'Bout Time! Farm Update

Well I don't know what happened to June, but we managed to squeeze in some serious weeding in two separate trips and a much needed vacation to Halifax and Ontario to visit the family! But now that we are back in action in AB, we better give you an update on our plot! We went up on Saturday to do a heavy dose of weeding and expose this wonderful looking garden!

We are so happy to have such a healthy looking plot this year that has easily tripled in size from our first season! We have two rows of potatoes, and three rows of beet varieties, as well as carrots, sunflowers, garlic and corn all popping up! We even collected our first harvest, of scapes!

Our first ever garlic patch did not produce as much as we had hoped, but considering it was the first time we planted garlic, or planted anything in the plot we had made (the plot did well in growing thistles), we are pretty happy with the 25 plants that have grown for us, and intend to have a larger plot with more varieties next year. We do love fried up scapes!

We are itching to dig up our potatoes, the early season variety Bellanita (little yellow fingerling potatoes) is flowering and almost ready for the first harvest. Our sunflowers are the height of my waist, so I am stoked to hopefully roast up some sunflowers this fall!

Unfortunately our germination on our first plant of carrot seeds (May 20th) were a poor performance, which we realized after checking the historical weather, they did not receive enough water during the critical time period.. but that's the dice you toss when you live 2 hours from the farm. The second seeding (May 28th) germinated much better however, so we weren't completely at a loss (keeping those eggs in many baskets!)

Here I am in front of my sunflowers, beaming with excitement of how well our plot has grown the last few weeks!

We are always amazed at ourselves for the amount of work we can squeeze into a day at the farm (with 4 hours of commuting time!). It is back breaking work, but we just dream about the amount of effort we could put in if we lived on the land and had weeks at a time to make a difference. These first seasons have been great to learn how much we are capable of with minimal funds, minimal tools and other efficiencies. We can proudly say this 3/4 acre was tilled by hand, seeded by hand, and weeded by hand, and will be harvested by hand! With more time and more tools, we can confidently bite off more plot space and not feel overwhelmed. And eventually we will have tamed the weeds enough to not get poked in the rear while gardening! Sigh, life goals!

I'll end my rant with a fantastic picture of the other half of Uprooted Farms, during our break this weekend from weeding! I think he's starting to look more and more like a farmer. The flea market Prairie farmer report hat certainly helps!

We have weathered some serious farmer tans, sweaty digging and weeding, bug bites and soaked jeans this year, but we are all the better for it! Now that we have invested the hard work, it's near time to harvest and revel in the fruits of our labour! The beets are almost ready....drooool.

Until next time my friends!

Kait

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