How does your garden grow? Beautifully!

It is difficult sometimes this time of year to stop, take a breath and enjoy the beautiful things around us that we have toiled to nurture along. This evening I found myself with two options.. pull weeds (always an option) or tour the gardens and try to capture some of the amazing things going on at Big Lick Farm! Of course I chose to enjoy and document the goings on at the farm and check the progress of all the crops. Above you can see our healthy onion patch that the Phoenix students freed from the quack grass. There is also a picture of our bok choy that was looking so promising for the first CSA share but in the last few days bolted and went to flower. Some of it was tilled under to add nutrients to the soil and the others carried down to the pigs~ they truly are omnivores! While touring around I hunted for the first snow pea I could find and savored the delicate flavor of that first pea as though it was the finest truffle! Our broccoli is coming along and will hopefully fill the gap in the CSA share that the bok choy left.
Only 11 more days to CSA time! ahhhhhhh!!! No more leisurely strolls through the garden from here on out! We are thankful that we will get at least one more work day with the Phoenix School kids on June 1st so hopefully we will be caught up for that first week of CSA! Hooray!! beautifully

Phoenix Students at Big Lick Images

Phoenix School Comes to Big Lick !

Hooray!!! We have been blessed with some great help to our business this last week! A few days ago we received a call from a project coordinator of the garden program at Phoenix School. The school received stimulus funds for employing youth on different projects in our community. We were so excited when we found out they would be coming! Both Asinete and I are already feeling the affects of the rush warm weather puts on a farmer and so some youthful energy was just the ticket! The students helped us to plant tomatoes on our new acreage that the pigs cleared, we weeded 7 rows of onions, thinned beets and hilled potatoes, pulled out bolting chard and weeded the snow peas... whew we were all tired at the end of the day and the students got first hand experience about what it takes to be an organic farmer!
Time to get some rest as we have 10 more students coming out tomorrow for another day of fun at the farm!

Busy Big Lickers!

Good day! Whew.. let me catch my breath for a minute! As you can see from our blog post we have been very busy! We have met quite a few of you at the Umpqua Valley Farmer's Market where we have been for the past three weeks (see photos above). Asinete and I decided that instead of trying to plant 6,000 tomato plants perhaps we could sell a few hundred through the farmers market. Our heirloom tomato plants have been well received but still after three markets now our greenhouse looks just as full of tomato plants as when we started.... oh well that will mean plenty of ripe fruits in a few more months! You can look forward to Brandywine, Black Krim, Green Zebra, Striped German, Pruden's Purple, Cherokee purple, Sungold and Roma tomatoes in your CSA share! Hooray!
Also Big Lick Farm was blessed to receive funding through the Umpqua Community Development Corporation with a start up business grant. With this money we were able to get our tractor, 65 fruit trees, and our John Deere riding mower (photo above) with a small trailer that will save us many miles of walking each day as we move crops from the field into the pack shed by the time CSA season starts. Of course with extra machinery comes extra cost of mechanic services!
Last in the news for this posting is that we got our pump into the river! Pictured above is our neighbor/friend and farming guru Buck. We spent Thursday down at the banks of the river getting the pump in, primed and connected to the electric meter. Of course now that the rain has come again we have not had to rely on it too heavily yet but soon enough we will!
Have a great weekend! Don't forget our first CSA delivery will be June 4th!

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!