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Author Archives: jim
More garden
The garden progresses. As you can see, I’ve tilled quite a bit. Those cultivated beds are about 1500 square feet, and beyond that you can see where I’ve cleared the blackberry debris and grubbed out the roots, ready to till … Continue reading
The first days of the season
Well, we’re finally in the thick of it. Sorry for the lack of a recent post; we’ve been pretty busy with the start-of-season tasks. Who’d have thought farming could be this busy? (hah) Let’s roll through the latest, one thing … Continue reading
Seedlings abound
We’re slowly easing into full-on work here. As I mentioned a few weeks back, we began seeding the long lead time items first: about 25 flats of peppers, tomatoes, beets, and onions. This presented a bit of a quandary, though, … Continue reading
Fence is up
The deer fence is finally up on the orchard. It was a process a little more drawn out than I’d imagined it would be, largely due to logistical considerations fo getting materials delivered. You see, I’m trying a deer control … Continue reading
Mini-greenhouse
Back when I was in the Peace Corps, I came across a clever design for a mini-greenhouse. It wasn’t appropriate for what we needed at the time, but I filed the idea away in the back of my head. It … Continue reading
Bee Home
We’ve wanted bees on the farm since the very beginning. Besides the obvious tastiness of local honey, we thought it would be helpful to the entire system to have the extra pollination. Farmer Leon next door agreed, and encouraged us … Continue reading
Planting trees
We’re getting down to the wire, but it now looks like we’ll get the orchard into the ground before the ideal tree planting season is past. We’d originally planned on planting 28 trees of several different types, but a few … Continue reading
Sawdust
After an unexpectedly long break due to a death in the family, we’re back at it. Today we received a DUMPTRUCK load of sawdust to mulch the blueberries. Normally, one wouldn’t use sawdust as mulch, because it has little nutritive … Continue reading
What’s all the buzz about?
Bees, of course! Emily and I are really interested in having bees on the farm, to better pollenate all the plants and to maybe even give us some honey. Last month we were introduced to Terry, the local beekeeping expert, … Continue reading
Trees to plant
It’s tree planting month! A few friends have approached me in the last few weeks about sponsoring a tree or two in the orchard, and this got me thinking that there might be others out there who would be interested … Continue reading