Keeping busy...

September is almost over already! We have been so busy we didnt realize how much time had past since our last post.
We have been cutting down trees to get firewood ready for winter. One of the trees had to come down because it is in the way of our power pole that will be installed soon. Adam is loving all of the "lumber-jacking"! He is actually very good at getting the trees cut down and getting them to fall just where he wants them. Today he cut a few trees, one of them was about 50 ft tall and perfect hedge for the wood burner.

We are going to have a factory home built and set on a basement we will have poured next month. The "modular" home is 213% stronger that a standard home and much more efficient. We wanted to start with our solar and wind but apparently you cant finance those "Non Conventional" items so we will have to start with KCP&L and maybe next year we can get the solar and wind installed.
First we will need to get the driveway in for the concrete trucks and that will require 300 tons of rock since we are about 600 ft from the road. The house is built in a factory where they can be out of the weather and have more control over the build with plumbing, wiring, drywall etc. The house its self will be built in 4 weeks then delivered and set on the foundation and then the final touches like, siding, roof and connections to water, electric and propane are finished. We hope to be in by Christmas! It is about 1,400 sq ft all one level with full walkout basement. We were able to make some customizations to it to make a more open floor plan and bigger kitchen.

We are excited to get moved out to the country, we love being out there working and seeing all the wildlife... Adam saved a baby turtle from the busy country road....

We also found time to be a part of a music video for one of our favorite rock bands Jackyl! They announced on the radio that they were taping a video in a warehouse downtown so we went down and got in line and made it in! There were about 1,000 people that showed up and they only let about 150 of us in! We might be on MTV soon! :)

More updates to come as the house gets started!

Dinner with Lidia!

Sunday night we ate dinner at our favorite place, Lidia's. We also got to meet the one and only Lidia Bastianich in the loft dining room. She talked about her cooking show that she films in her home and the wines that were served at dinner from her family vineyard in Italy.
She was very sweet and just as wonderful as we imagined..(we are BIG Lidia fans!)
We talked with her about our future farm and our love of good healthy food. She immediately asked her GM, Jason to get his card to us so we can keep in touch once we get up and running. Jason was also very nice and we talked about farming and his garden too.
We had a wonderful 5 Course dinner with ricotta stuffed eggplant, sliced prosciutto, Shrimp risotto, Roast pork shoulder with polenta and a peach sorbet with almonds and cherry ambrosia. We rolled out of there with our big bellies after 3 hours of being wined and dined..

We got our Land!

Yesterday we closed on our new land and future home!
36 beautiful rolling acres in Blairstown Missouri, about 1 hour south of KC near Garden City. It has 1 pond and two small creaks with lots of trees and plenty of open area for the farm and house. Its along a black top road and there is a private gravel road that goes along the west side of the property. Very pretty area and quiet surroundings. Our neighbors across the street are the Russell Stover Family. Of course we cant see them... they have 1000+ acres over the hill.
Now we are on the search for a tractor, we think we found one we want but we are going to look a few more places before we decide for sure.
Adam is ready to get the tractor out there to start tilling up the farm area and plant some cover crops like alfalfa, beets, radishes, and other nutrient rich items so we can till them all under in a few months so they can compost over the winter and then it will be ready to plant in the spring!
We have been making cuttings of Moms apple tree in the back yard so we can kick start our orchard, and we have started saving seeds from our veggies this year to plant on the new farm so we don't have to buy so much next year. We plan to by a small trailer this fall so we can move out there soon and later next year we hope to start building the house.
We will be updating as we start working on it but for now here are some Pictures!

Getting HOT!

Feels like summer came early this year. Its been in the 80's-90's for a while now and the plants are loving it.

Potatoes are doing great, beans, zucchini and yellow squash are huge and we have 4 in long zuchinni's already.

Peppers and tomatoes are getting bigger and the Basil is growing FAST! We planted sweet basil and opal basil this year and it is a gorgeous purple color.

We learned something new about garlic. When the bulb is forming a "curly shoot" will come up between the leaves with a flower bud in the middle. This is a "Garlic Scape" in other countries this is actually considered a delicacy but they are typically thrown away in the U.S.
By cutting the scape you allow more energy to focus on the growing glove underground and the scape is a wonderful early garlic "chive".

We already have some pests in the garden causing trouble. We have some potato beetles and bean beetles nibbling on pretty much everything. We spay an organic mixture that makes the bugs stop chewing and therefore stop eating. Doesn't work as quickly as pesticides but we dont want all that poison on our food either so we just have to stay on top of the organic spray every few days. Tonight we added some calcium and seaweed fertilizer to everything so it will get rained in tomorrow.
Definitely keeping busy between work and the garden.
Cant wait to eat it!

