Water Wheel Transplanting

What an amazing implement! Before we borrowed this from Grace at A&T State University we just crawled around on our hands and knees and planted one plant at a time. Talk about a time saver!! Now we can plant about 30 flats (48 plants each flat) in half a day. My apologies if it's a little dizzying to watch, but it was quite a feat to record a video and keep up my side of transplanting.

It's hard to believe that we are on Week 12 of 16 for the Spring/Summer CSA shares!  We thank everyone who has participated in the first season of the year.  Our second season of shares will begin the week of August 18th. This season will include produce such as tomatoes, red okra, eggplant, colored bell peppers, sweet potatoes, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, collards, kale, summer/winter squash, beets, carrots, pie pumpkins, muscadine grapes, and more!

We have also added a third pickup location in addition to the farm on Monday evenings and the Greensboro Farmer's Curb Market on Saturday mornings. We are available at New Garden Nursery on Lawndale on Thursday's from 9-1 as well.

If you would like to participate in this 10 week share, just download the application from the link below and mail payment by August 1st. Please let us know if have any questions.


                               Farlow Farm Summer/Fall 2013 CSA Application

Planting sweet potato slips

Thanks to craigslist we were able to find an old tobacco setter last fall that works absolutely perfect for setting our bare root sweet potato slips. As long as you didn't get the giggles, setting the slips were a breeze!  With 4,000 planted, we'll need lots of help around mid-September to harvest!

Sweet potatoes here we come

So last year we thought we had lost our minds planting 1,000 sweet potato slips. Well, this year we decided to quadruple that. Yes, that's right, we'll be planting 4,000 slips next week! We are quite looking forward to using a new implement that we bought this winter as opposed to crawling on our hands and knees to plant like last summer. It's an old 2-person tobacco setter. Stay tuned for pics/videos.

Russell bedding up hills for the sweet potato slips.

What's for Dinner?

This was just too cute not to share :-) ER and MB were out in one of our raised beds having a contest to see who could dig up the biggest overwintered carrot. All bets were off once Ellie, our 2 year old Great Dane, spotted them. She loves carrots at any age!

1,100 plants later........

Well Saturday's gorgeous weather was not to be wasted around the farm. Russell and I planted nearly 1,100 transplants including purple and green kale, white and purple kohlrabi, orange, green, and white cauliflower, broccoli, brussell sprouts, red and green bok choi, red and green butterhead lettuce........ah, the list continues! Don't forget this Friday, March 22 is the last day to sign up for the summer CSA.

Spring/Summer CSA Shares Now Available

It's official, we are now accepting shareholder applications for our second Spring/Summer CSA season. Applications can be printed below.  We will only be accepting a limited number of shares as this is our first season of subscriptions. The deadline for this season is March 22.  We will begin a fall season share program in August. We will post information for that sometime in May. Please let us know if you have any questions about this upcoming season.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/129140023/Spring-Summer-Season-2013-CSA-Application

The Greenhouse Is Filling Up

Here are the first round of transplants that are going to get prepped for planting out in the next two weeks. Did you know that plants have to be 'hardened off' before going from greenhouse to garden. This process gradually introduces the plant into natural outdoor growing conditions and toughens it up a bit. We'll begin setting trays outside the greenhouse for a few hours at a time, until they can handle an entire day, at which point they'll be transplanted into the garden.

Green Un-Guns Galore

Well you probably call them onions, but our first born has always called them "un-guns" so that's what we call them. We have about 2,000 to plant and harvest at the green onion stage and here we are planting the first 700. Hard to believe that doesn't even plant the entire 200' row.

MB is a little man of perfection. Things must be planted just so and the rows laid off with the Allis G were not up to his standard. That's where the multipurpose trowel comes in.

3,000 Plants and Counting........

That's right, we've gone a little greenhouse crazy and already have over 3,000 plants in the first 3 weeks! It's nothing less than amazing to watch everything sprout and thrive in there. We're now at the stage where we are transplanting planting from the 105 plug size to 48 plant trays. That's alot of transplanting! At this point we have kohlrabi (white and purple), beets, spinach, bok choi (red and green), mache (corn salad), cauliflower (orange, green, and white), kale (green and purple), lettuces of all kinds, cabbage, collards, leeks, onions, and I'm sure there's something I'm leaving out! If all continues to go well, we should be expecting our first harvests around the third or fourth week of March.

