More Strawberries Planted

Finished transplanting young strawberries from the herb garden into the "jam" garden, which pretty much filled all the beds up.  Above is a view of the finished garden with the elderberries blooming in the background (they are doing awesome)  and the Vidal Blanc grapes barely visible across the street.

Stringing Wire and Tying up Grapes

Started anchoring the trellis end-posts so that we can run at least the bottom wire for the Vidal Blanc vines.  So far, two of the six rows have wires and this evening, we started pounding in the 3 ft. bamboo stakes - one for each grape - to support and guide the vine up to the wire.  It rained most of the day, which softened up the ground nicely and the little stakes went in rather easy.  We are using zip ties to hold the bamboo stake to the wire, hopefully that is sufficient.  We got about 100 done, not even a quarter yet... 

Family Time

Haley meets Sparkles, the calf

We had a lot of visitors this weekend, including Anja, Duff and Leif from Pittsburgh, Haley from Paris on her way to Colorado, Sam & Caleb and Jens & Grace.  So we did not get too much done on the farm, except enjoy walking around and showing it off - which was a lot of fun! 

Jeff trying to make Leif smile

Tina showing off the refinished barn

Anja and Duff

Sam and Caleb hanging out

Haley holding Leif

Haley and Leif with grapes in the background









Almost smiling!



Berry Update

Our blueberries are beginning to ripen, and we actually picked a few this evening.  The blackberries are still blossoming, but berries are starting to form - and the sheer amount of these is slightly daunting!

June Grape Update

We got all our Chambourcin grapes tied up to the double row of catch wires (second row of wires), and we added the post extensions to run the 3rd - high- wire to eventually position the shoots on.  We are using the VSP (vertical shoot placement) training system and the grapes look great right now. This year is only their second growing season, and to be safe and not stress the vine too much, we left one bunch of grapes for just the nicest vertical shoots.

Our new Vidal Blanc patch is growing nicely and we have no deer nor rabbit damage so far (knock on wood).  We have all the trellis holes drilled, and most of the posts are already pounded in.  We are just working on the end posts, where additional cross pieces need to be installed - then we can start running the bottom wire.  We ordered 500 bamboo stakes today - to place by each growing vine - to guide it up to the bottom wire.  The stakes should be here in 2 days - we hope!

This "patch" consists of 500 vines, whereas we only have 200 Chambourcin grapes so far.

Jam and Smoothie Garden

Making nice progress on our newest patch:  the "Jam and Smoothie" garden.  We started a second blueberry patch last fall, on the house side, between the newest Triple Crown blackberry patch and the existing elderberry patch.  Earlier in the spring, we added a row for raspberries, black and red ones,  with one lonely gooseberry bush at the end.  This week, we added two more rows:  one for Honeyoye strawberries, (we planted 50) with currant bushes at the end, and another one for "unknown, but really good" strawberries.  We plan to use the "runners" of existing strawberry plants, which are growing happily in the herb garden.  The patch is finished off with a row of lavender - some of these were left over wedding favors, which we supplemented.  Hoping the lavender bushes grow up nicely and attract plenty of pollinators!   The fruit trees then border the lavender on the other side.

CANNING!!!

I guess you have to be bit crazy to get excited about the first batch of canning for the season, but we do ...every year!  We started off the 2012 canning season with strawberry jam - 20 pints of it.  We use the low sugar "Sure-Jell" kind, and pretty much follow the instruction verbatim.  EXCEPT:  we make the regular jam (NOT the freezer kind), - but then store the jam in the freezer.

We like the taste and consistency of the regular low sugar jam, but the color and freshness that the freezer provides. We also do this for nectarine and peach jam  - they all loose their color and flavor too fast if not frozen.

Our second canning job were the peas this weekend.  Between ourselves, our family and friends we ended up picking 24 buckets of peas, or 15 bushel.  We never did finish picking the entire patch, we simply ran out of time and volunteers....but then the peas were supposed to be a cover crop anyhow, to get nitrogen into the soil.  The pea pods were just a happy by-product.  We canned 50 quarts of peas between Friday night and Saturday.