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...

St. Patricks Day at Grand View Farm

 What a crazy winter we are having this year! March 17th when we are usually buried in snow, we are enjoying an early spring! The crocus' are out and so are the...

 ...bees!!!

Our birthday boy, Mr. St. Patrick himself with the bees, we had to add this one just for the record books! It was in the 70's and is predicted to be the same all week!  Instead of making maple syrup today, it looks like we are making honey!

And what were the bees in such a "buzz" about so early in the season? 

The silver maples had just blossomed! This huge tree is just in front of the hives, as soon as you got close to it you actually could hear it buzzing! It was an amazing sound!!! Something we have never witnessed before!

The high tunnels got a dose manure and soil amendments today too. They are now ready for spring planting!

This Weeks Update 6/19/11

This week has been a little slow, we finally got some rain starting last weekend and continuing into this week. This caused our outside work time to be less than it has been. Even though we were not out there working, the little plants were!
Our row of snap peas are looking great, we would like to put up a fence for supporting them soon. In the back of this photo you can see our new compost bin made of bales of straw. We will be collecting plant debris and grass clippings from the field as the summer goes on.

Next to the peas, our green beans, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower are looking good minus a few holes from those pesky little Cabbage Loopers.

We also planted a few herbs, here are our freshly planted basil plants.

Everything in tunnel one is growing great! Our tomatoes are growing bigger and bigger each day! All the support strings were put in place last week so that we can train the tomatoes and cukes to grow up.

Some plants even have open flowers!!

Our little cucumber plants are doing well too, although not as large as the tomatoes, they are still growing more and more each day.

We have been learning lots about managing pests too. Our winter squash had an attack by the Striped Cucumber Beetle. This is one of the very worst, the rest seem to be recovering after daily picking the bugs off and some organic bug killer!

Our rhubarb is looking great since the day we planted it which you can see here. We have only picked enough for a pie or two because we want the roots to develop really well the first year of transplanting.

Construction on tunnel two has been slow but moving along just the same.

By the end of the weekend it was ready for the end walls to be sheeted, next step will be the plastic!

Zack and Emmy are removing soil and rocks from around this boulder we dug up with the tractor in order to plant some nice perennials around it. In the background you can see the newly set out Swallow/Bluebird houses.

We also spent A LOT of time in this patch of earth planting dry beans! Jacobs Cattle and Yellow eye, four rows of each, seed by seed!! Thankfully they are all in now and we will patiently wait for them to sprout out of the ground.

The last photo is of our resident flock of Canada Geese. There are several families with babies that come every evening to munch on the grass in the field. So far no damage to the veggies, we are hoping it stays that way!

This Weeks Update - 6/4/2011

It was another busy weekend!
During the week we were able to get this batch of winter squash and pumpkins planted in the tilled space between the two tunnels. The tunnels were going to be closer together with just a path of sod between them but we ended up moving tunnel 2 further away so that it would be more level. We then had a large area of tilled soil we decided to make use of.

The first big project this weekend was to build the end walls on tunnel 1. Here you can see the first side is almost done, except for the doors.

We seeded our first little plot of carrots! We are hoping to plant these every other week until late summer to be able to harvest fresh carrots into the winter and early spring!

A hot dog BBQ after a hard day's work!

By Sunday night both end walls were done and we were ready for plastic!

Some more tricky high bean balancing was in-store for the brave soles unrolling the plastic!

Once the first layer of plastic was unrolled the second was prepared.

On goes the second layer.

Meanwhile, the small plot next to tunnel 1 was being prepped for planting.

We had already started a long row of onions here during the week.
The row of onions were finished and in the next row went the summer squash and zucchini.

Once both rolls of plastic were rolled across the top it was time to spread them out! One side and then the other the plastic was laid out over the sides. It was all done with almost no sign of wind, thankfully!!
By the time the plastic was all laid out this little farmer had enough!!
Then it was time to button up the hatches. Strips of strapping were screwed to the front of the wood in order to keep the plastic in place. Also, a small blower fan was placed inside to inflate the space between the two sheets of plastic as a heat barrier.

A job well done and a beautiful sunset too!

Our Big Weekend Day Three

Our little tomato seedlings were given their one and only car ride early Monday morning from the seed house to their new home! We filled the back of Donna's car with 80 or so plants!!

The next step was to plot out the beds in the tunnel. We used Elliot Colemans method of 30 inch beds and 12 inch walkways.

We also added compost and peat moss to the soil. Her the girls are having a very DIRTY time mixing the peat and the compost in the wheel barrows and then transporting it by the bucket load to the beds.

Once the beds were complete the tomatoes went in!

Our first crop in the high tunnel! It is so exciting to see it all coming together!!

Our Big Weekend Day Two

Saturday started out with the guys working on pounding in more supports for the high tunnel hoops. They hit some major rocks on the far side of tunnel 2 and had to spend quite some time digging them out with the tractor.

Just after lunch was the arrival of the bees! They came in these little boxes complete with five frames of bees and a queen. You will notice at the bottom some of the bees on the outside of the box. They clung there for the whole 2 hour ride from Maine!

The bees looked great when the boxes were opened, David inspected each frame looking for brood.

Can you spot the queen bee in this pic? It is a little tricky because she is under another bee but you will notice on close inspection that she is much longer than the others and her stripes look a little different.

Here is Liz setting the inside cover in place.

Bee keepers perfume!

The lid from this box was loaded with bees!

They were even building comb on top of the frames when we opened the box.

This little bee didn't make it!! But it made a fun pic!

All the bees were happy by the time we got them loaded into the hives, added another box and then some sugar water for a little extra boost!

While all the excitement with the bee hives was going on the guys were busy erecting tunnel one! It was so nice to see one finally up!!

Some of the gang worked on hoop construction while the first tunnel was being erected.

Once the hoops were completed, team 2 decided to erect their own tunnel!
GO Team!!

Meanwhile... Emmy is guarding the greenhouse plastic which is rolled up neatly in these green bags...

...and Ethan is just hanging around, so much for help from the kiddos.

The asparagus is coming along nicely! We under-sowed it with white clover to keep the weeds down and feed the plants some extra nitrogen. Also the bees will love it!

The finishing touches needed to be done up in the rafters! David seems content to sit up there awhile and enjoy the "Grand View".

Two houses up! What a great day!!

At the end of the day Paul and the girls tilled more ground for veggies!
Heard it stated today "our eyes are bigger than our stomachs"!!! Time will tell...
And here is Pat digging rocks to make way for even MORE land to be tilled! Did I mention there are LOTS of rocks???

Day three coming soon...