greenhouse and grant progress

I promised 2 weeks ago that the next post would continue w/progress on the greenhouse that Billy has been altering, partly w/funds from the SlowFoods St.Louis grant and mainly w/his own ingenuity.

The 1st picture is the front wall of the Southwest side of the greenhouse, the main entrance if you will. This wall at the time of this picture, is made from single wall polycarbonate and you can see the bubble wrap hanging on the inside of the greenhouse for additional insulation. In this 2nd photo, the wall is completely "see through"as my engineering minded husband has framed and hung a recycled window that we bought somewhere for 20.00. You can see the new rubber mats on the inside floor and if you look at the top, this window has smaller sliding windows for ventilation...pretty cool huh? At present he is replacing another partial wall w/the irregular pieces of the double wall "thermoclear" material that we had left over from the interior wall project. Here is a pic of some tomatoes that we are drying as part of the grant expectations which was produce sundried heirloom plum tomatoes as an alternative market product. These tomatoes are Orange Bananas, Plum Lemons, and Amish Paste. The Plum Lemons mostly came from Kimker Hill Farm, St. Clair. As most of you know our Plum Lemons had almost complete crop failure.

NOW for the exciting part of this addition. Yesterday I spotted one of our Cayuga ducks coming out of the pampas grass which as you all know from previous posts, is where they tend to hide their nests. I spoke to Kelly Childs from SlowFoods last month that I was finding duck eggs about the farm and was hoping that someone was trying to make a nest even though it is VERY late in the year for this. So when I peeked into the grass, this is what I found.

I believe this to be the same hen that raised the small batch earlier this season. She has 6 or 7 eggs under her. This is unprecedented behavior for Cayugas, they are usually finished nesting by early September at the latest. If they don't build a nest, they are generally finished laying by late July. I am excited!

Terra de Tomatillo

I try to describe the effects of the tomatillos on our farm to no avail. People can't picture it unless they see it and they just don't believe me. Posted is a pic of the view of my garden from the front gate. This is only about a 15 ft. strip... the rest of the garden is overran the same way. There are thousands of them falling over and covering ground. They overshadow the tomatoes and the bees prefer them when time for pollination. This is after we also have pulled out and thrown away 100's of plants and tilled even more sprouting babies under. People who haven't experienced this say "well ours don't come back because we till them under" as if suggesting that we don't. We do and the sheep shelter in the garden all winter and their bedding piles up and they walk the ground down hard. Then as soon as spring comes and we open the ground again...here they come. I joke all summer that I am going to change the name of the farm from Sunflower Savannah to Terra de Tomatillo.... Unfortunately we aren't reaping as much from our tomatillo crop this year. I have been able to make very little salsa. It's just too cool at night and while they struggle valiantly, they just can't fill those little sacs full enough.

As we have mentioned before , Slow Foods has given us a grant to be split between raising Cayuga Ducks and making our greenhouse more efficient in order to sun dry heirloom tomatoes as an alternative product. Bill has been working on this just as valiantly as those tomatillos but w/more success. Here he has taken out the center wall between the 2 rooms of the greenhouse. This wall was constructed of house wrap plastic and bubble wrap. He has replaced it w/a twin walled polycarbonate like material. The floor of this room has been insulated with 2 inch foam, covered over w/underlayment and then intersecting foam mats are being laid down.

These are pictures of the room at the same angle from outside the door looking in. The 3rd is facing the wall from the center of the room.

All of these things serve the purpose of making this Southwest facing room, which normally is used for germination and green growth more energy efficient and insect proof. The room on the other side of this wall faces the northeast and is used for finishing and controlling growth.

Next Post; Bill continues to make improvement on the greenhouse.

This season so far...

I know, I know, not many posts lately. ...It's just been hard keeping up while dealing w/everything.

