Spring Happenings 2015 and a BIG Announcement...

So much to do and so little time is our motto this spring... maybe that is every farmers motto in the spring but it seems especially so this year! 

First our BIG announcement!

We are the proud new owners of the Whitakers Farm Stand on Rt.16 next to Leavitts Bakery!

This has been a local family run farm stand for over 30 years and has a very large customer base. The Whitaker family was ready to retire from the "farm stand" life and offered the stand to us. This is a huge opportunity for us to grow our little farm and we are very excited to do so!

We are renovating the farm stand building and are hoping to open mid June. Besides our own veggies, honey, maple syrup, eggs, and broiler chickens we are hoping to have berries, meat, cheese and other local products. Stay tuned for updates on our grand opening date and hours of operation. 

Second, we are putting up a new High Tunnel! 

This one is twice as big as our other 2 tunnels and will help us to provide plenty of ripe and juicy tomatoes to the new stand. 

The day the tunnel was delivered the pieces lying on the ground are like a giant puzzle!

The guys putting the bows into place:

Once all the bows were in place we started on the perlings (the horizontal bars at the top).

The end walls are now up and we will be ready for plastic soon! Look for more pics coming this week.

And last but most definitely not least is the veggies! 

We have been non stop seeding and planting in order to get ready for the new stand. This is our earliest year yet for almost all of our crops and we have never had this much in the ground by Memorial Day! 

Besides planting we have been tilling up ground all over the farm to make room for all the little seedlings. Here is a freshly tilled area for all our carrots and onions:

The first little tomatoes are just starting to form up!

Check back for more updates coming soon...

We're Now on Etsy! Update...

*Update 2/7/15
Our farm store on Etsy is taking a break, 
we will let you know when our syrup will be available there again.
Meanwhile our syrup is always available at our farmstand.

You can now purchase our maple syrup jugs with the NH logo at our Etsy store!

We have four sizes available and can also customize the small size as a favor for your special event.

Other products in our store include some beautiful hand made bags and other crochet items. Be on the look out for more items being added to our shop soon!

 Check it out by following the link below:

Grand View Farm Etsy Shop

Memorial Day Work Weekend 2013

We had an "all hands on deck" work weekend that ended with just the right amount of fun! Check it out... 

It was a wet and soggy start to the weekend but the ducks were loving it! They even found their Canada Geese friends had come back for a visit.

Our tomatoes have grown A LOT since this post and were needing to get into the ground in the worst way! We finally had all the plastic mulch and drip tube that we needed to get them in.

The beds were made and the drip tube was laid.

 Then came the plastic mulch. We decided to give the red mulch a try since it is supposed to help tomatoes grow stronger stems and larger fruit.

Next came the tomatoes! They were so big they already needed to be supported with the strings and clips!! On the outside edges we will be adding in some herbs and maybe hot peppers.

The farm stand got a fresh coat of paint, inside and out!

We are still working on the trim but it's looking pretty good.

Here is a view of the inside, honey, maple syrup and pastured eggs for sale each and every day until we start adding some produce as the season progresses. Check out our For Sale tab above for more info.

We also spent some time moving this low tunnel greenhouse which we constructed last fall as an extension to the winter chicken coop. We decided to use it to plant the peppers in. That would allow us to have more space in the high tunnels for tomatoes and cukes.

The broiler chickens also got moved to pasture this weekend. Here they are all snuggled together in one corner... not sure how any one bird will get to the water except by walking on the others??? Crazy birds!

 And finally came the fun! After a family barbecue and dessert we waited for dark and then the fireworks!! Jason our resident fireworks expert brought a Chinese lantern. It was a blast to watch it float really high and then slowly back down.

Our family firework experts are becoming quite good at putting on a great show! Had some amazing fireworks right in our back yard! 

 Can't wait until the 4th of July for the best firework show yet!

Moving Day for the Pullets

The day has come to move our new laying hens on to pasture! The new chicken tractor is ready and so are the pullets! We tested a new moving method this time since we have so many birds (83 to be exact). The back of the pick up truck with a piece of the broiler pen as the top worked pretty good. They really had too much space and were pretty jumpy in there...

 Once we got them moved in they seemed to adjust really quickly! On a sunny day like this one they seem to stay really close to the coop and venture out more when the sun is going down.

Our laying hens were also moved  to the pasture area from their winter home across the street. They are loving the new grass!

They found a compost pile we had dumped in the field and totally tore that thing apart! Guessing there was lots of tasty worms in there!

We wrapped the electric netting around the old hay rake... hoping they take to using it as a roost so we can snap a pic :-)

The extra electric netting we purchased this year gives us a much larger area for the hens to graze. It reaches from the woods line all the way to the road. Right now we have a divider fence between the new pullets and the older hens so that they can get use to each other. Soon we will remove the divider and let them hang out together. Our plan is to eventually use only the new chicken tractor/coop to hold all the laying hens. 

Early Spring Update 2013

Things are really picking up now on the farm! Here is a few of the things we've been up to...

Our newest laying hens are really getting too big for our small brooding coop and their new home is just about done! Here are a couple of photo's...

We still need to add roosts and egg boxes but it's looking really good!

It has been very dry so far this spring but because the ducks love the water soooooo much we usually fill the turtle pool once a day for them to splash and play in. They are so fun to watch!

Our rhubarb is just getting going, we hope to have a bumper crop this year!

Our tomato seedlings have just been transplanted into large soil blocks. We are keeping the in the green house with an extra layer or two of row covering over them at night just in case. 

Outside we have lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage in. We are using row covers on these also, mostly to keep away those pesky cabbage loopers.

Our first batch of broiler chickens have arrived. Also ordered three guinea hens to help keep the tick population down.