There are several thoughts in my head tonight.  

1. Wow! what a wild spring and early season it has been.  I'm just now getting the planting done and it will take me all week to complete that task.  I don't know if you all know, but I'm a college student graduating this June, so my schedule has been swamped to say the least.  I am working 12-14 hrs a day to get the minimum done.  (and I'm NOT talking laundry either!)  We had snow just two weeks ago, planting is very delaying this year.  My very regular cherry tree is just NOW getting buds.  The latest I've seen this happen since  I planted fruit trees 13 years ago.

2.  My website here.  sigh.  really I need to take a poll.  This thing is costing me $30/month and with Facebook, I tend to gravitate that way for easy updates....AND it is FREE.  In this economy, who can argue with free?  Plus I'm on Localharvest.org and it's FREE too!!  I'm probably going to move that way, update my business cards and cut costs where ever possible. 

3.  My customers are the BEST!  We tried going to Denver, don't like the drive.  Will stay local and hope you all are happy with our products.

4.  We have worked diligently on the high tunnel, we have windows and doors in the east end wall.  Our neighbors down the road, sadly, lost their tunnel when we had wind speeds documented at 70 mph last Monday.  I'm really sad for them since we had the same issue just a year ago.

5.  So....I'm off to bed, very tired tonight.  Hope all is well.

 Tomorrow is our first market of the season.  Despite an extremely challenging start to the season, even by Colorado standards, we are excited to start our season with a small sample of our crops from our high tunnel.  High tunnel growing has an interesting learning curve, so we hope to get better each season, which is four seasons with the tunnel.  Tomorrow we will have some of our free range eggs, swiss chard, spinach, lettuce mix, mild mesclun, radish and turnips.   As well as some beautiful flower pots that were grown by a small grower right here in Elbert County.  Local all the way!  Tonight it is about 40 degrees and we just finished our harvesting, that after our regular day's work.  So while I love being a nurse, I'm wild about growing stuff.  Which must be the truth because it was raining and cold while I washed produce and I was loving every minute of it, talking to the ducks and chickens and kids.  Spring should be here, but while Mother Nature seems to be in some confusion this year, I'm so happy to know that we are at the end of one long, cold winter and the spring greens are delicious!  Hope to see some of you tomorrow.

You know, they say, "the trend is your friend" and honestly after watching the clip I just posted I'd say that the old is new again.  I've been growing for a number of years, and let me just say that 20 years ago growing was something that most felt was best left to the group of vague, seldom-seen folks called farmers.  Truth is, I grew up with those real farmers before they were gone and all I wanted to be was a farmer when I grew up.  Now farming is the new trend.  And I'm so happy to be getting my hands dirty this spring as a small farmer again.  The tunnel has survived some really serious winds.  Did I mention serious winds?  So thankfully all the greens growing inside are safe and sound.  We have peas, lettuces and spinaches all growing outside too.  I'm hoping for no more big snow storms in April or hail in May so we have nice crops.  Baby chicks come next week.  A few layers to replace some older girls and meat chicks to put in the freezer.  The hens are happy that it is spring and they are laying nice brown eggs in abundance.

    I am really moved to buy a cow or goats...again.  We had dairy goats at one time, but Nubians are so big and they repeated got out and repeatedly tried to kill my fledgling orchard by eating those apple trees.  The husband got angry (understatement) and said the goats must go, and since angry husbands are not nice to live with, I promptly sold my goats and three kids.  (Baby goats, not my children...although...some days, my teenagers....you know).  And now, after several years of sleeping in, not fighting wind and blizzards and dark of dusk in winter to milk goats, I rather, well, miss it.  I buy local raw milk, but it is one more trip to town and if gas gets as high as they say, I'd like to stay home as much as possible.  So back to the idea of dairy animals.  I wonder, get dairy goats again, but a smaller breed like Oberhasli?  Or bigger like Dexter cattle or even bigger, a Jersey cow.  So much to consider, but honestly, the pull of goats is strong.  And we have just a small pasture.  Oh well, much to contemplate.

The old is new again! 

Sadly today saw the loss of two of our beloved hens.  I knew, years ago, that when I took on the goal of truly free ranging my hens I'd have losses, but losses of the dog sort are the worst kind.  We had a nice snow storm that dumped a couple feet of snow very quickly here,  the snow also allowed a neighbor dog to get out of his pen.  He's a Husky dog with a taste for chicken.  What can you do?  I talked to the neighbor, but I don't think he has any appreciation for the amount of money invested in each and every hen.  These hens have been in production for less than a year.  One year out of the three years that they lay very well.  The cost of each baby chick, the high cost of good feed, and the loss of income from their eggs makes each hen a very important part of our small farm.  I doubt I'll ever get more than "I'm sorry" from this guy.  And I was SO mad.  Yet I have no recourse really, this is the third time in several years that this dog has eaten chicken.  I want to maintain neighborly relationships, but that should go two ways in my never, humble opinion! 

On a more positive note, my new apple trees that I got planted on Monday look terrific and all the wet snow is watering them for me.  Stuff is growing in the tunnel, spring is coming and I'm a happy camper overall.

Well springtime is certainly here!  We have lots of heavy wet snow falling today after days of beautiful warm weather in the 60's.  I've gotten lots done as well.  Earlier this month I transplanted my little tomato seedlings as they grow in their heated greenhouse at a friends house. 

Don't they look lovely?  Got about 100 tomatoes and 25 pepper plants there and more tomatoes and peppers under grow lights in my basement here.