Our crops have been slow coming in, partially due to the cool weather, partially because of the weeds that we haven't been able to keep up w/regardless of all the help that we have had and finally because of the guineas. The tomatoes started coming on strong the 1st week in july but so did the guineas. They started hopping over the 6 foot garden fence via the raised beds going around them.... they have eaten almost everything. We have caught some and clipped their wings but still to no avail, they still had enough push to go over that fence. They have pulled down the vines and eaten the Purple Carbons, the Lemon boys, the Black from Tulas, green or red they have no preference. What tomatoes had the time to ripen w/their voracious appetites anyway? We were getting much flack from the customers about the lack of salsa so late in the season. Then Claire at Double Star Farms started chomping at the bit and donated some tomatoes and we bought some seconds from Centennial Farms and along w/a FEW from our plot we were able to get salsa going. Billy(you remember my loving husband) designed a chicken tractor for the guineas. We captured the female that had chicks which kept them and her mate there. In a 2nd he put another female which kept her mate outside the cage, but close and out of the garden. We're making progress.

Now as for the grant, you've seen the ducks and posted is a pic of some of the Thai Red Turtle Eggs which are changing color. I'm pretty sure that we have some Amish paste also as I seem some plum tomatoes in the garden but I won't know for sure until they ripen. I believe that I posted earlier that we would be exchanging the Orange Bananas for the Plum Lemons as we have had almost a complete crop failure of those and the Plum Tigris. Hard to figure why, last year both did so well. This year, low germination of both and what was left was put into the ground to sit there and do nothing. Some are still only a few inches high and they have been in the ground since late May. Puzzling. I can understand the seed being bad but after germination, growth is what happens....usually. Other tomatoes around them are flourishing nicely.

Concord Baptist Church Sunday school group was here a few weeks ago helping out via my sister. While they were here, they help Bill move everything out of the greenhouse so that he could do more serious work on the greenhouse to make it more airtight as we planned for in the grant.

So that is what is going on. Hopefully I can get myself together enough to be consistant at this again. TTFN

I'm back

It's been a rough few weeks what with the back surgery and the diagnosis. We've just been trying to stay above water here. Literally because of the rain and figuratively because it just feels like we've been drowning. We've had to accept a lot of help to keep things going. For the help we've been truly grateful for the blessings. It's been hard though, telling everyone how to do things instead of doing them myself. Over the last week or so, I have been able to do more and that is a blessing too.

We promised Slow Foods to keep track of what's going on Grant-wise by blogging about the projects. I have been remiss in this. I try to be a person who says what they mean and means what they say but as I said, it's been rough. Hard to sit at the computer for one thing. In any case, here is a pic of the ducklings that we are raising. If you remember, she hatched 8 and we bought 4 about the same age, then we bought 2 about 4 weeks older. Well one thing and another, she lost 4 or 5 of hers and then 1 or 2 of the other small. So we have 8 left, but as you can see, on is of a gray color which means it's egg was fertilized by the runner duck that we got rid of. So we will have to find a home for it. The rest are beautiful specimens. As we still have not been able to find any adults, I guess that we will be ordering some babies to fill out the rest of the grant proposal.

As far as the tomatoes go, we had almost a total crop failure of the Plum Lemons, Black Plums and the Plum Tigris. We plan of replacing the Plum Lemons w/the Orange bananas that we planted. We got plenty of Thai red Turtle eggs in the grounds and there are some Amish Paste. We got a few Plum Lemons but they were so small that it's hard to say if they will survive. Same w/the couple of Plum Tigris. SO we'll see what we get. TTFN

