Spring Images

Happy Winter errrr I mean Spring everyone! Be hard to tell the time of season these last few days! Fruit trees are loaded with blossoms and Asinete and I are working overtime just to keep all the crops hand watered (above) since the rain predicted has not come. Never thought I'd be wishing for more rain in Oregon as we are now!

A little over one more month until the start of CSA season! Hooray!!!

Time to Call in the Big Guns!

Hooray! With the help of the Phillips family (previous owners of the land which we now farm on) we were able to get our new pasture land ready for planting. The pigs had done a great job on the initial tilling rooting out the sod in search of tender roots and worms. After the pigs came Asinete on our farmall cub with the disc plow to turn over the soil. The next step to disc the ground was accomplished this past Sunday with the mighty John Deere! You can see we were all in awe above watching as the green tractor cut through the sod clumps as effortlessly as if it were butter. While the men busied themselves with all things mechanical the wives worked on planting out all the artichokes and transplanted Roma tomatoes. When the Phillip's family left it was like a whirlwind had come through and gotten us caught up in so many areas. Thank you Norm, Sheila, Scott and Cindy! Our farming angels!
With the warm/hot weather comes a big time consuming job of keeping all of our crops watered by hose. This is because we use the river to irrigate from. The pump needs to fit right at the edge of the river but still the river is too high. Long hours are spent hosing down the plants to keep them cooled off. We have several rows which are just now trying to sprout (carrots and more snow peas) and their soil must always be kept damp.
We were able to sell some of our thousands of tomatoes at the grand opening of farmers market last Saturday along with some of our brilliant rainbow chard. We'll be back to market on Saturday and maybe see some of you there!
Time to get back to work! We are risking it and planting two rows of extra early tomatoes (Glacier variety). We will then cover them with remay and hope the nights don't dip below freezing again!

Official Farmers Now!

We are official farmers now with our old '48 Farmall Cubby tractor! We have dusted it off and put it back to the work it was made for 61 years ago! The tractor is older than Asinete and I put together and works harder than both of us too! Yesterday and today Asinete tried his hand at pulling the disc plow to cultivate the area the pigs have already moved through. We had planted a cover crop here just a few weeks ago but had to plow it under as we need to get the ground worked now to ready it for the plantings to come next month (tomatoes, beans, cukes, melons, corn) and all those goodies that are so many peoples favorites! Of course with the tractor comes additional worry about our safety. While Asinete was plowing it looked as if it was going to flip over and I started hollering at him from across the field. What entertainment we must provide for our neighbors!
The warm weather we had these last few days has kept us super busy. We have tilled under the rest of the cover crop, planted 16 rows of potatoes (and more to go!), planted out 10 rows of beets, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, collards, lettuce and cabbages with more packed into the greenhouse waiting impatiently to get into the ground.
Our bodies are sluggish and aching at the end of the day since we have been sedentary all winter long. Hopefully when summer comes around we'll be fit once again!
Good day!