Fall Is Here

Fall is here, along with all the fall chores! This pile only represents 1/100th of the leaves on the property, but I take all I can manage to get into the garden. They are great to cover the soil and create a lovely compost to till under for the spring.

We have been here at the farm for a full year now and it is exciting to think that for the first time, we can do some "fall" plantings to create early blooms for spring. Already the plant catalogs are pouring in and there are many seeds that can be started now to get a head-start for earliest of spring and summer blooms. Of course there are still veggies to be had as well.

A profile shot from the Fall garden- Collards, spinach, Kale planted in the veggie patch.

Anyone who restricts their seed starting to spring is missing out on the "cool-ness" of fall seed-starting season! Many plants can be started in fall and thrive in the mild conditions of Virginia.

I came across this old English Cloche in a fancy store. - a great way to give your baby seeds a head start but I prefer the free way to achieve the same effect -

The the good 'ol reuseable 1liter coke bottle. Actually I found that this is even better than the expensive one, since the cloches have no ventilation and like the inside of a car, can cook your plants if you dont watch out! The coke bottles have a ventilation opening built in. These mini-greenhouses are easy project to do, just take some scissors and cut off the very bottom, take off the label and voila!

Since we are adding lots of cool flowers to 2011, to make it on the seed purchase list, the new plant must serve 2 purposes - they must have (1) blooms that will hold up in a bouquet and (2) be a nectar or host plant for butterflies/bees. So my list begins - A few of the plants that are starting now (November/December ) that will overwinter well here in Zone 7 are:

Mondarda sp. (bee-balm) - just starting seeds now.

Obedient plant - named because you can actually move the stem around and it will stay where you bend it.

Dill & Parsley - For us to eat, for aromas in bouquets and the best host plant for swallowtails - can never have enough of these and the caterpillars devour them by the first week of spring.

Asclepias -aka butterfly weed. Late last summer I collected seeds from our plant, never have I seen so many monarch caterpillars as on milkweed - it gets eatten down to the stem.

Shasta Daisy - anything in the aster family is a great plant for bees and butterflies. These flowers are large and act as a nice landing pad for the butterflies and the stiff stems hold up great in the vase.

Being in the seed starting mood, I also wanted to begin an experiement for growing micro-greens. This project is especially great for a short attention spans like mine. From planting to harvesting, microgreens only take about 2-3 weeks to arrive on your plate. Apparently there are many different types of seeds you can harvest - from wheatgrass to spinach, even herbs like basil.

Simple to start - just a few supplies needed. Soil/compost mixture, pan, seeds, spray bottle for misting, and light. Tapping it down, I used my handy 'tater 'masher to maker sure all the seeds have good contact with the soil.
Yes, it is a brownie pan! I put mine on heat mat and light source. Watered with a spray bottle about once a day.

After about 7-10 days you are ready to harvest!

I decided to start with one easy one - radish - has a spicy kick, and beets, for a hint of color.

Check out the pictures. I would imagine it would be a great way to do to get your kids to eat their greens. They are packed full of nutrients. Not to mention a quick winter project for when you have some cabin fever.

Radish Microgreens Beet Microgreens

I am reading some books about microgreens and they are praised for their high vitamin content. They are used by up-scale restaurant chefs as a garnish to top off salads, cheeses, appetizers, sprinkled on top of soup. Also they can be used like sprouts in salads and sandwiches. I read that one chef sprouts some in a pretty container as the table centerpiece . His family would cut and use for snacking. I am going to try two more larger varieties next month. Sunflowers (they have a nice nutty crunchy flavor) and Pea microgreens, which are more substantical size and are great to be used as the base of the salad.

On to the "real" work of the farm (:) lol!

A little update on dumplings building prgress. He was able to successfully install the the overhang for the front of the porch up with the help of uncle Frank's crane truck.

How pretty is this porch looking!

Dumpling in his element.

Finishing up some framing on the roof. The hammer he uses is his grandpa's who taught him how to build when he was old enough to swing a hammer. It has been through some projects ! Gramps definetly passed along his building ability and talent.

He has decided that the roofing panels will be the same ones he used on the chicken coop since they worked out nicely for the egg-mobile.

Oh yeah and he has had alittle fun, with some practice time with his bow - pretty good aim I would say.

Farm Brings Science to Life for Local 6th Grader.

Alexis is an 11-year old - 6th grader at a local Magnet School in Virginia Beach. Part of her science curriculum is 16 learning hours of Life Science Service per year.

Alexis had visited our farm with her family earlier this summer to pick flowers, and we were more than happy to have her back to volunteer some time behind the scenes at the farm.

Chris made no hesitation to put some free labor to use! Here are some pictures from the days events (pictures thanks to Steve, her dad)
First duty of the day is- collecting eggs from the nesting boxes.

Cleaning the eggs and packing them into the containers for the customers. This process can take a while since it requires a gentle touch!

Next task is feeding the girls some breakfast, our flock of New Hampshire Reds and Black Australorps are bottomless pits. Besides the fresh grass and bugs, throwing some scratch feed around their pasture keeps them entertained and busy for the day.

