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Birds, Birds, Everywhere. The ducks, the hens, the guineas, the roosters, the ravens, the hummingbirds, the sparrows, the eagles, the robins, the...well, lots of birds. If I spend too much time with the I turn into a bird brain! But we put up with them because they give us yummy eggs, they're pretty, and always keep things fun and interesting. 🍻 To the birds!  The quackers are up first with their excitement about their afternoon water refill. It's an all purpose bathing/drinking waterbowl, they are fowl multitaskers with their water. #everydayispoolday  Of course, there is the working women that make up the bulk of the flock. 25 hens of laying age that now live rooster free! #allthesingleladies  There's the Golden Girls. The last of my original flock that are over 20 years old now. No more laying eggs for them, just laying in the sun, waiting fo their food to be brought to them, and exploring the gravel pile for bugs! #livingongreenpastures   But enough about birds, because the yarrow is blooming and someone's gotta go harvest the beautiful blooms! If I can find them through the grass. #Iwishthisgrasswasntgreener  The roof is done, and my parents are released from their daily toiling until later this fall. And yes, I've already started putting things in their new home, even if it's a little drafty. #raisetheroof The first full-size Rainbow Swiss Chard is ready along with it's monochromatic friend the Dino Kale (aka Black Kale, Lacinato Kale, so little color, so many names) #arosebyanyothername  This maternal pair and their herd had a fun sleepover in the field, but I had to break it up when they tried to eat my tarps for killing the grass #imsuchapartypooper  What's available this week?
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Lots of greens! Spinach, Chard, Kale, Lettuces of many kinds! With the cool, damp spring they are tender and sweet (except the Arugula of course). Some will be around all year, like the lettuces. And some will come and go, like the spinach, so get them while you can! The bees are buzzing around all the blooming flowers, some that I planted and some that just grow unless I don't let them. Even if the weeds can frustrate a farmer, I do admire their tenacity! The new shed is almost ready for a new roof! The chickens waddle through the tall grass, and Hella spends her days either following me around the farm and meowing at me to help her catch the numerous gophers or sleeping in a warm and cuddly spot.  The good stuff! Lots of spinach this week, as well as rainbow swiss chard, kale, and lettuces!  It was a wet harvest day in full rain gear, but the veggies like it (even if the flowers like it not so much, so their tunnels stayed closed all day to keep them cozy and dry as overhead water can damage delicate buds and blooms)  Speaking of blooms! The lupines are done, with the last few left for the bees! This weeks bouquets will be a variety of delphinium, calendula, silene, yarrow, bee's friend, and more!  The framing is done, just a few details to go before the roof gets up! I hope Oscar the Tractor and his merry band of mowers and tiller and tools like their new home!  It's tall grass season which means a quick mowing of paths for the hens is necessary so they can move easily through the pasture to visit their friendly neighbors.  What's available this week?
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! 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?
Everywhere you look there is a sea of green. The grass is green. The trees are green. The field is green. And the rows of veggies and flowers are green but not all the green is good. While all that grass is great in the field and I can't wait to whack at it with my scythe and make some old fashioned hand-cut hay (even a farmer can have weird hobbies :) ), it is not so great (or easy) to get rid of where I don't want it, namely my planting rows. Each year I use a few new tactics to try to manage it and this year it is my ultimate goal (always gotta have a goal right?). I'm tackling it with tarps (to block the light it needs to grow), tillage (to whack it back), weed fabric (to stop it from growing while the plants have their own little spaces and since the other methods don't work while growing in that space), solarization (covering with clear plastic to 'burn' it out), and sometime just yanking it in frustration! Hopefully this year will be it's downfall! mwahahaha!!!! but really, I need it to go just from my planting beds. It can have the field all to itself!  A sea of green under gray skies. All the rain makes the grass grow taller and taller which the chickens and ducks like.  Another sea of green but not the kind I was hoping for! All that grass likes to grow everywhere, even to engulf my rows of veggies and flowers. Sometimes the best thing is to whack it all down, a light till, and cover with weed fabric before take two with new transplants.  Before all those weeds and smothered crops get whacked down, I cut some baby greens that will be available this week.  The first butter lettuce heads are ready! They (mostly) won the battle against the grasses with the help of some weed fabric.  The next crops are growing fast and the grass is beaten back in their rows (for now)  The weed fabric doing it's job with some nice rows of young flower plants and head lettuce. I am a very 'live and let grow' kinda gardener and always had a ramble of veggies and flowers in my home gardens, but farming requires a bit more strictness, efficiency, and tough love when it comes to what you let grow where.  The grazers are on the grass  Hella helps find lots of things in the long grass, including tiny (and some not so tiny) gophers. You get' em girl before they gobble everything up! There has been a lot out here already this year. 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! Since most of the week has featured yet more planting and transplanting, I'm featuring the highlights of microgreens production. Basically, it's put some seeds on soil, water them, and watch them grow, but there are a few quirky bits that I went 'hmm' to when I first grew them. They have so many good qualities (low maintenance, quick to grow, quick to harvest, tasty!, and especially, they are super duper packed with nutrients!). Imagine all the nutrients a full size plant has and pack the bulk of it into two tiny leaves and a skinny stem! On the flower front, the Tulips of the Week are Fostery King (a bold red petal with bright golden center) and Rasta Parrot (a rainbow of Caribbean colors on curly petals).   Next they are stacked! Yep, right on top of one another. Even the tippy top one gets a cover of an overturned humidity dome weighted with rooted cuttings. This is an important step that helps those surface-strewn seeds grip into the thin layer of soil.   