Harvest – Page 2 – My tiny u.p. farm

Farming is hard sometimes

July 30, 2016July 30, 2016Jen Powell2 Comments

We currently have a lot of roosters. We had 3 adults, and I’m not yet sure how many up-and-comers from this year’s hatches. I really wasn’t noticing the crowing, until last week my neighbor said something – he mentioned that the roosters were getting a bit annoying. His mentioning it made me notice it, of course. So I figured out who the worst offenders (at that time) were – it was mostly our older roosters Wonky Top and Splash, and one of our younger roosters from our first batch. I thought about it and realized that the only reason I had kept so many was for breeding purposes, which have now been accomplished. I have 14 chicks that were all from my chickens, so my older roos have spread their genes. We culled the three worst offenders, for now. We were planning on taking out some of the younger ones anyway, but I hadn’t planned on Wonky and Splash (since we named them), so that was a bit hard. We kept our best (and quietest) year-old rooster, General Dorko.

dorko — General Dorko, the Dorking rooster.

It has been quieter on the farm lately… or it was, until my silly little bantam roosters started crowing more. They are very small so their crows are little (it sounds like a regular rooster sucked some helium first). They are really tiny, so in terms of meat it would be a lot of work for not much payoff. I think I may sell them along with the hen. Her eggs are going to be small – the bantams were a bonus when I bought my hatching eggs anyway. They are cute, but not really what we’re trying to do here.

bantam roo 1 — Here’s one of my bantam roosters.

With all the harvesting we are having to do, I feel like I’m killing something every weekend. Actually, I literally have been lately. I need to figure out timing for future years. We did 5 rabbits a few weeks ago, then a duck (we skinned it instead of trying to mess with waxing / scalding – the meat was delicious). Then the three roosters last weekend. And I have a backlog of “animals we need to cull soon” – ducks, chickens, and rabbits. I have to do some rabbits later tonight.

Next year, we are not planning on hatching any chicks, so that will help. We won’t have ducks, since we are going to take them all out this year, and we don’t plan on having them ever again since they are ridiculously messy. The rabbits are relatively easy (no feathers to pluck) but it still sucks having to actually kill them. And they are eating a lot, or at least this batch is – I don’t know if it’s the summer heat or what. We were trying to decide whether to keep rabbits at all anymore, and I think that we will, at least one more year to see where we are at (if it’s actually saving us money or not). But I won’t breed them again this year, and I need a different schedule for next year – maybe a batch in spring, one in the fall, or something. Summer seems too hard on the does. We will be retiring Fire (our black Rex doe), because this last litter was only 3 bunnies – I don’t know if something is wrong with her or not, but we will be taking one of the younger bunnies we have and raising it up to be a breeder. I’ll probably sell her to someone as a pet.

I enjoy farming, I just need to figure out a better balance in terms of timing.

Artichokes & Tomatillos – in the U.P.

September 26, 2015September 26, 2015Jen PowellLeave a comment

I have been growing Artichokes this year. I love artichokes – especially whole ones steamed/boiled with Italian dressing, where you pull off the leaves and dip them in butter. Yum. I tried to grow them several years ago living in L.A., but with my work schedule they didn’t get watered enough and they didn’t do so well. I’d read that they can grow as annuals in northern climates, so I planted 9 plants. Two have produced fruit! (Actually a thistle, not a fruit). They are pretty small, but I’m still very excited.

Here's the nicest one of my two that I've gotten. — Here’s the nicest one of my two that I’ve gotten. You can see how small it is – my hands are not very big either.

Here's the second artichoke - it's a little skinny but still will be delicious. — Here’s the second artichoke – it’s a little skinny but still will be delicious.

I noticed that one of my plants is now growing another thistle off the stem where one of the above fruits was cut off.

I think one reason that only two of my nine plants produced fruit was that they ended up getting overcrowded by my nearby tomatillo plants. The tomatillo plants are very large and leggy, almost growing like an indeterminant tomato plant. My tomatillos got fruit this year also. Last year I planted some very late in the year, and didn’t get any fruits. This year I got them in early and I have a decent sized crop – some of them are a little small, but they were ready to pick. Here they are in a pot boiling up for Salsa Verde:

Tomatillos in a big soup pot - getting ready to be made into Salsa Verde. — Tomatillos in a big soup pot – getting ready to be made into Salsa Verde.

I will definitely be growing more artichokes next year (and giving them more space), and more tomatillos.