Hanging out with the girls, all the happy hens in their eggmobile. Every kid should have a pet chicken!

One of the life science projects the class has been learning about is composting, something we do alot of here on the farm. Fall is a great time for any gardener to start composting because there is so much to work with, tons of leaves and fading flowers. First step is gathering spent flowers for the compost heap...best to alternate a layer of fresh - green (nitrogen) and dried -brown (carbon) to create the best ratio for composting.

Pulling the dried plants back to the compost heap.

Composting is a process that takes months but luckily we did have a pile that had been composting all summer. Here is Chris scooping out some final compost product from our turning compost bin. Dark and fluffy, gardeners refer to finished compost as "Black gold" - our special blend developed from a lovely mix of chicken poop, egg shells, wood shavings, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, leaves, and grass clippings. Alexis is going to take some home to experiment with how beans grow diffently in compost, regular soil and mixtures of the two.

Next on the agenda was to feed the bees. Depending on the season, we mix a different ratio of sugar:water mix to mimic what the bees need depending on what activities they are preforming in the hive.

Mixing up the sugar/water solution - The fall ratio calls for 1lb of sugar : 1cup of water. Very thick syrup so they have supplemental food for the winter.

Pretty heavy, but she found a way to mix it!

Once that sugar was all desolved, she got suited up

Preparing for meeting the hive.

Chris smoking the bees. They tend to be alittle more aggressive when they have a stash of honey to protect, and this time of year they definetly do! The hive weighs about 40lbs since all the combs are full of capped honey. A supply they created from working so hard on pollinating our flowers and veggie plants all summer. The smoke helps distract them so we can enter the hive. When bees smell fire, their instinct is to stick closer to the hive and use their wings to cool off the hive. When working with a colony full of honey, the smoker allows the beekeeper to preform their duties without having the bees swarming all around trying to defend their goodies.

Chris explaining how to fill the feeder and pointing out how having these floating wood pieces inside prevents the bees from drowning in the syrup. Carefully pouring in the bee food into the feeder -

Future beekeeper having fun plus the bees are fed for the next month or two! Alexis even got to sample some honeycomb fresh from the hive! Yumm...

Sunflowers - Early Bloomers

One of the great things about fall is that if you have been taking photos of the garden over the last few months, then you have a nice chunk of snapshots to showcase the span of a project. Our sunflower field was no exception to that. We had read and heard a tip from many growers to plant sunflower seeds in succession - a method where you make many plantings every 1-2 weeks over the growing season. But, we had also heard about planting varieties who's bloom times were in succession for same effect - instead of having to replant every week or so, just mix the bloom times.

So here is a shot of my 60,70,80 day blooming sunflower seeds all mixed up and ready to go

On one of the hottest days of the summer, near the last week of July - Dumpling had planted them all. All 10,000 of them! Here he is using the Earthway seeder (set on the corn setting) at about 70 days out, hoping for a nice range time time for blooms.

Irrigation and fish emulsion fertilizer on automatic timers were ready to go. We had previously enriched the soil 3 months prior with a thick cover of buckwheat, then tilled under to provide great soil and nutrients for the bed.

Things were off to a great start for sure!

About 2-3 weeks into growing, my foot prints are visible since I took our tiny little mantis tiller between each of the rows to til up the surface weeds - just to make sure the sunflowers growth was always a step ahead of the grasses! I only had to do this 1 time, then the shade from the top growth blocked the weeds.

About 3 weeks into it they were looking lovely! August heat wave was helping them out.

They really took off at about the 3-4 week mark and were thriving in all the heat, rain, and enriched soil. Was alittle alarmed that they all were forming heads so early - like 30 days out!

Imagine my surprise at seeing the 45 day mark....

Bam! These babies were bustin with blooms 45 days after planting!

Pro-Cut sunflowers are simply great for arrangements! They have no pollen to drop on your table or stain your clothing while you are cutting them.

And regardless of what the package said - they all came at once!
Our farm was covered in an ocean of sunflowers in alittle under 2 months!

Was able to sell buckets to local florists and brought bunches of them into the office every morning where i work, co-workers and their families bought some fresh cut from the field. Also got a few calls once I listed them under the farm section of craigslist.

Suns are by far the easiest flower to grow. The labor - was in laying the irrigation, planting the seeds, running the tiller throught the rows 1 time to prevent weeds, then harvesting them.

Some take-away lessons from the sunflower experiment were:

Procut and Lemon variety were the best of the bunch - opt for the Florist grade variety.

Realize there is no short-cut around succession planting.

Sunflowers need to be planted once every two weeks throughout the summer to get a steady stream of flowers for marketing.

No real problems with insects. The lower leaves that were munched on, ended up being stripped from the stalk anyways to make bouquets - so it was no biggie.

Using the buckwheat cover crop really did a good job at preventing weeds, only did 1 day of tilling/weed control.

It is Ok to cut these just before they are starting to open, and ideal to minimize petals from being damaged from any insects.

