Goings on in the fall garden

rainbow chard, planted in July is going strong

Packman broccoli, in flower.  This attracts a lot of bees and other pollinators

My lettuce and spinach patch, now about 30 days or so old and we are picking from it.  Cut and come again style.

My root trio- radish, beet and carrot.  Radishes are about done, beets in about 30 days and carrots for winter.

This radish is starting to bolt.  Its easy to tell from the broken leaves (usually its one big leaf, lobed leaves are for bolting radishes)

same trio bed with radishes removed.  It really loosens the soil nicely for the beets and carrots to grow

from near to far: turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi and spinach....all 30 days in

hard to see but if you look closely I've got onion seed sprouts started here to overwinter for spring next year.

Spring lettuce gone to seed.  Also attracts pollinators and provides me some seeds.

anyone know what this is?

Gahhhhrlic and cake

I have all the garlic planted!  Yeah!!  I planted a little over 50 cloves in between our asparagus plants.  About 20 were from last years crop and most of the rest were whatever white variety was at the store this season.  I did also put down some store bought elephant garlic, but only about 6 cloves.  I totally didn't get an order in this year so here's to a little experiment :)  I plan to try more of these experiments next year.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I've heard from the bank that our appraiser has requested additional information from the builder.  Not sure exactly what that might be but I put in a call to our builder today to follow up and try to get this thing off the ground.  I had hoped that I we might be started by now since my mother is coming next week but alas, we have no progress at this time.

Speaking of next week, its my husband's birthday!  I'm making this cake King Arthur's favorite fudge birthday cake recipe  and it just looks so indulgent.  I may have to post pictures of it.  My mom is coming up from Florida on that same day and the following day we are going to see my sister.  Should make for an exciting week around here.

Here's the birthday boy and his biggest fan.

Pondering on Profitability

Ok well maybe not exactly profit but at least supplemental income to help support our farm efforts.  Obviously the hay business is not for us.  Our plan is to take 4-5 acres and fence it in for pasture.  So what after that?  I'm pretty sure I want to do pastured broilers and layers...those are pretty easy with low overhead.  I'm debating goat herd milk shares but I'm still not sure what I need to do to get started.  I mean obviously we need goats and milk jugs and grass but do I need any kind of licensing or special equipment?  What if we get a cow and do cow shares?  I know to sell our own cheese I pretty much am out of luck until we have the kind of money that will allow me to purchase full on dairy equipment.  I know I'd like to try to do a small CSA eventually but I need at least another year to work out the issues with nutrient deficiencies in the land first. 
An idea I'm considering for the spring farmer's market is selling baked goods.  So far my breads get raved reviews and at the church bake sale they sold pretty fast at $4/loaf.  I could also do jellies and pickles I believe without a special kitchen as long as its through the farm market.  I think if I tried it otherwise I'd have to set up a commercial kitchen.  Another idea would be to make soaps from the goat milk and also I've been making dishwasher and laundry detergent...maybe I could sell versions of that too?
So much spinning about in my head, I really hope something will clearly come through as the right path.  Might be a whole lot of trial and error next year...actually I can promise that!

A lovely walk

We took today a lovely walk around the perimeter of the property and my husband is embarking on the task of removing saplings and brush that have grown up and are eating up valuable acreage.  We were IDing trees and we have elms, maples, oaks, chokecherry, mulberry, crab apple, elderberry, apple, wild plum and hawthorns.  Among the rest of the plants we have a bunch of raspberries, blackberries, wild grapes and wild roses.  There are a lot of forageables there to work with really.  Hopefully I'll report next year what I manage to harvest and process of those.

Haycutters!