The past two days were so nice and warm that we were compelled to work outside.  It was so nice.  I've been planning to get a couple low tunnels built so that I could plant inside them on April 1st.  I read about them and went ahead and followed the directions, and it works really well.  I couldn't be more pleased!  I was worried that if I didn't get these up, we would get lots of snow which would cover one of my garden areas so deeply that I wouldn't be planting a thing until June!  I need more space to have spinach, salad greens, cabbages, and broccoli growing in before the season technically starts.  I did two 4'x30' long rows as my trial.  First, went and bought 10, 10' sections of EMT from Home Depot.  The pipe bender I got from Johnny's Select Seeds.  The instructions said to mount the pipe bender to a sturdy structure such as a picnic table.  Well, my picnic table is fiberglass, so we went to plan B:

One pipe bender attached with large bolts to a section of 2x8' board we had laying around plus:

Kids applied for the sturdy part.  Worked just fine, even though they are a bit small. 

And one teenage boy for muscles.  In less than an hour I had 10 hoops that were 4' wide and about 4' tall!  I've realized that I can grow lots and lots of wonderful stuff under these.  I'm using some woven plastic greenhouse cover as my covering.  We dug trenches along the sides of the beds to bury the plastic since this storm was coming in and I didn't really want to see our hard work end up in the neighbor's pasture.  The east side we just used bricks to weight it down so we can put our thermometer inside.  Plan is to take the cover off on Sunday and be able to plant spinach and salad mix inside and then re-cover.  It's really pretty easy to vent with the plastic held up by clips to each of the pipes.  Now I'm going to cover my entire main garden this way!  Talk about a cheap way to extend the season.   The rest of the growing space will wait until summer.  I read that you can cover the same area as a high tunnel for about 1/20th of the price.  But that high tunnel will be mighty wonderful full of tomatoes this summer, hopefully!

Here's a shot of one tunnel covered and one row of hoops.  We got both covered before the winds picked up later yesterday afternoon.  Happy Springtime!

On a cool February afternoon, I got the high tunnel all cleaned up and ready to plant.  I tilled and watered and tilled again.  A smaller area of spinach I left because I'm hoping as the days get longer and warmer that this small patch will allow us to actually eat something homegrown and green soon.  In the mean time I hope to plant early next week to cool weather crops.  The tomatoes are going great in their heated home in at a friend's greenhouse, I'll be transplanting them next week into larger pots.  I'll take pictures too, I promise.

Earlier this week it was nice enough to fill the duck's wading pool, they had a grand time flapping and swimming and talking to each other. 

In a family already full and busy, one young girl talked us into letting another dog come live here.  So now we're up to four dogs.  Miss Lulu is a wonderful rescued chihuahua/pomeranian mix who looks more like a small fox than a dog.  I'm thinking I love my new little dog, she's really worked her way into my heart and I find her jumping and running beside me as I do morning and evening chores.  She is a willing chicken herd-er and a darling lap dog.  During the waning days of winter, when it's hard for me to even imagine spring, she's brought a whole new meaning to the word sunshine. 

   With all the social networking available these days, we have put our farm up on Facebook.   If you use Facebook, just search for Mountain View Meadows Farm and become a fan! 

  We're getting busier around here, tilling and getting ready to plant the high tunnel by mid-February.  We have 200 tomato and pepper plants growing in a heated greenhouse, so they'll be ready to move into the unheated tunnel in late spring.  It's been so nice this past month, that I worry about the spring turning cold and snowy just when we need to be outside working.  Seems like weather is always a challenge here.  But that's just the way it goes and thers's not a whole lot of control over that one.  Have a good week everyone!

Ok folks, it's cold out there today.  If it weren't for the lack of wind and the sunshine, it would be a downright miserable day.  But the sun is shining, so I went to check the high tunnel temps.  I would love one of the lovely Davis Weather Stations with their automatic reporting to an indoor station....but it's always a balance of finances.  Anyway, I had to do it the old fashioned way.  I walked outside.  It was a balmy 16 degrees F in the sun outside, so I expected it to be 30 or so degrees inside the tunnel, I was going to be all excited if it was 40 degrees.  I could not believe my eyes, the thermometer read 62 degrees F!  Wow, how awesome is that?  This my first year with this lovely thing and I'm very pleased, the spinach is growing nicely, and is a great addition to eggs in the morning.

Speaking of eggs, the girls are doing well this year, despite the cold.  I filled their heated waterers again this afternoon, and gave them a nice treat of locally grown grains.  I have used the term "free-ranged" when refering to the eggs we get, but I think I'll switch to the term "pastured".  The term free-ranged is used by huge commercial operations (and as defined by the USDA) to refer to a group of hens that are allowed access to the outdoors.  Well, this merely means that they have or open a door to a small outdoor area part of the day.  These poor girls, raised inside, have no idea that going outside is a good idea!  The commercial grower knows that consumers will pay a premium for eggs that are labeled free-range.  Pastured eggs come from hens that are on pasture during daylight hours and locked safely away from predators come night fall.  As you can see, this requires intense management on the part of the farmer.  I don't really mind, I love my silly hens.  But it does require that should you ever desire to vacation somewhere overnight, you have reliable help that will do the chores on time.  I lost 40 hens to a raccoon last year during a short winter holiday away.  My helper didn't really believe me about locking the hens in at night, on time. There is no price tag for recovering that loss.  So I stay home most of the time or make sure my help is well trained!  Several studies have shown that these eggs are more nutritious as well, and as some of us here can vouch for, you can taste the difference for sure!