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.