New pictures, and first garden dinner!
Posted by Lauren on 31 May 2008 at 11:57 am | Tagged as: chickens, dropstone farms, farm updates, pictures, spring
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!
Hi guys. I just found your site today while reading Laura’s blog (not so) Urban Hennery. I’ve been reading hers very regularly for a while and clicked over to yours. Very cool! I love what you’re doing there.
I had a suggestion on the bamboo thing. I read an article a while back where a person was interviewing an older asian woman and asked how she managed to keep such clean edges on her bamboo patches. The answer? Eat them. Ever bought bamboo shoots from the store for that fancy stir-fry? Maybe you could can them up, or even sut them fresh and sell them. Just possibilities.
I’ll be checking back.
Namaste
P~
You know, I wondered about that, as I have always found the shoots to be delicious. But I wondered if they would need to be preserved in some way? I’ve only ever had them from the can, never fresh. I suppose I should research it.
We ended up getting some clumping bamboo, which is not supposed to spread, but I have mixed feelings about that because I *want* it to spread somewhat, you know, so I can harvest and use the tall canes. Having the one plant doesn’t prevent us from getting more, though, I guess!