Missing Willow Farm

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Fruit trees were some of the first things we planted when we bought our place in 2005.  Fruit trees and some grape vines and an asparagus bed.  Things that take some time to establish.  The grapevines are long gone, they were a sad experiment.  We considered nut trees until we discovered they take like 20 years to fruit.  Heck, I’m retired and don’t want to wait that long.  Besides, the squirrels would probably steal them before we could get to them.  We planted apples, peaches, cherries, apricots and persimmons.  We got our first fruit last year, exactly two apples.  One fell off the tree and a deer got the other one.  I made a pomander out of the ground apple (waste not want not).  This year appears to be our year for fruit because it’s popping out everywhere.  It’s either that the trees are finally mature enough or perhaps that fertilizer I bought off of a commercial orchard last year is helping (imagine that!).  I figure I can’t help it if it falls on the ground again this year but I refuse to share with the local deer population.  We didn’t want to fence the orchard so I did some research.  Apparently, if you cover the fruit the deer can’t find it.  As long as the leaves have sunlight, it’s OK for the fruit to be shaded.  So… now we have paper bag trees.  It looks pretty funny and may not work but fingers crossed that it does.  I want fruit this year, dammit!  Luckily our newly purchased annex (the trailer next door) has giant apple, peach and plum trees and we have a ladder.

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Garden space is very precious for some folks, especially those who live in apartments.  When I post about our raised beds and greenhouse, lots of folks tell me they are hoping for to have space for a garden ‘someday’.  Actually, someday may be now if you’ve got space for containers.  We’ve got  19 plus acres and always do container gardening on our back deck.  It’s a pleasure to take a cup of coffee out in the morning while watering and checking on how things are coming along.  This morning, I found our first ripe yellow cherry tomatoes and some cucumbers that should be ready to pick in a day or two.  I apparently need to think about making my first batch of dill pickles, too.  We’ve also got zucchini and about ten different varieties of hot peppers.  I didn’t include photos of our blueberries, citrus, lemongrass, ginger and banana tree but they’re all out there in pots as well.  Yes, we have a refrigerator on our deck.  When we bought the property next door it came with a trailer and a brand new fridge.  It’s now our jacuzzi fridge, where we keep liquid refreshments and freeze protein that won’t fit into our other freezers.  Actually, we had a bad storm last weekend and the door to the freezer blew open overnight and our stew beef defrosted.  Gah!  I’m sick to death of beef stew!  Anyway, my husband raided my sewing kit and it’s now got a very secure velcro closure.  But I digress…. it’s early June and there are still vegetable plants in your local nurseries.  And pots.  And potting soil.  If you’re waiting for ‘someday’, consider running out this weekend to start your own garden adventure sooner than later.

Beautifully, I must say.  Here’s a snapshot from the end of May.  I planted pumpkins, melons and fancy winter squashes this morning.  I try growing pumpkins every year with no success.  Fingers crossed that this year will be different!   We’ve just started yesterday to harvest a few cherry tomatoes.  I’ll be the first to the farmer’s market with tomatoes again this year.   Our customers are very anxious for them.

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Spring is a very popular time for visitors to our farm.  Flowers and trees are in bloom, the weather is delightful and babies are everywhere!  We’ve been fortunate to have our daughters come, a few friends as well as both of my parents.  My Dad takes an annual spring motorcycle trip with buddies through the mountains and my Mom flies up to visit while he’s gone.  This trip, he actually stopped by while she was here.  We had a great visit and put them both to work!  My Mom helped me move peonies from our new annex property and weed and mulch our flower beds.   My Dad helped us with a new fencing project.  I planted peas twice this Spring and the deer ate every one of the plants.  Both times.  I knew we needed to do something to keep them out of our raised beds so I did a little bit of research and came across an invisible fishing line fence.  My Dad pounded T posts about every 10-15 feet around the garden then we strung fishing line in a criss cross pattern between them.  The ‘gateway’ is made of bird netting. The idea is that the deer can’t see the fishing line and walk right into it.  It freaks them out and they run away.  I must say so far so good!  It’s taken us a little bit of time to remember it’s there (duh.. invisible!) and we’ve had no problems with deer in the garden since it’s been up.   My husband pulled an old barbed wire fence off of the annex property so our T posts were free (but usually run just $6 or $7 each new) and the fishing line came from his tackle box.  Now if we can figure out how to keep them out of our orchard!

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Scapes!  Scapes are the curly tendril flower shoot of the garlic plant.  If you don’t pick them, they will slow further growth of the garlic bulb under the ground because the plant is putting it’s energy into the flower instead of the root.  From one plant you get both scapes and bulbs.  It’s like a two-fer!  I get rid of about 5 inches of the pointy end because it gets tough when cooked.  The rest of it is tender and tasty, delicious sliced into stir fry.  We’ll harvest the garlic in about a month, then let it hang for a few more weeks and it should last us until January.  In the meantime, we’re having leg of lamb with sauteed scapes for dinner tonight.

Orchards are a big draw for deer but turtles??  We found this huge guy in with our apple trees this morning.  It’s the first time we’ve seen a pond turtle up close.  They normally hang out in the middle of the pond floating around.  We once saw a guy stop a pickup truck on a bridge to move one of these out of the road.  He picked it up and it turned it’s head around and bit the crap out of him.   His heart was in the right place.  🙂

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Mornings are Wubba time, Jenna’s favorite toy.  I swear she would fetch that thing until her heart burst.  If you tire of tossing it, she’ll lay down with it where you can see her and chew it until the plastic ball falls out.  Then you’ve got a plastic ball to toss her.  She has several…

Heirloom tomatoes aren’t self-pollinating, which is an issue when we grow them in our greenhouse through the cool months. We start our seeds in January in our dining room under lights then pot them up a few months later.  They get moved into the greenhouse in April where they stay until after our last frost date in early May.  During these later months, they are growing like crazy (taller than me) and start getting blossoms. Without insects, there is no pollination so we take that task on ourselves.  A paintbrush goes from flower to flower and, by the time we move our plants to the back deck, we’ve got tomatoes!

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Whenever I go into the pasture for any reason, Milos shows up to ask (nicely) for a dog biscuit.  Yesterday, it was to get photos of Mina’s twins…  Of course I oblige.  These dogs are very difficult to handle so I am happy to ‘train’ them with treats.  His sister FiFi got out a few months ago and it was the promise of a biscuit that lured her back into the pasture after a few hours on her own.  That and, I’m sure, a desire to be back on the job with her brother. FiFi’s big adventure.