Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Jam and Smoothie Garden

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Making nice progress on our newest patch:  the “Jam and Smoothie” garden.  We started a second blueberry patch last fall, on the house side, between the newest Triple Crown blackberry patch and the existing elderberry patch.  Earlier in the spring, we added a row for raspberries, black and red ones,  with one lonely gooseberry bush at the end.  This week, we added two more rows:  one for Honeyoye strawberries, (we planted 50) with currant bushes at the end, and another one for “unknown, but really good” strawberries.  We plan to use the “runners” of existing strawberry plants, which are growing happily in the herb garden.  The patch is finished off with a row of lavender – some of these were left over wedding favors, which we supplemented.  Hoping the lavender bushes grow up nicely and attract plenty of pollinators!   The fruit trees then border the lavender on the other side.

CANNING!!!

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I guess you have to be bit crazy to get excited about the first batch of canning for the season, but we do …every year!  We started off the 2012 canning season with strawberry jam – 20 pints of it.  We use the low sugar “Sure-Jell” kind, and pretty much follow the instruction verbatim.  EXCEPT:  we make the regular jam (NOT the freezer kind), – but then store the jam in the freezer.

We like the taste and consistency of the regular low sugar jam, but the color and freshness that the freezer provides. We also do this for nectarine and peach jam  – they all loose their color and flavor too fast if not frozen.

Our second canning job were the peas this weekend.  Between ourselves, our family and friends we ended up picking 24 buckets of peas, or 15 bushel.  We never did finish picking the entire patch, we simply ran out of time and volunteers….but then the peas were supposed to be a cover crop anyhow, to get nitrogen into the soil.  The pea pods were just a happy by-product.  We canned 50 quarts of peas between Friday night and Saturday.

Prolific Peas

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Much better harvest than last year – probably 2-3 times more pods on each plant!  Luckily our family from Bedford visited today to help pick – they picked 11 five gallon buckets of pea pods, which made 2.5 buckets of shelled peas.   But this accounted for only 1/3 of our pea patch….the rest will have to wait until Friday evening and Saturday.

Luckily there are still mechanical pea shellers available for custom shelling, for just a few dollars – and within a few minutes – we got all our peas shelled at a farm in Newville.

Garden Update – May 27

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Blackberries in Full Bloom!

We are still working on the trellis systems for the “Triple Crown” blackberries and the “Vidal Blanc” grapes.  Drilled more holes, set and pounded posts and went to Lowes twice today to purchase more posts.

Jeff plowed and disked the area above the  “Vidal Blanc” grapes and planted the rest of the “Incredible” corn, and 5 rows of “Silver King” corn.   Tina continued working on the new “Jam and Smoothie” garden and we also planted 20 “Sweet Ruby” pepper plants, 25 “Big Dipper” green peppers and 35 Basil plants – then we had an massive storm front with driving winds and thundershowers put a stop to all planting for the day 🙁

More Blackberry Trellis Installation

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Our one year old plants (Triple Crown) have been growing like crazy with all the rain we’ve had this week, and the tractor barely fits above the plants anymore, so we’re concentrating on drilling all the post holes for the trellis posts in this patch, before the brambles grow higher

Toben watches “Pappy Jeff”

The posts are approximately 30 ft. apart – or roughly every 8 berry plants.   We marked the spots for each post with a squirt of spray paint.   We are using our “skinny” auger in the post hole digger – and it definitely works best when sharpened!  Jeff also found that it works a lot better with some extra weight above the auger – hence the creative rigging of cement blocks 🙂

The posts line up with those we set last year – our “Apache” patch, which is now in its third year … and looking amazing!