And....We're off

Saturday was the beginning of the Tower Grove Market Season. It was a good day and a good Market. It was great seeing the old crowd again both vendors and customers alike.
It's difficult doing market w/a back injury but Karen and the ever loyal Hubby did all of the work while I explained the varieties of tomato plants to the customers. At one point, Kimberly from Slow Foods came by and commented on me sitting in a lawn chair w/my feet up. She couldn't see the ice pack behind me.
Today to continue on the theme of help on the farm, Dan and Denise Wissman came over to help plant. Dan tilled almost the whole garden and even though he BROKE the tiller(just kidding Dan, I'm really glad that the tiller didn't break you) it was an immense help. Denise planted 6 row of tomatoes and transplanted dill and marveled at the size of the worms in the garden. She planted Green Zebras, Mortgage lifters, Early Girls, Lemon Boys, Pink Girls, Purple Carbons and Bijskij Zetyl. What a relief. About 2 O'Clock, Julie Ridlon showed up again w/food and proceeded to transplant Astilbes and tomatoes. Even though she had to learn how to use the hoe, She weeded. Of course she had a lot of fun w/the word hoe. ...
Karen transplanted zinnias and Julie offered to trim the dog so they did it together. Just stuff to help...anything to help.
All and all I feel a bit better about the start on the season...Thanks everyone. Back out or not, it's nice to know that you mean enough to someone for them to go out of their way to help you or to care about your well being.
Blessings...to everyone that does. Blessings are everyone that does.
Oh yes, and the LAST lamb of the season was born last night...another girl.
Blessings...I'm still counting.

Gratitude

So it's been mentioned on and off that my back is giving me a lot of trouble. It appears to be
more serious than we first thought and has kept me down longer than anticipated.
Worrisome is a word for planting season when you can't get off the couch.
Understatement is saying that I have some good friends to back me up.

Karen has been mentioned off and on since we started the blog. She's a great best friend. She keeps the house clean and encourages me, goes outside and lets me boss her around the greenhouse. Then walks around wheezing for 2 days because she's not used to our Mid Western pollen.

Two weeks ago Sally, one of my oldest friends called to say she was coming out to help.

She came out to divide and pot tomato plants for me free of charge. She, her daughter & boyfriend. They all pulled weeds and carried the bundles to the mulch pile.

They ate before they came here and left w/out letting me pay even for gas. FRIENDS.

My brother in law Merle came out and worked 2 afternoons to help finish the raised beds around the greenhouse and just helped out the hubby w/stuff that I am not able to do. What a relief.
Gina was on duty Saturday.

Sunday Julie Ridlon from Chantrelle Catering came out to visit and see how things were going.

It was entertainment for herself and niece Becca, but they brought noshes, took pics and flattered the heck out of us. When she left we had extra ice cream, awesome coffee, offers to help plant and sympathy.

Michel, a florist who owes me nothing because she already buys stuff from me is always offering something whether it be biofreeze or a halter for the llama.
Everyday Doug and Cheri call to check on me. Doug tells me to keep the faith and Karen schleps me to the tests- even though she will tell you that she is not a morning person. And she's not...she's a friend person.

Seems like there are a lot of those hanging around here...simple and true people that you can count on...Friends

Market Season Soon

Market season is upon us. Schlafly has been rolling along since April beginning and Tower Grove starts on the 9th. We are not as far along as we'd like to be. This farmer has been running around getting tests done to find out about the back problem. This has been taking up lots of time. Still, the greenhouse is full, we put 6 dozen Guinea eggs in the incubator, we have dill and asparagus in the garden. Still waiting for the last sheep to lamb.
I'm both excited and dreading the tumult. It will be good to see the customers again as always.

We will not be at Schlafly tomorrow, but will start the season next Wednesday. We WILL be at Tower Grove this Saturday the 9th. This is what we will be bringing to BOTH markets.

Fresh Dill, Spearmint and Catnip herbs, Lambs Ear plants, Hosta and Water Iris.

Here is a listing again of the Heirloom tomatoes that we have: Paul Robeson, Plum Lemon, Green Zebra, Mortgage Lifter, Rutgers, Taxi, Sun Gold, Thai Red Turtle Egg, Moon Glow, Orange Banana, Purple Carbon, Plum Tigris...and more. If I missed a variety that you are looking for, email me. I'm sure that there are more.

