Rain and Raccoons

Last night it rained for the first real serious rain of the season. It was raining pretty hard in the middle of the night, but it's cleared up a bit now. Still, it's supposed to rain for the rest of the week. We're still picking broccoli, although the Belstar is almost all gone.

The younger seedlings are interspersed with lots of baby dill.

The broccoli crop has been prolific and delicious. We're still harvesting grapes too, and I still have a ton of juice.

The lettuces are getting big. These are the Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed.

And the blushed butter. We lost a lot of the DWFH in transplanting, but with the butter, we used the shadecloth, and had lots better luck.

The daikons, red radishes, and arugula that I planted last week are coming up strongly.

So what about raccoons? It's been a banner year for raccoons. Late last Thursday night, we heard the hens screaming bloody murder. We went out and there was a big racccon in the yard. He wasn't the least bit afraid of me yelling and waving my arms, so I had to arm myself with a broom. We also used the hose to shoo him away. When we checked the chickens, we found that one had been injured. The dang raccoon dug under the pen, reached in, and managed to grab a chicken's foot and pull it under the pen through the hole. The raccoon then bit off two of the hen's toes! Poor hen! We got her cleaned up as best we could, wrapped the wound, and put her in the hen hospital... in this case, a basket in the bathroom. She seems to be recovering, as she is eating and drinking. She's pretty content to stay in the basket now though.

We decided to go ahead and move the other hens to the farm. That way, when this hen is a little better, I can put her in the pen by herself to finish recuperating. Here the hens are in the pen on the way to the farm. There will be a bit of an adjustment period while they work out the new pecking order.

Last Saturday, we went over to 9th Street and cut back all the baby silk and Chinese black locust trees that were sprouting. We used a foam brush to dab Roundup on the cut stumps. Not organic but... those are really invasive trees. After a couple of hours of hard work, we went downtown to the "You know you're from Chico when" Facebook group reunion.

Where we saw this lovely woman: Miss Ami.

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What We're Eating
More Nathan food! Nathan brought over the first order: meat pie, bread, flatbreads, and sausage rolls. Not shown are the two packages of frozen sausages. Yum!

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Fall 2012 Rows

I like to keep row information here too so I don't forget what we planted where, when.

1A and 1B: pumpkins
2A: Soloist cabbage and Apollo broccoli
2B: Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed lettuce (transplanted) and reseeded romaine lettuce.
3A: Bell peppers and kale left from summer, and replanted kale.
3B: Blushed Butter lettuce
4A: Fallow
4B: volunteer mustard, will plant arugula soon
5A: Fallow
5B: Arugula, Daikon (some seeds from Ann), Giant of Sicily radish
6A: Apollo broccoli (front) DWFH lettuce (seeded 10-10, back)
6B: Apollo and Belstar broccoli
7B: Soloist cabbage and bok choi, tomatillo, zinnia, more cabbage
8B: Late broccoli (started late August)

New bed: still in peppers and tomatoes. We'll start pulling out the tomatoes and make that the sheet mulch area.

The current fallow areas of 4 and 5 A will probably be favas, and 1B will be peas once the pumpkins are done.

My yard:
I have planted 50 red cipollinis, 25 yellow cipollinis and 25 torpedo onions in my yard, and I'll plant all the garlic there also, when the pumpkins and butternuts are done. The Galeau pumpkins are harvested, but the Triambles are still ripening up. The butternuts had another burst of growth after the worst of the heat passed, and have put on a whole new crop.

Fantastic Fall

We're enjoying a really glorious fall, with warm days, cool nights, and so far, no rain. That means we've been getting the last of the fall plantings in. We mulched and composted rows 4 and 5b and the end of 6a. 5b is planted in daikon, red radish, and arugula. 6a has more drunken woman frizzy headed lettuce. 4b will be arugula, but I'm just staggering the plantings.

We've also been working on the pizza oven. Here you can see that the area is dug and the rebar inserted. 

Then last weekend we poured the cement. We used 8 bags! But now the slab is big enough for our new brick design. 

We got lots of concrete blocks. We need more, but the truck can only hold so many at a time, especially if you have cement in there as well. 

We're still harvesting lots of veggies. The broccoli in particular has been delicious and plentiful. It was interesting to note how much earlier the Belstar was than the Apollo. The Belstars are in full head, and by now are mostly picked. The Apollo are just barely starting to head up. This is giving us a lovely extended season. Both were planted mid July. Next year: twice as much! Plant again in early August.

