It Was the Best of Times

(thanks to Mother Nature, the first Wando pea seedling has emerged)


and It Was the WORST DAMN TIME in the Entire History of the farm (thanks entirely to the ridiculous and not forward-thinking farmer).

What happens when your farmer puts you in a sunny windowsill on a windy day.

All the potential tomatoes... You know what this means: Raise a glass, and pour one (or a few) for the homie...

Green Thumb Sunday: Non-Green-Thumb Edition

Green Thumb Sunday: Non-Green-Thumb Edition

A Green Thumb Sunday when the ground is frozen once again? Fitting for this perfectly weird edition. First off, an illustration of the ridiculous onion problem I mentioned a few days ago re: why the farmer needs improvement when it comes to fall tasks:

New growth. Plus a lot of crap. Hmm. Is there a metaphor here?

Next, and the real headline news is a massive Victory of the Farmer! Remember that trash can, left by the original owners of the house (before the Farm Consumers)? That trash can that was too heavy to be moved and at one point in the summer became the Squirrel Death Trap, forcing H to fish a squirrel carcass out with a stick? And fling it, making the yard smell horrible for days? Yep, that trash can.

Today, I moved it! And, it's set to slowly melt the little bit of water/ice left inside into the neighbor's mess of a "yard" which is also down-stream of the Farm. So. Excited!!

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 39F
Yesterday's low: 17F
Warnings: Snow. Ice. No, really.
Reason to consider a new career: Maisy caught a bird in her mouth this morning, and when I thought I was going to have to kill it because it was too injured, I nearly fainted. Luckily, it was just stunned. Catch and release, I'm cut out to do... Breaking necks with my bare hands, not so much. But HUGE thanks to Dr. P for the hippie-farming-advice on how to put it out of its misery. And equally HUGE thanks to the bird for rallying and sparing me from having to enact said advice.

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??

Not To Brag...

...but I just made the best dinner of life with stuff from the farm (all the salad greens and spinach!) and stuff from the farm box (parsley).















Spinach and Greens with Lemon Olive Oil Dressing
Parsley Gremolata
Shrimp with Garlic White Wine Sauce

Pride and Joy

This is it, people. The farm was planted on May 24th, and here we are, on June 25th with the very first harvest. Just a month of love and attention, and what do we have? A midnight harvest of bounty! Well maybe not midnight, and maybe not bounty, in the truest sense of the word, but it's definitely a harvest. And I'm definitely excited to eat something I grew. I think tomorrow, I will grill corn and chicken to slice on the salad greens and spinach harvest, along with sunflower seeds and some dried cranberries. Getting hungry already!

Farmers Run On Dunkins.

Friends. This is all you need to know.

Farmer Victory!

It was not the squirrel, Nutz4Nuts, who had a taste for cilantro.

It was this character:












And this one fat one that I suspect ate most of the leaves:



















And two others, just like them. At least, that's how many I've found so far. This farmer was looking for the beasts during the day, when the real trick was to sleuth around at night.

Using my Farmer Resources (aka a link provided by N to the U of MN Extension Service), I believe these are cutworms. The U's picture looks suspiciously like my cilantro-scarfers.















Now if I could only figure out what the problem is with the patio tomato plants (flea beetles??), the pest problems might be under control for one minute. Tentative Theory on the Farm: growing plants outside is better than pretending your screened in patio is a farm.