All our plants are grown in recyclable pots using Organic potting mix and untreated, mostly organic seed.

As usual, we will have 5 kinds of granola and Cherry Serrano Pepper Jelly.

In today's unsure times, roll out and support your local farmer to insure your food safety.

Oh, and we are selling lambs(live) if anyone is interested.

See you there.

Project Progress

At the Silex Farmers Market on Saturday, we were able to get 2 Females that were about 5 weeks old and 4 smaller week old females. How do I know this, well because I spent about an hour showing people how to sex ducklings so they would know what they had.

I am still casting about hoping to get some adult hens from someone somewhere, but for now we will be ordering 10 ducklings from Mc Murray Hatchery as Metzers is where I got my original flock from and we are trying to keep the gene pool swimmable. Here are the 2 older females with one of the extra Drakes we have.

Monday, Billy went to get the polycarbonate material to finish the ceiling and hopefully the dividing wall in the greenhouse. Today he is putting in the ceiling. We were able to get some odd pieces at a better price than we hoped for so maybe we will be able to get more done.

Both of these things were possible thanks to the grant money provided by Slow Foods St. Louis. Thanks again, Kelly, Kimberly and Bill.

Getting Ready

Well we are getting ready for the weekend.

First we going tomorrow for the Silex Market. I am really excited about this especially since Kelly Klober called today to say that he has found me some Cayuga ducks, bless his heart. And speaking of Cayugas, look what happened this morning.

She just waltzed out w/8 new babies.

Tomorrow after the River Hills Market in Silex, we will be headed to Mike Brabo's

Vesterbrook Farm to do his Certified Naturally Grown inspection. He is READY. As you all might know, Certified Naturally Grown is a grassroots organization that follows the same strictures as Organic but is ran by Farmers instead of the USDA. The Organic label has been perverted by Monsanto and the likes in an attempt to do away with the competition of the small farm. Because you know, WE ARE the ones causing all the problems....NOT!

Then Sunday will be Earth Day at Forest Park in St.Louis. We will be in the Food Education section selling Heirloom tomato plants, Spearmint, Catnip, Water Iris, Lambs Ears(the plants) and a few other things. Varieties of tomatoes that we will be bringing are;

Heirlooms~

Purple Carbon, Mortgage Lifter, Taxi, Mule Team, Pink Oxheart, Green Zebra, Moon Glow,

Silvery Fir Tree, Thai Red Turtle Egg, Amish Paste, Missouri Love Apple and a few more.

Hybrids, Early Girl, Lemon boy, and a few Sun Golds.

ALL are potted in ORGANIC compost and RECYCLED POTS. The seeds are either from Certified Organic Sources and/or Untreated.

We will have Curly Willow Branches for Propagating,

Organic Mung and Adzuki Bean Sprouts and a limited amount of Alfalfa Sprouts.

Don't forget our Feather Jewelry made by my own 2 hands from Feathers on our own Farm while bored out of my head because of spinal incapacitation.(Everyone will tell you that I don't sit still well.)

Karen is doing all the dirty grunt work because I still am really limited on what I can handle and she will be on hand at the proceedings. Be sure and tell her thanks when you see her.

We will be providing reusable shopping bags for plants and Earth Day theme and convenience.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Oh yes, and here is the promised pic of Jessie and her new lamb

