flowers – My tiny u.p. farm

A Nice Day in April…

April 19, 2019Jen Powell1 Comment

Today was a beautiful day. We had temps in at least the 50s, and it was sunny. The snow is melting, and I planted a new bed full of perennial vegetables. Here are some pictures from this nice spring day:

snow yard 1 — Here you can see our yard is on it’s way to being snow-free. It’s taking awhile. This picture is taken from outside of our dog fence, near the garage. On the left you can kind of see my garden, which is still half covered. The garlic bed started to peak out of the snow today, and that was the deepest part of the snow in the actual garden.

snow yard 2 — Here is the house with some snow around it – we have a metal roof so the snow falls around the house and those snowbanks always take longer to melt.

chicken path — Here is our chicken-coop path currently. It’s a low, muddy mess. Luckily we have muck boots to wear when we go to the chicken coop. The ducks love this area – they dabble their bills in the puddles when they pass though. (When the snow is all melted and the ground dries out, the “path” actually disappears, but it’s been a pathway for the last several months).

Here is a new bed I’m creating near the garage for some perennial flowers and vegetables – I originally planned for just sunchokes and crosnes in this area but I think I will put some milkweeds and gogi berries as well since there is enough room. This is a good spot in case the sunchokes go a little invasive, as I’ve heard they can. This area is out of the way, just grassy, and it could use some nice flowers – sunchokes are supposed to have yellow flowers and be nice and tall. I set this up last weekend, and I thought I would have a week or so for the plastic to kill the grass, but I did not; the sunchokes and crosnes arrived sooner than I thought they would.

Here are the sunchokes – they arrived the other day. I got two kinds, a red (on the left) and white fuseau, on the right. I got three tubers of each kind.

crosnes — Here are Crosnes (aka Chinese Artichokes). These are pretty small but they are supposed to be delicious, and a very easy to grow perennial. I read that you should cut the plants before they flower in order to get tubers of decent size though, so I plan on doing that. I ordered 6 tubers – I think I actually received 8 but some were very small.

planted bed — Here is the sunchoke and crosnes portion of the bed planted. I left the rest of the bed with the plastic on it so it can continue to cook in the sun for awhile. I laid fencing over the bed to keep chickens out – it’s very sandy and they would love to make this into a dust bath area. I will fence it soon and then will be able to take this cover off.

I went wandering the woods and yard a bit today – I found some moss that had greened up already – here is a bug’s eye view of the moss.

white crocus — We have crocuses blooming! Here are some white flowers.

Here are some purple crocus. We have daffodil leaves emerging too.

Late Summer Photos

August 29, 2018April 29, 2019Jen Powell2 Comments

There has been a lot going on this August, and the garden is still growing well. We have tomatoes but none are ripe yet. We have had an overabundance of cucumbers and starting to have a ton of summer squash. Here are some cool pictures of our farm from this past month:

My onion crop! We got 103 yellow onions. I also planted some red onions late in the season, I am not sure if those will be ready this year or if we’ll have to wait till spring. This is my second time growing onions from sets, and the best harvest I’ve had. Last year the chickens kept dust bathing in the onion patch – this year the onions were not where the chickens could go.

I got a good garlic harvest too – I think there were a couple that didn’t grow though; I planted around 40 cloves from last year’s harvest, which grew into 36 bulbs, and these were mostly pretty large sized. I am saving a couple of bulbs for replanting, and also ordered some more garlic – a couple of Porcelain strains to try. Those have really large cloves – like 4-6 per bulb on average, so that will be exciting. I ordered my bulbs from Filaree farm. (filareefarm.com)

My tomato and squash jungle. I will be cutting the tomatoes back soon to let things ripen up. They don’t get a lot of sun in this spot except in the afternoon, so I think that is holding them back a bit – these were all early (60-65 day) strains, but they are just sitting green currently. Some large tomatoes though!

squash and tomato garden — Here is another view of the squash and tomato bed. You can tell the sunnier part of the garden (toward the cars) since the plants are a bit taller there.

Here you can see the big beefsteak tomatoes sitting on the plant, in the center of this photo.

back sunflowers — Sunflowers at the back of the house.

sunflower 1 — Here is our tallest sunflower, I’m guessing this one is about 10 feet or so – it towers at least 4 feet over my head.

tall sunflower — A better view of the tallest sunflower plant. This is a rogue that grew in the middle of my garden. Sometimes those seem to grow better than the ones I actually planted. Although I have a few very tiny ones that grew from the birds dropping seed in my yard. Those are cute and about a foot tall.

sunflower and bee — A bee hanging out on a sunflower. We have a lot of native bees here – I used to want to get hives for honey, but I’ve been rethinking it the last year or so – I’ve been trying to do more to support the native bee species we have around here.

bees and flowers — Here are three sunflowers, each with a bee. The bees seem to really like to hang out on these. I think they get a “sunflower coma” – like a baby would get a “milk coma” if that makes sense – like their bellies are full and they are tired so they take naps on the flowers.

