Burns Best Farm

For those of you following our farm/garden situation, I wanted to let you know we received about 1 1/2 inches of the most beautiful liquid heaven yesterday afternoon.  This is the first measurable rainfall we’ve had on our property since April 14 and we praised the Lord for it.

There was actually mud outside the door this morning and I have a reprieve from watering for a day or two, depending on how hot it gets. 

We’ve been irrigating for weeks, but there is nothing like God-given moisture from the sky to nourish the earth. It is so much more complete than anything man can put on a plant to help it grow and produce food.

As for harvesting, I did manage to get all my potatoes dug up before the rain came.  I will plant more in late summer to take us into the fall, but I learned a lot with this maiden crop and I will do a couple of things differently next time.  All three varieties produced but with the hard freeze in April killing back the plants, I didn’t have a big harvest at all. 

The yellow crookneck and pattypan squash continue to flourish and I actually sold four pounds yesterday to mark my first sale of the season.  That was encouraging.  I love to sell food!

The beans have bloomed and I see little pods on the bushy plants, so probably by the weekend my hamstrings will be singing the blues.  I may not post again til September, we have so many beans planted!  If we make it to the market this summer it will be because the beans come in big and we need to sell them somewhere.

Blackberries are starting to ripen.  If I can get to them before the boys do, I might get enough to make a pie. Otherwise, little hands are helping themselves.

Thanks for checking in and we’ll be needing more rain by the weekend, so if we come to mind, please pray for us.

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I mentioned to FarmWife that I would post a banner on my blog when we had some rain here, as we have been and are still in extreme drought conditions.  We have had a little liquid heaven in the last 10 days or so, and while I am thankful for it, the total accumulation is not even an inch.   A couple of times the dirt has actually changed to a darker color, but there is nothing that could remotely resemble mud going on here.

Our first crop to arrive in any quanitity is summer squash.  Mike started transplants of yellow crookneck and a lovely scalloped pattypan squash; he also direct seeded both of those plus an Italian zucchini.  The tranplants have been bearing now for a couple of weeks.  (Those plants direct seeded look good but are still a few weeks away from production.)  The squash tastes great and I have roasted and stuffed the pattypan a couple of times.  It has a nice sweetness that comes out when it’s roasted. 

The lettuce, which we can’t eat quickly enough to keep up with, has begun to bolt, or so have the largest heads.  The tomato plants look good and we completed the trellis this week for all nine rows.  Yes, we have close to 300 tomato plants in the ground.  The cherry tomato plants have begun to set fruit and I am anxiously awaiting the first hint of color.  How else do you know it’s summer? 

In the tomato bed we have 7 or 8 volunteer watermelon and/or canteloupe plants that have situated themselves close to a drip irrigation source.  This same field last year was given over to the johnson grass weeds that popped up instead of the corn we actually planted (this was the second corn planting that we lost to last summer’s drought….are you catching a theme here?)  The summer before that, in ’05, for those still hanging with me, we planted watermelon and canteloupe in that field. 

We knew there were a few volunteer melon plants of unknown varieties that grew in with the johnson grass, but the weeds got so high and thick we gave up on trying to find any actual melons.  These little volunteers that are showing themselves now are third generation to the last melon seeds we bought in ’05.  Don’t you love heirloom, open-pollinated plants?  I am fairly certain I have at least two different varieties this summer by looking at the leaves.  And since we have drip irrigation around the tomatoes and we keep that area weeded well (ok, weeded), we should be able to harvest something.  I’ll keep you posted on what they turn out to be!

I have harvested a few potatoes from my potato bed (please read through my spring archives to follow my potato drama….I’m too lazy to enter a link) and while I’ll do things differently this fall when I plant more, I am generally pleased with the outcome. 

There’s more going on and I’ll just have to check back in by early next week to post those details.  The chickens are growing and the roosters are crowing and the beans are blooming, and life is good.  I hope yours is.

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We are about 12 miles from the Georgia/Tennessee state line as the crow flies, and our air is hazy and smoky today because of the wildfires in south Georgia and north Florida.  Well over 300 miles away.  I am keeping the children inside today because the air quality just stinks and I don’t want to trigger anything that might require a breathing treatment.  I’ve only been outside to move the sprinkler around.

Because have I mentioned, we haven’t had rain to speak of in six weeks?

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