The other big harvest right now is grapes. We're getting tons of lovely grapes off the red grape vine. The Thompsons weren't as productive (we need to get them more air, and fewer whiteflies), but this grape really put out. What do you do with that many seeded, non-wine-type grapes?

Make grape juice! First, I destemmed and carefully washed the grapes. I had picked a 5-gallon bucket full!

I put up the food mill, and used about every bowl I own.

With lots of cranking, the juice comes out one side, and chicken food comes out the other. I juiced out a couple gallons of juice, and it's unbelievably good.

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What We're Eating
Chef Nathan food! Sarah and Nathan came to the farm with samples of Nathan's homemade sausage. He's also making meat pies and other goodies, just for friends for now.

I also made tiny pies! These have butternut squash in them, which I grew in the backyard.

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I finally found the right shelf to hold all my jars of dried goods. This fits in an unused space, and frees up a lot of counter and cupboard space. Besides, the jars are pretty, and it reminds me that I have those things so I use them up.

When I'm stressed, I tat. I've made great progress on this window insert.

Indian Summer

Ok last post was catchup, but here's where the farm is at the end of September. This is rows 2 and 3. the center of the garden is open right now.

And here's the right half, rows 5 through 8. Look at how big those brocs are!

In fact, they're broccing!

This row has a complement of basil.

 While this one is enlivened by a zinnia.

 The datura is out of control in front of the rose. This flower had a giant bee in it. Seriously, the bee was as fat as my thumb, and nearly as long.

 I weeded and thinned the new broccoli starts, and they are doing really well.

 These cabbage and bok chois are bursting out also.

 We got some volunteer mustard around the edges of the lettuce bed. Notice the shadecloth on hoops.

 The shade seems to be working, because the lettuces are thriving.

Even with fall crops coming in strongly, we're still awash in summer crops, like zucchini

And tomatoes and peppers.

The Thai peppers are about ready for harvest.

 With it a little cooler, we got the rest of the trench dug out for the rest of the foundation.

 This was just a cool mural I saw downtown. I saw a gal taking a picture of ... a parking lot. I wondered what she was seeing and... I found out!

 Back at my house, I picked the pumpkins today.

 A few apples fell off, so I think they are almost ripe.

 The triambles ripen up slower, but I'm getting some nice ones.

 Including this tree-climber.

Fall Catchup

Yay for Tink Attack! Looking forward to seeing you soon!
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It's that lovely time of the year when it cools off at night, and still gets plenty warm during the day. It doesn't SEEM that hot... well not until you get out in the sun to pull weeds! We've been enjoying the farm daily. The fall crops are coming along really well.

These pics show how big the brocs were about two weeks ago. They're fully grown now, and already broccing. Above are the ones in 2a and below are the ones in 6b. I planted these on July 15, which was just about right. I wish I'd planted another set about 3 weeks later.

As it was, I planted these in 8 about late August. Here you see the first starts coming up, well surrounded by weeds! I weeded this all and transplanted them to space them evenly, and they look great.

This shows the cabbage and bok choi a couple weeks ago.

When it got too hot to farm, we cooled off at Five mile.

We got some nice grapes, mostly the ones that grew up in the tree.

We also made a big improvement to the chicken pen. We updated the watering system. Here Rick poses with the first iteration. We soon discovered that they were drinking more than we thought, and that container wasn't large enough.

So we switched to a five gallon bucket.

The water comes out of these emitters, and the chickens just peck at them to get clean fresh water. Buddy sent me a link to a chicken site, I clicked the ad and bought the emitters, and Rick got it all assembled, including doing all the complicated plumbing.

Tom and Nancy bought  a house in town. Whoo Hoo!  Here Nancy sings with the band on Rock Band night.

Back to harvesting... I picked a bunch of butternut and delicata squash.

We've also reeled in some giant zucchinis!

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What We're Eating
Zucchini Pancakes with Curd
Even a giant zucchini works if you peel it and scoop out the seedy inner flesh, leaving only the firm outer layer, then grate that on a box grater.

3 cups of grated zucchini

¼ to ½ cup feta cheese

3 eggs

¾ cup whole wheat flour

¾ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon each salt, pepper, oregano

olive oil

lemon or orange curd

Wrap the grated zucchini in a clean dish towel and squeeze to remove excess moisture. Put in a bowl and mix in the remaining ingredients.

Heat olive oil in a cast iron frying pan. Drop in dollops of batter, flatten slightly, and fry up. Drain on paper towels and cook the next batch. Serve warm or cold topped with a nice dollop of lemon or orange curd. It’s so delicious we wished we had planted more zucchini!
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