Garlic!

This week we got our garlic in the ground. Unfortunately the freshly planted garlic field doesn't really look much different than it did before we put hundreds of cloves of garlic in the ground, but all of these beds that you can see will be full of tasty garlic by the end of next June.


Before we could even venture out to the fields to plant the garlic we had to crack open each head and break it into individual cloves.







Then we laid the cloves out in rows...















And plunged each clove three or four inches into the soil.










As you can see we got lucky this year and were planting garlic in nice warm and dry weather. This is not always the case. Of course the task is not finished yet. We are waiting on some straw to mulch the garlic. This keeps the cloves from heaving out of the ground as everything freezes and thaws throughout the winter.

We planted five times as much garlic as we did last year because the taste of fresh garlic beats anything that you can get in the store. Come visit us next August and you can taste the difference!

A little more summer

The past couple weeks we've alternated between fall-like and summer-like days. Today is a summer-like day. We're back to running irrigation constantly and trying to get harvest done early in the morning before the sun starts to really bear down on us. At the same time we actually have time for some farm tasks that aren't in the field, like cleaning out the chicken coop. Here's the coop with fresh, clean straw.

We have been waiting for the ideal opportunity to clean out the coop before the winter. The weather has been perfect for this task because we want everything to be nice and dry because dry straw is lighter than wet straw. The chickens seem to appreciate the clean coop, but they appreciate any greens that we toss them (in this picture they've just gotten some carrot tops) even more!


Without much rainfall most of the trees in our area have already begun to drop their leaves. We didn't really get many fall colors this season. Instead most of the trees look like these.









While the warm temperatures have made for an underwhelming leaf season, they have meant that we've still got lots of flowers around the farm. Here are some that are love these October days. This is ageratum.






And scabiosa (or pincusion).







And finally, marigolds.








In addition to flowers the broccoli is starting to come on. For the sake of our broccoli and cauliflower we are hoping for some cooler weather even if we are enjoying the warm sunny temperatures ourselves!

First frost?

Tonight just may bring our first frost of the season. While this would kill the tomatoes and peppers (most of which are still alive even if they are producing very, very slowly at this point in the season) all of the other crops growing on the farm now don't mind a little bit of cold. In fact many of the crops that we have out in the field won't grow very well in warmer weather so we welcome the cold. In addition to cool weather crops the spiders are thriving right now on the farm. There are many of them in the tomato field and this one has scored the ultimate prize, a big tomato hornworm.


This broccoli is one of the crops that doesn't grow well in the summer heat. In fact it is just now getting cool enough for us to have nice broccoli. Here is broccoli that is just about ready to harvest...






and here's our best-looking broccoli crop so far which won't be ready for another two or three weeks.










This is a plant that is closely related to broccoli. It is broccoli raab (or rabe or rapini, etc.), and is spicier than traditional broccoli with smaller florets and more tender green leaves. The broccoli raab is closer and is a brighter green while the broccoli is behind.


Another green that we are growing is this rainbow kale. This is a new variety of kale that we found in one of our seed catalogs that was the result of crossing Tuscan kale with red kale. We really like it because it has a nice color to it with big leaves. Not to mention that it tastes great too!


Finally, we've always been amazed that we haven't had problems with deer eating our crops. Well, unfortunately they have found the lettuce. Since we didn't have a very large planting of it, we've just covered it all with remay which will deter the deer for this year, but we may have to come up with a different fix next season.