Missing Willow Farm

We did it, first time ever.  Customers at the farmer’s market are always asking for tomatoes in April and October, when lettuce is available.  Tomatoes ripen around here in July and lettuce is a cool season crop.  But we’ve got a few tomato plants in the greenhouse still going, despite extremely cold weather.  To keep them producing, we are hand pollinating the tomato flowers every morning.  Considering how tasteless grocery store tomatoes are, it’s worth the effort.

We produce microgreens, which are tiny tasty plants.  Beets, garlic chives, parsley, kohlrabi, broccoli are all examples of what we grow.  These little containers anchor us to the farm more than the livestock as they are watered twice a day.  Vacations are elusive, thankfully we love being here.

Our sheep flock together for safety when Jack is around.  Hermione couldn’t care less.  He ignores the goats and visa versa.  Occasionally we’d like him to fetch our goats from the far side of the pasture but it’s not an option.  We have to resort to shaking a bucket of food.  Works every time.

The deer bedding, aka our potato patch, has been plowed under for the season.  As always, I am thankful our ‘real farmer’ neighbors can’t see us plowing our teeny tiny plot with a non-tiny tractor.  We also use it to bush hog our pasture, turn our compost, dig holes, transport immobile animals (don’t ask…),  scrape our half mile driveway and we’re mighty glad we have it when it snows.  And it keeps us from a backbreaking day of hand turning that garden patch.

Not the running kind, silly.  We do a zombie movie and game marathon this time every year.  Do you have any favorites?  Happy Halloween!

What’s a new deck without an awesome smoker?  Brian’s been playing with our new Green Egg ceramic smoker.  He’s smoked ribs and salmon so far and is planning to crank it up to try pizza.  So far, everything is delicious!

Fog rolls off the pond on these cool mornings.  We’re up and out pretty early to water in the greenhouse, feed the critters, let the chickens out in their yard to enjoy the day and play fetch with Jack.  He races us to the pasture when watering is done.  He wins every time.

We’ve had our first frost this year, which means frozen water hoses aren’t far behind.  Time to fill the rain barrels in the greenhouse and call our propane guy to top off the tank.  And locate our heated animal waterers.

We took down the fishing line fence around our garden like we do every year once we’ve harvested everything and frost is here.  Once we harvest potatoes, we let the weeds take over in our potato patch (because what’s the use of weeding an empty bed??).  With the fence down, we’re find the weeds trampled and deer-sized indentations in there.  Those weeds will be plowed under in the next few days but, for now, it’s a soft place to sleep.

We finally decided to get rid of the giant cherry tomato plant that was taking over the entire back wall of our greenhouse.  It had stopped producing, and was too dense to reach to hand pollinate any new flowers.  I swear this thing is over 20 feet long.  We won’t miss it because we have other plants that are producing in there.  Besides, it had to go in order to turn on the heater!