General July Update

A large farm update is in order. There has been so much going on recently.

The wildfires in Northern California have brought some smoke to the area recently. Earlier in the summer, there was a period of five days with smoke. We were worried that this summer could be reminiscent to the summer of 2002. Thankfully, we have been very lucky. The smoke returned once this week, but the winds shifted. That evening both the sun and the moon appeared red-orange.


The broccoli harvest this year has been the best ever at the farm. The refrigerator overflowed with bags of broccoli. In order to use it up, we ate it with almost every meal. We sauteed it with onions and put it over pasta. We ate it with dip. We baked it in quiche. Luckily, it is my dad's favorite vegetable!

After we harvested the sweet cherries, the sour cherries started to come in. I picked 2 pounds, 13 ounces of them the first round and Lisa made two jars of cherry jam. It was my first taste of cherry jam and now it is one of my favorites.

Lisa's mint has gone wild this year, trying to take over one of the beds in the garden. I severely pruned it last week, resulting in mass amounts of mint. Unfortunately, my mint is much less vigorous. In fact, it is pitiful with only a few stalks.


The meat chickens are well over six weeks old, the age at which most slaughter houses kill their chickens, now. We moved them up to the orchard coop where they have more room to spread their wings. They also have an outside enclosure, fenced with three foot chicken wire. One of the turkeys died a few weeks ago. The remaining turkey lived in with the layers for a while, but she was the object of much abuse. She now lives with the meat chicks, but is always flying out of the enclosure.

My sunflowers are blooming now. Planting them in March was so much of an improvement from last year. The flowers brighten up the bed.

Elsewhere in the garden, the cabbage is looking very healthy, yet another result of a wet, cool June. We have been harvesting garlic, onions, wheat, and oats. The wheat and oats are in very small quantities in comparison to industrial farms of course.