Greenhouse!
Here in the northern part of the northern hemisphere, a garden without a greenhouse has limited function. According to our gardening neighbor, the last frost date here on the hill is May 15th, which...
View ArticleRat Hunting
Over the past year or so, we’ve noticed a significant increase in rodent issues in our barn, especially rats. We’ve increased the number of traps, both hand built and purchased, and while we had some...
View ArticleWaking Up
We’ve had an incredibly busy February, lots of packed social weekends and travel and generally not a whole lot of sleep for the adults in the family. But the winter months are fading away already, and...
View ArticleHard Numbers
Here on our little farm, we are lucky to have full time jobs to pay the bills (though on nice days we sometimes regret it) while we experiment with what makes sense for our space and our family. While...
View ArticleSeeding
Now that we have a greenhouse, we can get a real head start on the garden. Being able to do this is more important than ever, because the average temperatures in 2016 are expected to be even hotter...
View ArticleA Brief Sunny Day
This weekend we set up some temp fencing on the steep hill between the garden and the house, and let the sheep come eat down the tall grass. We’re keeping them off the pastures to try to recover from...
View ArticleGrowing The Orchard
One of the first thoughts we had about our property was, “this place needs more fruit trees”. We have a small orchard that we have certainly made use of, but this year we are finally making an effort...
View ArticleSpring is for Babies!
It’s baby season here on the farm!! The finally farm babies were finally born a few days ago, so the anxiety of the farmers has gone way down, and now we just get to enjoy adorable sleepy, bouncy...
View ArticleSpring Chickens
The south-most section of our garden space has been a battle zone for the last two years. Although we sheet mulched as we did for the rest of the space, in that area the grass continued to be too much...
View ArticleMicroclimate
Our property is located at the top of one of the eastern hills leading into Oregon’s coast range. South, east and west of the hill are deep valleys, and the upper hill, where the house and barns are,...
View ArticleAt Least It’s Not Rain
It’s been raining FOREVER, and now it’s so beautiful and snowy! The ice and snow is going to get exhausting soon, but for now we’re just enjoying the break.
View ArticleIt’s a Shed! Concrete.
In late 2016, we began work on a new structure on the farm: a building to replace our fading woodshed, including a shelter for our trash and recycling, and (most exciting) a room to house our food...
View ArticleIt’s a Shed! Framing.
We got a lot of cutting and measuring done the weekend of the eclipse, and got the greenplate and bases cut and nailed on. After a lot of prep work measuring, calculating, cutting… recutting… we were...
View ArticleIt’s a Shed! Walls and Roof.
Walls up, we spent the last two weeks putting up rafters. By “we”, we mostly mean Grandpa John, actually – the rest of us went to school and work during the weekdays, and he kept at it and got us to...
View ArticleDryland Garlic
We’ve grown garlic on the farm since our first year, when we tossed some cloves in a hugel in March and harvested perfectly lovely heads in July. Since then, we’ve found space in the garden for the...
View ArticleSigns of Spring
It’s fruit tree pruning time on the farm! Megan got to take an amazing class this month on tree pruning (photo above is the ‘professional’ pruning demo)… now it’s time to try to apply it here on the...
View ArticleThank you, Dad
The search for our farm started one sunny day when Megan, Thaddeus and John sat out in the bed of John’s truck and daydreamed about finding property for the three of them to grow on. Years later, that...
View ArticleRoadside Attraction
Our property has a long stretch of road frontage, with a strip of grass that we constantly have to maintain to keep from getting out of control. When we first moved in, we envisioned planting...
View ArticleWild and Precious Life
Around here, we are pretty glad to be welcoming in 2019. We took a break from, well, almost everything last year after losing Megan’s father in March, and then soon after learning we would be adopting...
View ArticleProjects for a New Year
We have been SO BUSY with farm projects the last few weeks. A brand new high tension fence that runs nearly the length of the property N/S (we paid for someone else to do the labor, thank goodness)....
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