#Harvest15

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Happy first day of fall!

I had a different post planned for today, but this is too timely not to share.

I had a great day yesterday. I had booked it off work, and set everything up so that I wouldn’t have to look at my phone or open my computer all day. The result of a random Tuesday off is a very relaxing day.

Bax and I started the day with a long walk. On our way home, we saw our farmer. He shouted out the window of his truck that he’d be on our fields in a couple of days.

At least that’s what I heard.

When B and I drove past the farm on our way back from the dump (where they stock doggie treats at the gatehouse) and headed for the charity scrap metal bin at the local therapeutic riding centre, we saw a combine circling around the east field.

Apparently the farmer had said he’d be on our fields today.

Harvest is such a special time. I love that I was home to see it.

B and I walked out to the “four corners” (the crossroads where four of our fields meet) to watch.

We timed it perfectly to see the combine coming up the hill to the truck.

I missed seeing the combine unload the beans last year, so I was glad we were able to watch the transfer this year. In just a matter of minutes, the beans had slid through the chute into the truck.

It turned out that the truck was full after this transfer, so we got out of the way so that it could hit the road. Can I just say how cool it is to have such a large property that a dump truck driving across it looks small? And this is far from our biggest field.

Bax and I decided to stay out of the way of the combine and investigate the freshly cut east field. We sat at the crest of the hill (just above the dump truck path) and watched the combine through the gap between the fields.

What a great way to spend the last afternoon of summer.

Garden update

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s been a little while since I’ve shown what’s in the garden–and it’s awesome.

Our tomatoes have done super well. They just keep growing and turning red. Our cherry tomatoes in particular have grown super tall. Taller than Matt.

Next to the tomatoes, Matt’s onions are getting ready to take their first steps.

Our beets and zucchini are producing like crazy. I have to pick every day to stay on top of the zucchini. I finally tried out the grater attachment on my food processor for the first time and grated up 34 cups of zucchini. They’re tucked into the freezer. It appears that I’m going to be making zucchini something all winter long–and pretty much every day between now and then.

Despite having only four plants, we’ve had a decent crop of beans. Although Matt did make fun of me one night when I steamed just 10 beans for us both. I thought they were pretty much done, especially given that I broke the main stem on our biggest plant, but new blossoms are appearing on the other plants, so I think more beans are on their way.

I’m probably most excited about our raspberries. I have a full row of reds that have all successfully transplanted from my parents. The blacks haven’t done so well, save for this one plant, which has lots of green shoots. I’m going to try to transplant a few more blacks to see if they’ll establish themselves before winter sets in.

The biggest challenge is to protect the raspberries from the squash.

Matt and I are both a little bit afraid of the squash. Seriously. They have ambitions to take over not just the garden, but also the farm… and perhaps the world. Keep an eye out. They’re coming for you.

We have acorn, butternut and pie pumpkins. And we’re going to have tonnes of them. I’ve already notified Matt’s and my families to not buy any squash at any point in the future.

Anyone know how to tell when squash are ready to harvest? Some of these are looking pretty close, and some of the leaves on the vines are starting to die.

The east front of the squash advance is headed by the pumpkins. They’ve broken through the fence and are heading for the soybeans. Matt mows them every so often, but a few fruit have climbed the fence to get out of range. These green globes are my test case to see if the stalks are strong enough to hold the pumpkins while they mature. I’m adding squash trellis options to my Pinterest board as I plan for next year’s growing season.

The northern advance of the squash has already consumed the rutabags and potatoes. My only hope is that both of these crops grow underground, so they might survive the surface invasion.

Just to the edge of the advancing squash are our poor peppers. They’re actually looking a bit better finally. They’re growing bigger and they’re blooming again. I’m hoping that the blooms finally set into actual peppers.

We have one lone pepper in the first bunch of plants that we planted at the opposite end of the garden. He’s a little bit warped, so maybe this is a symptom of the other problems we’ve had this year with the peppers?

The lettuce have officially bolted. We’re leaving them alone as Matt wants to see how tall they’ll grow–apparently he has a thing about height.

A nice touch that I’m also enjoying is the stone bench that we’ve added to the garden. This sits at one end of the raspberry rows–the cross axis of the garden. The curve of the bench fits in well with the curved edge of the garden. I’m looking forward to sitting here and seeing the view across the garden and out over the fields.

