Market List
Chinese Noodle Beans, Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans, Heirloom Slicing Tomatoes, Rainbow Mix Cherry Tomatoes, Port Wine Tawny and Pasilla Peppers, Genovese Basil, Tomatillos and Zinnia Bouquets
We still have Sam's Famous(the fresh) Salsa for a few more weeks. I got in trouble last week for not putting it on the list, lol and it's the 3rd week for the Smoked Tomatillo Salsa. It will be around for awhile.
It seems like living on a farm, I should be able to spend the day in my tomatoes. While I do spend the bulk of what time I get to be working in the garden on the tomatoes, its really not as much as one might think and its not usually doing what I want. In reality, with the Farmers Market, we just get 4 days working on growing stuff. Monday through Thursday. On Fridays we get ready for Market, part of Thursday too. Saturday we're at Market, gone about 10 hours, then we unload, eat lunch and try and relax a bit before we take care of the animals. Sunday, we go to church and take it easy, except for the animals of course. That leaves Monday to Thursday, minus, meals, bank, doctors visits, chasing sheep, making salsa, granola etc. My favorite thing to do is work in the tomatoes, tying them up, picking them, taking off dead branches. This is a shot of one of our seven tomato rows of our newly improved field. They look great compared to last year. Lately we've been fighting off White Flies and I spend a lot of time squishing them. They're very tiny and like to congregate on the blossoms and suck the sap out of them so that they fall off before they set fruit. Also they cling to the leaves and spread disease that eventually kills the plant. So I go back up and down the row, pressing these minute soft bodied bugs against the stems, trying to keep from breaking the blossoms off. They seem to favor the Purple Heirlooms, but they're pretty fond of the Cherokee Green too. Still, all and all they look pretty good considering the bugs.
Another thing that takes time away from growing is the animals misbehaving. Wednesday I sorted the sheep. We we pulled them off the pasture for a few days and put them on hay to give the fields a break. It's been so dry, they have eaten everything and I have to worry about them picking up parasites, going back over the same ground again and again. I wanted also to mark some ewes to sell for breeding stock as our St. Croix flock has gotten pretty big and to separate the boys from the girls to see how many rams we had coming up for processing, how many ewes to sell and to make sure that there was no fighting between the smaller rams and our gigantic registered ram, Reggie. It went pretty smoothly, took about an hour to pull the rams out and mark the chosen ewes with red paint. It lasted however, about 36 hours. The young rams busted through the new fence and everybody went every which way. It'll be several days before I find the time to do it again. Sigh. Sometimes it's like that.
Well it's cooler and we actually got about an inch and a half of rain on Tuesday morning. It should be a beautiful market this weekend. We'll see you Saturday @ Tower Grove Farmers Market.
God's blessings on you and yours,
TTFN,
Sam and Billy
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