another greenhouse!

With a lot of hard work you can go.......

from this

to this.



Before,


and after.

It all started when CSA customers Jeremy and Ginny offered us an old quonset hut that was on their property. Because it had a good solid steel structure we thought it would make a perfect greenhouse.


We spent a day taking it down.


Chad and Sandy of the Art Farm kindly let us use their space to build the greenhouse.


ready to go!


another day to rebuild it, a hard day that is!

Paul is now putting the finishing touches on with his trademark recycled windows. And I hauled in manure and planted with salad greens. Beautiful!

People

Me, setting up our farmstand and extremely happy with the broccoli this year!

Paul working super hard dismantling a donated quonset that will be used as a greenhouse, he is in his element recycling and building.

This is Drew. He is 10 years old and wants to be a farmer when he grows up. Every week he comes out to the farm and volunteers with his mom, Kathy. He is an awesome worker. I love this pic! One day I arrived at our farmstand to see somebody leaving on his bike with our garlic sticking out of his backpack. His name is Dave. He and his wife are regular visitors to the stand.

Animals in our garden

As well as many vegetables and flowers we have an interesting assortment of animals in our garden, some resident, and some not:

deer, pesty nuisances, but pretty regardless

the occasional bear comes by to check things out

some of our fabulous laying chickens

Lucy, our cat, guarding the next round of seedlings

you may have to click on this picture to enlarge it to see some very welcome guests to our garden, honey bees

Am I busy, or am I busy?

This is such a wacky time of year. Here we are with July just around the corner and the cool weather crops are growing abundantly, but at the same time the warm weather crops are waiting in the wings ready to bust out. But just to make things really interesting, I'm starting to seed Winter crops already. Thanks goodness for spreadsheets that help keep on track with what needs to be planted and when, and to help determine where things should be planted. It is quite the logistical nightmare to maintain a rotation system and yet find room for Winter crops when the beds are all full to overflowing with crops already!

All the gardens are looking fabulous, despite the awful start to the year where almost nothing grew for so long, we are reaping the bounty now. The broccoli is sensational this year!

Another year!

A year later and I'm adding something to the blog, ooops! I'm planning to be more diligent about writing (at least occasionally) this year.

This year has not started with a bang, no siree!! Rather, it has been wet and cool for the whole of April AND May! For a while there it felt like nothing would every grow, but in the last week or so the nights have warmed up a little, 8-10 degrees C at night and the odd day up to 15-17 degrees in the day time, so the early season plants are finally starting to put some growth on. Check out this picture below - it was taken on May 22. Then check out the previous posting that was dated May 22 of 2010, the picture was taken from the same location. The difference in the garden is unbelievable!! I estimate that the season is a good three weeks behind what it was last year.


Despite the weather woes we haven't been idle. This Spring Paul built a cute chicken coop at our home and we have five laying hens and will have 4 more coming in a couple of weeks. Fresh organic eggs and chicken manure are awesome, but we also get great satisfaction from just having the chickens around. Paul also expanded our farmstand and we've changed the logo and signage for a fresh new look.


The latest project is a new greenhouse - you can never have enough greenhouses! This one is wood framed, it should be much sturdier than the previous pvc hoophouse. Already I have planted melons and tomatoes in there and will be adding cucumbers and eggplants once the darn weather warms up.

This week we planted our new field for this year in potatoes; Russian Fingerlings and Sieglinde - yummmy! The field is approximately 1/4 acre and I thought that it would take many hours to hand dig trenches and plant potatoes but with a team of four of us we were able to do the whole field in 2 hours. I'm still impressed!! :o)