Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Week 4 Update

Week 4!

This week the greens are out!! Lots of head lettuce, loose leaf lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, radishes, more snap peas, snow peas and some baby pak choi.-- oh yes and fresh cilantro..... make salsa!!!! The cilantro makes the difference. And more basil.

For those not familiar with what to do with swiss chard or baby pak choi, I like it best sauteed in olive oil with garlic or shallots. I also like to cook it with chicken stock as the leaves soak up all the good chicken stock flavor. (If you need any great chickens to make the best chicken stock ever-- you know that Mike can hook you up....)

Amazing how much can happen in 1 week! We had help this weekend from a father and son who wanted to work on the farm for the weekend. They left sore but full of eggs and lettuce and chicken. If you want to work off 5lbs in a weekend... have I got a plan for you. Free of charge workout on hamstrings, biceps, triceps, lower back, abs.... you name it.

We finally got the agricultural well dug today!!! Now we just need to hook up all these pipes to the well and get the plumber and electrician in. I'm hoping 2 more weeks? Maybe 3? It is such a pain to move the hoses all over the place and I will be so happy when we can just turn on 4 nozzles and give it 1-2 hrs and be done with watering.




We've also become the owners of I think about 29 or 30 more sheep in the past 7 days from 2 different flocks that were being downsized or sold off. Some are Katahdin and some are Dorper. We also became the owners of an animal trailer. So we can now take our animals to market when it is time. It was quite an accident for the sheep and the trailer and it happened so quickly that I turned around and today we have a decent size flock in the pasture now.
That's about 50 sheep in the picture below.


Our color rangers that will be meat birds are having fun in their new outside home. They are getting settled to go to sleep in this picture. These birds will be available for purchase the 3rd week of July.

While the broilers above are getting ready for bed (they are only 6 weeks old), the older hens at 28 weeks old are below and still walking around. Can you find Nicky the Naked Neck Chicken? These 200 or so hens are starting to lay eggs. We're finding about 5-6 little eggs per day.....yippee!!

The garden is starting to look pretty. The weeds are getting picked and things are coming together. Below are the peppers after being mulched.

Mulched tomato plants. Also beans growing nicely.



We will have zucchini next week in the CSA box!!!! See the yellow squash below.....
The garlic also looks like it might be 2-3 more weeks and it'll be ready to pick.
Tomatoes are still growing but no red ones yet.....



Happy belated Summer Solstice. My 2nd favorite day of the year!

2 comments:

Michael@greenakeys.com said...

Why did you have to photograph the hoop house from that side! It looks like Ma and Pa Kettle built it with Geoduck and Crowbar the indians doing the contracting for them.

Paige said...

I thought you used an old vw as a template; not that I know what a hoop house is supposed to look like.