Farming, blogging, and...more farming!

Well, we had our first CSA, and everything seems to have gone well. I thoroughly enjoyed making up everyone's bag of produce!
A lot of work has been done in the gardens in the past week, including planting the peppers, eggplants, and (most of) the leeks and onions. And a lot of rain has fallen in the last few days (including right now), along with some hail.
Not too much has changed on the animal side of things.
We had nice market on Friday, in Windsor. It was a beautiful day for a market!


This is a row of onions in one of our gardens.

new blog

I have started a new blog about cooking with seasonal ingredients. Visit it at inthekitchenwithfrancesca.blogspot.com .

Farm news:
We have planted all of our cabbage plants in the last two days (some 12 hundred plants) !
And we also have more new ducklings!

CSA News:
No broccoli this week (sigh), but next week hopefully!

Going head first into week 1 of CSA

The first week of CSA has sprung upon us! This is a new milestone for Oakmanor Farm.
This week we will have mostly greens; lettuce, spinach, kale and swiss chard. Though we will also have rhubarb (remember to chop up and freeze some to have for pies and such during the off season), onions and plenty of herbs, and also (maybe) some broccoli! If no broccoli this week, then some next week.

And to the barn animals (or should I say pasture animals?):
Nothing too new with the cows, other than the fact that they love being out on pasture. all the horses are together now to enjoy a field grass. The pigs...nothing new.  The ducks though do have a new surprise; we have five new ducklings!

I know in this picture there appears to be six ducklings, but one went missing.




And about the gardens...

All the tomatoes have been planted -- yay! Along with the summer squash (zucchini), and herbs, flowers, chinese cabbage and bok choy. Also our little patch of strawberries is doing well. Within a few weeks they should grow to full size and turn red.

Busy time of year

Spending more time outside now, with plants to plant, and lawns to mow. Oh, and Market to attend!
This week was the second market. Many people were surprised to see that we had lettuce and spinach already. The radish's were beautiful--if I do say so myself-- along with, my favorite, romaine lettuce and, of course, kale. We also had a lot of transplants at the market, next week we will only bring herb and tomato transplants. A lot of the transplants left over from market have been planted into the garden, so I hope no one at the market wanted swiss chard, broccoli or lettuce transplants!

In the past few days, we have planted onions, flowers, swiss chard, cilantro, parsley, radish, beets, mesclun mix, spicy greens mix, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower.  And last week we planted potatoes and strawberries.

And the weather here has been very nice, not too warm, or rainy! Though the other night we did have an incredible thunder and lightning storm.

And our CSA should start in about a week and a half.
These are a few of the products that we will have at the time of our first CSA week:
kale
lettuce
swiss chard
cilantro
peppermint
thyme
oregano
and probably many more things, but we will have to wait and see on June 15th!