4th week of April 2010

Barn Swallows The barn swallows returned from their southern homes right on schedule. We expect them by April 25 each year and we first noticed them on the 25th. We enjoy watching the swallows swooping through the pastures and it is especially fun to see the babies peeking over the edge of the nests in the barn. We are also enjoying the varied song of the mockingbirds and we just sighted the first Baltimore Oriole of the season. Wildlife on the farm is a good sign that there is plenty of food and habitat so we are usually glad to see the various critters. A few of them however, make gardening a challenge. So my peas and lettuce in the orchard patch are protected with two low strands of electric fence to deter the rabbits and groundhogs. I did find the neighborhood peacock eyeing my tender pea seedlings hungrily and I hope the fence does its job well. Peas are a high labor crop and since my family requested plenty of them, I am putting them in charge of some of the pea tending. So this week I had plenty of help to put up all the fence while the peas were still a couple inches high. It's so nice to get that task done on time rather than needing to untangle tall pea plants before inserting the fence. This year I planted Sugar Sprint (an early snap pea), Sugar Snap, Green Arrow for shelling and Carouby de Mausanne which is a flat snow pea. We are starting to eat a few pea shoots from the greenhouse planting and soon will be able to put some pea blossoms on our salad from the Dwarf Gray Sugar plants.

Lettuce Barrels I was very pleased with the lettuce crop under the barrels. Here is what I am harvesting for salad bags this week. I also had a number of greens like chard, burnet, arugula and others under barrels that are good size. Next week I think I can start picking from the lettuce and spinach under the trampoline cold frame. Meanwhile, the unprotected lettuce looks almost the same size when I planted it two weeks ago. A little bit of warmth makes a big difference this time of year. This week I'm starting to uncover some of the early crops and moving the barrels onto the warm season crops to give them a head start. One of our experimental crops is peanuts which we planted in hills and put under barrels to help give them a longer season to produce. Soon we'll put barrels over tomato and pepper seedlings as well as hills of cucumbers and zucchini.

Butter Churn Someone recently joked that I was a "professional butter churner" since that is often what I am doing during my Thursday demos at Lehmans. This week my butter churn and I even posed for the front cover of Lehmans summer catalogue. My churn has now logged over 100 churns and our family is loving all the yummy butter from our grass fed Jerseys. This time of year the butter is brilliant yellow and full of nutrients since the cows are on spring grass. One friend says he feels like Superman when he drinks spring milk. There may be truth to that since there are some amazing things that are found in spring milk like the Wulzen Factor (or antistiffness factor) and Activator X which is a catalyst which helps the body absorb and utilize minerals. The fast growing spring grass is loaded with minerals and the cows concentrate that for us in their milk, especially the cream. To read more on this, check out Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon or www.westonaprice.org. In the meantime there is another dairy project happening on the farm, the boys are tinkering with converting one of our hand crank ice-cream freezers to an electric model. Their goal is to finish it for making Mother's Day ice-cream - I can't wait!