For now, the other half of the garden is still under wraps with a tarp and some old carpet. (The rope marks the centre axis, so I can keep the raspberry rows lined up). This photo is definitely about keepin’ it real for all of you fellow non-Pinterest-perfect gardeners.

I’m patient enough to wait for next year to farm this other half. I’m definitely satisfied with what we’ve accomplished this year. And we’re more than satisfied with the harvest we’ve had.

What fresh food are you enjoying this season? Have you grown anything this year? Any thoughts around what might be wrong with our peppers? Have you had any sightings of our squash yet invading your neighbourhood?

Harvest!

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I know this blog has turned into more of a gardening blog over the last little while as opposed to a home reno blog. We have many more renos to go, but in our limited Canadian growing season, I am going to garden. I appreciate you all sticking with me. In case you can’t tell, we’re loving our new vegetable garden. We’re especially loving all of the food that we’re harvesting.

We were a little late on planting (the whole building the garden thing delayed us a bit). So I’ve been trying to be patient when it comes to looking for edible vegetables. However, I’ve perhaps been a little too patient.

I thought the zucchinis were still at the blossom stage. A closer look revealed we were past the harvest stage for some zucs. Yipes. There were nine good-sized (really fairly large) zucchinis. And two days later, I harvested seven more (and there’s been one more since then).

So far, I’ve made grilled zucchini, chocolate sour cream zucchini cake, zucchini bread, chocolate zucchini bread, zucchini soup and zucchini parmesan. I even snuck a few into my parents’ car when they came to visit the farm. More are coming though. Anyone have any good zucchini recipes?

Out of a whole package of bean seeds, only four plants have grown (the others were nibbled right after they sprouted). That means our harvest has not been huge, but we’ve had a few lovely yellow beans.

Beside the beans, the tomatoes are turning red. The cherry tomatoes blow me away. I’ve never seen tomatoes grow in clusters like this. And of course, they’re my favourite sweet tomatoes. Very few make it to the house. I eat ’em like candy right in the garden.

The potatoes plants are blooming. I hope potatoes themselves grow in time for harvest this fall.

And beside the potatoes, in a mass of leaves and vines, squashes are starting to form. I’m absolutely going to figure out a trellis system next year for the squash. They’re taking over. Good thing we have a big garden, but there are lots of other plants on the wishlist for next year. The squash are going to have to learn to share.

We’re picking lettuce, beets and green onions as we need them, the red raspberries have transplanted successfully, and I have hope that a few of the black raspberries are going to make it. It looks like even the peppers may be perking up.

This is the closest I’ve ever been to being a farmer. And I have to say I like it.

What are you growing, harvesting and eating at your house?

Pepper problems

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Anyone have tips for growing peppers? Our plants aren’t doing so well over here.

Remember this picture of the little pepper and blossoms from a few weeks ago?

Well, the plants haven’t grown at all. In fact, they’ve regressed. See the little green nuggets laying on the soil?

The little peppers fell off their stalks. (My finger is in the shot for scale to show you how little the peppers grew).

The peppers are the only things that aren’t doing well in the garden.

I thought maybe they weren’t getting enough sun, but we’ve planted two different batches in two different locations.

We’ve tried jalapenos as well as sweet red bells.

None of them are growing.

Do you have any tips?

Bounty of berries

Posted on July 22, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

This year is an incredible year for raspberries. We have canes growing all around the farm, and they’re all loaded with tiny berries.

I’ve never picked this many berries any of our previous summers.

It took me awhile to pick them–not just because there were so many. I had to do it all one handed because this was happening on my other side. Oh Ralph, so helpful.

After harvesting the berries, I decided to harvest some canes. The plan is to have two rows of raspberries in the vegetable garden: one red and one black. I had already started the red row with canes from my parent’s garden,and they’re doing well. A few days after transplanting, though, the black canes aren’t looking so hot.

I’m hoping I can convince them that they’ll be happy in the garden. I also have hopes that with a little domestication, hydration, fertilization and cultivation, I’ll not only have healthy canes but big and juicy berries.

Do you grow raspberries? Are they black or red? Who else has a four-legged helper for picking? Any tips for domesticating “wild” berries?

