What are we up to during our "slower" busy season?
Howdy everybody!
Hopefully you all are winding down from a great holiday season, as we do so we are keeping mighty busy on the farm! Projects range from simple maintenance on trucks, greenhouses, and other farm equipment to big projects like putting up a 2.5 acre high tunnel (unheated greenhouse) and building a packing shed on the new farm.
Amongst all of these projects we've been planning our 2013 season, making huge seed and equipment orders, and planting the first greenhouse of transplants for the new season!
We're also trying to make time to update our website and other farm listings for the new season--one of the bigger website projects? Revamping our website's "pictures page." I am recoding the design to make it easier to view the pictures via a popup gallery. I am working on them when I find time, and currently have the 2011 picture gallery live! It's a lot of fun to look back at past season's pictures and laugh at "how we used to do it," or think through all of the challenges and triumphs of the particular season....I hope you enjoy leafing through the collection of pictures as they come out!
Thanks to all of you for supporting our family farm! We hope that you all have a great Winter!
One of the most exciting projects on the farm is (of course) making the first plantings of the 2013 season! We got to plant more than thirty thousand transplants including Lettuce, Broccoli, Cabbage, Spinach, Tomatoes and more!
This shot shows the first plants of the new season! Born on January 2nd, these Broccoli seedlings should be ready to transplant in less than eight weeks!
Keeping the greenhouse warm is a huge deal right now...the seeds (especially for the tomatoes) need to be kept warm if we want them to grow into healthy transplants! This is our "semi-customized" wood furnace with a blower fan installed on the draft.
This is a shot of the same table of broccoli this morning--it's growing out great!
Cabbage transplants....
Spinach transplants
Other than the exciting greenhouse seeding, we've also been doing some mundane chores. Cutting firewood is a large chore as we keep the family house, as well as our greenhouses heated with wood.
Caleb headed up a project building a new hog pasture. We like to keep some hogs through the season to help recycle leftover crop scraps, this much needed new fence should cut the job title "hog chaser" from this years resume :)
Unloading the fence posts and hog wire...
Getting the posts set in line
Stretching the wire with a "come along" winch and some tow ropes tied off to a tree, and two 2x4's screwed onto the end of the fence wire respectively.
Then all you have to do is clip the wire to the fence posts with wire clips!
Our dog rascal made sure everything was done right :)
Mom's chickens have started laying, and the family is tickled to have our own eggs again.
We have purchased a new (to us) 2002 F-450 truck with a 14' box this Winter. This will probably be the truck that Caleb uses this year.
We were also blessed with a Case 580D backhoe! We've been using this thing all over the home farm to dig out stumps, level piles of dirt and a blue million other things...we really love it!
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