We had planted suns earlier in the spring and summer, but alot of people were surprised we had planted these towards the end of july, but from the weather we experienced here in Virginia - we could have easily kept succession planting up until the end of August/first week of September with no problems!

For the summer flowers in general, Zinnias and Sunflowers are the 2 easiest flowers to grow and market, and most widely recognized by customers and florist alike - you can't go wrong with incorprating them into your farm or garden! Because they were multi-branching, I did actually like the zinnias timing better - plant once, get tons of flowers from each seed for a span of over 2 months, but the sunflowers are so special, it is worth the extra work for succession planting. The only sad part about sunflowers is that you get 1 flower per seed, as opposed to 20 flowers per stem on Zinnias.

Most of all - Don't try to coordinate or plan a huge event around blooming flowers, this advice is even more critical if they are of the single stemed variety.

Nature, as with alot of things in this world, cannot be timed :)

Next summer we are going to increase the variety of flowers we grow here on the farm, so we can have more selections to make diverse bouquets.

I have a feeling that Pro-Cut sunflowers and Benaries Giant Zinnias will always be our 2 main flowers though.

Eggmobile - The Great Reveal!

I have been wanting to write this chapter of our farm-life for along time now!

In the past, there have been 2 main choices if you have chickens. (1) Keep them contained in a permanent pen. In this senario a chicken will eat every blade of grass and bug in the area, leaving an unhappy chicken in about a months time. Eggs won't be as rich in vitamins, and chickens quality of life is low. No fresh grass, no fresh bugs, droppings accumulate, odor starts, and chickens become sad.

-(2) The alternative method "free-range" chickens roaming around your farm -we have learned the hard way, no matter how many acres of land you have the birds will congregate on the exact spots you dont want them to - patio, front porch, back deck, carport etc...and crap everywhere. To top it all off they will tear up every flower bed, peck every prized tomato and kick up mulch over your walkways - leaving unhappy farmers.

( We never understood why they would want to be on concrete over grass but for some reason they really do!)

Soooo....we opted for option #3. ..we wanted to create farm-harmony! Here has been our month in pictures of dumpling re-creating his version of a lovely invention by Polyface farmer - Joel Salatin- called the eggmobile. Joel was featured on the movie "Food Inc." and is putting a wonderfully positive eco-friendly spin on farming that we admire. Here is dumpling building upon the truck base. A find off craigslist $200 and a 4 hour drive but well worth it - since its the secret ingredient to this system.

Slatted floors create ventilation and let the chicken poop fall through to fertilize the ground below.

Our model, Vanna White, demonstrating the stadium seating - roost style. Plenty of windows for a fresh air and a cross breeze.

Four nest boxes. We fill these with straw, their favorite nesting material, and the platforms allow them easy access to hop right in. The bottom is a little deeper to keep the straw neatly inside the nest box.

Here is the awesome part. The nest boxes are outside the coop- therefore we get to gather eggs and it is an enjoyable experience! Just open the hatch door and harvest your breakfast. I am egg-cited because this will be a great way to introduce families to our farming demonstration for all who visit our veggie/flower stand. Since its movable, the coop will be rotated up front to the customer facing acre. This little display will be a hit with customers and their kids and show farming at its best.

All painted up (color scheme reminds me of the Cracker Barrel!)
Windows have wire to prevent critters from entering, but open for more air flow.

Dumpling built an additional platform to hold the 50 gallon water tank. - how cool is that. Not lugging water around the property, just drive it over to the hose and filler up!

Last step here, with the roof on, the structure was so tall he had to let the air out of the tires to get it out of the garage for its grand debut!

Open house time! Here is one of the girls giving it a final walk-through before we hand them the keys. lol!

The two bigger doors allow us to fill up the 2 feeders and give us plenty of arm room to clean out the coop (via pressure washer) Dumpling moving the eggmobile to the first spot. Easily pulled with mower or tractor.

Next, this portable fencing is used often for sheep, goats and chickens. Lightweight, portable, and electrified to keep the critters out. (all except the hawks that is!) Drum-roll puuuulllease!

ta-da - happy birds and happy farmers! Let the scratching and pecking begin.

Alittle slice of chicken heaven. We have determined a move every 3-4 days is ideal to keep bugs and grass at its peak. The ladies scratch the soil and leave their fertilizer gifts in the grass, not under our shoes, lol.

Having great fun outside in the country air - Bug huntin' and grass pickin' - make for some tasty eggs.

So there she is! Dumplings designer twist on a self contained chicken eggmobile system.

The battery for the electric fence is on the right. The solar panel to attach to it is on the way...so we can harvest even more of that sun energy.

So, just to give a recap and some advice for anyone looking to get their own flock...Here's our 2 cents! After our first year in chicken farming, and experimenting with a few different types of homes for our flock - Chris and I honestly advise anyone wanting chickens to buy, build, or invest in an egg-mobile, along with electric portable fencing. Better yet, have it ready and waiting before you bring home your first baby chick. It has greatly improved our quality of farm life, the chickens quality of life, and just overall much more pleasurable to coexist in farm-harmony.

Yeah for the eggmobile!!!!