Here are two bees napping on a coneflower. The bees are cute.

Early Fall Gardening

October 9, 2017Jen PowellLeave a comment

We’ve been harvesting tomatoes left and right. We’ve gotten a little bit of zucchini. It’s funny how you plan for the year and things just grow how they want, with no regard for your planning. Last year I was overrun with zucchini and yellow squash, so this year I grew one plant of each. They have not done well, so I’ve gotten 2 zucchini and it’s already October. With the amounts of rain we had this year (and it’s not done) the garden has been a little hit or miss for some things. Here are some newer pics of our garden:

087 — Some very tiny cherry tomatoes. These are very tasty, and super prolific. I even had some sprout from last year’s lost broken tomatoes (I call them rogue tomato plants).

089 — Some of our purple tomatoes. I thought these were Black Krim, but as I had others ripen I think these darker ones are actually blue beauty. I remembered Black Krim having a lot of green and these don’t.

091 — The largest pumpkin I’ve grown, shown between my feet. These were supposed to be pie pumpkins. This is more jack-o-lantern size.

082 — A nice sunny sunflower. This grew in my yard (not in the actual garden bed) , in an area that didn’t get mowed this year. The chickens didn’t eat it before it had a chance to grow either, so that was lucky. I think the deer have stayed clear of my yard with all the dog and chicken activity.

085 — The ducks enjoying a nice day in the back yard.

094 — Here is our garden at the end of September.

097 — Another view of the garden, from the porch.

001 — Another large pumpkin. This one was hanging from our fence but I picked it so it could finish ripening on the porch. I like how the leaves look still attached here.

002 — Downey checking out the porch. There are other pumpkins behind him.

012 — A view from inside the garden in early October.

013 — We finally are getting some cauliflower heads! I had given up, but then a few days ago I saw a white head. I tied the leaves up on the plant, like you’re supposed to. A day later I found another of my plants has a head, so I did the same thing. This is my first year growing it.

024 — Here are the rest of the tomatoes. We are supposed to get down into the 30s tonight, so I got spooked and figured I’d rather bring the large ones in. It was a little dark when I picked them, so there may be others out there. These will ripen on the table. There are still a ton of cherry tomatoes outside.

bee — Another Bee on a bright red sunflower.

butterfly 2 — A butterfly on our zinnias. There has been a lot of bee and butterfly activity on all the flowers lately – I think some are getting ready to migrate somewhere, or store up food for winter.

The garden is starting to wind down a bit. We still have a lot of stuff to harvest, but most of it will be ok if we get frost. Carrots and beets are still getting larger, and I have some Kale to pick. We also have peas and beans, but I’m letting those dry on the vines. I’m hoping I get enough peas to make a little bit of pea soup. I usually don’t let them go that long (they are so yummy picked earlier) but I want to give it a try.

Late Summer around the farm

September 4, 2017Jen PowellLeave a comment

We’ve been up to a lot this last month – it still just keeps raining way too much, so everything tends to be sopping wet. Some veggies are finally starting to produce/ripen. I’m hoping the rains don’t hurt the harvest – I’m worried about tomatoes splitting. Oh, and we’ve also already had frost warnings – some areas near me actually had frost a week or so ago, but we lucked out at the house and didn’t get any frost. Here are some pics from the last few weeks:

late august — The garden mid-August. You can see the soaked muddy ground here.

sopping wet garden — Another pic from mid august.

toad — We found a visitor in the garden. He was huge! I wish the picture had turned out less fuzzy.

Here are the chickens coming to see if we brought them any treats.

A bubble – my son got a bubble wand from a birthday party, and we took some photos.