Now, for those of you who have purchased our eggs in the past, our newest hens have started to lay and we have eggs galore! We are gathering about a dozen a day. Even in our off season MB does sell his eggs to help with his feed cost. Just let me know if you'd like to purchase a dozen or two ($4 a dozen) and we can arrange a pickup time.

How many omlettes can one family eat?

 

 

 

"Okay sissy, this is how you very delicately wash the eggs."

This is no optical illusion, pretty sure this is our first double yolk egg.

There's no place like home.....

The hoophouse/greenhouse was put to the test with last night's wind and thankfully, it survived. We all went to work first thing Wednesday morning making some sandbags for the side 'curtains' of our new structure. Since it is really a hoophouse, which means we can roll up the sidewalls on both long sides, we were a little nervous about the forecasted winds gusts.  As we explained to MB and EC why we were doing this, I mentioned that we didn't want to see our hoophouse sailing in the wind like Dorothy's. MB informed me, straight-faced as could be, that it would be okay because we didn't live in Kansas!

Hauling the sandbags on the tobacco sled/trailer.

Stepping back and admiring your handiwork.

Greenhouse Updates

So the "hoophouse" we (Russell) constructed earlier this month has now officially been converted into a heated greenhouse. Good news! Tons of tiny seedlings are sprouting due to the addition of a heat source. We originally intended  on adding a hoophouse just to get a few weeks jump on starting spring/summer transplants to set into the gardens, but that quickly changed when we realized we could modify a woodstove that we already had and use the endless supply of wood that we have. Everyone has been enjoying 70 degree days inside while the outside temps have been, well, January-like.

Step 1 of planting in the greenhouse - submerge yourself in the potting mix and check the consistency! This is why EC is the official Entertainment Leader of our farm!

Still in the 'hoophouse' stages, no heat source, but high hopes of planting many trays of goodies.

Break time from working in the greenhouse - surprise, they actually put their shoes on for this!

This is "Pawpaw" who has been quite the engineer in getting our heat source up and going.

Did someone say 'heat'? Clearly an open invitation for everyone, four-legged and two. This picture was taken the day after we found Ellie at a neighbor's house. She ran away during the snow storm last week and needless to say, EC was more than happy to have her furry greenhouse assitant back home.

Ellie makes every trip with us to the greenhouse, even in the wee hours of the night, to check temperatures.

How do a 4 and 6 year old stay busy in a greenhouse for hours on end.......today it was a very large box of monster trucks, kindly shared with by one of their cousins. Thank you Caleb!

Interesting find in our woodpile.

Okay mommy, I 've been a bystander long enough. I've got this.  First, fill up the pot with soil.

Next, label it with all the letters I've learned to write this week. Apparently this was a BBHHSSS plant. I'll be sure to post pictures of what actually sprouts

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Last step, water, water, and water some more. This little gardener follows the motto "If some is good, a whole lot more is a whole lot better."

MB ignoring mommy's 50th request to please not use the hammer as an ax and severly damage some body part in the process.

The first beet sprouting today, four days after we planted it.

A bit more difficult to see, but right in the middle of the cells are two purple kohlrabi seedlings.

Where has the time gone?

Lots of goings-on at the Farlow Farm. Winter is certainly a slower season for us, but certainly plenty to do....................

Dirt baths to be taken

First time cauliflower

Harvesting honey, great! Losing bees, not so great! We're hoping to catch a swarm in the spring and get our hive up and going again.

Painting the 'ribs' of the hoophouse.

Adding plastic to hoophouse.

MB feeding a Golden Campine hen an overgrown purple carrot.

Adding initials to the chinking in the log cabin

All greenhouse construction requires a knowledgeable canine supervisor.

How a righty and lefty share a drill

When the going gets tough, the tough take a cake break!

Supervisor #2

Adding leaf mould to asparagus bed.

I really do work something besides a camera.

Take me for a ride on my big red tractor