Merry Christmas!!!!!

Our First Snow on the Farm This Thursday.

Merry Christmas!

This year went by fast and I realize its been months since I updated the blog so here are some recent photos. Hope everyone's Christmas and new year are wonderful and safe and hope your 2013 is great!

Chickens getting big!

They like to look in at us in the Kitchen.

Matt having a nice "moment" with a Rooster.

Installing the electrical line to the coop. Runs their light and heat lamp.

Our First Egg! We are now getting about 10 a day!

Nesting boxes in the coop.

Lazy dogs enjoying the sun on a chilly day.

Adam says Hello. :)

Getting close....

We went to our first Lees Summit Market yesterday and had a great experience. We sold out of everything and talked with a lot of people that were interested in what we do and interested in buying healthy, home grown, pesticide free food. It was very encouraging. We had Yukon Gold Potatoes, Purple Viking Potatoes, wild blackberries from our property, herbs and radishes.

Adam's all set and ready for the day! Hopefully we will need three tables soon.

We have been busy getting the summer crops ready and keeping them watered. The lack of rain this year has made it harder but we are on a roll. We have 75 tomato plants in the ground and doing great. Little green tomatoes waiting to turn lots of colors (16 different varieties!).

Cantaloupe and Watermelons

Peppers and eggplants are getting bigger and the melons are looking great. 

16 Brahmas (White)
16 Speckled Sussex (Brown)
13 Purple Guinea Foul (Grey)

  Chickens are getting bigger fast and they are fun to watch. They are all healthy and should start laying in the fall. It is neat to see them turn from fluffy chicks into some very pretty birds. The Guineas are still living with the Chickens but will be relocated to the garden soon to eat bugs and keep pests away. They like to fly out of the fence for a bit and come back at dusk or sit on the roof of the coop and keep watch. They sounded the alarm the other afternoon when some dogs started to walk up the driveway, they scared the dogs away. :)

First years lessons so far.....

Well, the last 3 months have been busy and full of learning "opportunities."
1) Everything takes longer than you think...
2) Always costs more than you think.....
3) Turns out a little differently than you think... but that is sometimes a good thing.
4) Don't dig holes for fence posts if your not ready to put up a fence. (your friend may step in the hole filled with muddy water... sorry Matt.....)

We tilled up two 1 acre areas and one of them was slightly down hill from the water collection pond and is ALWAYS wet. Lost all the cauliflower, had to start new patch of lettuce, and had to transplant the spinach and the brussels to the other tilled area on the other side of the pond and they seem to be doing better. Potatoes are loving the wetter area and sprouting like crazy. We have about 300 ft of potatoes doing really well.

"New" garden site, 200 ft rows.

Just got peas, beans, squash, lettuce, beets, radish, broccoli, herbs, cabbage, kale, and some grains planted last weekend and some of which are already sprouting. The rain was PERFECT timing. We also planted aprox 500 cloves of garlic with the lettuce.

Lots and lots of garlic!

This Saturday is a full moon so the corn, and oats are getting planted as well as melons, cucumber and some more beans. (Full moons energy helps sprout above ground plants, while root crops go in on a new moon.)

Adam getting the corn/oats spot plowed.

We also got the chicken coop built with the much needed help of Matt. What would we do without him? He has two hidden hatch doors for collecting eggs from the nesting boxes and one for sweeping out the coop. We had enough vinyl siding from the house to use on the coop. Hope to get the chickens in about 2 weeks. We also plan to get some Guinea foul to live in the garden and eat all the bugs for us.

Hatch to nesting boxes.

Want to be able to start at the market in lees Summit in a couple weeks but waiting for some growth! We will email again the week we plan to start.

House is done! Time to FARM!!

Monday we closed on the house and are moving forward to starting the farm. Matt did an AMAZING job on the addition and got it built fast! We now have a spare bedroom and an office! We got satellite internet yesterday so we can finally post new pictures!

Need some grass!

Matt's tile work in the mud room

Hallway in addition

Master Bedroom

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After lots and lots of hard work and jumping through more hoops than expected from the lender we are all moved in and taking advantage of the fall-like winter we are having.

Adam got his tractor this week and already mowed the farm area so we can till this weekend. We just cant believe its almost February and we can actually turn the soil for spring planting, an important step we thought we would miss this year.

We are also working on getting the basement cleared out of moving boxes so we can set up the seeding stations and get ready to start seeds.
Spring will be here quick and we hope to be at the Lees Summit Farmers Market in April when it start up again.
Below are some construction pictures.
More updates to come!

Building basement stairs

Clean House, Rud's waiting for the appraiser

Stove install

Matt C and Matt H framed it all in two days!