Here is about half of the potato harvest. We harvested the last 4 (out of 8 or 9) bags. We really didn’t get a lot – I will try a different method next year (and keep the plants away from the chickens) – the food bags didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I think we planted more seed potatoes, weight-wise, than we harvested.

fuzzy raspberries — A fuzzy picture of our raspberries. I put them in a couple years back, and finally got a decent crop, BUT they don’t taste like raspberries. One berry had a hint of raspberry flavor. I’ve tried letting them ripen more but those just rotted, so it’s not that they’re not ripe enough. I’ll have to research this variety more. They are good, just not what I want them to taste like.

cherry tomatos — Our first ripened tomatoes of the season, on one of the cherry tomato plants.

early girl — Early Girl tomatoes – these are the next to ripen – this pic is from a few days ago but I noticed one is a little pink today.

black krim — Black Krim tomatoes. These will get red on the bottom when ripe. They keep this nice dark color on top.

blue beauty — Blue beauty tomatoes. They are more of a purple tomato when ripe.

A question mark made from potatoes – my husband set these up, using this silly shaped one we got.

A large pumpkin waiting to ripen. It’s supposed to be an 8″ pie pumpkin variety, but this one is a bit larger than that.

small pumpkin — Here is a smaller pumpkin.

train depot — We sold some hens today – our 3 year olds and a two-year old. We’re trying to bring our food bill down for the coming winter. Here the ladies are waiting for their ride this morning. We now have 22 chickens (20 hens and 2 roosters). And 3 ducks.

early sept sunflowers — I took this really nice picture tonight – The sunflowers have some really nice flame colors.

Thanks for checking out our late summer pictures. Hopefully this rain will let up a bit and we’ll have a nice fall harvest.

Zinnias and Garlic!

July 31, 2017Jen PowellLeave a comment

I harvested some wonderful garlic tonight. Here are some pics of the harvest, and of the plethora of flowers in my garden.

garlic 2 — This is the second time I’ve grown garlic – last time I just bought organic garlic at the grocery store. This time I ordered actual garlic bulbs. It made a big difference.

calendula — Some Calendula and nasturtiums. The flowers I planted in the garden really look nice this year.

melons — I’ve de-purslaned the melon area – there is still some growing in between the tomatoes, and I’m sure I haven’t seen the last of it here, but it looks a lot better.

sunflower top — Here is a sunflower head. This was just under my head level, so I’m sure it will get a lot taller before this flower finishes forming.

herbs and stuff — Some herbs and cauliflower.

marigold — Marigolds! I love these, but I’m really starting to enjoy my zinnias…

flowrs and greens — Here is a nice shot of some of the greens and flowers on one side of the garden. I’m really happy with the flowers this year.

greens and flowers — Another shot showing more flowers.

A walk around the farm …

June 17, 2017June 17, 2017Jen PowellLeave a comment

I took a walk around the property yesterday to see what flowers are blooming. I took some pictures of what I found, and of some other features on our property. I also put in some new trees today! I hope you enjoy the photos:

purple flower — These are in our yard – My mom planted them years ago, and has told me before what they are. I can’t remember the name though. These are some of my favorite flowers that come out each year. They’re like little purple fireworks.

Daisy — Here is a daisy. These grow all over the place.

Lupines — Here are some lupines. We brought a couple over to our yard from another yard years and years ago, and it must have been that a lot of other people did too. These grow everywhere now between our house and town (about 15 miles away).

Thimble Berry Flower — Here is a Thimble Berry flower. I have seen a lot (and large) flowers this year, so I’m wondering if we’re going to have a good crop. The plants are wild and grow across the street. I’ve tried to transplant them to our yard but they have not taken. Thimble Berries are delicious.

The unused plot — Here is the back view of our Across-The-street part of our property. When I was a child, my parents had goats fenced in here, but now I call it the “fern Jungle” – I’d like to reclaim it at some point, and put some more gardens and beehives in.

The hall — Here is a better view of the “hall” – our old building. It’s just an old storage building that is starting to fall in. We are planning on someday taking it down.

the homestead — A view of our house from across the street. Our property is on both sides of the road.

044 — And here are our new trees! We pulled them from across the street today. Some were growing behind the hall in the woods, and a few were growing right next to the hall. They look a little sparse but I think with more room they may grow better.

043 — There are 6 trees – a few are spruce, and there are two that I think are Eastern Hemlock.

Hollyhocks

August 1, 2016July 30, 2016Jen Powell3 Comments

My parents planted hollyhocks several years ago, and they keep coming back every year. And each year before they bloom, I forget that they aren’t all the same color, until they bloom. They are beautiful. Here are some pictures:

hollyhocks 1 — Here are the hollyhocks – different shades of pinks and purples

hollyhocks 3 — They are all in the corner outside our shed and bathrom windows

July Flowers

July 22, 2015July 22, 2015Jen PowellLeave a comment

A lot of things in our yard are in bloom right now – we have many different wildflowers, and I planted some flowers in the garden that are currently in bloom. Here is a tour of the flowers in our yard this month: