garden etc.

honeycrisp harvest

my first ever Dahlias

mid-Summer fruit status

raspberries

honeycrisp apples

black currant

Bartett pears

new this year: a fig tree

red grapes

blurry pic of red plum

peaches

red currant

purple climber

clematis in bloom

blackberry bounty

The year I bought my farm Raquel sent me some blackberry bush root stock which I planted.  7 years later, they stand 10 feet high and produce endless giant, juicy blackberries.  They never even make it in the house - I just pick them and eat them every day XOXO

'lil fruity

Berry harvest from the orchard - clockwise from top left: black currants, raspberries and blueberries, red currants, gooseberries

saving the berries

When I moved to the farm 5½ years ago, my good friend Raquel sent me tiny root stock starts of raspberry and blackberry bushes.  They grew and prospered and have supplied me with fresh berries every Summer for years.  With the construction of the cheese barn underway, we will be plowing down the area where the berries are now, so I took advantage of the warm Indian Summer temperatures this week and cut them all down for the Winter, and next Spring will dig them up and move them somewhere new to grow once again.  Here is the pile of trimmings 

and here the bases of the bushes, ready to be under a winter blanket of snow for the next several months

a pear

This years harvest from my pear tree

lone harvest

A perfect, single, organically grown MacIntosh apple from my tree.  It produced ONE apple this year

cabbage harvest

My haul of little cabbages from the garden

wee golden

tatties

My first crop of red norland potatoes dug from the garden

jordgubbe

my Nordic strawberries, a gift from Holman Farm last year, are fruiting

seasonal tokens are about

red and black currants, and a few gooseberries from the garden

red berries shine here and there

- Dickins

Holman seedlings

Power gardener and ultra friend Laurie gave me a box of her home-started vegetables seedlings, as she so generously does each year.  This year's goodies: broccoli, tomatoes, eggplant, brussels sprouts, kale, and collard greens. 

coreopsis and gayfeather

going to scatter these in the meadow that I don't mow here at the farm - the feed store folks told me most of them will look like weeds this year, but next Spring will be beautiful 

purple food

garden harvest of all purple vegetables

fruit update

The orchard didn't do that well this year, due to a cool Spring and Summer.  What my honeycrisp tree lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality - behold the SINGLE apple she produced!

Gnarly looking pears - they will taste OK, but suffered Japanese beetle damage earlier in the year.

Three McIntosh apples

orange and yellow

The big yellow squash has turned orange

Bumble bees on a sunflower

hi ho

19th century sterling silver tablespoon excavated from my garden.  I will shine it up, but I love the way it's bent

tomatoburst

Tomato haul from the garden September 7, 2013