Week 1 Harvest and Tour of the Gardens

Our first morning of our 3rd year. Quite the crew! My sister Lisa in the light blue shirt, Lorrie (me) in my purple Raven T, niece Angie in gray sweatshirt, her daughter in pink with the piggy tails, my niece and Lisa's daughter Anna in the black tank top with her three kiddos and their brand spanking new puppy.

Our new sign. Hopefully by week two it will have a reclaimed barn wood frame from one of the farm buildings.

Bill, my grandmother Daisy's niece Faith's best friend pounds in any loose nails on our 1950's harvest boxes before their first use this year.

White peonies along with Love Lies Bleeding, an amaranth that we are growing for the first time this year.

Angie picking our strawberry "row" that has spread tremendously. With more sunshine they should get sweeter. Oh, did I mention Angie is limber?

This sweet smelling honeysuckle plant originated in Jewell, Oregon were our Dad grew up. A bit nostalgic.

My nephew's wife Stephanie (niece in law?) and her daughter help pick the yummy strawberries. At this point of the day 3 of my nieces are helping out!

I think she is loving this "picking" of berries. A little juice down her chin!

Anna's oldest is a very good helper. Here she shows off the purple cauliflower she has helped pick.

Anna's middle cherub, picks into his hat of course.

Awww, siblings and their cart of broccoli and cauliflower.

Bill along with my 4th niece of the day Amber.  She just graduated from OSU with a Bachelor of Science degree in Pre-Pharmacy and a minor in Chemistry and will be attending Pharmacy School at OSU in the fall. They are marveling at the colorful Swiss Chard. She probably could tell us why there are so many colors!

Yellow chard.

Original chard color, white.

Magenta chard.

Peonies and lupine in one of the bouquets.

A single peony along with double peonies and a brighter pink lupine.

The greenery in this bouquet is the herb Sweet Sicily. It is mixed with peonies and Love Lies Bleeding.

Orange roses with dark blue delphiniums.

Pink peonies with lovely verbascum spires.

Blue balloon flowers with white peonies and blue salvia.

Bill, my grandmother Daisy's niece Faith, and my mother in law, Mary all help even out the selections of colorful Swiss Chard for each harvest box.

Angie picks chives, bundles them and puts them into cool water. Her little piggy tailed daughter has been picked up by her grandmother to stay at her house for a nap. This is a family oriented endeavor!

Anna finds time to make us a delicious pasta salad. Broccoli, cucumbers, basil and tomatoes from our gardens and greenhouses mixed with kalamata olives, Colby jack cheese and pasta tossed with Italian dressing. Lisa concocted a basil pesto bread. So amazing! They muddled some of today's strawberries and added them to lemonade. Lunch is special here at The Farm.

Bill, my mother in law Mary, and my buddy, "other Mary" trim up the lemon grass and organize for the boxes. "Other Mary" and I taught together at Sprague High School for many years.

Amber helps pick tea. The newest shoots are harvested.

Figs are putting on size in the orchard.

Another bouquet, this one with roses in a cluster.

This single peony with the long stamens is very showy. One of my favorites.

Faith organizes the tags that are attached to our bundles in the warmth of the greenhouse. Of course there is a trike in the greenhouse. :)

We tried something new this year, seeding the beets early in the greenhouse and letting them grow there for a month or two before transplanting them into the raised beds. Florencio has transplanted many things this year as we try to improve our springtime selections. Here are red and orange beets.

Angie enjoys the red kale.

Amber counts the kale stems as Angie cuts them.

What a regular asparagus spear looks like when its growing.

An unusual asparagus spear.

Hmmm.

Faith marvels at our unusual find. Can you tell it became rather chilly in the afternoon?

Mary, aka, Grams, shows off the radish bunches.

"Other Mary" and Bill organize beets so everyone gets 3 red ones and 1 orange one. Even the tops are healthy! 

Florencio delivers his 3:30 cutting of fresh lettuces.

So pretty and delicate. Nothing like fresh lettuce.

Today's harvest box contains: radishes, kale, chives, green onions, lemon cucumbers, Swiss Chard, asparagus, lettuce, parsley, beets, tea, strawberries, basil, broccoli or cauliflower and a bouquet of flowers. All of these sitting on a bench our brother Karl fashioned out of the black walnut tree that came down a few years ago by the Potting Shed. 

My niece Anna, who lives here at The Farm with her husband who is finishing his first year of Veterinary School at OSU, is holding up her youngest little girl and their brand new puppy. All are adorable!

