After milking Betty this morning… wandering up the hill past the jujubes, pears and pomegranates…. and saying hello to the still bleary eyed kiddos it was time venture back out to vent the high tunnel.  It was still dark but the black of the night was giving way to gray dawn of 6:30 am light.  I headed back down the hill, past the barn housing the still sleeping boys (praline, bopper and buccaneer) rounded the corner of a large sweetgum tree and was met by a caterpillar hanging from a silken thread.  In the light of my headlamp I stopped and observed him (or her) as the caterpillar hung suspended in mid-air.  I assume this very innovative creature was waiting for an ever so slight puff of morning wind to ride to some new batch of tasty foliage.  It hung there on its almost invisible string tied off to some branch overhead and I couldn’t help but marvel at its patience.  How long had he (or she) been hanging there?  What if there is no wind today?  I mused on this subject for a small amount of time and decided I needed to get done with my task and get back to house to help Harmony with the seemingly endless task of every day morning chores.  I left the hanging caterpillar and continued on to the high tunnel, opened up the first side and was greeted by the amazing rush of inside air.  The air from the high tunnel (after being closed up all night) is a sensuous humid mixture of plant, decaying material, soil and warmth.  I imagined the strawberry plants breathing a sigh of relief in being alleviated from the warm humid air and moved over to vent the other side of the high tunnel.  After this brief respite from the full day ahead I wandered back up the hill, back past the jujubes, pears and pomegranates and into the house to snuggle on the babies before heading out to school and work.

This brief but welcome time of reflection refreshes in my mind every day that farming/gardening is not some task that we take on to produce food.  It is a cultivation of an entire ecosystem.  An ecosystem which hopefully will be better off when I am no longer a part of it.

In our crazy and hectic lives, how often do we stop and observe that caterpillar so patiently hanging from its silken thread or even just to smell the roses or as Langston Hughes so brilliantly wrote…….”Let the rain kiss us!”

Chickens on the farm!! Finally!!  :) 

Dylan's dad was in town a few weeks ago and built a chicken coop while he was here.  Pretty awesome, actually.  The coop is moveable and can hold up to 50 laying hens.  We started with 25 "assorted red", hoping that most of them are Rhode Island Reds.  Currently, they are in the farm room in a brooder and doing great!! They are all healthy, happy little chicks and will be ready for the coop before we know it.  The kids have really enjoyed caring for them.  The feed them bugs and grass and vegetable scraps....and scare the chicks to death in the process.  They are slowly getting used to each other. 

We are VERY EXCITED to have eggs at some point!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Can't wait. 


-Harmony

It seems like forever since I sat down to write!!  And it probably has been!  The very few winter months we have are a good time to get all of your philosophical musings out in words, but then spring hits and there is no time for those moments any longer.  

It has been busy, busy, busy here at 47 Daisies.  We shut down the seed room in the barn this past weekend and transferred all of the warm weather plants to the hoop house.  Another end to grow lights and heaters until next December.......:)  The hoop house is FULL of plants almost ready to be set out into the beds.  Among them.....tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, flowers, herbs, and a few leftover cold weather transplants that haven't made their way out yet.  

We are harvesting asparagus every day now and it is delicious.  It literally grows overnight and if you don't catch it daily is soon too tough to eat.  Our favorite way to quickly prepare asparagus this year is to bake in the oven on 425 for about 12 minutes.  We like to coat the asparagus with a small amount of olive oil, sea salt and Parmesan before baking.  It's perfect!! And we're not sick of it yet. 

We are milking once a day now, raising baby chicks in the brooder and preparing for the start of the CSA on April 7th!! Spring is busy, but so exciting around here. 

--Dylan

We will be holding a CSA meeting here on March 3rd at 2pm (rain date March 10th, 2pm).  This meeting is open to everyone! If you are already signed up for the 2012 CSA, if you're thinking about signing up for the 2012 CSA, or if you'd just like to learn more about a CSA in general...come to the meeting!! We will  be discussing details about our CSA...and then we'll open it up to a Q & A session, so come with questions!!  :) 

A CSA is a great way to get fresh, local produce at a very reasonable price.  If you're unfamiliar with the whole CSA process, this meeting is a great way to learn more!!!! 

After the farm meeting will be an optional farm tour which will include things on our farm like the baby goats, the seed room, the high tunnel and the garden beds.  It will be entertaining AND informative!! You will see exactly where your food is grown and spend some quality time with the family that grows it!

We will be serving coffee and water.  Please bring a coffee mug and chair or blanket!!

RSVP to 47daisies@gmail.com and let us know how many people will be in your party. 

Look forward to seeing you at the meeting!!
--Harmony

photo borrowed from www.bonfirehealth.com

We have baby goats in the barn and it is so nice.  Betty was due to give birth on Sunday (the 12th) but when Dylan went down to the barn on Friday morning to do chores....there were twins in the barn!!! Betty had 2 bucks...which we've named Pioneer (the dark one) and Clover (the light one).  They're both doing great and the (human) kids are having so much fun with them, as they're just now starting to run around and play. 

