The big garden is finally done and the beginning of summer....

We have been very busy at the farm!  (This is another long blog, but it's worth it to read through to the end!)  :)  After the second till that the landlord did for our organic veggie/herb garden, we had a top layer of about 3-6 inches of dirt that was filled with grass/weeds/etc....We had to remove it to get to the layer beneath which was suitable for planting.  It took a weekend and a full week of working at night/in the evening for Pieter and I to remove it.  You can see the progress of that work below...

After it was all done...

 The pathway to the pile about 40 yards away from the garden, it was a long hike with many wheelbarrows of dirt...

 Pieter and Kaya with the end dirt pile result...

 Once we had that finished, I took a vacation day so I had four full days over Memorial weekend to do all of the planting.  The progress of that process is below...

 I had done the first part of the garden with a manual hand-tiller which was a LOT of work, so I got a Mantis tiller to help me with the big part.  It was still a lot of hard work, but definitely helped tremendously.

 And the final garden, all planted and ready to grow!  (From the back side)

 (From the front side.)

The full list of everything we are growing is at the end of the blog!
 

Besides getting the big veggie/herb garden done, we've had a lot of other things going on.  We took a break from planting on Saturday night to meet Piet's family at Primo in Rockland for an AMAZING dinner.  I got Salmon with eggplant/peppers and potatoes/pea shoots.  It was soooo good.

 Pieter got Peekytoe Crab with squid-ink pasta.

 We also got a bunch of desserts for everyone to share, they were all so delicious!

 Pieter and his family, all incredibly amazing, wonderful people!  (and the waitress, she was great as well!)

 Pieter finished chopping up our found fallen wood and made two new benches for the fire pit, so we are all ready for our first fire!

 Our bearded irises have started blooming and are so beautiful, one of the many wonderful things that came with the house/was already here.

 I finally got the (non-wild) strawberry patch all weeded.  I'm afraid it is probably too little, too late to get a good crop of strawberries, but we'll see (and I definitely will be more on top of it throughout the season and next spring so we'll have a better crop!)  This was before I started weeding it:

 About halfway through:

 And, after I was all done:

 We do have some berries and got one fully ripe one yesterday that we split, it was so good, I hope we get more!

 The small organic wildflower garden is exploding!  You can see the amazing progress it's made over the past few weeks below:

 The two rhubarb patches in the backyard (also left from the previous tenants) are growing like crazy as well, we will start harvesting it soon!

 One of the squirrels living in our walls/workshop.  We just ordered a Havahart trap, because there are at least three of them and they are getting more brave everyday.  We are concerned about them chewing on wires so we'll have to trap them and move them to the forest far away from our house!

 The organic herb garden by the house for use in the kitchen is coming along.  It still looks a bit sad, but I've planted some more seeds, so hopefully soon it will be looking great!

 There are SO many different types of butterflies around here right now!  I've been trying to get pictures of them, but only have two decent pictures so far.  This one is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail:

 And this one is a Viceroy (similar to a Monarch, but with slightly different markings):

 The organic peas that I planted awhile ago are doing great, they are grabbing onto the fence that I made for them and climbing right up!  

Both the organic soft-neck and organic hard-neck garlic plants are getting huge!

Our organic flax plants are also growing quickly and are quite beautiful at this stage:

Our organic Pink Beauty radishes are are also growing quickly!

 A couple of more weeks and our organic lettuce mix will be ready to start harvesting and eating, I can't wait, it looks so good already (though this picture hardly does it justice!)

 We have had 7 of the 10 organic potato plants that I planted sprout up and they are doing great!

 I finished the small flower garden by the barn and the strawberries.  We have our daylily plant, some morning glories given to us from my wonderful mother, and some miniature gladiolas from my amazing Auntie Ann!

  

 The orange honeysuckle bush is starting to flower like crazy!  Hopefully we'll get some hummingbirds to visit us!  It was really starting to sag, and stunted the growth of the organic wildflowers beneath it, so I retied it up to the post and it looks great again!

 And finally we have a TON of lily-of-the-valley plants growing beneath one of our trees and their little bell flowers are so gorgeous!!