Our first bouquet of the year finds a home.

Slicing cucumbers enjoy greenhouse life this time of year.

Tomatoes bred to produce inside greenhouses tend to grow in clusters. Here is one such cluster.

Here is a second large cluster.

Red, white, and blue flowers for Memorial Day. I think Dad, who was a WWII veteran, had this planned. 

4 rows of tomatoes have been planted through red plastic mulch to increase production and keep the fruit cleaner. Drip irrigation is under the red plastic. Fertilizer is applied through the irrigation system.

4 rows of all varieties of peppers. Also with drip irrigation watering them.

3 rows of watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow crookneck and patty pan squash enjoy the heat the black plastic encourages. They also have drip irrigation beneath their plastic.

The grapes start out very small. Each little green grape was a tiny greenish flower.

More grapes on a nearby vine. When they ripen, grapes will be added to the Tuesday boxes.

Blueberries seem to be prolific this year. It will take them a couple weeks to fill out and turn blue, then another week or so to sweeten up. Just because a blueberry is blue doesn't mean it is ripe.

These are Marionberries. They are emerging from their flowers and growing longer. The whitish parts are sepals and the fuzzy parts are the stamens (male parts). The berry is the female portion. They are also a few weeks away from harvest.

This view shows how Florencio has set up the irrigation system. Each year the white pipes are put away and the plastic and drip tape (with drippers built in every 8 inches) are pulled up from the garden after the harvest is finished. New plastic and drip tape is used each year.

Sylvanberries will be the first to ripen. At this point it almost looks like they could use a shave!

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Sylvanberries, one of the many "cane" berries, are biennials. The new canes are down low arching toward the ground, they won't fruit this year. The canes that are "up" on the wires were arching low last year and were put up on the wires last fall. After the "up" canes finish fruiting, they die. Then Florencio trims them to the ground and hauls them to the burn pile. He then puts the young canes up on the wires. These arching ones will bear fruit up on wires next summer. We are always careful not to tromp on next year's canes that will bear next year's fruit.

Waldo berries will fruit after the Sylvans. These are also a biennial cane berry. Biennials grow foliage the first year, flower and set fruit the second year and with that their life is "complete" and they die.

Several types of radishes are growing in our "reclaimed" ground. Nothing has been planted here for many years. We are hoping that wire worms that plague root crops won't be present. Fingers crossed.

Raspberries are changing from flowers to small green berries.

These are a small "wild" blackberry that Dad had figured out how to grow here at The Farm. He put pvc pipe over the wires to keep the tender canes from breaking and destroying the fruiting possibilities.

Different colored leaves help indicate older canes on raspberries. They are also a biennial and fruit on 2nd year canes. The fall of the first year there will be a small crop at the tips of some raspberry varieties. The main crop comes from fruiting lateral branches in their second summer.  

An unknown blackberry variety is loaded with maturing fruits.

The onions appear to be winning the weed wars. Florencio is being diligent about trying to keep the weeds away from the onions who don't compete with weeds well at all.

Chard in the evening light.

Annual flowers for the bouquets will be planted in this empty space on this end of the field. 

Florencio has made these furrows with the tractor. 3 varieties/colors of potatoes will be planted here.

Lisa and I went for a walk through the orchard after people picked up their boxes. Apples in the orchard.

Pears.

A different type of pear.

We did spray for apple scab, but these little spots indicate we didn't prevent it all. Lime sulfur is used to prevent apple scab. It is an organic spray.

Another pear. Love these colors.

A small blemish, probably scab also. It can be peeled off of ripened fruit.

Granny Smith apples are the LEAST resistant apple to the apple scab disease. Notice the one in the bottom left. Bummer.

Brooks prunes in all their bright green color. They will turn dark purple with a whitish hue that will rub off. Yellow inside. So delicious.

Asian pears maturing. 

Triple Crown blackberries are just starting. They will be huge by fall when they ripen.

Looking down the row of Triple Crowns. They are a thornless blackberry. Yippie!

 A small fruited plum tree that didn't fruit last year. Man is it loaded this year. Lisa and I think it is yellow on the inside and purple on the outside. We don't have any records of which trees are what out in the 98 tree orchard. Dad knew what they all were.

Dad loved persimmons. These curly green things are the outside of a persimmon flower.

Here is another persimmon flower opened a bit. The fruit is starting to show. They don't ripen until late fall and all the leaves are already off the tree. It will appear to be a bare branched tree with orange decorations, usually in October.

