March 18th (already?!?!) the oak leaf lettuce and cauliflower is up!

It looks like winter might end after all!

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 55F (!!!)
Yesterday's low: 34F
Warnings: Hoping the strawberry plants don't get too used to this warm weather.

A Return to Labor...

Family, Friends, Strangers, and Pioneers,

Happy Labor Day! This is going to be a long post, because many things are going on at the moment. I just came back from checking on the farm, and I have some things to catch you up on... First of all, over the last week or two, a number of things have either succumbed to squash vine borers or just run out of steam and needed to be pulled. This includes most of the zucchini, all of cucumbers, and most of the green beans.
Fear not, the tomatoes continue to grow and ripen at breakneck speed. The plants are even making new flowers. I know in the interest of ripening the tomatoes already on the vines that I should remove these flowers stat. But the bottom line is that I don't have the heart to do it, and the plants are already making more tomatoes than three humans could possibly eat in one summer. Here are a few yellow ones I picked this morning, alongside the last cucumber of the season.
About those yellow tomatoes... When I picked the first, gigantic one, I was so excited. And then I took a bite and almost cried. It tasted terrible, and I professed my hatred of yellow tomatoes to my closest friends, but not you people of the internets, because I had put so much energy into growing the things and Worrying my Farmer Worries about whether or not they were growing appropriately. Well, luckily I tried another one a few days later, and I am happy to report that it tasted DELICIOUS! This one was of the traditional size, instead of the first ginormous one, and this one was definitely ripe--I might have cut into the first one a little too early. In any event, I am proud to say that I love yellow tomatoes, and am once again delighted with the Bounty.

Also on the farm, the flowers have sensed they're running out of time and sped things up. Now I'm not generally a fan of flowers, and certainly not posting pictures of them, but I'm a little bit enamored by them this fall...

So here's the sunflower of Green Thumb Sunday fame, but close up:
Some kind of vining flower seed N is growing that we almost mistook for a weed until we figured out what was going on:
The garlic chives flowering away:

Now, we're at the sad part of this post. September has arrived (somewhat unbelievably), and the time has come for me to return to my real career as a graduate student. I never really left it, but I added this farmer gig on top, and as is no surprise to anyone who knows me well, I'm not very good at doing two things I love at once. So this Farmer schtick is getting downgraded to a part-time job, which luckily dovetails nicely with the fact that the farm requires almost no maintenance at the moment. And the Grad Student schtick is going back to it's all consuming ways. I have a giant paper to write, and then several hours of on-the-spot questioning to prepare for this fall, all in the service of showing the powers that be that I am a competent human being. And I'll be collecting my dissertation data. This weekend, I prepared my office for that task, and like the green-ish farmer that I am, I even recycled a little motivation.

What does that mean for you people of the internets? Well, this blog is going to be updated a lot less frequently. But I'm still going to air all my farming adventures, mistakes, and hijinx to the masses. I mean, threat of frost will soon loom over the farm around every turn, and you know I'm going to post all my antics of attempting to cover those wild tomato plants and all of my fretting about whether they are surviving as they should. Oh, and I don't think I mentioned it but I planted lettuce seeds (!!) a week-ish ago to try my hand at a "fall crop" even though I'm not sure if Minnesota can handle it. People, you know I will be fretting about that too. But daily posts are a thing of the summer, not the fall. And you know how I like routine...

So until the next time the farm (or the farmer) does something remarkable, take care of yourselves, and each other.

When you don't have a sign off, I find it's best to use Jerry Springer's. ;)


Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 86F
Yesterday's low: 67F
Warnings: Last day of hot weather, possibly for the rest of the year, today.
Mood of the farm: Worried about all the plants the farmer is pulling...
Reason to consider a new career: Well, I'm a grad student. And I love it. So I'm sticking with that.

Green Thumb Sunday: I Can't Believe I'm Growing All These Veggies Edition

Green Thumb Sunday: I Can't Believe I'm Growing All These Veggies Edition

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Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 83F
Yesterday's low: 60F
Warnings: The tomatoes are going to run out of summer if they're not careful...
Mood of the farm: Playing a trick on the Farmer by growing so many cukes a person could not possibly keep up
Reason to consider a new career: Today I wondered if there was such a thing as too much bounty...

Who Needs Modesty?

And now, because everyone likes to brag occasionally, I'm bringing you the Top 5 Victories of the Farmer. Don't worry, it's still me--tomorrow I will bring you the Top 5 Failures of the Farmer. :) Bragging and I are not the best of friends.

1.) The carrots are somewhat spaced and actually growing!

2.) The Lemon Boy tomatoes are growing like champs, and they have the heirloom irregularities in shape that I love.

3.) This is a watermelon. No really. And there are four more just like it growing in the watermelon's expansive area. Not the expansive area I carved out for it mind you, because spacing is totally overrated. But the watermelon plants sure are thriving on all the bare earth they can find.

4.) The Romaine is growing! In July! In heads! Without bolting! After I almost pulled it in late June!

5.) This one is more a victory of the cucumber plants than of the farmer. But still. With the giant infestation of yellow striped cucumber beetles, who especially like to eat the flowers off before they're pollinated, this is a victory on all counts (and look at all the promising baby cukes around this bigger one).

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 80F
Yesterday's low: 62F
Warnings: The nights sure seem to be getting colder already...
Mood of the farm: Growing as fast as possible in an effort to impress Anonymous K on her final visit to the farm
Reason to consider a new career: Farmer's secret has been found out. She waters the cukes with vinegar and dill instead of actual water to grow dill pickles instead of boring old cukes. But now that H made that secret public, what's left??

Harvest Day 7/16

After a full morning of farm work, today was a Harvest Day. There were so many green beans the plants were starting to fall over. Between the Farm Harvest and the Farm box, my whole dinner was covered!




On the menu: salad greens (my farm) and spinach (my farm) with lemon-olive oil-garlic dressing, sun gold tomatoes (farm box), shaved raw beets (farm box), green beans (my farm), cucumbers (farm box), and baby shallots (farm box).

I'll get y'all an update of the Farm soon (some of the tomatoes are up to my shoulder!?).

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 92F
Yesterday's low: 69F
Warnings: thunderstorms. maybe.
Mood of the farm: trying to perk up

Full Circle

I think it's only fitting that on the day my grandfather, the person who taught me everything I know about farming, died, a storm of serious proportions hit the farm. And after carefully following his many directions over the last two months that resulted from phone calls that usually went something like this: "Papa, I'm going to have a farm! What do I do?" or "So Papa, I heard people sometimes make rows on their farms. What's the deal with that?" the farm survived last night's storm like a champ. Which seems ironic, but fitting all at the same time.

Just like a real farmer, the man really knew how to rock a straw hat after a hard day of fishing for sunnies with dough.














And he had a great little hop at the end of his bowling stride. Strike every time, practically.



















So in his honor, I give you a few bits of good news from the farm, because that's the kind of thing he would appreciate.

The first Wando pea pod:























One of the mini Romaine heads:


















The Great State of the Green Beans:























The first delicious green bean:


















And a MiniCuke after a hard rain for good measure:


















Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 81F
Yesterday's low: 61F
Warnings: Severe storm alert
Mood of the farm: Appreciating its good start in life