July + August 2022 Review
The last two months have thrown some challenges our way, but we are starting to feel like sunnier (metaphorically) and cooler (not metaphorically) days are just around the corner.
Our Opening!
Due to delays in irrigation (mentioned in June’s review and below) and sustained sweltering temperatures, our crops haven’t gotten the start we were anticipating this year. We are still planning to open this fall, likely October 15th, however, we will be doing more of a “soft opening” with a “grand opening” to follow in spring of next year. For our soft opening, we anticipate being open every Saturday with eggs and a limited selection of produce. Throughout our soft opening, we will continue to improve our selection of seasonal produce.
Please tentatively mark your calendar for our soft opening on October 15th. Once we firm things up in a couple of weeks, we will send out an additional letter to let you all know and post to our Instagram.
Plants Are in the Ground
After various delays we were able to get the main irrigation installed. While the intention is to do almost all of the work ourselves, the trenching and plumbing required was a bit much for us, so we did have an irrigation contractor handle the install of our irrigation filter, 3 inch pipe run and valves. We are doing all the above ground irrigation work ourselves however, so Jake ran 3 inch layflat and assembled flush valves to cap the layflat runs. That was followed up by running drip tape for the rows and tying into the layflat with barbed flat connectors.
We managed to get all of our starts in the ground during the slight dip in temperatures just prior to the last heatwave. We needed to get all the starts out of their pots ASAP so we planted them and prayed that they wouldn’t burn to a crisp on the week of up to 114 degree days. It seems that our prayers were mostly answered. The tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplants, basil, and peppers are all seemingly doing well. Our squash and pumpkins were suffering prior to planting from being root bound and previous high temps, but we put them in the ground anyways to see what would take. We definitely had some die off, but a surprising amount seem to have survived and are starting to take off.
We’ve planted somewhere between an eighth and a quarter of an acre so far, and hope to almost double that in the next few days. Tomorrow we’ll start putting more seeds in the ground, hoping to get them harvestable before the temperatures drop too much.
In the next few weeks, we’ll start making more concrete plans for cooler weather crops (think root veggies, cruciferous greens, onions, etc.)
Birds
So far the birds are our most successful project! The chickens are doing very well and they continue to put on weight and feather out into a varied bouquet of clucks and cockadoodledoos. All of the birds weathered the heatwave with a little help and as temperatures return to seasonal normality we are full steam ahead on their permanent hen house and paddock. With lots of hard work and any luck, the hens will lay their first eggs this month in their new colosseum gallus. We are both very excited about the construction methods and design of the permanent hen house and look forward to sharing more specifics once we have a finished product to unveil.
The waterfowl are also thriving! Our first batch of ducks came the first week of July and quickly turned into full on ducks. The duck growth rate is really something to behold. The second batch came about three weeks later and that second batch is nearly full grown now and are starting to fill out adult plumage. Our waterfowl roster includes 6 White Star, 6 Cayuga, 4 Chocolate Runners, 2 Black Runners, 2 Blue Runners, 2 Fawn and White Runners, 2 Welsh Harlequins, 1 Buff Orpington, 1 Silver Appleyard and 2 White Chinese Geese. The geese definitely have the most personality as they go about their business keeping many goosey secrets. Their house, named the Quack Shack, is functionally complete albeit pending a few finer touches we plan to add as we go. The Quack Shack was designed to be mobile so we can practice a paddock style weed and soil management using our hungry, web footed, waddlers. Duck and geese eggs are a ways out, but brunch at Farmstead 248 is about to be lit when they finally arrive!
Cocktails 248
We are a couple that loves cocktails! We love experimenting with ingredients and we’ve included ingredients from the property when possible. We decided to share our fun on Instagram with weekly farm cocktails on Wednesdays. In the near future we may share cocktail recipes made with ingredients on the farm here on our website.
Kelsey’s Roses and Thorns
Roses: My brother, sister-in-law, and niece’s visit, silly silly ducks, and our plants surviving the heatwave!
Thorns: The continued heat! I’m so happy it looks to be coming to an end.
Jake’s Roses and Thorns
Roses: Ducks shooting in and out of fresh pools. Frantic Charlie laps around the yard. Increasingly bellicose rooster crowing.
Thorns: Delays, heat and learning curve for new practices
