Garlic Scapes!

I've been waiting 11 months for garlic scapes, and they are finally here!  I'm so happy.  They go in everything for the next 6 weeks--in my scrambled eggs, on pizza, and in stir fries.  I did all three today!

I am harvesting onions and getting small leaves of swiss chard plus all the beet thinnings I want right now.  The spinach, alas, never took.  At least two plantings were as dead as a door nail.

The 10th Avenue Red Fife field is weedier than I had expected.  I will have to be prepared to clean the seed immediately after harvesting, otherwise the moisture from the weed seeds can spoil the wheat.

I scored a fantastic electric motor on Craigslist yesterday.  I will use it on the Model 600 mill and I hope this will make it much more productive.  Right now I just have a 2 hp motor on it, and I am always pushing the motor past it's safe amperage rating.  The only issue with this motor is that it's rated 7.5 hp, while my gearbox is only rated 4.6 hp.  I will need to limit the amperage so as not to exceed the rating and trash the gears.  This should not be too much trouble.

The new shoe on the seed cleaner is basically set to go.  The ball trays are not what I had hoped--the balls are not bouncing all that great.  I expect to be messing with it once I have a harvest to test it more.  The slope on the scalping screen is about 11 degrees, much higher than stock.  I am hoping this will let whitecaps and straw scalp off easier than before.

Dead Floriani Red

My floriani red, a gift of a farmer I met in SW Wisconsin, is totally dead seed!  It's been 10 days and there is zero sign of life.  So I dug up the rows with the wheel hoe and replanted Roy's Calais, of which I have plenty of seed.  I also put in about 15' of sunflower, which I have never grown before.  I plan to buy some pole beans at DP Wigley and make a 3 sisters plot here.  Hopefully the squash won't get too crazy and block everything from germinating.  The beans are supposed to go in about 2 weeks after the corn, but I think I can't wait that long.  They will get shaded out by the squash.  I'll drill in the  beans in a few days, I figure.

Put in about 15' of carrots, in that nice ground where the bok choi just got clobbered by cabbage beetles.

I put in about 20' of French buckwheat that I got from the USDA, into that empty row between the sweet corn and the garlic.  The brussel sprouts that I planted yesterday are taking root really nicely!

At the other end of the same row I drilled in a double row of lentils.  This crop failed last year, but this year I am trying ordinary lentils (not the black ones) from Outpost.  It would be really cool if I could grow lentils.

I have been harvesting the cilantro aggressively, even though it is just getting going.  But there is 20' of it so I think at some point I will be overwhelmed with cilantro, regardless of what I do now.

More lodging

3/8" of overnight rain really did a number on the wheat in the garden.  It's weird--note that the rogue rye is standing tall, despite being a foot taller than the wheat.

By the afternoon it had mostly stood up again.

I could also see a little more lodging in the Spring Street Turkey, which is in the background.

Corn up, Mostly

Sweet corn, planted in May, is coming up very nicely.  The replanted sweet corn is also starting to poke through.

The popcorn and Roy's Calais is coming up nicely.  The popcorn may need thinning--the small kernels sometimes doubled up.

The Floriani Red has not budged, which is unexpected.  It's been 12 days, and this soil is really pretty decent.  Very interesting!

This is how we compost at the farm.  I shovel the loose stuff on top, and this crew comes along and digs it all up.  It works pretty well.

This is some of the Turkey on Spring street, which was knocked down in a relatively brief squall a couple of days ago.  I'm surprised that it lodged at all.

Farmers Breakfast

Breakfast year round nearly always includes a couple of eggs, scrambled.  For the past few months I've only had garlic or maybe frozen scallions to add, but I finally have Spring greens!  The spinach was all a bust, so presently I am using beet thinnings and baby swiss chard.

Sloooow Summer Morning

Around this time of year the donkeys can get into a mode where they just do not want to get out of bed.  I go down around 5:30 am, open all the gates to the pasture, and the three donks just stare at me from their stall.  This morning was an extreme case.  Sebastian was sitting down, so I knelt down and just rubbed on him a bit. Then Rosie came over and rested her chin on my shoulder.  We hung out like this for a few minutes, and I reflected on how lucky I was to have this wonderful farm with such great animals.  I went inside to eat my breakfast, but they did not rouse themselves to go eat anything for another 30-40 minutes.

Rooster drama.  Rodrigo has been beating up on Woodstock.  They can be so cruel.  Two months ago it was the other way around, but Woodstock injured his leg and now Rodgrigo is just going to town on him.  It's really awful to watch sometimes.

We had a 1/4" downpour last night as part of a very quick squall.  Now the wheat in the garden is really laying down!  I hope some of it stands back up.  

The popcorn and Roy's Calais flint corn is coming up nicely.

Rosie can hang her tongue out for what seems like hours.  I take it as a sign of extreme contentment.

More Replanting

The USDA samples in the middle of the plot.  Left to right, Turkey, Wisconsin No. 2, and Bacska.  The Bacska is taller than any of the wheat in the field.

Parsnip experiment.  These giant parsnips were planted last July and never quit.  But the roots are getting all woody and only the outer portion was edible.  It was actually quite good, but I don't think it will catch on.  I ate it like corn on the cob and consumed the soft, sweet flesh on the outside.  BTW, asparagus this year has been a total bust.  The plot was not doing much, and the housesitter did not pick it very cleanly while I was gone.  So when I got back it was all 3' tall, and I pretty much decided to let it go and rebuild at that point.  My 2015 and 2014 plantings are also doing blah--weak and small.  Not sure what's up.

First greens!  Beet thinnings for my morning scrambled egg.

Once again I am replanting in the new section.  This soil is not as far along as I had hoped.  The bok choi and other cabbage family stuff is coming up very weak and slow.  Spinach has been planted twice and I don't think I have seen a single seedling emerge.  Today I put in radishes, kale (row we are looking at), and parsnips to finish out the allium row at the top left.

Ehmke Turkey is lodging.  This is weird--we only had a light rain and little wind.  Also, I don't consider this to be a very fertile part of the garden.  It happened after 1/4" of rain fell over the course of a couple hours today.