Shalom family, friends, and neighbors!  A new year often brings new goals and again we will attempt to have one of our goals to be updating this website consistently!  Many of you know that we had a tough 2019 season.  It started off with weather that many old time farmers said that could very well be the worst that they had seen.  It was rain, rain, and more rain.  We had just about recovered from the terrible weather and another hardship struck July 11th.  Fire!  Long story short, our barn and chicken coop burned to the ground.  We lost a lot, including our 3 Nigerian Dwarf Goats.  To add insult to injury, our surviving animals, Hershey, a small jersey heifer cow, and Blue, a male miniature  horse, had to be put in the only other fenced area that was available at the time. Incidentally, this was also where we had a good deal of crops planted.  As you can imagine, they enjoyed the crops.  We also suffered crop damage in other areas because when the chicken coop burned down, there was no area to put the chickens in that they could not escape from.  They had a field day.  We had to drop all of our markets except the 2nd Street Market.  With David working a full schedule, we struggled to balance all of the responsibilities that we now had due to the fire.  I don’t want to make this post longer than it needs to be, so I will just say that we are thankful that The Most High saw us through everything and we are about 75% of the way done with rebuilding.  I present to you, our new barn:

In our next post, we will let you know what we are currently doing, so be sure to visit often for updates.  Shalom!

 

Greetings Family, Friends, and Neighbors!  My apologies for the lack of updates.  We were busy with various farm related projects, including getting FOOD in the ground.  We also suffered (lightly) a little set back when the storm hit (tornadoes, for those who don’t know).  The farm didn’t suffer any physical damage, however we lost power and water from Monday night until Thursday night that week, so we lost some plants.  We are still without telephone and internet services, which is why I am not able to post any update pictures today.

We plan to be at the Pearl Market this Friday from 10:30 am until 2:00 pm.

We expect to have:

• Mango Pineapple Jam
• Potted Indoor/Outdoor Herbs
• Fresh Herbs
• Kohlrabi
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Spring Onions
• Pak Choi

We hope to see you there!  Shalom!

Greetings family, friends, and neighbors! Busy, busy, busy describes the activity on the farm this spring! From starting seeds to building structures. Moving fences and processing compost. Planting, planting, and more planting. Spring is officially here!

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Next weekend we plan to take a small break to attend the O.E.T.A. conference.

That’s all for now! Shalom!

Greetings family, friends, and neighbors!  Just four days to go!  Four days before it is officially Spring!  We had some much appreciated and welcomed warm weather this past week.  It allowed us to continue working on several projects, including the set up of the area where we plan to put our new strawberry beds.  We had a little set back because of a storm and ended up having to reapply our plastic and fully frame the hoops in, but we like it better now than before anyway.  The strawberry plants are scheduled to arrive around April 8th.  In addition to Mara De Bois, we decided to plant Seascape, and to a lessor degree, as a test run,  Albion, Portola, Evie 2, and AC Wendy.  Those are in addition to what we already have on the property, which are Sonata, Pineberry, and Yellow Alpine.  Without further ado, here are a few pictures:

That’s all for now, Shalom!

Greetings family, friends, and neighbors! The weather has been pretty mild for late winter, nevertheless, we can hardly wait until warm spring weather finally arrives. While we wait, we will keep an eye on some new workers who recently moved to our farm.

These baby chicks are already doing their part on the farm by helping keep one of the areas that we start seed in warm. As you can see above, we already have several seed trays started and some of them are already up and growing.

We also have seedlings growing in the indoor propagation room:

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That’s all for now, check back again often for more fun updates. Shalom!

Greetings family, friends, and neighbors! The OEFFA conference was very informative. We sat in on mini workshops about tree pruning, produce washing safety, SARE/USDA grant writing, and winter growing. There were a lot of vendors. Vendors that we were particularly impressed with included: Gardener’s Thumb Worm Castings, Tiger Mushroom Farms, and Central State’s O.E.T.A.

With the conference behind us, we are now focusing on several projects, one of which is turning these…..

Into these….

These boxes will add lots of square footage for growing. Most of them were made by the little farmers:

That’s all for now. Thanks for tuning in! Shalom!

Hello family, friends, and neighbors! The rain and cold weather continues as we count down the days until spring. This is perfect weather for an indoor food and farm conference! Today was the first day of the 40th Annual Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association Conference.

We spent today learning more about soil health and balancing which proved to be just as interesting as we thought it would be. We also attended a land and labor mixer and got to meet with new and old acquaintances. Lord willing, tomorrow and Saturday, we will attend several workshops of varying topics. We are looking forward to meeting more people and learning new things. I’m going to hit the sack so that, hopefully, I will be refreshed and alert tomorrow. Until next time…. Shalom!

Hello Family, Friends and Neighbors! Winter has finally given us a taste of it’s best. We have had several bouts of snowy and cold weather. Very little can be done outside in weather like that! Things that we were able to do involved putting hay up in the barn for the animals, starting seeds in some of the hoop houses, and starting seeds indoors. Here are a few photos of some of that work.

Hello Friends, Family, and Neighbors! Mild weather has continued to be the theme in Ohio this winter so we have continued to work outside to prepare for the spring.

Other than the outside work, I have been doing a lot of research on flowers. Last year we decided to let the portion of the property that we have dedicated to permaculture, go uncut. We knew that there were several native plants, including milkweed and black eyed susans in the uncut area, so we cut a path and let the rest thrive. We also planted a couple rows of zinnias, sunflowers, and marigolds. Our insect pollinator population made a noticeable improvement, so this year we want to plant several types of wild and cut flowers. I hope to share some photos of the flowers this year.

That’s all for now…. Shalom!

Hello all!

The month of December is just about over, can you believe it? The weather has continued to be mild and as such, we have continued to work outside to prepare for the 2019 growing season. I’ll share a few photos of some of the work that got done and one of a work in progress.

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We are really excited about the planned expansion of our strawberry beds. We have decided to go with an ever bearer called Mara Des Bois.

As hinted by the name, this strawberry is a French bred variety. It is said to be one of the best flavored ever bearing strawberry that is currently being offered. We hope that it lives up to it’s reputation!

That’s all for now… Shalom!