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Seasonal Farm Tour

Spring 2008

The Landscape

Spring is all about getting things started: in the ground, in flats and cold frames.

Farms and gardens in our climate start seedlings indoors during these months: our many varieties of tomatoes (above) along with celery root and dozens of other crops will go into the garden in May.

Broccoli and cabbage seedlings (far right) can take light frosts, so we're already setting them out.

Tomato Seedlings

Our cold frames
and unheated greenhouse (shown here hiding behind the peach blossoms) are crowded with lettuce, spinach, kale and early peas. We're happy to welcome these greens into our kitchen now, after a long winter. (See Greens Season recipes.)

What's up in the garden: long rows of onions and the first pinkish shoots of asparagus.

Look for these now in farmers' markets that are opening for the season all over the country.

Mamma Turkey With Kids

Our breeding flock of these heirloom birds is one of the few remaining in the world. For more about vanishing heirloom livestock breeds, visit The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Tom
(The proud father)

This year's lamb crop total:

Eight, including a set of triplets!

Lamb

Barbara and Lamb

Summer is all about flowers and fruits ...

... and weeds.

Weeds!

Our summer here in Southwest Virginia has been extraordinarily dry. We have so far survived the drought by using mulches, and relying on the tilth of our heavily composted soil. But we join farmers throughout the eastern United States in hoping for rains -- abundant and soon.

What's up in the garden (left to right):

-- potatoes and garlic ready to harvest.

-- early tomatoes and peppers.

-- fennel.

Update on heritage turkeys: Our Bourbon Red poults are about to get their adult plumage.

Lambs are weaned and thriving!

Opal

Fall brings the end of annual growth: hard-shelled fruits with developed seeds inside, and the root crops.

The growing is over, but the season of good eating will last a lot longer. Our year here was marked by extraordinary drought, but with just a few well-timed irrigations and a wealth of mulch, our garden fed us nicely through the summer and has provisioned our root cellar for the months to come.

This photo shows part of our last day's haul from the garden, before frost arrived in October.

Clockwise from top left: Musquee de Provence pumpkins, Centennial sweet potatoes, celery, (in basket): basil, lima beans and red peppers, (in wooden trug): celeriac and Georgia Jet sweet potatoes, and in the center, acorn and butternut squash.

A Gift.

Walker--our six-month-old Border Collie--stands guard as Barbara conquers the sweet potato patch.

A garden surprise came to us by way of the mail, too: a gift of a Gundaroo Tiller broadfork (shown with Barbara, photo left) from friends and fellow sustainable farmers Michael Plane and Joyce Wilkie in Australia. For anyone interested in learning more about the broadfork, the website to see is www.allsun.com.au.

Here, Steven holds a Musquee de Provence pumpkin that matured to full size despite our severe drought.

One week of excellent rains at summer's end brought the trellis of limas (behind Steven) into flower and one last round of production in the cool days before frost.


This great T-shirt was a gift from our sustainable farming friends at Georgia Organics...

When the temperatures start to drop, there's no more procrastination -- everything has to come in, or be destroyed by the freeze.

In this photo it may not look like we're going to wake up the next morning to see a blanket of white frost sparkling on the ground, but that was the forecast.... and sure enough, we did.

So ends another season of production on our farm. Scroll down to see the whole year in review.