Sugar Creek Farm

They say that confession is good for the soul. So perhaps if I confess my gardening sins to the internet, my soul will begin to feel more green than black again.

Friends, I confess, our garden this year is a disaster. I present, Exhibit A:

We’ve got a good crop of weeds, anyway. I’m already mourning the tomato sauce I’m not going to can, the corn I’m not going to freeze. We did get a number of meals of fresh beans, and I even froze a handful of quart bags. But the pigs enjoyed the majority of our overgrown beans.

And the only excuse I can offer up is that I’ve not yet found a balance for this season of life that we’ve entered, this season of having active kids to cheer on and support as they find and develop their own interests, their own strengths. It was admittedly much simpler when they were little, and our evenings were our own. Now I get so much joy out of watching them do the things they love and develop their talents. I’m certainly not complaining about it. I know that in a blink this season will be gone, and they will gone off to lives and homes of their own. But it’s hard to juggle that with my own desire to be a modern-day Ma Ingalls. I’m hoping some of you been-there-done-that moms will offer me some suggestions.

But back to the jungle garden. Matt would love to just take the lawn mower to the whole thing and be rid of this eyesore. (In fact he did start to take the mower to it, and took out 2 of my paltry 6 melons in the process!)
But as I toured the jungle garden today, I found that there’s still some bounty to be found.

Exhibit B: I’ve got 2 of these Cream of Saskatchewan melons out there.

I’ve also got one Chelsea Watermelon and one Sweet Siberian melon. So on the bright side, we’ll at least get to sample one of each of the 3 types of melons we planted. I planted 3 packs of melon seeds, and only 6 germinated. I blame that one on the crazy weather we’ve had here in Iowa this summer.

Exhibit C: We’ve had a bumper crop of lovely cauliflower.

These were grown from purchased starts. It’s one of the few things I’ve managed to freeze for winter. And it’s still coming on.

Exhibit D: One lone but oh-so-perfect-looking head of cabbage.

Exhibit E: What I picked on my little walk-through today. A green zucchini, a yellow zucchini, some onions, potatoes, and tomatoes.

I’m hopeful we’ll have a bumper crop of potatoes and onions. The drying beans should come out pretty well. I’m making up for our gardening shortcomings by purchasing from my friends at the farmers markets we attend. And I have to say that those little tomatoes there on the right side of the bowl are making me very happy. Those are from seeds that Karl & Tabitha sent me. Plus there are some yet-to-ripen varieties from other seeds they sent. I’ve managed to not completely squander their generosity away.

So things are maybe not as bad as they seemed when I first began this little confession. Could be a whole lot better, of course, but there’s always next year. Leave me your tips on kid & farm & garden time management!

3 years ago:

I went to Grundy Center and bought milk

Welcome, Globe Gazette readers! Deb Nicklay wrote such a nice article about us. I had no idea Deb was going to hunt down my online blogging friends and ask questions! Thank you to Jeanelle at Midlife by Farmlight and Angie at Children in the Corn for saying such sweet things 🙂

I’ll be back in a bit with tales from the chicken pen and woes from the garden…

“I am the real Pride of the Farm, not those stinking pigs!”

2 years ago:

More from Heritage Farm

After missing the annual steam engine show last summer we were excited to get back out there again this year! As always it was an enjoyable afternoon taking in all the sights, sounds and smells that go along with this show.

This year’s featured machine was a gasoline-powered 1918 Holt 75 Caterpillar:

According to an article in last week’s local newspaper, “The late Ed Smolik, acquired this particular Holt in a remote area of Canada. Ed brought the work worn machine home to Osage where it rested for more than 50 years.”

And according to a post at this forum, “For the first time in nearly fifty years this giant came to life. It has been sitting many years because the heads were cracked and beond repair. After sitting in Ray Smolik’s shed for years it made its trip to Waverly where work was started on it by the late John Ruth. Two years ago we hauled it back to Osage where we finished it. The late Ed and Ray Smolik had 16 brand new heads casted in China. And the valves were bought rite from Caterpillar. We also had a new radiator built.” There are more pictures of this machine on that post.

The work that goes into restoring and maintaining these machines is really something!

