Wow! Where has the time gone? And to think I was going to try and give a “weekly” update : -).

We have been amazingly busy these past two months. We finished up the final stages of packing up the farm store and covering and securing things which needed to be left outdoors. Things like cream cans, an antique sheller, wagons, display bins, horse collars, lanterns, lassos etc. which we decorate with during the summer months all must be put away to keep them safe from wind and rain damage.

We’ve managed to get all of our fields tilled and cultivated and ready for planting. We picked up Oganic Purple Vetch, Lana Woolypod Vetch, and Kanota Oat seed at Farm Supply today. $80 a bag!!! Ouch! We plant the vetch as a cover crop. Vetch is a legume that helps to set natural nitrogen in our soil (similar to alfalfa, peas and beans). The oats serves as a trellis for the vetch to climb, which exposes more of the plant to sunlight and creates a healthy crop. Some of the vetch will be cut for hay and baled to feed our goats during the winter. The rest gets tilled under to create a green mulch for a healthy crop of pumpkins and vegetables next summer.

We’ve nearly had more rain this past month than we had all of last year. We had a major storm 10 days ago which brought much needed rain. Unfortunately it brought destructive wind too. One casualty of the storm was our small greenhouse. It is amazing what 55 mile an hour gusts can do. Almost every sign at the farm store was blown over, and we lost some of the decorative accents on the buildings. Lots of broken branches too, but no other real harm done.

The girls have spent the last month pruning. Becky finished the berries and grapes. Mandy has almost finished the first fruit tree orchard. She has three more to go. Each variety is pruned a little differently. We are pruning the crowns down further on the apple trees, to control their size, so they will be easier to harvest next fall. We also heavily pruned the persimmon and plum trees. We had an extremely heavy crop last year and lost several branches. The slender branches can’t hold the weight of an abundant crop, and it seems we just never thin aggressively enough. We are hoping that scaling back on the breadth of the branches will make a difference.

Our bare root trees arrived this week and we are getting ready to plant. This year we are planting 36 Angel Red Pomegranates (a new variety that is supposed to be especially good for juice), 20 Fruitless Mulberries (shade for our Threshing Bee event we hold every September) and a few individual fruit trees (Honeycrisp and Mutsu) to replace ones that we lost to gophers or deer.

Something new we are planting this year is a few Feijoas. They are a very pretty, somewhat small evergreen tree. They bear an oblong fruit which smells like a blend of pineapple and strawberry and tastes like a guava. Sometimes folks refer to them as a Pineapple Guava. They are sweet and rich in Vitamin C.

We are also planting some Jujubees, PawPaws, and two different varieties of Hardy Kiwis. We have a lot to learn about how to trellis and propagate them. Thank goodness we have a farmer friend who knows a lot about unusual varieties and she generously shares her knowledge. It will be several years before we get our first crop, but we are anxious to see how they do in our soil and weather conditions..

Before we plant bare roots, we make wire baskets from chicken wire for each plant or tree. We place the wire basket in the ground before the tree is planted, and nestle the roots in the basket before refilling the hole with soil. This offers at least some protection from gophers. We dip the roots in solution of Vitamin B-1 before we plant them, which helps protect the trees from shock and gets them off to a good start.

I will try to weigh in again soon and let you know how planting went.

My best,

Joy