Heirloom Crenshaw Melons bound for Medford Food Coop

We are taking a load of these lovely vine ripened, organically grown, heirloom crenshaw melons to the Medford Food Coop today.  Dont miss your chance to try one of these... supplies are very limited!

A sample of these beautiful melons, super sweet and healthy

Run by the food coop and grab one.. you will not be disappointed. A sweet canteloupe - honeydew flavor with awesome aroma and creamy flesh.

you can also order some for home delivery through our online store.

Get one and experience how well our pig eat!

First crenshaw melon harvest... pure yum !

The first heirloom crenshaw melons are in! We tried some still green but almost ripe ones and they were good.... but these vine ripened ones.. excellent!

Its a bit like a cross between honeydew and cantaloupe. The flesh is smooth and creamy, very sweet and a light cantaloupe aroma. Perhaps the best melon ever!

These are intended for pig food, but we will definately be sneaking some for us and might even sell a few in the online store!

posted from Bloggeroid

Golden Sweet Sunset Adventures

One of our favorite activities we love to do as a family is pick fruit for our animals.  The children laugh, they play and we enjoy each others company.  And as if all that wasn't fun enough,  then,  we get to watch them enjoy the harvest!

Many people have been blessed with fruit trees on their property that fruit more then their family can utilize. When the fruit becomes ripe and falls,  it can become a bit of a chore for the owner to manage.  We are so thankful to pick any unused fruit and also to clean up fruit that has dropped. 

We were able to pick 4 (5 gallon) buckets of tiny yellow organic plums for our animals from this generous couple in central point.

If you know of any organic fruit or vegetables that would bless our farm, please let us know. It is extremely valuable to us,  and we are very thankful to provide the variety in our animals feed supply.

Happy picking!

Grape harvest

What fun we had harvesting grapes recently!  Thank you to the Schmidt family!

Blueberry planting time!

Spring is here, and with it, the need to get our new blueberry plants in something to grow a crop this year. Since we are planing on moving the farm within a year or two, we don't want to place them in the ground permanently just yet. So, working with a local nursery we decided to place the plants into the new things called "grow bags".

Grow bags are 35 gallon bags make of something like felt. The rough surface inside the bag encourages roots to stop lengthening when they hit the side of the bag and start bushing out instead. In contrast, plastic pots let the roots grow round and round in circles until it becomes root bound. These bags should give us a couple years of growing room before planting in the ground itself is a necessity.

So we started transplanting the big blueberry plants into the grow bags. We used a mixture of organic potting soil, organic pete moss, and as much of the original root ball as possible. What a challenge! By the end of the day, with only 5 plants potted, myself ad my young farm hand were both beat! These mature blueberry plants weight a ton, are challenging to work with, and just generally tired us out! It will be worth it though, when we have buckets of fresh ripe blueberries to pick this very first summer!

We placed the finished blueberry plants into the orchard, to line the fences. My plan is to keep the plants all within the orchard to make a nice "hedge" along the fence where they are save from the sheep and llama, but the turkeys can find shelter under their shade. We will need some sort of protection from the birds eating all our berries. The berries along the bottom will be a nice food source for the young turkeys, but wild birds will steal all the upper berries if we let them. Netting seems appropriate for that.

The first 5 blueberry plants in their semi-permanent home

The toms had to come check out the new additions!

Closeup of the blueberry inside the grow pot. Perhaps we should have gone with one size larger.

Blueberries Arrive Finally!

Today the blueberry bushes were delivered! Apparently there was quite the demand for mature blueberry bushes in the southern Oregon area, because several other people showed up at Little Sprouts to pick up their plants too. The bushes arrived on a rather large flatbed, which barely fit in our circle drive.  Here it is waiting to be unloaded with about 40 blueberry plants on the trailer.

Blueberry bushes waiting to be unloaded

We ordered 20 plants ourselves, and the other farmers that showed up all had a few each, so it took a while to unload the plants into the various trucks and trailers. What a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon! It was really wet and muddy after the last few days of rain...  the ground is very soft. and an inch off the driveway and its like being in quicksand. Times like these I am thankful for 4 wheel drive tractors!

Loading some plants into a trailer

And of course, my usual supervisor was on site making sure everything was done right. Most of his time was spent inspecting the water puddles.

Is this puddle compliant with OSHA?

Sure does make a nice splash!

So now we have 20 mature blueberry plants in hibernation resting comfortably by the front fence. They can sit there through the winter since they are dormant. Come March we will start planting them along the fence line to provide a nice privacy hedge and buckets and buckets of blueberries! There should be enough blueberries to harvest this coming summer to provide all we need for our family, and have plenty left over to sell. We are considering offering them as dried, jellied, jam, or baked into something yummy.

blueberries are on their way!

We have made arrangements for another new crop on the farm starting next year. Blueberries! We are putting in mature blueberry bushes so that they will fruit the very first year. If all goes well we will have Little Sprouts blueberries for sale throughout the summer.

The plants are set to arrive this Saturday, weather permitting.  They will be dormant and can sit all winter if need be until I get time to dig holes for them. The decision coming is where to put the plants, which are quite large apparently.  The blueberry plants are like very large bushes or small bushy trees.  We are considering using them as productive hedges for privacy and shade.

Fresh  bush ripened blueberry pies! Yum!

First fruits

Look closely and you will find 2 tiny apples at the top of one of our apple trees! We are so excited to see fruit growing only a couple months after planting these trees!