A Great Farming Blog

Hey y'all! I know it's been a while since I've posted, but I've been having computer issues and I haven't made it to the Apple store yet. :/

In the meantime, I thought I'd post a link to one of our favorite farming blogs: Hearth to Harvest

The author of Hearth to Harvest is a friend who is an experienced farmer, and she has a wealth of information to share. She and her family run River Cottage Farm. They are committed to producing healthy, local food. So, check it out. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

-Tricia Ann

Dare To Be Different!

Spreading The Word - Scotland

You should know your local farmer...even in the U.K.! My friend sent these to me after recently visiting England and Scotland. Thank you!

Stirling Bridge in Scotland

Westminster Abbey in London, England.

So, where has your "Who's Your Farmer?" shirt been?

-Tricia Ann

Spreading The Word - Hopedale, Illinois

Thanks to the E. family for sending me this picture. This little guy is spreading the local food message too!

-Tricia Ann

Spreading The Word - The Gulf of Mexico

Spreading the local food message across the globe! Photo credit goes to Olivia.

-Tricia Ann

Into the Light

I was flipping through the latest issue of Organic Gardening Magazine one day last week, when I happened upon an article about garden photography. It suggested shooting into the sunlight early in the morning. I had never thought of this, and couldn't wait to try it. So yesterday morning while I was picking lettuce and green onions, I kept an eye on the sun, waiting for just the right time. Just as I saw it peeking over the trees, I grabbed my camera and started shooting. I discovered pretty quickly that I needed to switch to manual mode because the photos were under-exposed. The result? Some of the best garden shots I've ever taken! Here are just a few. I may post more later, if I have time.

I'm so happy that my sunflowers are finally blooming!

And lest I bore you with garden photographs, here are some people.

Jacob is saying, "If I were at a Mexican concert, I'd yell, 'Pollo Para No Dinero!'"

Speaking a little Spanish is sometimes worse than speaking none. Can any of y'all guess what he meant? :D

It was so funny that we laughed about it all morning.

Okay, so I need to work on self-portraiture now. ;)

-Tricia Ann

Drought and Recent Photos

As y'all can see by our lack of posts, we've been swamped with garden work lately. In addition to all the harvesting, weeding, fertilizing, and making deliveries, it has been bone dry around here, so the garden has needed lots of irrigation. The problem is that our well has gone from 11 gallons-per-minute to 1 gallon-per-minute. So, we haven't had enough water to irrigate. All the plants have been getting very wilty, and we haven't been able to plant anything. Dad has been working out a solution. He got a pump and everything we need to get water from the creek up the hill to the garden. He and Jacob began putting it all together yesterday, but it's not done yet. In the meantime, we've been fervently praying for rain, and this morning the Lord is pouring the rain down on us! We're so thankful.

Here are some pictures I've taken recently. Hopefully, I can get some more up soon.

The cherry tomatoes are starting to come in! This is a mix of Sungold and Lemon Drop. All you CSA members should be getting these pretty soon.

Red trucks just make awesome pictures. I think so anyway. Jacob has listed MJ on Craigslist. :( I'll be so sad when he sells her.

We dug up a few potatoes to see how they were coming along. I love growing these...they're so pretty. We have Sangre (red), Purple Viking, and Nicola (white) in this picture.

And lastly, Jacob bought me a pair of white aviator shades. :)

Our New Farm Intern Program

Meet Rambo and Pedro.

Okay, so maybe the heat's been a little too much for us today. ;)

The Storm Rolls In...

King Corn

Jacob has posted a review of the movie King Corn on his blog, Music City Moo Dude. He also posted some photos from his Alabama trip. Check it out... Jacob's a very entertaining writer.

Hoss-Training and CSA

Hoss is really sweet, and I don't think he would ever hurt a chicken on purpose, but he plays roughly, and might injure one accidentally. So, Jacob and I have been trying to train him to be very gentle with them. I'm not sure he gets it completely, but he's improving steadily. Mom took some pictures of one of our training sessions.

Our CSA begins tomorrow! It rained all morning, so we had to harvest all the veggies this afternoon. Here's what this week's basket looks like:

'Rudolf' radishes

-Tricia Ann

Farm News

With all the rain we've been getting, the garden is growing by leaps and bounds. We've been planting like crazy around here - tomatoes, watermelons, squash, cucumbers, and lots of other good stuff, including a gazillion heads of lettuce. For those of you wondering how many "a gazillion" is, it is approximately 2000. Yeah, that sounds like a lot, even to me!

We are 10 days and counting from the beginning of our CSA. Here's a picture of part of the garden.

Can you guess what Jacob did on Saturday?

Yep. He played paintball with some of his buddies. They were very nice to let me take some pictures.

