Spring on the Farm

After rain that seemed like it would never end, things are getting into full swing here.  The house is basically done (very minor trim left) and we are fully focused on growing more food on the farm.

The first new thing for this year was trying to graft our own fruit trees.  Amber grafted 15 plum trees and 11 of them took!  Of the 5 pears, none made it though.  We did get to keep 2 grafted pears from the Permaculture Grafting workshop this spring, so we have 2 new pear varieties growing in the nursery.  Along the way, Amber managed to slice her finger pretty seriously also.  Pay attention to knife safety!  It matters!

Ouch! This is after super-gluing it closed.  :(

 Grafts right after they were completed above and scion wood leafing out of a successful graft to the right.







On April 27th, we hosted the last field session of the KU Permaculture class Amber teaches.  To prepare, Amber cleared out the southwest corner of the property in preparation for sheet mulch and planting as a food forest.  There was a lot of scrub sumac and wild grape to remove as well as weeding to do along the existing swale planting.  The area is marked by 3 volunteer mulberries along the fence line, the swale to the west, a black walnut and sandhill plum on the northwest and an Arkansas plum we grew from a plum pit on the northeast.  Once the area was mowed, it was ready for the field session!

Over about 3 hours, the group laid down cardboard, manure and wood chips over the entire area.  Then we planted oregano, rhubarb, irises, daylillies, fernleaf tansy, peony, echinacea and tulip bulbs.  An elderberry bush got added later to the center of the area (it didn't make it in time for the field session).  It was a wonderful end to a fun semester!

At the end of May, we hosted a graduation party for Jacob.  It is incredibly hard to believe that he is that old, but here we are!  Part of the preparation for the party was cleaning up some of the remnants from the house construction.  The space by the driveway that has been the wood yard since 2014 was at the top of the list because we needed parking space.  This is what it looked like when we started over the weekend of May 11th.

This is what it looked like when we finished.

It was an exhausting weekend moving all the remaining wood into consolidated piles elsewhere, stacking the pallets up on the pallet pile, cutting out all the sumac and dogwood saplings and then mowing the entire area.  It is wonderful to have it done though!  We didn't have enough time to take down the concrete form shed, but getting this area done makes a huge difference to how the house looks as you drive up.

 Our new graduate in his robes

Right now, we are enjoying the last of the spring lettuce and radishes, the first of the edible pod peas and watching the summer crops come into their own.  The strawberries have been delicious this year.  There are just enough for a small batch of jelly, but the rest has gone into fresh eating and desserts.

The cabbage is growing well under its row cover.  Hopefully we'll have some nice heads to make sour kraut from and eat over the next few months.  Here's a peak under the cloth at the end of May.

We finally found a tree service that will deliver wood chips to us at the farm.  We have so many projects planned that will need wood chips!  This really is a huge time saver for us.  The first load of wood chips got dumped by the house and is being used to mulch the "yard" and the new garden area.  The second load went to the area along the bottom of the drive way. The plan is to plant this narrow strip with fruit trees in the fall (the ones that were grafted this year hopefully).  

With the extra time now that we aren't milking, we finally got to do some landscaping around the house.  Amber and the kids built this flower bed with a small goldfish pond over the last couple of weeks.  The flowers are all perennials, so hopefully we can enjoy them for many years to come.  The pond pump is solar and seems to be doing very well so far.  We added a dozen feeder goldfish this past weekend and after a couple of losses, the rest are making themselves at home.

Last weekend, we stumbled onto a mother turtle laying eggs on the path down to the garden!  It was beyond cool to find.  I've also never seen a turtle that big that wasn't a snapping turtle!  It was a red-eared slider water turtle.  After consulting with a turtle expert I work with, we put a protective cage over the nest so that predators can't dig it up.  We kinda hope to catch the babies when they hatch and maybe get a pet turtle out of the deal too. 

This past weekend, along with finishing the flower bed, we also did some garden maintenance.  The unmulched paths in the garden were way overdue for mowing and the blackberries were getting smothered with weeds.  Jeremy spent Saturday morning mowing and Jacob and I attacked the blackberry row.  Here it is just as we got started.

And this is the finished product.  You can actually see the blackberries!  The piles of weeds in the aisle give some indication just how much stuff we pulled out of the row.

After we finished weeding, the 3 of us harvested mulberries from the new sheet mulched area.  We were pleasantly surprised to find that one of the three volunteer mulberries is a white mulberry!  Our neighbors have a white mulberry that must be the parent of this one.  The berries are so sweet and the trees were just covered in them.  It was a reminder of the natural bounty around us and how with just a little care, nature will provide in abundance.

Last night, I picked up 4 volunteer peach trees from a co-worker.  They were grown from pits of a naturalized peach tree on their property, so we don't exactly know what we'll get from them.  The parent trees are very hardy and produce tasty peaches, so we have hopes that these will do the same.  For the moment, they are heeled into an empty garden bed along with some irises that need a different home.  Eventually, they will help start a second row of fruit trees in the top field or they will go into the new area along the driveway.  In exchange, I will give her a pair of the plums I grafted this spring.  Yay fruit trees and barter!

As I walked back to the house from heeling in the peach trees, I was met with a gorgeous field of wild flowers.  Life on the farm is beautiful in so many ways and sometimes it just catches you when you don't expect it.  We hope you are enjoying the beautiful spring as much as we are!