Sunflower Savannah: And So We Begin

Market List;

Celery, Scallions, Egyptian Walking Onions, SuperFood Salad Mix and Tomato Plants

Maybe some Garlic Ramps. Not sure yet if we have enough to bring.

Sorry, we are still low on Lamb. We will have a bit of organ meat but no real cuts for a couple of weeks yet.

Tomatoes for the 2017 Growing Season

Mortgage Lifter, Paul Robeson. Moscovitch, Lemon Boy, Early Girl, Striped German, Yellow Topaz. Black Brandywine, Pink Girl, Hungarian Heart, Arkansas Traveler, Purple Carbon, Pork Chop, Sara Black, Sugar Plum, Chocolate Cherry,

Amish Paste, Black From Tula, Cherokee Purple, Golden Jubilee, Gold Metal, Sweet Carneros, Barry's Crazy Cherry, Green Zebra, SunSugar, Caspian, Black Trifele, Vintage Wine, Plum Lemon and Yellow Pear.

There are a few more varieties that we are keeping just for fruit offerings at Market like Chestnut Chocolate, Thai Turtle Egg, Abracazebra just to name a few.

Some varieties will not be available until next week.

Hard to believe that we are beginning our 12th season at Tower Grove market much less that the season is beginning again.

Slow Food gave us a very nice grant this year for growing Food Plots for the St.Croix sheep. The idea is to improve our pastures by way of planting cover crops, field grains that are NOT corn and soy, for instance, Rye, Barley, Oats, Milo and Peas, Turnips and Peas for protein and bulk. In order to plant all on a rotational basis, Slow Food St. Louis gave us the funds for a 10 row crop seeder. As usual, Rusty helped me pick it up. I really don't know what I'd do without Rusty. We really lucked out moving in next to he and his wife. Maybe some of you know that Cortney who has worked for us for the last 3 seasons is his granddaughter and the above girls are of course her little sisters.
So we went and picked up the seeder and our order of approximately 380 LBS. of seed. Fifty each of Organic Barley, Winter Rye, Oats, Crimson Clover, Cow Peas and Buckwheat, another 50 of a mix of Annual Rye, Groundhog Radish, and Crimson Clover and some smaller bags of other mixes of some the above things mixed with Field Peas.

Another unexpected plus that came along with the seeder was the rack that it came in. You can see it in the background and it just screamed "potting bench".

Am I right?

As it figures, we got a test plot planted and then it rained for 2 weeks.

Finally on Wednesday, we loaded the

seeder up and started planting. We used a cooler and mixed large feed scoops of everything that we had ordered and then poured it in and mixed it again. The only thing that we aren't planting is the cow peas because the weather is a bit iffy yet and they like it hot. The plan is to plant all 6 of the pastures...and then rotate the sheep between pastures one week on each planting behind them so that when they get back to the first pasture it has been growing for 6 weeks. Turnips and radishes planted at the beginning and end of the growing seasons. That's the plan anyway.

So Rayven's sister Jade came out this week to help me out. It's really cool to see these kids begging their mom to come to the farm and work and they do work. Rayven last summer and Jade now. No whining or crying about stuff. They may not be pros but when they do mess up, they just go back and do it again without an attitude. They really want to know how to grow things.

Jade has planted onions this week, kept the beds watered, labeled plants, helped keep the animals watered too. Oh, and we went swimming too in the lake today and YES it was cold.