Powerful pretty piglets!!

I can't figure out how to rotate this picture, but this is a shot of the largest piglet we brought home today.  He is a big guy!!  My favorite part of picking up piglets is watching the drivers behind us.  They lean forward, squint and then start laughing as they realize it is a bunch of piglets they are looking at!!  They are so cute, but so strong!!  This bunch weighed too much for us to slide out of the truck so Mike had to grab one by one and put in the pen, and they are so powerful it really gave Mike a run for his money!!!  Meanwhile Molly is running in circles trying to do her part, and Mike is doing his best not to trip over her!  Of course she is hoping he will trip and drop one so she can put it away.  She went nuts as soon as she "smelled" us coming and went right to work barking and running in circles.  You could just hear her saying "okay, let me do my job, just let them out, I'll put them away....awwww...come on guys!!!".  It was nice to have her there after watching Mike struggle with the piglets.  Just in case one did get away, I knew Molly would have it back in no time flat.  It is nice to know I don't have to run around like a chicken with it's head cut off anymore chasing escapee animals!!!  Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Our was absolutely stupendous!!!  See ya all soon!!

Box of chocolates

This week I was fortunate enough to have the company of a wonderful woman by the name of Andrea.  She honestly worked harder than me, and was a joy to work with.  At one point the tiller would not start, and I was determined to get it start so I think I tried for 45 minutes!  Andrea had cleared a row and I wanted her to be able to see it through, tilled and planted.  Meanwhile being the worker bee that she is she was pulling the dried weeds in the next row.  This row and the one next to it were the most damaged rows from the pool collapse.  The thousands of gallons of water had spurred a huge weed growth, and there parts of the greenhouse and the pool strewn throughout it.  To be honest I had turned off the irrigation and was trying hard to not look at it until Mike had the time to help me build the hydroponics over it.  The truth is with the holidays coming it was not going to happen until after the first of the year.  Today as I left the new greenhouse because I was dripping more sweat than the ceiling with all its condensation I proceeded to the old greenhouse where Andrea had been working.  There I saw the cleared row, and to be honest it was the first real look I had given it in a while, and there I saw what I had been looking for.  I had just posted a question on building a better carrot bed on a listserv of market gardeners across the country I belong to.  My carrots are too hairy and the quality is not there, but I knew part of this was the summer season, which is not conducive to sweet carrots.  I already knew I had to watch my nitrogen levels, but the market gardeners also told me to watch my organic matter, which will cause the hairiness and of course in addition I needed a well drained porous soil that would allow the carrots to grow at ease, and there it was in front of me.  I started the tiller, which started easily thank the Lord, and tilled about 10 feet.  The bed had been amended at the beginning of the summer and all the mulch had been washed away or had broken down within the soil and now there was a healthy amount of sand in it creating a beautiful porous soil.  I widened the walkway to create an easier working area and thus built the bed up creating plenty of room for the carrots to grow.  So I owe Andrea a lot more than I thought.  Just like the tiller needed a good jump start...so did I and Andrea was my "jump start" that day.  You never know why people walk into your life or for that matter why things happen to you and what gift you have provided to another, but in this case Andrea was my gift.  She has a fantastic appetite for life, and understood all my goofy analogies.  When I was showing her the new greenhouse she came up with one of her own that I loved.  I showed her how the Swiss chard had grown beautifully hidden behind some old celery plants and then a new growth of basil that had come up unexpectedly, and she said "It's like a box of chocolates, you never quite know what you will find".   Thank you Andrea.

It's still hot!!

The last few weeks are a blur with being sick, planting and finishing up more canning, and I can't believe it is still hot!!  I have the greenhouse going off five times a day trying to save my lettuce transplants, but it does not look good!!  The only saving grace is the cooler evenings, but when the world provides lemons, make lemonade...in this case start throwing spinach in the ground as fast as you can in order to maybe sneak in a harvest before the dead of winter and/or hope that it overwinters for an early harvest in February/March, and also start more transplants inside in case you lose what is in the ground, and plant, plant, plant seed!!  The meat chickens are at their "doubling" time...every time I go out there they seem to have doubled in size and the turkeys are really starting to take off too!!   The new laying hens are in full production...though here at home we are eating a lot of "baby size" eggs :).   The cows as you can see are enjoying the cleaning of the fields...squash plants are delicious...just ask them!  The piglets should be here in a few weeks for the beginning of the next pork batch, and thank you everyone for the comments on how delicious it is...makes my day!!  I spent quite a lot of time dealing with the tree order today and decided to ask if anyone wanted to hitch onto the order.  These trees you will not find in the store and they are being ordered on rootstock specific to this region.  Heirloom apples, peaches, pluots, plums, cherries, figs, etc.  Just email me at moonstruckfarms@verizon.net and I will provide a list.  I need to know by November 10th and the money is due then too.  They will be delivered in January/February 2013 as bareroot.   By the way...did you know the deep beige color on the butternut squash develops after it cures in the field...thought I would let you know...I had customers asking why mine was not like that; I was picking fresh from the vine...the rest are curing in the fields now :).  Have a great week everyone!!

Moonstruck signing off!!

Bring on the holidays!

