The State of the Farm Address: or how are we doing on the plan I discussed in December

In December, I mentioned that we planned to plant a larger scale garden here and get some animals.

The garden is about a 60 ft x 60 ft horseshoe-shaped area with various plantings. We have 5 tomato tepees with 5 plants each underneath. The tomatoes are interplanted with green and purple basil and surrounded by marigolds for insect control.

There are about 50 white potatoes and 50 red potatoes planted, but something is wrong with the red potatoes. We think the trees have filled in with so many leaves and the direction of the sun has changed so much since planting in February that they aren't getting enough sun and they've just died. There are about 40 ft of pole beans which are yard-long green beans. With those are planted cucumbers, buttercrunch lettuce, and scarlet nasturtiums.

Along one of the fences is the squash bed with zucchini, yellow, acorn, and butternut squash plants. They are growing like crazy and have little baby squashes and/or blossoms on every plant.

The onion and garlic bed is coming along nicely and I snip green tops of onions for cooking whenever I need some. The cabbage patch is about 8 ft x 8ft and has interplantings of chamomile, clary sage, and dill. I've decided that only perfectionists wait for cabbages to form heads. I'm snipping leaves and using them in stir frying and other recipes! Fabulous!

The melon area is planted with decorative Indian corn, cantaloupes, decorative gourds, birdhouse gourds, pie pumpkins, and giant pumpkins. There are also pumpkins growing in the compost pile.

I still need to plant roma tomatoes for sauce, heirloom tomatoes because they're cool and I can save and use the seeds next summer, chard because it is delicious, leeks because they taste VERY different from onions, and peppers because they are beautiful! I look forward to seeing what kind of harvest we get.

Animals?? We GOTS animals. Here's the list:
13 (almost) laying hens
14 quail
10 week-old mixed chicks
8 bunnies
5 goats
1 puppy
2 kittens and
104 freshly hatched pullets!

By my count, we have 157 critters as of today, May 29, 2009.

As for growing edible mushrooms, we are still making decisions about that enterprise. So, all in all, I think we're doing really well on the plan!