What we're up to.

Things are going well here on the farm. The weather has cooled off and the bugs have bugged off. Gone are the bug coats to be replaced with sweaters and light jackets. Ben & Jake are growing like bad weeds and are taking naps at the same time which is allowing me to be able to help Derek and John with the harvest by bagging and weighing out greens and other veggies. It feels good to be involved again. Derek and John are in the works of setting up a hoop house for a bed of Tatsoi as an experiment to see how long in the season we can grow greens for. First they built a frame where they bent metal pipe, next they measured along the vegetable bed five feet apart and hammered rebar into the ground. The metal pipes were then put over the rebar. The next step will be to find a row cover wide enough to cover the hoops. Hopefully it'll be a success.

Our cat nugget had her kittens in the last few weeks and we finally found them behind scrap wood in the storage room. Three little orange kittens, too cute!

Our fall greens are coming along nicely. We are currently harvesting arugula, mizuna, komatsuna and lettuce mix. We have spinach, radish, tatsoi, more arugula and mizuna, swiss chard and beet greens coming along nicely and hopefully the fall weather is agreeable so we can have greens into the fall. We just finished harvesting our purple and coloured carrots and only have orange ones left. The leeks, onions, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini and beans are all still producing but as the cooler weather sets in the heat loving crops like tomatoes, beans and peppers will slow down and we'll be left with the hardy veggies like onions, carrots, parsnips, rutabaga and leeks.

A few photos to show whats going on. enjoy!!


Ben and Jake


Jen and Ben


Setting up the hoops


Onions drying in the sun


New kittens


New greens


Derek & John setting up hoop house


Work horse rototiller & sunflowers

The Boys

A few updated photos of our farm boys!! Hard to believe they are almost 2 months old, weighing in at over 10lbs each.





Jake

Ben

Twins = No time to blog

So the boys are now almost 7 weeks old and I can't believe how fast the time has gone. I have hardly had time to eat and drink let alone blog. Things on the farm are going well. The CSA is now half done and we are now into the fall crops like carrots, beets, beans, tomatoes, peppers and onions.

My internet time has been limited and even checking e-mail has been difficult. Now that the boys are having some sleep time during the afternoon I'm hoping to be able to start blogging again. Time will tell!!

CSA Pick-up Week #3

Unfortunately I was unable to get a picture of the shares this week before the truck headed to Charlottetown. This weeks share included:
Lettuce mix
Snow Peas
Swiss Chard
Snap Peas
Strawberries
Beet Greens
Garlic Scapes
Dill
Green Onions
Cilantro

I'll try and get the guys to snap a picture before the truck leaves on Saturday morning to get a photo uploaded then. Until then if anyone needs more info about what the veggies are or what to do with them check out the paper newsletter included in the share or send us an e-mail. Thanks

We're home

We made it home and out of the hospital finally Sunday afternoon after spending a full week getting prepared for the real world at home. I was not ready to leave the hospital until Sunday as I felt really unprepared for what was ahead but I am feeling much better now. The boys are settling in quite well although the lack of sleep at night is tough. Luckily they slept a full four hours last night so we did manage to get some shut eye. The days are busy for Derek with farm work, and me with e-mails, feedings, poopy diapers, cuddles, the odd nap and trying to remember to eat and drink. So far so good but it sure is a lot of work.

Help in the field

Today we had a wonderful family come to the farm to help us weed some of our more desperate sections. In about an hour we were able to weed three beds of broccoli and cabbage. The pig weed was completely over taking the actual crop and I knew for ages that it needed to be done but there just seemed to be so many other areas first. Those beds were also covered with row covers to protect against the flea beetles so it was rather easy to ignore them. Today the row cover was pulled back and the weeds were eliminated!! Thanks so much Chris and family for taking time to come and help us!!

Second CSA Pick-up Tuesday July 7

We had another very successful CSA pick-up at the Charlottetown location today. Thanks to all our wonderful members for their great feedback and commitment to the program. I was impressed that most members had gotten through most of last weeks veggies which is impressive because there were ALOT of greens last week. Check out the photo below for this weeks share basket.


The second week of veggie goodness

1= Joi Choi (a large bok choi)
2= Garlic Scapes, the flowering part of the garlic plant. Excellent chopped and used as you would garlic cloves.
3= Beet Greens, yes those are beet greens even though they are red. So yummy just steamed with salt & pepper and a little bit of butter, yummy. Derek's favorite.
4= Mizuna, simply chop and add to salad or throw into a stir-fry
5= Daikon radish. Similar to regular radishes but a bit more on the spicy side. This is a very popular vegetable in the Japanese culture.
6= Radish, probably the last week for round red radishes, or at least until the fall when the temperatures turn cool again
7= Lettuce mix, baby lettuce greens great on their own!!
8= Strawberries, need I say more. We picked these at 2:30 this afternoon and CSA pick up started at 4. It doesn't get much fresher than that!!!
9= Spinach

This will probably be my last week at the Tuesday pick-up for awhile as these babies are probably not going to wait much longer. I"m still feeling great and am still harvesting, weeding but am not that fond of the copious amounts of black flies that enjoy munching on me. My full term due date is this Friday so we'll see what happens, maybe I'll be able to get one more week in there.

We also had a great CSA pick-up on Saturday at the Summerside Farmers Market. It was fun to see old and new members and have a chat about the veggies included in the basket that week. The market celebrated its first birthday last weekend and what a crowd!! The place was packed. There was children's entertainment, buskers, free pleasant pork hotdogs, free ice cream and strawberries and hourly draws for market money. We were sold out of everything except for one Chinese cabbage by the end of the day. It was a great day.