Stone's Throw Farm

I noticed a ton of dragonflies in the orchard yesterday evening, and realized, “Of course, they’re feasting on the mosquitoes!” Yes, it’s that time of year, and we’ve certainly got plenty of standing water right now for the annoying bugs to breed in. We’re chugging along at Stone’s Throw Farm as best we can . . . when it rains every few days or rains 2.25 inches at a time, much of our soil never quite dries out enough to work. For the most part, the plants we already have in the ground are doing fine, though. The first snap peas I seeded rotted in the ground, but the 2nd planting is coming up strong and the 3rd planting is sprouting. We had such a good pea crop last year that I suppose we were due for a little trouble.

We were able to pick up and move the “garoophouse” — a canvas garage frame that I’m using for a hoophouse — into its new spot with the tractor, and got it all ready for our second round of greenhouse tomatoes (the first round is doing fine in our #2 hoophouse). The field tomatoes are ready to transplant, but we only got their beds partially prepped before all the recent rain. I’m sure we can keep them happy in their pots until we can get them into the field, though. My mom helped me rescue the radishes, greens mix, lettuce mix, and beets from extremely thick weeds, and we’ve done some hoeing in the Brassica plantings, too. The spinach is next on the list to rescue from a carpet of weeds, and the carrots are up. The pigs are, of course, packing on the pounds. My dad spent a ton of time mowing around the fields and trimming under the fence and so forth this past week, so the whole place looks freshened up.

In summary, we’re about where we were last year at this point . . . please forgive my lack of enthusiasm at that announcement!

The Napa cabbage is doing all right. So is the grass between beds. 😦

Looks like a baby hoophouse!

The honeybees have surely enjoyed all the dandelions.

Lettuce, rye, etc. looking west.