Earth Day Sunday

Hey Everyone,

Back is still giving me quite a LOT of grief and I am SO frustrated but I thought that I'd better get on here and let you know about Earth Day St. Louis. This Sunday we will be at Forest Park with the rest of the Market. Hopefully we will have a good spot.
Among our usual stuff, like our granola-5 Kinds, and our Cherry Serrano Pepper Jelly, we will also have our summertime Lemonade and Organic Green Tea w/Jasmine and Local Honey. Both will be in those famous cut glass jars.
Heirloom tomatoes will be the focus on the plants we bring but we also will have some potted Spearmint, Catnip, Water Iris and more.
I've been working on some Jewelry made w/feathers from the farm. Mostly earrings, but I think that they will go over well.
Saturday we will be going down to visit Kelly Klober at the River Hills Family Farm Expo. Kelly and some friends run the River Hills Farmers market which has garnered a lot of press due to the community, the uniqueness of the market and their goal of improving the heirloom bird breeds out there. It's at Silex School in Silex Mo. and starts at 7:30 a.m. We aren't going to sell, just to look around. Kelly speaks at a lot of the farm conferences and has written 2 books on pigs and one that is in the process of being published which is about chickens. Come down and see what is going on.

There was a new lamb born last night. A little ewe girl. I will post pics later. Thanks heavens for little girls.

Down and Out

Sorry everyone, No posts for a few more days. This farmer's back is out and I can't sit at the computer right now...or do just about anything but breathe. See you in a few.

Head Start

This is my Cayuga hen going back to work.
It's a lonely job but someone has to do it.

Wednesday I went out to the barn to check on Jessie one of the Jacob sheep that we acquired last fall who is due to lamb soon. While unlatching the gate one of my 2 female Cayuga ducks came flying around the curve of the drive, quacking to beat the band. The thought crossed my mind that she might have a nest somewhere. The girls do this to let you know they are hungry from sitting around generating enough heat to hatch the nest of eggs that they are incubating. It's like they are saying...."wait, wait, wait for me". Sometimes if you are late feeding, I swear it sounds like they are telling you off. They eat like they are starving,wash their face in a bucket and waddle back to where they came from. Still I was busy w/other stuff(imagine) and I forgot about it until I was showing the lambs to my mom on Thursday and she did the exact thing again. So we got to poking around and found her nest in the Pampas grass. Today I took some photos. You can see that there is some fencing around the grass. We do this because these Pampas grass clumps are favorite nesting places for the ducks. They are also favorite places for the dogs to get a nice egg breakfast. The fencing lets the ducks in and keeps the dogs out. It won't deter skunks or raccoons but they don't usually venture that close to the yard where the dogs are. It does the trick. SO it appears that we have a head start on the duck project. We will be placing our order for outsourced ducklings on Monday which is when we also plan to go and pick up the Polycarbonate panels for the greenhouse/Sun dried Tomato project. I captured these 3 photos when she got off the nest for a minute. You can see in the 3rd one that she is not quite resettled and I got bitten for my efforts...I mean really, who wants there picture taken while they are concentrating on having 9 babies?(Don't even make a Nadia joke) All kidding aside, these ducks are fearless mothers and will die trying to defend their brood both before and after they are out of the eggs. They will grab your hand w/their beaks and will bite so hard that you can pick them up because they are holding on and while they are doing that, they will beat you w/their wings. The incubation process for ducks is 28 days I am excited, I love it when the ducklings start waddling around.

Cayuga eggs vary from black to green to

off white. I would guess that some other duck

has been laying in her nest because the green one

is bigger than the rest. She is not happy in this second photo

Time Off of the Farm

Looking out my front door ....and wondering....What the heck? They've taken over. Aren't they supposed to be in one of the 4 fields?