The first purple coneflower is opening.

Icelandic poppies bloom.

Foxglove.

Honeysuckle climbs the trellis.

A small flowering clematis climbs next to the showy honeysuckle.

Just before the first harvest boxes

Lisa trims spinach with Mt. Hood in the background. The Sylvanberries are blooming like crazy on the row behind her.

My dear friend, Mary, with the wide brimmed hat, chats with my niece in law, Stephanie. The colorful tall lupine spires sway in the breeze. A beautiful day at The Farm.

Stephanie keeps one eye and ear on her little one sitting at the child's picnic table.

She crashed a few minutes before as she was toddling on the gravel road. Bumped her forehead, but picked herself up and kept going. Tough kiddo!

Niece Anna (who lives at The Farm) and her sister in law, Stephanie, marvel over some of the very early harvest today. 

Cucumbers they picked from the greenhouse plants. 

Asparagus needs to be picked regularly or it will turn into asparagus ferns.

Colorful Swiss Chard. So tender this time of year.

Mary seeds broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and sunflowers today. One seed per cell in these 50 cell flats. She is good at this!

Gravel gets delivered for The Farm.

Sylvanberries are blooming like crazy. Each flower has the potential to turn into a berry. Hopefully there will be enough pollinators in the area for all these flowers. It was a hard winter on our bee hives.

A decorative allium sparkles in the sunlight. So many little flowers make up the beautiful ball-like flower.

A pink peony catches the sunlight.

Painted daisies look happy.

Some stems bend more than others. Sweet peas will be climbing up the weathered wall in the background sometime soon.

Tilling in the evening sun next to the third and fourth plantings of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. Drip tape is in place under each row.

Florencio drives the tractor as it rolls out drip tape under the plastic mulch and then buries the edges under the soil. The black plastic will increase the warmth of the soil for watermelons, cantaloupes, zucchini, yellow crookneck, patty pan squash and cucumbers. 

Here are the four rows of red plastic mulch. Tomatoes produce better with sunlight reflecting off of the color red. Our 31 varieties of tomatoes will be planted here.

The contraption on the back of the tractor is quite ingenious. It does everything except automatically drive in a straight line. It does roll out drip tape, dig trenches to bury the plastic on both sides, and then covers up both sides. All at one time. 

The many colors of Swiss Chard. Orange.

Magenta.

Yellow.

White cauliflower peaks out from its protective leaves.

Purple Sicily cauliflower. The white little stripe was from a little leaf hiding the cauliflower from light. You might see the little leaf standing upright.

The first cabbage.

Broccoli is actually a lot of tiny flower buds. If they open they will be yellow and are also edible. They are wonderful in salads. And yes, they also taste like a mild broccoli.

After the middle and largest head of broccoli has been cut, many will produce side shoots like these.

Two colors of kale are loving this weather.

  

Peas the rabbit hasn't found, yet.

A different variety of peas.

Purple blooming peas, a third variety. 

Radishes push their way upward.

Cilantro going to seed. The flowers turn into the seeds which are called coriander. They look like little round basketballs.

Additional broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage starts are planted outside the raised beds. The earliest ones need to be planted in the raised beds due to the excess moisture in the late winter, early spring soil.

Colorful lettuce. Some have smooth leaves, some are bumpy, they catch more salad dressing :)

Celery is growing, too.

A beautiful, tender bed of Swiss Chard. 

Red beets are putting on size. They should be just right for the first harvest boxes.

Two kinds of spinach.

The Sylvan berries are turning from flowers to green berries. It looks like we should have a pretty good harvest.

A view down the row.

The Waldo berries are a later maturing berry. They are mostly still in flower stage.

There are advantages to opening up new ground for additional space like we did here for the onions. But the disadvantage, all those weeds seeds that have been turned up are now enjoying life. Lots of hand weeding to do.

Between the posts are different types of radishes.

Florencio and our Dad discovered a different use for a clam gun. Digging holes through the plastic without cutting the drip tape underneath. Tomatoes will be planted here tomorrow (May 21st).

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Florencio's son looks on this evening as the sun is starting to set. Some days are long on The Farm.

Last year we planted one SINGLE row of strawberries along the left side of these beds. They have grown and spread tremendously.

When picking up harvest boxes, there is parking right where this photo was taken. Boxes will be picked up in the blue roofed, potting shed. Some of the lavender and rosemary plants in the foreground didn't survive this past winter. Multiple days of very cold weather did them in. On the other hand, the peonies are happily blooming.