Peach preserves, apple butter, applesauce, spiced applesauce, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, green beans and now mincemeat are all canned and sitting on the shelves ready for eating, gifts or Thanksgiving pie!! Bring on the holidays I am ready to enjoy and be thankful for all the blessings we have received this year!!  Unfortunately Thanksgiving may have to be rescheduled at home due to Michael being asked to fly to Kauai as his buddy Scott's trainer (he fights in the MMA rings)....I feel so sorry for my husband who has to fly to Kauai!!  Not....it was our favorite island on our honeymoon, I am so jealous!!  It is just as well as we will be busy putting on the dinner at the church, and I so love that day!!  By far one of my favorite of the year, and a little rescheduling is not unusual for this farm/EMS family after all these years.   Life always works out for the best as in the last few days I have been fighting a head cold so I have been poking around the kitchen cleaning and finishing up the canning chores looking forward to having more energy right when it cools down on Monday and enjoying every minute of planting dill, cilantro, lettuce, bok choy, radishes and more kale!!  Tomorrow I am picking up a couple of straw bales and finishing off a larger compost pile, and I think I will just plant my Fall potatoes right into it and see what happens.  I have some sliding glass doors to throw over it for the winter.  My favorite part of gardening is waiting to see "what will happen next"....there is always something new to learn and look forward to!!  Moonstruck signing out. 

Quiet coming soon

As I was filling orders I felt the sense of peace that I love so much about my farm life...not that it always feels that way, but I cherish it when it happens.  I had just come in from feeding and collecting squash, which is now producing since the weather has been a little more even in temperature, but they are still very small.  I had filled all the little Cornish chicks watererers and feeders and they are so cute at this stage to say the least, and while I was doing that the turkeys in the pen adjacent were walking up and eating all the bugs off of the waterers...turkeys are very social and love to peck at bugs that are invisible to the naked eye.  I then filled the feeders for the larger Cornish (who are running like I have a blow torch in my hand from me...not social) who will be ready for harvest in four weeks and I marveled at their growth.  Molly during all this is throwing her body against the pens reminding everyone who is boss!! (Yes, this is our morning routine).  We then went down and gave the pigs the scrap bowl and checked on them.  Two are about ready, but two are quite small so it will be a while yet.  During this Molly is running around barking at the heels of all the cows to remind them who boss is once again!  (Sorry, she loves the pigs, if she has time she just comes over and gives them kisses....and then I give her a bath!!).  Then over to feed the cows who race me to the feeder and make it almost impossible to put the leaves in as they are trying to eat as I push it into the corrrals.  I then make a second trip where "girl" comes over to eat by herself.  She is the smallest and we have developed a routine where she saunters over (I might have told you already) to eat by herself, but the last week or so "Spot" has been joining her....romance in bloom maybe??  I think part of my sense of peace comes from the break from the heat yesterday and the feeling of Fall in the air and winter soon.  I am a Fall and Winter person...they are my favorite seasons!  I can't wait to have my first fire, put some chicken carcasses on the wood stove and make heartwarming chicken soup!  My kids actually ate some canned soup this week and said it was horrible....hopefully they will appreciate Mom a little bit more, but I doubt it, they are teenagers afterall!!  See ya all soon!

Bees!! Yahoo!!

As most of you know things have not been going smoothly around here, pool collapses pouring 50,000 gallons of water into greenhouse and across property (the pigs loved it!), the beds out front are now succumbing to the beginning of the critters building their stores for winter, and yields have been down due to my learning curves and the weather and taking on too much, but what do most farmers do…we bounce! So we are bouncing and not only are we about to dive into hydroponics to solve part of the issue, but we are getting some help around here in the yield category…yes the real workers are coming…two bee hives arrive on Saturday!! What a tremendous blessing they will be increasing yields hopefully beyond any tinkering with the soil that I could do would accomplish. We also are investing in more equipment to make the animal end of the farm run more efficiently with more automatic water fountains and more feeders. Even the cows are going to get a new automatic water fountain so that I don’t have to clean out their trough and they get nice fresh water with each sip. To bring my spirits up around here I walk the fields (that are doing well) like the corn, the green beans coming up and all the winter squash including sweet dumplings, butternut and carnival and the huge first two plants of rhubarb! I also tinker in the kitchen and tonight there is goats milk yogurt warming in the oven (i have a bread proofing setting of 100 degrees) and with some luck I will have luscious warm yogurt to add to my granola in the morning along with some fresh canned peaches (we did 30 quarts). Yes I know it sounds crazy after all that hard work, but it puts a smile on my face and a warm feeling in my belly!!




See ya all soon!

Whistling Turkeys

It was so nice this week to be able to leave the windows open and sit at my lap top listening to the turkeys whistle!! They are such neat animals.  Michael built them a great new coop and after going into it they did not stop talking about it for hours.  Our first batch of Cornish chickens will be ready soon and the summer turkeys soon after that so I guess we are in full swing.  We did do 10 for ourselves a few weeks back to check the numbers again on using the organic feed and test flavor of course....our favorite duty around here, and it was fabulous!!  No mushy chicken for us.  Free of worries; I know exactly what is going in them, and it is so delicious!! The coop is so nice that Mike built I think we will be able to extend the season a little more than I thought providing more poultry for our freezer and yours!  Remember this year we are only doing batches through the Fall and we only have a limited amount of Thanksgiving turkeys available this year...we needed to get our feet wet and start slow.  Any questions just drop us a line at moonstruckfarms@verizon.net.  Moonstruck signing out!!