Update on the Farms progress

Thought I'd start this post off with a picture of Big Ben. For those of you who may not know, Big Ben is actually the neighbors cat, but I don't think Big Ben knows that. Big Ben hangs around our farm and helps us tend to the veggies and the orchard along with some light mouse hunting, his daily doses of much deserved affection, and of course his daily handout of food. His idea of helping today was to lounge and roll around in the strawberries as I was picking the ripe ones, and before you ask....yes, I had to lift a leg or two off of the strawberry plants in order to check for any strawberries he was hiding.

So far, with Ben's help of course, we have managed to actually get some fruit trees into the ground.... a total of 6 to be exact. We have the yellow delicious apple tree, the Jonathan apple, both olive trees, a Meyers lemon, and a grapefruit all planted.

This tree here is the  Yellow Delicious Apple. It's the first apple tree that has gotten any blossoms on it so far and I'm hoping to have apples started soon on this tree. The yellow delicious and the Jonathan apple are both self pollinating and both  will pollinate my two Anna's apples along with helping to pollinate each other. When deciding that you want to grow your own apples you really need to do your homework and even though some apples are self pollinators you still should have at least two apple trees. You also need to know what types of apples will grow in your area.

 

 

Here on the Farm we currently grow two different types of strawberries. The strawberry pictured above is a Tristan Strawberry. The Tristan Strawberry has Pink to reddish flowers and  will produce medium to large Strawberries throughout the growing season, which starts early Spring and goes through mid to late Summer, and you can usually pick a good handful or so every other day. The other variety of Strawberry we grow is the Quinault Strawberry. The Quinault Strawberry is a much larger Strawberry. This variety of Strawberry has a white flower and does not Produce as many Strawberries as the Tristan. the Quinault Strawberries are the ones most commonly seen in the groceries stores and have a sweeter taste than the Tristan, but both varieties are easy to grow and very low maintenance.

 

Our Tomato plants now have flowers on them although I was unable to get a good picture of them. I am hoping for a good tomato harvest this year aswell as a good crop of blueberries. I have planted my Dragon carrots recently and they have started to sprout. Dragon Carrots are a purple carrot with a slightly peppery to spicy taste, unlike the sweet taste of the regular orange carrots we're all use to.

The onion's I planted last month are starting to make bulbs, the squash and cucumbers are hanging in there and I should have a few bellpeppers this year too. I also managed to plant my watermelon seeds and am hoping they do well. The only thing I have yet to plant are my regular corn seeds and my broom corn.

 

Well that's all for me for tonight, Guys, and Gals. So hopefully ya'll will have a great night tonight and I'll keep ya'll more up to date with the Farm now that we have gotten internet out here. 

 

 

Big Ben the Barn kitty

I've mentioned Big Ben on the blog before. He does not belong to us but to a neighbor down the road. this past week or so Big Ben has been hanging around the farm watching us garden, walking through the garden beds once I've finished planting them, getting his undivided affection, and even rolling around in the garden beds on newly planted cucumbers. Recently we've noticed that he had injured his back leg. The sore on that leg looks as though a small dog or other smallish animal had grabbed his leg. It's healing nicely though and it doesn't seem to slow him down one bit. I seem to have this feeling though that he is staying under our house pretty much day and night as he feels safe there. With the last couple days being cold I'm pretty sure he stayed at his house. We have come to love Big Ben and I do worry about him daily. I've also learned that Big Ben is very self sufficient for a cat. I always feel bad when I forget to bring him some food. However, I kind of stopped feeling bad since he has proven to be a very skilled hunter, even for a cat.

We had gone out to the farm last weekend to do some gardening and while walking to the garden beds I noticed a very dead half eaten mouse in my path. I immediately knew it had been Big Ben. I didn't think too much of it even though I felt bad for the mouse. Later that day big Ben made his usual appearance and when he tired of his affections and got a little hungry he went off and caught a sparrow to eat. This didn't sit well with me as I feed birds and put up nest boxes for them as well.

The next day we go back out to the farm and as soon as I pulled up I could tell Big Ben had caught something. I get out and walk over to him and see that he had caught yet another medium sized mouse. He dropped the mouse and it was then I realized he hadn't yet killed it, but had only severely wounded it. Before I could walk away he grabbed the mouse again and this time finished it off right as Sky had walked up. I felt bad for that mouse too but I realized that Big Ben was doing us a service by keeping them out of the house.

As sky and I walked away to begin gardening we looked back at Big Ben just in time to see him throw his prized kill high up into the air and leap after it to catch it. In some weird way it was almost comical to watch as the now dead mouse seemed to be attached to an unseen string being pulled up by an unseen hand.

Like I said before we really do love Big Ben. I  may not agree with him hunting birds, which I've only caught him doing once, but he's more than welcome to all the mice he wants. Don't get me wrong I actually love mice, but I don't love mice in my house,being we've had a mouse problem before and these two mice Big Ben has caught seemed to be headed toward the house I don't mind one little bit.