In about 2 weeks we'll start milking Betty....CAN'T WAIT for fresh goat's milk!!

--Harmony

Spring is a mad dash at 47 Daisies to get everything accomplished when it needs to be accomplished.  We are in the thick of that mad dash right now.  Just to keep you posted as to what is happening on the farm.......here is what we accomplished this past weekend.....

All cover crops got tilled under
75 pounds of seed potatoes were planted
lettuce, pac choi, collards, cabbage, chinese cabbage transplants were set out
broke ground at the farm we are leasing 2 acres from and planted 50 pounds of "all blue" seed potatoes there
had twin baby goats seeding is under way (carrots, spinach, sugar snap peas, lettuce mix, turnips, radishes and daikon radishes were seeded into the beds).......

This week we are starting the rest of the warm weather transplants, which will be transplanted to the beds in late March.  All in all we are looking at another 3600 seedlings to get started......we are a little late but no worries, we still have a little time.

On a different note, we are officially out of drought status!!!!  This is great news and it looks to be a productive year!!

See you soon at the farm!
--Dylan

Dylan decided he wanted to grow peanuts this year.  I thought this sounded very cool.  We love peanuts, so why not grow our own? And it would also be a great addition to the CSA and/or market, if they do well and we get a good crop.

I guess I thought you'd get seeds (peanuts) and just plant them in the ground.  I didn't think much of it....until Dylan received his box of peanuts from the seed company.  We were sitting at lunch with the kids and the mailman honked..indicating we  need to come out and get a package that wouldn't fit in the mailbox.  Kade brings the package in and it was addressed to Dylan, so he opened the box and there are several separate packages wrapped in pages from seed catalogs and gardening magazines.  It appeared to be gifts.....but it was actually peanuts.  The separate packages were the different varieties he ordered.

Dylan was looking at the different varieties and reading the descriptions to us....and then he said, "it says shell before planting".  I just looked at him for a minute and said, "What?? You have to shell them all before you plant them? That's insane!!!".  He just kind of laughed and said yes we did.  I went on to ask when in the world we'd every have time to shell all these peanuts before then planting them. Dylan's response was something like, "We'll figure it out."  I was very frustrated about this peanut development.  I know that probably sounds crazy, but any extra work that takes away from our everyday farm work is a hassle.  Not that we can't do it and won't "figure it out"...it's just a shuffle and a little bit more crazy than usual trying to find the time to fit it in. 

So.....Dylan had a great idea and decided we'd get a good movie and shell peanuts one night after the kids when to bed.  Sounds great! Multi-tasking, Dillaway style!  No such luck.  After more research, the peanuts have to be shelled just prior to planting.  This changes things...quite a bit.  We'll have to shell the peanuts within a few hours of getting them in the ground!!

Oh well...we'll "figure it out".   : ) 

(Photo borrowed from www.harvesttotable.com)
--Harmony

With the arrival of spring we are in full gear here at 47 Daisies.  Seed potatoes have arrived!!  We order our seed potatoes from a farm in Colorado.  They have to drive the southern shipments to Arizona to ship them in order to not subject them to Colorado freezing winter temps.

Five varieties are going in this year and it should be pretty exciting.....Again this year we went with red, white and blue potatoes so all the colors of the rainbow (almost!) are going in the ground.  I put my foot down on the blue potatoes though.  Last year Harmony insisted that we could grow blue potatoes but they needed to be white on the inside (thus purple viking went into the ground).  This year we went ALL BLUE!!  These potatoes are blue from the skin to center!!  How awesome it will be to have blue mashed potatoes without adding food coloring!!  We are scheduled to plant the seed potatoes in the middle of February and we can expect to start harvesting around the middle of April.  .....175 pounds of seed potatoes all certified organic and naturally grown!!!!
Can't wait!!
--Dylan 

2012 seems to be flying by.  It is the last day of January and the list of accomplishments for this month are DEFINITELY not as long as I wish it was.  But there are just as many things to be excited about!!!

I follow the "drought monitor", which is a joint effort between NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  It is a very useful tool for farmers (and the general public for that matter) in that it gives us the ongoing status of our drought which has been absolutely brutal.  The good news is that we have dropped from the "exceptional" category into the "abnormally dry" category.  As of the end of November 2011 we needed 15+ inches of rain to get us out of this dreadful drought which plagued the south in the growing season of 2011.  I would guess that with the next update to the drought monitor we will be in the "none" category!!!!  Hallelujah!!

So what does this mean?  This means that we are banking soil moisture which translates to a productive spring.  Last season we were irrigating by March.  Tilling in January and February looked like the dust bowl.  This year is quite different.  We have had our typical rainy winter (with more to come this week) which allows our soil to recharge.  

In addition to this good news on the drought front, long term summer 2012 outlook is predicting an end to La nina and above average precipitation starting in July through October!  This is the news that we like to hear going in to the start of the growing season.  The weather folks are predicting above average temps through June.......but we can deal with that as long as it isn't the EXCESSIVE heat that we experienced last summer starting at the end of May!!

It is definitely going to be a good productive year!!  I can feel it!!
--Dylan