Harvesting and Freezing

September 1, 2015September 1, 2015Jen PowellLeave a comment

I’ve gotten a lot of vegetables so far this year. I’m still waiting on my tomatoes to ripen, but they are coming along. I’ve been picking suckers and new flowers left and right, and I can see the tomatoes are starting to get a pinkish tint to them. We’ve had 80-90 degree temps this week, and it’s expected to continue – I think that will help with the ripening.

In the winter we were buying a lot of kale, so I grew a bunch of it, and we haven’t used a whole lot yet. So this weekend I decided to pick as much as I could, and freeze it. I left the plants, with new baby leaves in the centers, so I will still have fresh kale until we have snow (it supposedly can survive frost, and gets better after a frost, so we’ll see how that goes). I ended up with a giant basket of kale:

My big basket of kale. This basket is about 2 feet long, 1 foot wide, and just under a foot tall. That's a whole lot of kale. — My big basket of kale. This basket is about 2 feet long, 1 foot wide, and just under a foot tall. That’s a whole lot of kale.

I took the leaves off the stems, blanched them for 2 minutes, and then froze them up. I ended up with about 10 cups of frozen kale.

This year I decided to grow lemon balm. I picked some to dry for tea. It smells so good!

I have had tons of zucchini and yellow squash, and I have frozen a lot of it. I read online that you can get away with not blanching it first, so I am trying that this year. Last year I blanched it, and it worked fine but it was more labor intensive; Also, since it was wet when I put it in freezer bags, I ended up with blocks of frozen zucchini. I don’t know if the slice/freeze method will still produce this result; I’ll have to wait and see.

I also grew acorn squash for the first time this year. I had four plants; most produced only one fruit – I did have two forming on one plant, but when I went out this weekend I realized that one of the fruits was rotting on the vine. The other four seemed ready to pick. The plants still have flowers so it may produce more, I will have to wait and find out.

Acorn squash. Yum! We love eating them roasted with cinnamon sugar and butter.

My corn is getting close to being ready. The silks are turning brown on the cobs. Last year I read that you wait 10 days after the silks turn brown – I checked a few cobs and I think by this next weekend they may be ready. I noticed today though that I must have raccoons or something attacking the corn. It must be raccoons – they are notorious for getting into corn in this area – I found a half eaten cob in my garden on the ground. I hope they give me time to get at least a few ears before they get them all. I’m not sure how to deter them – they climbed my fence. I’ll have to figure out some kind of raccoon deterrent – maybe putting a lip on the top of the fence so they can’t come over the top of the fence.

The harvest season begins

August 11, 2015August 11, 2015Jen PowellLeave a comment

This is my favorite time of year. I love when I can just go to the garden to pick dinner. My vegetable plants are really starting to produce for me. I had some chard and kale already this season, but the last few days my zucchini and yellow squash have started to have large enough squashes to pick. Yum. I have a lot of plants so I know I will eventually be overrun.

This year I have 5 zucchini, 2 yellow squash, and I think 4 acorn squash plants. Last year I had 3 or 4 zucchini plants, and by mid September I was very tired of zucchini. I froze what we had left and didn’t eat any for a couple months. They were very delicious in the middle of winter when I wasn’t sick of zucchini any more. This year I received a pressure canner for my birthday, so I’m planning on using that to can a lot of our harvest. I also plan on freezing some things.

I have gotten some pea pods, but not enough to do more than just eat the peas straight out of the pods. My son has been enjoying that. I worried my peas wouldn’t like the heat we’ve been having but they are doing well. Next year I will have to have more plants.

My beans have been producing well. I actually got enough from my first harvesting of them to use for a side dish for tonight’s dinner:

I started with some green bean plants, but they didn’t do very well at first. I wanted more plants, so I bought a packet of purple beans. They really took off, and I’ve been getting more purple beans so far than green. The green plants are growing taller than the purple, and I can tell they are going to produce well – there are a lot of flowers and baby beans growing along the vine where they’ve climbed up my string support system. They are even climbing one of my sunflowers. Last year I had a few bean plants, but I never got enough beans at one time to cook on their own; it was always just enough to cook up with something else. I’m hoping to can or freeze some this year – hopefully I have enough to do that.

I have a lot of green tomatoes forming. I’m growing three varieties of indeterminate tomatoes, and the plants are going crazy. I have been consistently pulling off suckers from the plants, and now because there are so many baby tomatoes, I’m pulling off extra flowers too, in an effort to let the forming tomatoes get bigger faster, and possibly ripen on the vine. I worry that they may take too long if I don’t do that – last year I had to let my tomatoes ripen in the house. Our growing season isn’t very long – we may get frost by mid September.

It’s an exciting time of year.