June 25th, 2022 Summer Arrives

 

Peppers, Tomatoes, Potatoes, and Beans
Click on the pictures to make them larger.

As I see things, the problem with starting Summer in mid-to-late June is that it does little to help with making the Farm a financial success. We need produce to sell in April, so having none of the plants putting produce on the table until sometime in July is something of a problem, if the problem is selling produce for a profit. 

Be that as it may, we are grateful for the plants we have growing today. Our seeds nearly jump into the sun once the Summer comes and there's little time for anything except planting and weeding.  Right now we have many hundreds of row feet planted in corn, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, watermelon, beans, peas, mini-cantaloupe, potatoes, onion, and herbs of all sorts. There are hundreds of flowering plants still to be planted, but these are on their way to the beds this coming week. It would be better if some of this planting success would happen in Spring, but it is hard to complain when looking out there today.  The Summer is a time for growing things, but there area few more things happening here right now worthy of taking some notice of.

Our Runner Ducks just love the hotter days.
This morning I cleaned their pond.

There are still some things to do on the new Farmhouse. I began painting the place this past week. It took a few weeks to get ready for painting and the weather was still a bit too wet and cold to start in. But the colder weather gave me time to get the house well prepared and my tools in good order. Once the heat showed up I primed and painted the back of the house in just a few days. All the climbing was a bit harder than it needed to be. Things make me tired where they didn't before. I'm thinking we'll get through the painting by the end of July, but it might happen earlier if the weather doesn't turn horribly hot. 

We decided to paint the house yellow about five years ago.  Like everything else we spent a lot of time thinking about the color prior to having to make a real decision about it. My first choice was barn red, because it is a farm house and it made some sense. But then we thought about putting a red barn on the Farm and figured it would be a bunch too much red, so we tried white (because farmhouse are often white). But white reflects light and we had decided to use the front yard as a public space, so white was out. Greens and blues are nice for trim work . . . So yellows came up naturally. We agonized about the shade of yellow and would point out yellow houses as we made our way off the Farm. There was a nice little house in Banks with what appeared to be the right color so eventually we went to the store and picked out some yellow paint cards. These cards laid around on the desk for a year or so before a decision had to be made. The color is Sunflower Seed, something of a misnomer since sunflowers are certainly yellow, the their seeds are definitely not. In any event, I got the first side of the house sprayed this past week and it is going to be the right color. The trim will be white, so too will be the batts of our board and bat siding plan. FarmyAF : Farm-y as f-heck.

Squash, Cucumbers, Corn, and Beans

In a few weeks we will have the last framing inspection before finalizing the Farmhouse permit and becoming legal. So we started in on finding the financing for the balloon payment due on the land contract we wrote in 2015. It's a large amount of money, but not as much as anyone would think it would be considering the size of the lot and its relative position in the world. Nearly two acres of good flat land is pretty hard to find these days, we got lucky. Since I wrote all of the contract, deeds, wills, and powers of attorneys myself I thought it a good idea to begin this next vital step by discussing everything with a lawyer. Good thing I did too, but I won't go into this here. Suffice it to say that we have things well in hand and have made significant steps toward finding our next significant step. There's two more years on the Contract, so we are getting started early and all should turn out well in the end.

The back of the Farmhouse is plain.
But the new Yellow makes a statement!

Our Farm is a special place, we hope anyone who might read this BLOG might feel free to come visit. But you might not so let me openly invite you to come out a visit. Expect dirt, insects, dogs, chickens, and ducks, so wear something that might get dirty. We'll try to sell you some of what we grow here every time you come, but the stuff we have is two weeks fresher and grown with better soil. It's the same dirt that has made our lives so very good.