Wednesday, May 12, 2010

“Now I’ve Seen Everything!”

I was telling my brother-in-law today that we are going to be blogging our farm adventures and he said,

“cool!  A blogging farmer… now I’ve seen everything!” 

I guess a blogging farmer is pretty unusual!

We are starting to see tiny little fruits and vegetables here at the “Good Old Days” farm.  Today, the little farmhands and I went exploring to see what we could find.  We found:

101-0139_IMG Peas!  Don’t they look good enough to eat!  (That’s exactly what we did as soon as the picture was taken.  So those particular peas are gone now… but there are plenty left!)


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Little Itty Bitty Cucumbers…They are only about 1 cm long!

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Parsley!  Yes, that is parsley in the garden and yes, there is more of it growing outside the garden than in the garden.  That stuff is taking over like a weed!  We are going to be having a lot of parsley around here for the next little while!

Then we left the vegetable patch and moved on to the orchard…

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You can’t tell it now, but those are the beginnings of persimmons!  You have to look very closely to see the green “blossom.”

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It doesn’t look like it, but that’s an apple…

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A nectarine!  Actually, we only have one nectarine tree.  We found the plant growing in the compost pile a couple of years ago.  It had started from one of the nectarine pits somebody had tossed in there.  We figured it wouldn’t hurt to plant it in the orchard and see if it would survive… and it did!

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I think we are going to have a lot of peaches this year.  So many of our peach trees look like this!

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Mulberries!

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Plums!  (I know they don’t look like it now, but those little hard green round things really are plums!  You'll just have to take my word for it!)

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Pears!

Out on the other side of the fence we found one last surprise:
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Lots and lots of blackberries!  We were just talking about how good they would taste when they get ripe in a couple of weeks when one of the little farmhands spotted…
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5 ripe berries!  One for each of us!  That will be dessert tonight!
The little farmhand who spotted them said, “It’s a good thing I have really good eyesight!”  As she was patting herself on her back for her keen observation skills I looked down and noticed that her hand was smack in the middle of a patch of:
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Poison Ivy!
Actually, we were all standing in it!  I’ll have to let you know how that turns out.  Right now, I’m signing off to scratch…

6 comments:

  1. Congrats on such a beautiful way of life!! Keep up the pictures and blogging, I love it!
    love
    annie

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  2. Thank you Annie. =) Looking at your garden last year was inspiring! When Yann said he wanted to do this I thought he was nuts. If I hadn't already seen your garden I would have thought he was really nuts. =)

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  3. Nice photos of your farming experience. Thank you for sharing them with everyone, it is a neat way to do so. :)

    Another blogging farmer that I enjoy is: www.farmfreshiowa.blogspot.com I always leave with a smile on my face.

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  4. Poison Ivy: Makes sure you have a soup with a "de-greaser" agent in it and use it to clean EVERYTHING that comes into contact with the poison ivy within the first 30 minutes as it will remove the oils from spreeding -- the oils can be active for many years later!!!

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  5. Thank you Abby and Adeena! Abby, I will check out the blog you suggested... I figured there must be more than one blogging farmer... my brother in law has a dry sense of humour... That's why we keep him around! Adeena, you wouldn't believe the poison ivy around here this year! I wish the vegetables were growing as well as the poison ivy! I didn't know the oils could stay active for years to come. Our oldest little farmhand had a case of poison ivy on the face earlier this year, but it was gone in a day. We are trying to be careful! I wonder if I can make home-made anti-poison ivy soap! =)

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  6. Animals, such as dogs, can spread the itch of the poison ivy too! Careful when you pet them...

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