Longer stems make them easier to cut and harvest! Sowing them really dense and not giving them the too much light helps with that!  Only 14 days after sowing, they have grown to the right size and are heading to be harvested! A short cart ride from the Dragon Dome greenhouse to the shiny & new carport washing & packing area, they are cut, mixed, and bagged up. The remaining soil, stem ends, and roots are dumped into the field and chicken runs for the hens to enjoy and make tidy work of cleaning up! Talk about zero waste!  And the shiny, new washing & packing area is finally shiny! With the electrical work all done and connected, I can finally see everything and have lots of space to work on many projects at once as I try to finish them in a frenzy to get them all done before the full harvest season starts when the field crops are ready  This weeks tulips are the bold and beautiful Fostery King and the otherworldly Rasta Parrot! Ya man, they be jammin! 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! The crush to get the plants in the ground at the right time is on! I can't prep beds fast enough for all the seedlings that are ready to go in, even though some have to wait until I know it won't get too cold. I will get frosts throughout the summer (the longest the farm goes without a frost is 3 weeks), but the earlier and later in the year the harder the frosts and little tunnels of fabric and plastic can only provide so much protection. For most growers they are considered season extension supplies, but for me they make growing in my little valley possible and without them I would be limited to spinach, radishes, and kale. It was a great market last week and I will be there again this week (and every week) with all the flowers, micros, and eggs (and soon more flowers and veg) rain or shine! Now back to bed prep and planting!  Lots of baby plants got to go into their forever homes this week (and many more the next few weeks too). One bed of flowers. One bed of lettuce and greens. One bed of direct seeded flowers and beets!  Right after their planting, a protective cover of frost cloth will keep them safe through the chilly nights. The direct seeded ones need a little chilliness and frost to help wake them up and make them pop!  Some of the neighbors dropped by while I was planting but they weren't very chatty  The duck nest is just a ring of fluffy straw with most eggs in the center but a few like to hide under the fluff, so each egg collection means a slightly rumpled nest remains.  The hens favorite time to roam is after a good rain. The bugs are up and out still and the hens won't get wet anymore. Num num grubs!  Hella was happy to help while rolling in the mowed straw, even if she didn't get much work done  The daffodils continue as the first varieties finish but the next begin to bloom. It feels like every bunch I collect and hold up to the sun is like a salute to spring!  The same goes for the tulips. The mellow yellow Akebonos are finishing up but the Candy Pinks are just starting. These beauties will satisfy a different kind of sweet tooth! 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! It's the first week of markets! Both The Farmers Market at Libby (Thursday 3-7pm)and the Troy Farmers Market (Friday 330-630pm) start up this week. Both markets are altering layout and vendor setup to accommodate social distancing. We are also encouraging non-cash payments, like cards or tokens, but cash is still welcome, and I thank everyone for their patience as hands are washed or sanitized between each transaction. If you order online and are picking up at Libby, you can opt for a no-contact pickup by using the markets drive-thru lane. Just give your name (or the name on the order) to the gatekeepers at the Market Manager tent and they will let you thru! The online store will open every Wednesday at 8am and close every Thursday at 10am, to give me enough time to prep the last orders for the markets. (If you want to pickup at Troy Farmers Market, please let me know in the 'Note to Seller' box at the end of checkout or forward the confirmation email to me at dragonsbreathfarm@gmail.com. The website is giving me some issues with multiple pickup sites and inventory, but I *hope* to have it fixed soon) Everyone is welcome to walk in and shop as well. It will be nice to see everyone's smiling (even if behind masks) faces and even if from 6ft away! I'll have the usual eggs and microgreens as well as daffodil bunches and spring bouquets with daffodils and the first tulips of the year! I'll also have some everlasting wreaths made from last years dried flowers and foliage and some handwoven scarves that kept me busy in the winter. And don't forget about Mother's Day this weekend! It is very much spring on the farm as everything begins to green up and grow tall! Here's to a great market season with healthy, local food and flowers that help the food security of the community, supports small farmers, makers, and bakers, and the health of me, you, and all the other creatures we share the world with! Yay for all the farmers, markets, and shoppers that keep us going! Thank you!!!  The tomatoes are planted in the greenhouse in their boxes, safe to enjoy the warmth during the day and survive the frosty nights.  And while the tomatoes have their designated space, everything else is jam packed in there! It's tiptoe room only, which makes watering an interesting endeavor. Most are flowers that will be planted out over the next few weeks!  The daffodils are popping this week! And the first tulips are busting open! Yay for spring flowering bulbs. They are like a little bank account you bury in fall and it grows and grows all winter, hidden under the snow, and pops up to make your withdrawal in spring!  Markets (both at Libby and Troy) start this week! Both will have modified layouts and vendor setups to accommodate social distancing, hand washing, and sanitizing. I've been practicing and fine-tuning the setup which will shift as different crops are harvested. Here, foot shoppers would be on the right with me in the middle and the produce and flowers behind. Behind (on the left) there will be a sign to indicate the area for picking up your online order with no contact in the drive-thru lane.  Soon all the farm goodies will be riding in style! It's been insulated to keep everything chilled and cool on the way to market and while they are waiting to be put on display!   They say the camera adds ten pounds. True, but so does a human being fully trained to fill the empty bowl with every meow until the vet says to stop. Naughty human! Portion control and chicken chasing is the phrase of the day! Meow all you want Hella. No free refills!!! 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
April 2020
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