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The heat and sun is here! The plants grow faster. I have to irrigate more. And everything finds what shade it can! There are lots of leafy green veggies this week (and extra spinach! yay!). And more flowers begin to show life to their buds and flower stalks! The familiar weekly routine of plant, irrigate, tend, harvest, repeat has begun!  The field is full! Time to harvest before the dawn comes!   It's that special time of summer! The wonderfully magical blue skies filled with cottonwood fluff! Growing up all the grumpy old white men complained for days and weeks about it, but I have always loved watching it float away on the summer breezes. It's the summer 'snow' that makes you feel like you get to live inside a magical snow globe and I'm glad I get to share the field and forest with many Cottonwoods (my fav deciduous tree! shhh don't tell the rest. I don't want them to get jealous!)  The calm winds, damp air, and dew drops at dawn are a better wake up than coffee. Yep, I said it!  The lupines keep shining while a few other flower friends make their seasonal debut!  The hens soak up the evening sun during their daily free time, and follow me around hoping for some special treats.  As the sun sets, the huntress creeps silently through the tall grass, with one last chance to catch her prey ... before her human carries her safely inside for nighttime. The gophers and ground squirrels will still be there come morning but many larger things that stalk silently through the grass come out at night. What's available this week?
Where to find it all?
I'll be at the Farmers Market at Libby, this Thursday from 3-7pm! I'll be at the Troy Farmers Market, this Friday from 330-630pm!
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Another cool, damp week in this mainly cool, damp spring means many veggies and flowers are just starting to be harvestable. With warmer weather on the way, this should only increase over the next few weeks. And as some of the root vegetables are ready to pull out, other roots need to be protected from the underground rodents that want to eat them all before they can bloom. Thus, I've developed sunken beds to protect all those roots from all those rodents! All that rain has made a very lush field of grass, perfect for the new fawns to hide in, the old hens to peck in, and for me to start thinking about cutting some down for some old-fashioned hay and straw. That same rain also makes the lettuce juicy and tender, there's lots of it available this week (along with other greens) and there are still some lemons!   Those dastardly rodents (gophers and ground squirrels) won't be able to eat my Ranunculus, Anemone, or Tulip tubers and bulbs anymore! I've built sunken beds that have a hardware mesh bottom that even their gnashing teeth can't chew through!  2 sunken beds with the Ranunculus and 1 of Anemone are happy as can be! And so will I when I can dig up and save their tubers each fall to replant the following spring! One more bed to build for the current tulips to relocate to and a few more that will wait for future tulips and all will be safe to rebloom each year!  The radishes are finally here! The first planting was lost to a sea of weeds but the second made it through!  The beginnings of a super sturdy storage shed. My parents have been hard at work getting the posts cemented in for the new shed that will replace the metal framed 'garage' that was destroyed this winter in the big wind storm. Gotta have a great place to store the lawn mowers and snow throwers and two wheel tractor!  A kitty on the chopping block. lol jk. This time of year it is more often her scratching post and lounge chair.  What's available this week?
Where to find it all?
I'll be at the Farmers Market at Libby, this Thursday from 3-7pm! I'll be at the Troy Farmers Market, this Friday from 330-630pm! A full spectrum of lettuce, some bright & hardy lupines that are blooming despite the cool & dark spring, and some special & sunny meyer lemons fill out the offerings this week! With harvest (finally) beginning in earnest, planting still a bit behind (but catching up), and special projects always looming on the to do list, the really busy season begins. It usually lasts through August before the harvests get thinner as the frosts get deeper, but until then it is dawn to dusk days filled with tending to the needs of the veggies, the flowers, the hens & ducks, Hella kitty, infrastructure maintenance, trimming & trellising tomatoes, opening tunnels, closing tunnels, irrigating, weeding, more irrigating, and more weeding. Repeat daily.  Lotsa lettuce! Red Leaf, Baby Romaine, Red and Green Butterhead.  Salad Mix is here! Just hanging around, floating in its cool water bath, waiting for the jacuzzi jets to start!  And some Power Greens (aka Stir Fry Mix). A nice diverse blend of different kales, boc choys, & mustard greens!   And the Meyer Lemons are back, brought up special from my ancestral backyard in Cali! They will only be available for purchase online and you can pick them up with your orders at either market!   If you were stuck inside for two whole days because there was 20 mph winds that are loud and scary, you would make this face too. At least there were hair clips and scrunchies to toss on the floor and toes to attack! What's available this week?
Where to find it all?
I'll be at the Farmers Market at Libby, this Thursday from 3-7pm! I'll be at the Troy Farmers Market, this Friday from 330-630pm! Not all tunnels are dug, since mine are built from the ground up! The current ones are the low caterpillar tunnels ('low' because I can't walk in them, 'caterpillar' because they are cinched down over ear hoop and it creates the look of segments, just like a caterpillar). They are very important for my ability to grow many things here as they protect the crops beneath them from my summer frosts. They are easy to vent by lifting the sides and the plastic gets all bunched up on the top which actually provides a little shade for the crops in the intense midday sun and they can be closed to also protect from hail or damaging winds! I've put up enough now that it goes fast and smooth, even though I usually like to transplant the row first, and then cover it so I have to be careful to not drag the plastic over tender plants or drop a hoop onto them. With the weather evening out, the perennial flowers will soon bloom, the summer ones are getting tall and the little veggies are getting closer and closer to harvest size!  All those little rows within the row are single passes with this, the Jang seeder. It has different discs for different seeds sizes, gears and sprockets to adjust the spacing, a plate that makes a furrow, drops the seed in, and another roller to tamp it down! It makes direct seeding go soooo much faster than by hand and makes tidy, evenly spaced rows that don't require thinning. It's a good thing they painted it yellow because it is worth it's weight in gold!  With so many hoses around, I almost missed this little snake with a tubby belly (hopefully one of the many gophers)   Each post needs a scrap of drip tape poked over the end and a loop of string, which are necessary to tie down the plastic to.  Next the bent metal conduit is slipped over the posts. The tunnel is starting to take shape!   To tie down each end, the plastic is scrunched up and folded over a rod or bar, a u-bolt is put over it as a place for the ratchet strap to hook onto. The other end of the ratchet strap is anchored to a t-post and then you ratchet it nice and snug so no gusty wind can take it away!   The hens continue to enjoy their evening ramblings, each night they find new places to explore and look for yummy bugs! What's available this week?
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AuthorI'm Farmer Megan with a life full of cackles, clucks, quacks, weeds, crazy kitten, and one tiny, senior, blind dog. Archives
May 2024
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