Busy Busy Spring!

Its been a while since our last post, we have been busy! Adam sorted through his seeds and found the selections for this year. We are doing fewer varities but more of each item. We hope to buy land and build later this year so we are keeping this garden simple.

We tilled the garden, started all our seedlings inside, planted lettuce, onions, beans and 27 lbs of yukon gold potatoes outside and are almost ready to set the broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, okra, herbs and flowers out.

We had planted onions and garlic in the fall and covered them with straw. They did great throught the winter and are getting huge quick!

I have been working weekends more with wedding season underway and we are activly looking for land.

We got the rain barrels back out and built a "tower" for them so we can get some better water presure. Yes, it is an ugly tower but all the wood was free so we did our best.

Izzy had some minor surgery last week. She had a large lump on her hip so they removed it. Turned out to be nothing. Her stiches were more of a problem than the lump, she had to wear a cone and we wraped her in gauze to keep off it. I slept with her on the couch the first few nights to make sure she didnt tear off her bandages. She is very good at quietly removing her bandages and pulling out her stiches (even with her cone on!). She is due to go in tomorrow to get the stiches out but she managed to get all 7 stiches out all by her self this last week. Amazingly her side healed up really well even with the stiches out.

Today was the first day she didnt have to wear the cone and we took her gauze off. She is a happy doggie now. 

We are so glad winter is over and we can get back out in the dirt! Happy Spring!

Happy New Year! !

Its 2010 and we are COLD!!!

We are going to be down to -7 tonight and we still have about a foot of snow on the ground that started on Christmas day. We are seeing weather that hasn't happened since 1982!

We had a great Christmas and are ready for the new year.

The pups got new toys, jackets and sweaters. Good thing too, they don't like the cold very much.

This time of year they just bury themselves in a blanket on the couch and sleep. They have gotten fat too! Izzy has gained 6 lbs (she was only 6 lbs to start with!) and Rud has put on 5 lbs of winter laziness.

In November we winterized the garden and covered the Carrots, onions and garlic with straw to keep them cozy till spring. We tilled the main area so we are ready to plant once the ground thaws.

We cant wait!

We hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and is keeping warm!

Happy New Year!

In the down swing

We cant believe Summer is over already! Feels like we just got started! Hopefully this time next year we will be about done building the house on some beautiful land!

We have tilled in the garden for winter, most things were spent and looking pretty ugly. Mom G had the Corson Family reunion on September 20th and we didn't want the garden looking gross for moms guests.

We still have broccoli, carrots, beets, radishes, turnips and lettuce growing. Next year the garden will be a bit simpler since we will be securing some land and building. We have narrowed down some favorites that we grew this year and will focus mainly on those. We felt we had to many varieties of everything this year and some were not as good as others.

We have been busy otherwise. We went to Virginia Beach for Adams Grandpa Atkins 90th Birthday, he looked great and had a good time. He had lots of friends and family show up to see him. It was so nice to see a lot of family I had not met before. We got some time to jump in the ocean and walk on the beach before we came back to this cold Missouri weather!

Last weekend we went out for Adams birthday. We went pumpkin picking! There is a neat farm locally we like to visit each fall that has a hayride out to a pumpkin field and lots of cute animals to play with. We each got to play with a little chicken and pet some goats, Adam was a happy little farm boy! Cant wait till we have our own!

Harvest Time!

We have been picking and pulling up all our spring time hard work.
There were a few things that didn't turn out the way we wanted but we are learning and that's the whole point. We found several types of beans we don't like, tomatoes that just aren't as good as others and we lost almost all of our summer squash (except for a few at the beginning), and all of our pumpkins and now our winter squash to squash bugs.

We did get a few Watermelon that he raccoons didn't eat. The White one is a sweet Cream of Saskatchewan and the red one is an old variety called Moon and stars.
We are just starting to get our red and yellow peppers and lots of Cayenne's and Jalapenos.
Today I pulled up all the remaining carrots, there are purple and white ones that are just as great as the orange.
We pulled up all our potatoes a few weeks ago and they are awesome! We have a plain white potato, Yukon gold and red potatoes.
Some of the most prolific and hardy items that we will definitely grow more of next year is the peppers, eggplants, okra, onions, plain green beans, and just 4 different types of tomatoes. We had 9 different ones this year to see what we liked and we have narrowed it down to the 4 best.
I got a new shirt a friend at work found for me. Of course Adam just HAD to try it on.
I don't think he realizes that I have the power to put it on the blog! He he......