Snapshot

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Baby pepper and a pepper blossom growing in the garden.

The pepper plants are not doing so hot so far. Hopefully this baby grows up.

Summer family

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Recently, I’ve started following a few more farm blogs. Even though we live on a farm, I am definitely not a farmer and there’s a lot that I don’t know.

One of the blogs I’ve been reading is Dinner Starts Here.

Contributors to this site are young farmers from Ontario. They write about their lives on the farm and “how they’re producing everything from berries to beef, milk and eggs to wheat, soybeans, potatoes and maple syrup.” The idea is to help people understand what goes into producing the food we eat and get to know the people who make our food.

Last week I came across a post about one of the farmer’s summer family. She wrote about the migrant workers they hire every year to work on their farm. She said, “Our guys are one of the major backbones of the business. They are vital to our operations successes – we quite literally could not exist without them.”

Photo courtesy of Dinner Starts Here

I realized that after reading her post, I had some misconceptions about migrant workers, so I reached out to the Dinner Starts Here team and asked if I could share her post.

Erin gives a good explanation of the important role migrant workers play on Ontario farms, and it’s a great introduction to the people who produce the food we eat.

Contrary to why a lot of people believe farms hire migrant workers – it’s not cheaper or easier… it’s actually is a lot more expensive and a lot more work for us to hire them than it would be to hire local staff. First – we’re required (as we are required to pay all of our staff) to pay them minimum wage. Some of our guys who have been returning year after year have earned increased wages like all of our staff does when they return year after year. Then – we have to pay for housing, a portion of their utilities, and a portion of their airfare to and from Mexico. We also spend countless hours taking them shopping for anything they need – from groceries to new clothes to take home for their kid… which is a tremendous amount of work, time and effort. But in the end… for us… it’s worth it.

I encourage you to pop over to Dinner Starts Here and read the rest of the post.

Golden beans

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I know, I know. In the story the eggs are gold and the beans are magic. But in our case, it’s our beans that are turning gold.

This is our first time growing soybeans, so we’re learning as we go. It turns out that as the beans ripen, the plants turn yellow.

The pods are plump and fuzzy.

Inside, we have actual beans. Edamame anyone?

In other fields in the area, where the beans are a bit older, the plants have gone past gold and are all the way brown. I still have no idea how far away we are from harvest time. We’re continuing to learn about this farming thing.

Is it harvest time where you live? Do you like edamame?

Sweet cherry tomatoes

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

She’s my cherry ~~pie~~ tomato, Put a smile on your face, Ten miles wide…
Tastes so good, Make a grown man cry, Sweet cherry ~~pie~~ tomato
(Badly paraphrased from Warrant)

After my lack of success last year attempting to grow tomatoes, I refused to plant anything edible this year.

But Matt wanted to try tomatoes again.

He got some plants from his Dad, and he carefully tended them all summer. He cleared an area on the turnaround, put the tomato cages in place, suckered them and watered them. When they outgrew the cages, he improvised with other trellises gathered from around the property.

It took nearly all summer, but his attention paid off. We finally have ripe, edible tomatoes! So much better than last year.

Even better, most of our plants turned out to be my FIL’s cherry tomatoes. These are wonderfully sweet. My absolute favourite tomatoes.

These tomatoes sprout every year in my FIL’s garden. However, just to be safe, I’m going to try to save some seeds this fall to grow our own plants next year using this tutorial from The Art of Doing Stuff.

Yes, my reluctance to grow edible plants has apparently been overcome by sweet ruby spheres.

How has your garden grown? What’s your favourite kind of tomato? Have you ever tried saving seeds? On a topic more likely to make you lose your appetite, can you believe that Warrant music video? There’s absolutely nothing like 80s hairbands.

Fields of beans

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s been nearly three months since our fields were planted with soybeans. Well past time for an update, Baxter informed me.

Hello y’all. Baxter here. I went on a detailed inspection of our fields this weekend, and I’m here to share my report on the state of our soybeans. I can’t believe Julia’s let it go this long without showin’ y’all what’s been going on. I’ve decided to take care of this myself. A farm dog’s responsibilities never end.

First off, our soybeans are tall. As tall as me. Some spots are shorter, but most are growin’ pretty well.

Baxter in our field of soybeans