Another restoration featured at this year’s show was Mitchell County’s largest country schoolhouse, dating back to 1859. And it just happens to have been built by my great-great-great-great-grandfather, William Green Dudley! And his daughter, my great-great-great-grandmother Mary Catherine “Kit” Dudley Hutchinson, was it’s first teacher.

The always awe-inspiring Reeves engine was on hand again for the plowing demonstration. I wrote about this engine a few years ago in this post. Lately some people intimately familiar with this giant engine have left some great comments on that post. It’s worth going back for a read!

Here are some other engines that could be found at the show. I know nothing about them, but they’re still fun to see!

And my favorite picture of the day…

This is an annual event, so if you get the chance come and check it out one of these years!

3 years ago:

OLS Week 7

This is the scene of last week’s breakout. The railroad track & trestle forms the western boundary of our property. Sugar Creek divides our pasture about in half. The fenceline down the left side of the pasture is electric, dividing the butcher calves from the cows. Then there’s an east-west fence that parallels the railroad line, crossing the creek on this side of the trestle.

When the creek floods, it usually takes the fence with it.

Or if it doesn’t wipe it out, it leaves it clogged with debris as seen in the fenceline above. If enough debris catches in it, a large portion of the fence is ripped out by the flood waters.

We’ve been flooded 3 times this year, which is more than usual. After each flood Matt’s re-strung an electric line across the creek. But last week the cows plowed through it. Of course it’s possible that with all the debris in the fenceline the electric fence was shorted out.

Matt’s ideal fence would break away when it floods without tearing away – something suspended overhead by a guy wire. But at 200 feet across, that kind of structure would be quite an undertaking.

So…how would you fence across the creek?

4 years ago:

Basement retrospective, part 2

This duck just hasn’t got her head on straight!

Yesterday when I went in the chicken coop there were 2 ducks with newly hatched babies. Today when I went in the chicken coop, nothing. Off I went in search of them. I found the duck in the picture above, with 10 babies, on the far side of the creek.

And I found this one, with 6 babies, on the near side of the creek.

Sigh… There’s nothing cuter than ducklings!

Our ducks are not the best of mothers. Out of 16 babies we’ll be lucky if we end up with half. Here’s the 6 that are left from a hatch of 13 earlier this summer.

There’s another 3 ducks setting on nests in the chicken coop. Still to come, pictures of our handsome drakes!

1 year ago:

Basement retrospective, part 1

For a little bit there I thought he’d escaped! I couldn’t see him anywhere, and I started to panic thinking that yet another animal had made a breakout into the neighbor’s bean field.

At least the button weeds are good for something.

3 years ago:

Z is for Zinnia

Our cows (and Star, by association) are in time out. It’s that time of year, when the grass is literally greener on the non-livestock-owning neighbor’s side of the fence. And the multiple floods we’ve experienced this summer have wreaked havoc on our fencing. Combine that with one particularly naughty heifer that seems to have taught the rest of the cows that you can actually just plow right through this silly electric fence!, and the result is an early morning phone call from said neighbor.

Headache number one is trying to round them back up and put them back where they belong. I was on one side of the creek and Matt was on the other, further downstream. The creek bottom is about chest high with grass and weeds, and in the mornings it’s heavy with dew. Traipsing around down there you end up soaked to the bone.

He was pushing them back towards me. My job was simply to stand there and make sure they didn’t cross back over to neighbor’s side of the creek. But they outsmarted us and crossed over before they got to me. And then they discovered the neighbor’s soybean field.

Headache number two is dealing with the insurance company. Matt called in the claim (which of course is just some 800 number in Omaha) and explained what had happened. The reply? “I don’t think you’re liable.” Ummmm, our cows, our fence, neighbor’s soybean field. Explain to me how we’re not liable. At that point, in as calm a voice as he could muster, Matt tried to make it painfully clear that we need to keep good relations with our neighbor. We’ve rented land from him in the past, and hope to do so again in the future. The lady on the other end of the line relented a bit at that point and agreed to send a crop adjuster. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

In the meantime, the cows are in lockdown until the grass gets a little taller again and Matt gets the electric fence spanning the creek reinforced with barbed wire (as it was before the floods.)

3 years ago:

Reach for the sky