Here is the full list of everything we have planted now in the veggie/herb garden (every single thing is organic):

Sugar snap peas

Hard and soft neck garlic

Potatoes

Tavera French filet beans

Provider snap bush beans

De Cicco broccoli

Lettuce mix

Nancy Butterhead lettuce

Red Romaine lettuce

Pink Beauty radishes

Napoli carrots

Rhubarb Swiss chard

Flax

Bronze and Green fennel

Jocelyn's broccoli

Red Purpelette mini onions

Sweet corn

Northern pickling cucumbers

Tango celery

Black cherry tomatoes

Moskvich Heirloom tomatoes

Brandywine Heirloom tomatoes

Black Prince Heirloom tomatoes

Japanese Black Trifele Heirloom tomatoes

Taxi yellow short vine tomatoes

Red Pearl cherry tomatoes

Sweet Chocolate green to brown bell peppers

Integro red cabbage

Ripbor curled green kale

De Milpa tomatillos

Hot Habanero peppers

Red Ace beets

Golden beets

Hot jalapeno chile peppers

Bandit leeks

Genovese basil

Cinnamon basil

Lipstick sweet pimento peppers

Munstead English lavender

Rosa Bianca eggplant

Early long purple eggplant

Cassius cauliflower

White sage

Dark green Italian parsley

Buttercup green winter squash

Cilantro/coriander

St. Johnswort

Fordhook acorn winter squash

Yellow crookneck summer squash

Early Prolific straightneck summer squash

Anton zucchini squash

Roman chamomile

German chamomile

Cortland yellow onions

Redwing onions

Arava melons

Nira chives

Staro chives

Common sage

Alpha calendula

Echinacea Purpurea

Spring continued.....

Spring is in full swing here at the farm.  We have had lots of bird sightings:  blue jays, crows, wild turkeys, mourning doves, pileated woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, tufted titmouse, chickadees, American robins, American goldfinches, and more yet to be identified (I just got better binoculars to help with this.)  I'm hoping to get pictures of all of the birds so I can post them soon.


I put out orange halves for the Orioles though I think the squirrels are eating them instead (I'll keep trying).  The other morning I saw that one of the orange halves was missing and didn't see it anywhere.  Then I found it.  This first picture shows the distance it traveled, it was on the post near the bird feeders in the distance (center of picture) and traveled to where the picture was taken.  The next pictures you can see where it ended up!






I put out a netted bag of Kaya's hair for the birds to use in their nests/houses.  I haven't found any nests in our bird houses yet, however I did find half of a robin's egg in our yard, so I know they are nesting somewhere.


I planted the lilac tree that my mother gave me (it's tied to bamboo posts right now to help with rooting/not falling over).  I can't wait for next year to hopefully get some flowers!!!




 I also made a violet plant bed (also transplanted from my mother's yard) in front of the workshop.




 I started the new herb bed w/chives (again transplanted from my mother's garden), lemon balm, oregano, thyme, flat leaf parsley, and 2 lavender plants (with the mint and catnip already there).  The plants that lasted all winter inside in pots are struggling, but I'm hoping to bring them back to life now that they are outside in a nice, healthy new bed.  It is in the corner of the house and workshop and is our kitchen/cooking herb bed (as there will be many other herbs in the regular garden).
 
This is the beginning with the chives and one of the lavender plants:




This is after the rest of the herbs were planted:






In the main garden, I planted the potatoes, snap bush beans, French beans, a mix of eight different types of lettuce, green butterhead lettuce, red romaine lettuce, Napoli carrots, flax, two types of broccoli (De Cicco and Calabrese), specialty pink beauty radishes, bronze and green fennel, Swiss chard, and mini red purplette onions.  The pictures are a progression of these plantings.


The potatoes:



The two different types of beans:




The different types of lettuce:




 The rest:



Jocelyn's favorite food right now is broccoli, so I planted a special patch of broccoli just for her and Piet and I made a sign:




The landlord did the second till of the rest of the garden, these are different views to get an idea of the size of it:




My leftover dirt that had to be moved into the backyard, though it is almost all moved now:




I made a new flower bed by the barn with a day lily plant and mini gladiola bulbs.  Morning glories (from my mom) will also go in there once they are ready to transplant.  These are before and after pictures.  (Kaya likes to be my helper in the yard/gardens.)














Some of the flower popped open the day after I planted it!  So pretty!! :)





A lot of our trees are flowering and are so beautiful and smell delicious!!!





I planted mammoth sunflower seeds all around the yard/house and if they all come up, the result will be amazing!  (Obviously pictures to come when they grow.)


I also worked on weeding out the strawberry bed but it needs a lot more work, pictures will come later of before and after weeding.


Finally, I forgot to post a before and after of our painting of the kitchen and dining rooms, so here they are!


Dining room before, after, and now:

(The rugs are for Kaya because she slips on the floor when she gets excited and we don't want her to hurt herself.)

The kitchen before and after.

The big planting weekend is coming up in two weeks (Memorial weekend), so I hope to get the strawberry bed all weeded, the found wood all chopped for the fire pit, and the rest of the garden prepared before then so that I can get everything else in that weekend and we'll be on our way to a HUGE veggie garden and lots of flowers and herbs.