Dropstone Farms

I finally got a new Eye-Fi card, which is a super handy thing in that it lets me skip the exact steps where I always get hung up when taking and uploading photos. Getting them from the card to the computer and then to the internet is hard for me for whatever reason. The card, though, is camera storage card and ALSO a wireless card, so when it’s on its home network, it sends them automatically to my computer and to Flickr! Which is incredibly convenient. So, I hope to have more pictures available more quickly, in the future.

I’ll not put too many here, but you can click over to my Flickr to see everything that’s new; don’t forget to click to the next page (or two; I took a lot of pictures). Or you can scroll down to the bottom of the “Little farm — getting started” photoset.

We harvested our first meal ingredient from the garden. Swiss chard risotto for dinner!

The little broccoli starts we bought at the market about five weeks ago are starting to make little broccoli sprouts.

We made a hoophouse of PVC and clear plastic, and the tomatoes, peppers, and basils are happily growing in their little warm house. I hope this will help ensure we have a better tomato harvest that last year — it rained all summer, yeah, but still, we only got like four tomatoes, and we would have done a lot better with some sort of home for them.

This is most of the garden, looking South. Directly in front is the cabbage-like-things section, with some cabbages and some brussels sprouts and also some cauliflower and broccoli. On the trellis is 2 kinds of beans and 2 kinds of peas, with greens (lettuce, arugula, mustard greens, kale, chard) planted in between so they will be shaded and not bolt. Potatoes are to the right of the trellis. The hoophouses have the hot plants (tomatoes, peppers, basil). Not pictured: carrots; beets; squashes; onions; corn; more beans; fava beans; cucumbers; watermelons.

The only reason Little Red stayed up there long enough to let me take pictures is that she doesn’t realize she can fly down. She was very skeptical of being up so high.

Chores this weekend include figuring out how to keep bamboo from spreading, so we can plant some to use for trellises, hoophouses, etc. next year, and thinking about building chicken tractor(s) and a solar food dryer. AND blogging more. I have a book review to write!

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It was FREAKING HOT here today. I didn’t get around to unpacking the thermometer we bought today until about 6pm, at which point the thermometer still read 80°. Too hot for Laurens!

Every time we go to the farmers’ market, I come home with more starts. I think Garth is becoming frustrated with this, but they always look so healthy and happy and delicious! First it was the broccoli, then like twelve cauliflower (I didn’t realize there were 4 plants to a pot; I should have looked more closely), and today it was two containers of 10-15 leeks each, plus one container with four thriving little fava bean plants. I have only ever cooked fava beans once, when they came in our veggie box and my brother- and sister-in-law Cyrus and Anna were out to visit, and Anna taught me how to peel and cook (and peel again) them. So I am excited about those. It doesn’t sound like we’ll get a whole lot of beans from just a few plants, but all the same, post recipes if you’ve got ‘em.

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So, whilst cruising craigslist for livestock, I came across the following ad for a Purebred Delaware Rooster. Being me , I misread the ad, first interpreting it as an ad for a “Self-propelled Delaware Rooster” and the for a “Purebred, Self-aware Rooster.” It could just be the Battlestar Galactica talking, but I do *not* need self-aware livestock.

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I got dropped off at the market today, fortuitously!
Co-workers were going downtown to see Iron Man (I was jealous but too busy to attend) and they pointed out at 5:45 that if they drove me to the ferry, they wouldn’t have to pay for the 15 minutes of parking they would owe if they instead parked at 5:45.

So I was deposited at the market, which is always a good deal, even when the market is closed … which it turned out not to be! I was lured in by the buckets of tulips, and found that the tulip vendor was still open, and also found that the pre-assembled bouquets were $4 each, instead of the usual $10. Score two tulip bouquets for Lauren!
The next surprisingly-open place was my favorite veggie stand, Sosio’s, who had local asparagus and spring onions. Plus peaches, which smelled so good I couldn’t resist getting one ripe enough to eat tomorrow. (I have found it to be very valuable to tell the produce chooser when you will be eating your fruits; it helps her to pick good ripenesses, such that you have one good fruit for juicy eating tonight, and one for each of you for lunch tomorrow, and more for later this week … when left to my own devices, I get all the ripest ones and most start to go bad before I can eat them.)

Dinner, then, was grilled balsamic-and-olive-oil soaked spring onions and fresh asparagus, with steak from our pals at Skagit River Ranch. I am so happy about grilling season, but am freaking THRILLED about asparagus season, and the reminder that it is just the beginning of delicious food time.

Man, food is awesome.

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I came home from work early today and put in the ground one caribe potato, three all blues and five swedish peanuts. They went in the ground in a row 18″ apart with ~4 feet^3 of compost and a quart of complete organic fertillizer (COF).

Half of the potatoes I planted in the second week of April are sticking tiny little vines out of the ground. They are very cute. I love potatoes.

We also have approximately 40′ of hoop houses as of Monday as well. They’re so cheap and easy I’ll need to write a post about them at some point.

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It turns out that a garden cart is significantly less than $400 when purchased directly from the factory. Who knew?

The decision was spurred by an anecdote from a friend whose father passed away from a heart attack that resulted from poor health and inactivity after he injured his neck and back carrying a 50# bag of chicken feed. I reflected on the fact that I am no longer twenty and decided that saving my back is something I should prioritize. But I still want the shiny, shiny iPhone.

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This is for archival purposes; sorry for the delay, the listification, and the brevity; more posts, which I hope will be more interesting, coming soon.

All row feet measurements are approximate.

• 14 feet of Mokum carrots
• 10 feet of Merida carrots
• 8 feet of beets
• 16 cauliflower starts from Persephone Farms
• 3 Brussels sprouts plants
• 12 feet of Guardsman onions
• 12 feet of Tropeana Lunga torpedo onions
• 3 newspaper pots full of leek starts
• 9 feet of cabbages
• 3 edamame seeds
• 7 Etna (cranberry beans) seeds
• 9 green bush beans
• 10 feet of green pole beans
• 10 feet of Scarlet Emperor pole beans
• Scattered seeds for: mustard greens; Simpson loose-leaf lettuce; Capistrano romaine lettuce; Sylvetta arugula.

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