So if you look back a couple of posts you'll see we've had this problem before.  Hay cutters come out, cut the field, fluff it and bale it only to let our bales get rained on (there was obvious rain in the forecast) and to make sure and take their share of them....leaving us high and well ...wet!
Our arrangement is that in exchange for half of the hay they are to cut and bale our field, leaving us bales to use for whatever or to sell.  The first cutting was in big round bales, which we have about 11 remaining of.  The second cutting was square bales in which they were supposed to stack and put a tarp over.  They claimed the hired help wasn't worth the trouble and fired them, leaving our bales in the rain and making sure to get theirs home.  We have about 160 of those bales, all ruined now.  Now on our third cutting we actually didn't expect them to cut.  They didn't call, they just came and cut.  Well they baled that on Monday and once again left ours to the rain....at least they stacked them this time but we didn't even have a chance being as it rained on Monday!  Seriously I would have been happier to see them leave it to improve the soil after cutting than to bale it up. 
So in my book, they are stealing our hay.  We should have really good hay to sell  but they've left us with ruined bales twice now and made sure to take theirs.  I think we should fire them, I also think they should pay us for the bales that have ruined and take them off our hands.  I'm so over it.  We were never looking to make a profit selling hay but we had hoped to offset the cost of planting the field.  Now, we have a 1/2 of our years worth of hay, most of it unsellable.  Really high quality garbage! 
I have someone coming (at least I think I do) to take the bales as a donation.  At least we can get them off our land as right now they are just sitting on and killing grass.

Still no news on the appraisal.  I really hope to hear something this week.

Ruined Hay

So this morning we had planned to wake early and deal with the hay only to have it rain before we leave the apartment.  Ugh.  I think someone/thing is trying to let us know that this hay was not meant to be.  So now we need to try to unload it or find a creative use for it.  I thought about donating it, freecycling it, making a shed of it (like a strawbale but hay instead), using it as tree mulch.  Its hard to say what is the best thing to do with it now that its pretty much worthless.

On the positive, we are going to visit TK homes today about an email offer that is pretty awesome and might allow us to build soon.....REALLY soon!  More to come on that, I'm trying not to get too excited about it.

Wet Hay

Wet hay is a very bad thing.  Its our second cutting of hay and we had it done in square bales this time and it was all going pretty well until it rained this morning--and looks like its going to rain off and on all night.  For us it means making tepees out of hay bales so they air out and dry again or suffer the consequence of ruined hay.  Like 100 + bales of ruined hay.  At $3.00 a bale that's money lost.  Not to mention, what do you do with that many bales of bad hay?  I guess it could be mulch for our orchard but we still have about 10 round bales left from the first cut that are needing to be used up or sold.  Did I mention that we suck at selling hay?  I'm thinking of asking my DH to let me handle the business of hay since I'm more available than he is in the hopes that we can do a better job of selling it off when the time comes. 

Planning for critters

I'm thinking positive today. I believe that sometime this year we will sell our house OR we will obtain the house at the front of our property...either way its a good thing. So for critters out there here are the zone rules we must follow:
concept of Farm Animal Unit has been created to balance the impact of large and small animals.
FA-01: This Farm Animal Standards section applies to the following districts:
AP AG CR R1 R2 GC HC LI GI
A. Exemptions: All lots shall be permitted up to and including 0.4 animal units for the purpose of
facilitating participation in 4-H and other educational opportunities. All lots which include 0.4 or
fewer animal units shall be exempt from the setback requirements of this section.
B. Farm Animal Defined: Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as regulating the keeping of
household pets. For the purpose of this section, farm animals shall be defined as those which are
raised and maintained for, or in support of, the production of food or other products.
C. Lot Size: The minimum lot size on which farm animals are permitted shall be 4 acres.
D. Animal Units Permitted: There shall be 2 animal units permitted per acre as determined based
on the following table. The Planning Director shall have the discretion to determine the minimum
acreage for any farm animals not listed.
Animal Type Units:
Large Animals (horses, cattle, buffalo, camels,
donkeys) 1.5
Medium Animals (llamas, emu, ostrich, alpacas,
sheep, goats) 1
Small Animals (pigs, turkeys, geese) 0.5
Very Small Animals (chickens, rabbits, ducks) 0.1

so any 2 goats or sheep per acre, any 4 pigs, turkey or geese per and any 20 chickens, rabbits or ducks. I think my ideal situation would be a 3-4 diary goats (staggered lactations - kids for meat or sale), a sow (to breed yearly-piglets for meat or sale), 8 layers, 20 fryers, 10 turkeys and rabbits ...this would give us meat, dairy and egg self-sufficiency. we have just enough room :D

that and a 1 acre garden(eventually) and our orchard (planted just needs to mature), leave an acre for the house and yard...should be fantastic! Boy, I hope this is our year.