In other news, we got all the siding on our house! A big thank you to all the people who helped us finish up this project.

As you can see, the house is a nice monotone gray now.

Jacob is heading down to Alabama to help with clean-up from the tornadoes. He and two of his friends are leaving at 4:00 tomorrow morning. I'm sure he'd appreciate your prayers for safe travel and that he would be a blessing to the families he is going to be helping.

-Tricia Ann

Deluge 2011

Well, it's time for the annual flood post! It all started on Monday when it began to rain. It rained, and rained, and rained; through Tuesday and Wednesday. On Wednesday night, it was still raining, and the National Weather Service issued several tornado warnings for Hickman County. So, we and our next-door neighbors (who don't have a basement) headed for shelter in the basement of our house. Since the house isn't finished yet, the basement serves as a lumber storage area. So, when you go down there, you have a great variety of seating choices - 2x4's, 2x6's, 2x8's, or 2x12's. Thankfully our stay in the basement was uneventful, and when the storm was over, we all went to bed.

Thursday morning, I awoke to the sound of water running. It wasn't raining, but it sounded like we had a nearby waterfall. When Jacob came in from doing his chores, he said that there was water running over the driveway and that Beaverdam Creek was rising. Needless to say, we began preparing for flooding immediately. With the help of some friends, we moved the cows across the road and made sure that everything that would float was on high ground. By that time, it was raining again. Two of Jacob's friends stuck around to help him pull up some temporary fencing. It was made of t-posts and polywire, and it was running right through a low spot in our pasture where the creek-overflow was gushing through. They had to wade through the water, which was about 3 feet deep, to roll up the polywire. I just stood in the rain and watched, wishing I had my camera.

After making sure all the neighbors were prepared for high water, we came in and dried off. We were praying that the Lord would protect Jacob's fence from damage. It rained awhile longer, then finally stopped. The water never got very high, and soon began subsiding. Jacob checked the fence this morning, and there was NO damage! All the water is gone, except for a smallish lake close to the creek. The power didn't even go out. It was a very small flood, compared to the ones of the past two years. The Lord protected us and our property, and we are very thankful.

Here we are in the basement with the neighbors at 11:00 p.m.

This is the water rushing across the driveway.

There was enough water for Jacob to turn photographer. He's shooting with my old camera that he inherited.

Gimli went through the water once, but he refused to come back. He jumped on the four-wheeler as if he was saying, "Take me back across, Jacob!"

This is looking down Sulphur Creek Road, close to our barn.

Jacob, playing in the road

Hoss had the time of his life. He likes floods.

Yesterday evening, I jumped up from the computer, where I was writing an essay. I ran to get my camera, and took this picture. The sky looked very strange and the setting sun was lighting up those trees at the edge of the pasture.

Now we're praying for some dry days so that the ground will dry out so we can get some much-needed planting done.

You can read about last year's flood post here. And the flood from the year before that here.

-Tricia Ann

Springtime!

It's getting really green around here, and I'm so glad! It's been dismally gray all winter long. Being from Georgia, where there are plenty of evergreen pines, I'm not accustomed to the bleak Tennessee winter landscape.

I love dogwoods!

I had the prettiest stand of crimson clover, and I couldn't wait until it bloomed. I was so disappointed when I realized that we would have to till it under before the flowers appeared, that Daddy left a little patch for me. Isn't he nice? They started to bloom this week.

Jacob's baby chicks

We've planted almost an acre already.

Here are some lettuce and kale transplants.

We're finally able to harvest our asparagus this year. It's beautiful and delicious.

The plants in the garden are all doing well and growing steadily.

-Tricia Ann

This and That

I just can't get this blog to look the way I want it to. I designed a nice new theme in Photoshop that was brown and blue. One Friday night, I decided to change out the header and the background really quick. Well, my "really quick" turned into 2 hours of wrestling with it. I finally just left it and went to bed because I had to get up early the next morning to go to the farmer's market. One afternoon last week, I tried again. After working on it two more hours, I got the header right, but still couldn't get the background up correctly. So, I gave up. I'm beginning to despise Blogger for causing so much frustration. Who knows, though...It might've just been too much airspace between the ears of this blonde user. ;) Anyway, I'm going to leave it like this for awhile.

I finally have pictures of the completed timber-frame building. I took these last Saturday when we began staining it. We've almost finished staining now, and it looks really nice.

Jacob always gets elected to perform the high-up tasks.

We've also started putting siding on the house. I think it's almost halfway done. Hopefully, we'll get the rest up in the next couple weeks. The guys are doing a fantastic job. The house is looking more "homey" now, as Mom says.

Some of our wonderful friends have come to help. It really moves faster with a three-man crew - one cutting and two nailing.

-Tricia Ann