I love great, home grown heirloom tomatoes, don’t you? There is nothing like the flavor of a great ‘Big Rainbow’ or ‘Mortgage Lifter’ tomato, still warm from the sun. Those are just two of the varieties I planted this year of a total of 10 different varieties, 14 plants in all. I grew nine of the varieties from seed, right in our own basement. I picked up the other one at a farmer’s market, I liked the name: ‘Stump of the World’.
This house has a great Farmhouse Style vibe that Al and I both love. It’s a basic ranch house with simple lines, plain trim and lots of windows. It’s airy and bright, open and comfy for living. It does have a few quirks though that we have on our list to fix.
It’s a fine August morning here on the farm. I just watered the flowers and harvested the day’s vegetables. Soon, I will need to start freezing, canning and pickling for winter eating. Before getting busy again, I thought I should post an update on what has been happening.
Spring is the busiest time of year for gardeners and farmers, so we’ve been busy bees here on 3/4 Pi Farm. So busy, as a matter of fact, that I haven’t had a moment to write about the farm for several weeks!
Finally! Some beautiful spring weather here in Michigan! Well, sort of. A week ago we had snow, today it was over 80 after an entire weekend of beeeeeeeyooootiful weather. We are having one weird April, that’s for sure. Mother nature is off her meds. It was just perfect for working outdoors though, so late last week, we ordered a truckload of compost. We could have had it earlier, but had other things on our schedule that prevented us from dealing with another truck in the driveway.
I suspect that this calendar year will be filled with ‘firsts’ for us. This week it was our first sightings of Wild Turkeys right on our own place. Last Tuesday I saw them across the farm field, a flock of hens followed by a strutting Tom Turkey- too far away to photograph, just near enough to tell what they were.
Last night we were able to hear the vigorous calling of wood frogs and spring peepers (and possibly chorus frogs – although they were being drowned out by the peepers) from our bedroom window. There must be a vernal pond in the wooded area across the road. The frogs in our pond have not started calling, so they haven’t identified themselves yet.
We just had to celebrate today! After all, Pi Day is a holiday just for us nerds and pi is a big part of our farm. Or is it pi are? Not sure. Anyhoo, I baked up a yummy Apple Pie, using some Northern Spy Apples we had in the freezer.
We’ve had some pretty nice weather here this week. It’s been really warm for March, so we took advantage of the sunshine to get started on our long list of tasks that need to be done. Over the winter we’ve had big dreams for our little farm.
It’s a beeeeeyoooootiful day out today, so Al and I decided to take our soil samples for our Sustainable Landscaping class homework. A simple experiment involving a measure of garden soil, water and a little soap put in a jar and shook for 10 minutes, we’ll look later to see what kind of soil we have.
