Gardening on the Farm

In addition to dairy farming and gardening, we also have laying hens and raise meat birds. While there is still a large portion of my food I buy, I do love to raise as much of my own food as I can. The Farmer was nice enough to help me with a project for my chickens. We put a coop in the old bank barn but it's not a great set up for meat birds, we built it mostly with layers in mind. So, we decided an outdoor grow out pen was in order, and it will also work for growing out layer chicks I hatch. We typically order our meat chicks from the feed store. I selected my layers for egg colour such as blue, green and dark brown so I haven't gotten into any good dual purpose breeds yet. The outdoor pen we built (mostly the Farmer, he's great at building things!) is 8x12 so it's a decent size. We are already talking about adding to it. My thought is to add a small coop area so they can be locked up night. We've had a lot of trouble with animals breaking into various set ups we...

Our first broccoli of the year! We didn't plant many broccoli plants but the few we have are doing well. This one was ready to harvest and another will be ready soon! We also got a pickling cucumber and while I was out I gathered eggs as well.

Today I discovered that even though my beans still have lots of flowers on top, there were tons of beans at the bottom of the plants. I managed to pick a nice basket full, along with a green onion. We will have some for dinner tonight and I put a few in the fridge for another night. The rest I blanched and put in the freezer for winter.

It's been a hectic week this week so I haven't had the chance to post. I was out working in the garden this evening. To keep weeds down I run the rototiller between the rows every so often but I wasn't able to do that last weekend as end of last week we got about 4 inches of rain! It's supposed to rain Saturday and Sunday as well so I figured I had better get out there today. The rainy weather and the heat has not only made the vegetable plants grow like crazy, but the weeds as well! My garden is very lush at the moment. My tomato plants have really jumped up. If I can find a break in the rain this weekend I will need to go tie them up again. And the pumpkin plants are taking over the other end of the garden. The pumpkin plants are getting flowers so hopefully we will get some pumpkins this fall. My pickling cucumbers have been getting a couple ready to pick here and there but I think next year I will plant around 10 plants so I can have enough ready at t...

The garden is coming along nicely! The plants are starting to get some veggies started. Even though most of the vegetables won't be ready for a while yet it is nice to see progress! More of the tomato plants are getting little tomatoes. The pickling cucumbers are getting some cucumbers almost big enough to pick. However the plants haven't taken off like I had hoped. They were seedlings I purchased late in the season so maybe I just planted them too late. Next year I think I will try buying seeds. I've always planted regular cucumbers from seed sown directly into the garden. I had a gap in my tomato row so I planted them in there so I could train them up the tomato trellis. Only one of the two plants is big enough for this so far. My dill is ready to harvest but it's too early in the season for pickles. I think I will let them go to seed as I have pickle recipe that calls for dill seed and I will save some for next year. Though from past experience i...

I've gradually been planting berry bushes here and there around the farm. A couple years ago I planted a red currant bush by one of my two wedding trees. These are trees we had on each side of the arch at our wedding and planted after; they are variegated maples. I planted the currant bush in the little flowerbed I had planted around the tree. Last year it had a couple berries but the birds got the few there were. So far this bush is doing really well and the berries are ripe! I am very excited to have beat the birds to the berries this year. The bush is still young so I didn't get a ton of berries, but there's enough for a little snack. Maybe I will make some scones and whipped cream and put these on top!

As they say, out of sight out of mind! I never did go and weed my pea patch which is back behind the driving shed. It's easy to ignore when you don't ever go back there. My poor peas were getting over run! I asked the Farmer to bring the rototiller back for me as it's somewhat difficult getting back there, you either have to go through tall grass or the hay field. So he got that back there for me so I could till between the rows. These are double rows of peas so after tilling I took the hoe to between the double rows and hand picked any weeds mixed in with the peas. I didn't quite get finished but I got the worst of it. The peas should soon be big enough that they will block out the weeds in the rows and I'm hoping the double rows will hold each other up since I didn't put in a trellis . They are looking pretty good, I'm hoping for lots of peas! Peas fresh  from the garden taste so good and hopefully there will be some for the freezer as well.