Unofficial Endings

    Labor Day weekend has arrived and, although it's as early as it possibly can be, it's the unofficial end of summer. The kids have gone back to school, pools are being closed up, summer homes and cottages are being visited one more time. Many people are pulling up the mostly spent garden plants having given away all the zucchini they could, but if you aspire to have an urban farm there is still much to do. I have written most of my blogs in the spirit of farming and most likely if we had more readers they would be disappointed in the lack of practical reports and advise. We are not experienced bloggers and the writings have inspired by my inward perception of what we have experienced. Kathy and I started this project with some goals in mind and as we have grown our garden areas and our lawn has shrunk we have added more to the list of what we want our farm to be. I hope to share the more practical side of our experiences over the next few posts.
   Although I have had rotator cuff surgery I'm still very involved in what goes on here at the farm, after all I do have a bit more time to consider what should be done next since I'm out of work at the moment. We have found this year that our wishes have exceeded our abilities just a bit. I had planned to learn how to can  our produce but we didn't have the money to buy some of the equipment needed for the job and time wasn't on our side. Kathy's job demands a lot of time and often I try to do things on my own even when I was working and this has made me realize that some of our planned projects were perhaps a little more than we could hope to achieve. This doesn't mean that we're going to give up on those things it just means we'll have to plan better. There is still a lot of time to grow our farm into our vision and we just have to keep things in perspective; Rome wasn't built in a day.There have been accomplishments which I'm proud of as well, I learned to blanch and freeze some of our produce which was a learn as you go experience but none the less the freezer has many pounds of green beans and squash in it now. I was able to, after several calls and visits to the town hall, secure a letter from zoning allowing us to have honey bee hives on the property. We have ordered a chicken coop and run which will house six hens next year. This weekend I will attempt to make sun dried tomatoes in the oven from the many pounds of tomatoes we have harvested over the past week.
   Even though summer is unofficially over there is still a lot of summer left in which to continue to harvest tomatoes, raspberries and brussel sprouts from the garden. The chicken coop will need to be set up when it arrives and the rabbits should be bred on more time before the cold of fall sets in. The bee hives may have to wait a year or two until we know how the rest of the farm will shape up for space but I will continue to plan for them. The kale, purple beans and snap peas still need to be watered and the ground needs to be prepared for the sun chokes. We can still learn how to make cheese and canning equipment will be saved for. It may be the unofficial end to summer for most people but here on this little urban farm it's the offical start to another season of learning and planning.

Late Summer

  We are now eight weeks in to the thirteen weeks of summer and I can see, smell and hear the difference in the season. Kathy and I had a chance to sit on the patio for a good part of the afternoon and relax, as we did I could feel the change in the season. The sun now rises almost forty-five minutes later and sets thirty-five minutes later than it did on June 21st. The birds no longer hop through the garden and the dominate male no longer sits along the roof top of my house guarding the nest against other lesser males. The swifts are flying higher now and the earlier setting sun catches their wings as they catch the high flying bugs for their evening meal.
   I look across our gardens and see plants beginning to yellow, spent with the heavy production of their fruit during the summer. We have harvested potatoes, onions, beans and squash in abundance and have put up many freezer bags of our produce. There are still beans growing from a second planting and kale will soon go in to the ground for a cold weather harvest but all around there are signs that the growing season is ending. The days are shorter and the shadows are longer, even the trees look different tonight. The maples that surround our yard are less green than they once were, the seedlings are turning brown and the leaves are a lighter green color a beginning of autumn color. The rabbits have had seventeen kits and there is a bit of urgency in their actions these kits must be fed and gain weight quickly as winter is coming soon. The does might have one more litter but they know that it's past high time for the raising kits the days are shorter and nights longer not cold yet but soon.
   This late summer, there is still time to plant a few more crops but that time is ending quickly. I can feel the changes in the season, not because of back to school ads or the fairs now in full swing, but the air smells and feels different. The days feel and taste different and if you are attuned to the nature of things you can feel it too. The plants are tired and the animals are ready for a change of seasons, they know there's a change coming and if I'm wise I'll listen too. There are five more weeks of summer and if I'm wise I'll make the most of them because there's a change in the air and if you still your heart and mind I'll bet you can feel, smell and taste it too.

Putting Up.

   Putting up is an old expression used by farmers, homesteaders and garden growers. It simply means to preserve the produce you have harvested in any of several ways. This is usually done by pickling, canning and freezing; we have chosen pickling and freezing as our methods for putting up our meat and vegetables. Many people are familiar with these methods only because they see the end result in the supermarket not because they possess the skill to do it themselves. It is this disconnect from food that causes people to ingest what ever the large super farms, think Monsanto, give them to eat. They don't know if it's good or not, they don't even know if it tastes right or not. People have grown accustomed to eating tomatoes that taste like cardboard and bread that can be mushed into tiny round balls of sticky gluten. People are disconnected from food and its' source and so are deceived by advertising into believing this is normal.
    The choice we have made is to reconnect to the land and our food sources and to learn the skills required to grow, harvest and put up our food. I can say it's more work, takes more effort and planning but it's worth it. I can walk through the garden and pull a tomato off the vine and taste its freshness, I can see when vegetables are ripe and know when it's time to harvest them. The process is learned but this type of learning is fun. I have blanched and frozen pounds of yellow summer squash and green beans in the last few days, something I've never done before. I made a few errors during the process which cost me time but learn I did and now we have fresh vegetables in the freezer. I have also harvested forty pounds of red skin potatoes and pulled seventy-five onions with great satisfaction. Kathy made mashed potatoes with some of our fresh crop and they tasted incredible.
   I have my shoulder surgery tomorrow and so there has been great urgency in getting everything done that I can. This time of year the gardens start to look tired, everywhere I look I see yellow leaves and spent vines which will soon become compost. I also see unripened fruit and hope for continued warmth so that we can fully harvest everything we planted. There are plots that are empty now and I'm just waiting for the weather to cool and I'll plant some kale and snap peas, with one hand if need be, because they do well in cooler weather. It has been a busy week and a busy summer but I still haven't learned all the skills I wanted to this year. I feel somewhat like the gardens, a little tired but I can't stop because I've chosen to be fully engaged in the urban farm experiment. I'm not sure what this surgery will do to my posts as I'm right handed and I'll not be able to use that hand for some time. I hope you continue to check in because Kathy and I aren't done learning and there's more we want to share.