I love Thursdays because ‘Around The Farm’ posts (with Sara of Farmama) are so fun!
I’m so excited about the garden right now and feel so inspired and energetic! There is so much that Jeff and I want to do and we are loving the movement and action of summer.
Bright color is bursting forth everywhere. I love bright colors!
The week started off with a rambunctious goat named Fennel who loved to break into the milking room and make a mess. What a climber, that one!
It started out with goats eating hay in the morning light. (But keep reading and you will see that it gets much better than hay-eating, oh yes!)
What happened in our garden this past week? A whole lotta mulching! Jeff used the compost from cleaning out the chicken coop last winter. He’s been turning it and getting it all perfect for the garden. It is incredible fertilizer and mulch to help the plants stay cool on hot days.
More mulching! Around the lettuce. (This is some lettuce the ducks didn’t get, but I’m happy to say the plants they ate are growing back!)
It feels so good to be harvesting from the garden. My gratitude and reverence for good food deepens more over time. I love cooking in the kitchen and then heading out to the garden to harvest whenever we need something. We harvested lettuce. We harvested collards. We harvested kale. We ate more collards and more kale and more collards… you get the idea, we love our greens!
In the greenhouse the sunflowers are popping up! We are still waiting for the runner beans to. The squash is getting big in there and wants to go in the ground soon. We picked out a spot in the garden where we are going to build a new, large raised bed for planting squash and we’re really excited about it!
Remember those little honeysuckle buds from last week? Look how big they are now! Close to blooming!!
There are little tiny daisies growing in the grass like a ground cover and then there are tall daisies in the garden. Daisies make me think of summer.
As you can see from this leaf curl on our apple tree out back, our fruit trees are not that happy this year even though Jeff sprayed them many times with natural neem oil to discourage fungus. The plum tree is the happiest of them all. There are two apple trees, one plum tree, one asian pear tree, and one peach tree. They all need a really good pruning! I’m itching to prune them right now, but it’s the wrong time of year and I need to be patient. Besides pruning, they need to be fertilized, regularly sprayed with neem oil, and wrapped around the bottom to protect them from bugs. (I also read planting nasturtiums beneath apple trees is good to prevent bugs, so want to learn more about companion planting. Any natural fruit tree tips you have to share would be appreciated!)
And speaking of unhappy fruit trees, we had two cherry trees planted in the woods. At one point (long ago) they actually got sunlight, but haven’t for a long time and we’ve never got any fruit off of them. We left them growing regardless, but we just discovered that they got infested with bugs and took that as a sign that it was time to cut them down (we don’t want it to spread). We cut one down, then the chainsaw broke. Jeff tinkered around with it and fixed it (I love how he does that!) so we will be cutting the other one down soon. All of the cherry wood will be used to make things. We’ll make buttons with the branches and Jeff has always wanted to carve some cherry wood so he is excited to have plenty to work with.
Okay, so now onto a very exciting accomplishment! You know those fence sections I mentioned last week? Well, we put three of them along the back garden fence line. That’s the area where a bear came into our garden last summer (the fence needed some major work!) Having this fence along the back side makes it so the goats can graze around the perimeter and keep the invasive species (blackberries and ivy) somewhat under control. After this, we had a few other areas to goat-proof before we could let them free range again.
We wanted to move this grape plant (that Jeff has had for a long time) to a sunnier spot, but had to delay that big project for another time. Instead we put some bamboo stakes and a piece of fencing around it to keep it protected from goats until we can move it. Jeff transplanted some other (easier to move) plants that he didn’t want them to eat and we put up a few quick-fix fencing…. and then….
The goats were free ranging again! No more eating that dry hay… they were eating succulent fresh greens! Here they are working on some hardcore blackberries.
This picture of Bree cracks me up! They make such funny faces when they eat, especially when eating blackberries because they have to be more careful.
They also have to be flexible and move their head around in creative ways- like this!
I find sturdy sticks and push down the tall blackberries that they have a hard time reaching.
Yes, I love harvesting blackberries to eat, but I’d really rather have them not growing at our place because they take over with spiky gnarly-ness, and I’d rather harvest them somewhere else. So I was happy to see Faun eating these blackberry flowers to keep them from spreading!
And there’s Fennel climbing up on her mom to get at something good to eat that’s out of her reach.
What a cutie!
We are so very happy to have the goats free ranging again! They keep the perimeter of the whole yard and garden all nice and trim.
Sweetie (some say she resembles a mop) likes to watch the goats eat and likes to mimic them. She thought she was a goat when she was a puppy.
This old wagon wheel by the front garden gate came from our friend and neighbor. We are planning on attaching it to the ceiling in the kitchen to hang pots from, but in the meantime I think it looks rather nice sitting there.
Oh how I heart summer!
What growing things have you been enjoying?
Thank you! 🙂
I enjoyed viewing the gorgeous pictures of your farm, garden, and “babies”(animals). These pics helped me celebrate the beginning of summer. Love them
It’s amazing how they can eat blackberries!!
Lindsay- I looked at your link! Thanks for sharing, so beautiful!
Your photos are absolutely beautiful. Thanks for sharing your day with us!
You can see our “Around the Farm” here – http://trinityacres.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/silver-bells-and-cockle-shells/
Oh those goats! How do they eat that stuff? Amazing!!
Your photos look so summery at the moment, our garden is rather slow, but promising….