For everyone who doesn't know, I went to Phoenix last week to help my best friend Karen move here to Missouri. Every year before market season starts, we try to do something together that we haven't done together. We have driven to Missouri from Arizona so we came back through Santa Fe. I have been to New Mexico but not Santa Fe. Still there is something about New Mexico. All the preparation I have to go through to get ready to leave and still it's like MAGIC, as soon as I cross into New Mexico, all heck breaks loose. Last time it was the only ewe that was left to lamb went down w/pneumonia. I stood on a mountainside begging my (saintly, wonderful) vet to do a farm call with no one home. He did and the ewe lived but we lost the lambs.
This time while trying to enjoy the Native Pueblo Indian crafts, I am fielding calls about the llama being loose and organizing a search for her. My poor husband arrived back at the farm only to go on a wild llama chase. Turns out we named Gypsy aptly. We had sightings from as far away as 3 miles in one direction and a mile in the other. Thank God we have awesome neighbors as 4 of them came to our rescue and someone boarded her for the night when she became too stressed to try and drag her a half a mile through the woods AGAIN. My favorite florist helped and she said that if she would've had a video camera she would've made a million dollars on America's Funniest videos of my hubby being dragged by the Gypsy. Anyway, Llama and Husband here when I got home. All Sheep alive, but there was a warning on our door from the Franklin County Police to keep our sheep off of Highway 185. Sigh.....
I don't think that I will go back to New Mexico.

Saturday we will be at St. John's Episcopal church on Arsenal to sell our wares.
We will have our usual Cherry Serrano Pepper Jelly, granolas and salsas but will also bring Spearmint and Garlic Chives. maybe even some asparagus. We'll see. Oh yes and there will be a variety of SMALL Heirloom tomato plants. See you then, 9-1.

Received the news and a check from Slow Foods St. Louis. We will be following our progress on this blog for the 2 projects for which we applied. One will be on raising Cayuga Ducks and the other will involve making our greenhouse more efficient in order to sun dry Heirloom Plum tomatoes.
We will be focusing on Black Plum, Plum Tigris, Plum Lemon, Amish Paste and Thai Red Turtle Egg.
Many Thanks to Slow Foods.

Over the Weekend

This is Molly w/her ram lamb and Raven w/her ewe lamb...Yay Raven.

Over the very busy weekend, we had some lambs. Here are a couple of them, I couldn't get them all in the confusion of the flock. These are Jacob Lambs and will be wool sheep. The mothers are half Jacob and half Barbados and the dad was all Jacob. They are part of the new flock that we bought in November. Now we just have 2 ewes left to lamb...one soon and one in a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow we will be posting pics of the plants in the greenhouse and of the 2 raised beds that are finished around it.

Rosa's are red Violets are two...

YESTERDAY was one of those days(even if I didn't say it in last nights post) that I call Sheep Boot camp 101. Rosa one of our Great Pyrenees started running the sheep while trying to transfer them to a new field. Now this is complicated by the new llama, Gypsy not knowing what to do when the sheep are moved. The sheep, they know exactly what to do. ...UNLESS the DOG is CHASING THEM. You just move toward any gate w/a bucket and they follow.
Gypsy, she is interested in the possibility of grain but doesn't trust this new gate she is supposed to go through and actually there are 3 gates.
SO I FINALLY get the sheep moved w/out mishap, but the llama is still loose. Rosa is tied up in disgrace and we wait til "Dad" gets home. He does and we go out w/the bucket again. Takes 40 minutes to get her out of the old field into the front yard then she won't go through that gate. Finally we hang the bucket on the outside of the gate and go do something else. Eventually she spots the bucket and walks through the gate to eat the grain. I slam the gate behind her. ONLY ONE MORE GATE. However at this point, the sheep are in a frenzy because they see the bucket and they are STARVING to death (NOT). So every time we get Gypsy to the gate they are pushing from the other side and Gypsy freaks out and heads down the drive. Okay our drive is like 1/10th of a mile long on each end and each time she runs further down. For another hour, it's back and forth, up to the gate and then all the way back down again. There's no danger of her getting on the road, but we are all getting stressed. Finally we lock the sheep in yet another field, leave the gate open and I make one more trip back down to the END of the drive and RUN her all the way back up and she goes in. Our butts are kicked. Not that I don't need the exercise, but I'd rather get it hauling compost to the raised beds.

Today however we had a better day, and pictured here are Violets two new EWE lambs. Violet is a Navajo Churro in bad need of a haircut. The lambs are 1/2 Navajo and 1/2 Katahdin cross.