What have we been up to?

Well for one thing, we named the farm! Thanks to our friend Ean High who suggested Evening Song Farm nearly a year ago. After much farm name brainstorming and careful fermentation, we went with the first suggestion we got, so meet Evening Song Farm, and check out our new website www.eveningsongcsa.com set up by Kara's older brother.

We have done a lot since last updating the blog, not the least of which has been taking shamlessless cute pictures of our puppy, Echo.



We also experienced out first farming bummer in our new location. Though there didn't seem to be a lot of snow on our caterpillar tunnels, Ryan took the time to clear off the snow from one of our tunnels. We intended to clear the other one the next day, but instead part of it collapsed! Bummer!


We use these to start early carrots, and then once the carrots are established we move the structure over our tomatoes to get them started early. Alas we spent a grumpy day clearing the collapsed section and then temporarily mending the broken hoops.



Now it looks fine, but when the snow melts we will have to replace the broken hoops and patch the ripped plastic.

We finally headed to Pennsylvania to retrieve the last of our belongings from the Sterling valley-- our goat, Lmno, our inoculated mushroom logs, and some other goodies. I threw a tarp and some hay in the back seat of my car, and Lmno had a goat palace in the back.



Though while I drove she was more interested in navigating.



We got a buddy goat for her. The new goat's name is Zeah ("Zee-uh"), and she is a Nigerian Dwarf goat, small with high butterfat.

Around the farm, we finally put the roof on the wash station shed, hung a door for the greenhouse, started our hotbed (with horse manure) to provide heat for our greenhouse starts, started our first round of plants for this spring, built many seeding tables, and myriad other winter tasks of season planning, marketing, and other construction needs.

Winter Update

Despite the change of work pace the winter brings for vegetables farmers, we still find ourselves occupied with work. (That is our best excuse for neglecting the blog, sorry!) Since our last photo managerie, we have worked on a few infrastructure building projects, focused on putting out a few "fires" in our old farmhouse (a leaky roof patch, a new gas line, moving a door to a new spot, patching wall, energy audit...), invested in an alternative deer fence, attended a marketing conference, ordered seeds, mapped gardens, worked on marketing plans, and enjoyed the winter. (Sorry for some of the sideways pictures, but the computer or blogspot is taxing my technological patience, just turn your head sideways a bit.)



Moving day!


Kara setting up the caterpillar tunnel hoops





Covering up our onions and leeks to overwinter





Our friends Mim and Ira came to visit and they helped us pull the plastic over our hoophouse. Thanks guys!





The toughest part is getting the large piece up and over the structure with two sets of hands, so it was great timing to have our friends drive by the farm and lend a hand. The wind wasn't too bad, and then Ryan and I set to work fastening the plastic to the greenhouse.



Triumphantly taking a break after fastening the end wall plastic. It's important to get the plastic tight and even to get the longest life out of this petroleum product.



It's funny how seemingly simple things can take a long time. Ryan's dad came to help us start our wash station roof, and it took the three of us quite some time to figure out our design and throw up this ridge piece against the barn wall to connect the roof to the barn.





Getting the beam up for the rafters.





It's difficult to see, but right when we put the beam up an awesome rainbow appeared right over our heads.


Here's a better photo of it







Meet Echo! Our little German Shepherd mix is the newest member to the farm team. His primary role will be to patrol our veggie fields for deer, groundhogs, etc... any of the unpaying vegetables customers that like to take a bite out of our living. On his free time he enjoys being ridiculously cuddly.



Kara built the stud walls for our walk in cooler. All we needed to do next is put up the insulation and install the modified air conditioner. Our friends Liz and Matthew came to visit (which was grand fun to talk farming for two days straight!) and they helped us realize that a different spot in the barn would make it much more efficient for us to move vegetables to and from the cooler. So we've taken down the studs and we're getting ready to move them to the upstairs of the barn. It's a little bummer now, but will save us a lot of back pain over the years. So, thank you to Liz! This picture was taken right before we took the cooler structure down.

Many Happenings

Alas, we have neglected our blog!! This post is a pictoral tour of the last 4 visits to our property that we've made since the previous entry. We will be moving up there permanently very soon! Enjoy the photos.


August 31st-September 2nd

This was our first trip up to our new home once the sellers had moved out. Here we are brushing our teeth.



And unloading the metal pipes for our greenhouse





Kara wasted no time tearing up the old dusty carpet in the living room. After a brief but emphatic session of destruction, her dad finished the job on the next trip up. (Note the the classy object in the foreground, some people call that an "upside down bucket" but we call it "dining room chair.")




Sept 18th-20th

Mowing buckwheat on the south field, which will be planted to garlic later in the fall


We then raised beds in the same garden after the buckwheat was mowed and incorporated.


Kara, Malaika, and Jim working on setting up the greenhouse




The house feels so much nicer after Kara's parents deep cleaned it.


The living room, carpet free with upgraded dining room chairs.


Our sink is at the end of a dead-end hallway. Funny.


Upper field after it was mowed.


The tall grass in background is sudangrass. The foreground is an emerging cover crop of peas and oats.





Our greenhouse, partially set up!





October 2nd-4th

Our to-do list, with inspirational artwork, written on whiteboard.




David fixing our sink. Hooray!


Kara mowing down our sudangrass cover crop: it grew to over 5 feet high! We accidentally let it grow a little too long, so that it started to form seed pods, which could germinate in the soil as a weed in subsequent years. Since Sudangrass seeds will only germinate in warm weather, we may try to use this section for early spring crops or late fall crops to avoid weed pressure from sudangrass.



Field of oats and peas as covercrop


Closeup: oats and peas


Closeup: oats and vetch



We transplanted onions and leeks (along with David) that we will attempt to overwinter.







On this trip we picked up 200 bales of hay from our neighbors 1 1/2 miles up the road. We managed to fit 60 bales in the manure spreader: hooray! Here it is parked in the garage next to our soil preparation equipment



And the rest of the hay was stacked in the upper floor of the barn next to our tractor.


The next three images are intended to be a panoramic view of our vegetable fields (left to right), but I couldn't figure out how to stitch them together. The hill that you see in the first two photos is Hateful Hill, apparently so named because it blocks the setting sun.






Next Trip: October 16th-20th

Planting Garlic, yahoo! Many thanks to all the garlic helpers: Wes, Jo, Angela, Jean, Colleen, Lindsay, Tom, Michaela, and Parker. We planted 190 pounds of garlic (9 1/2 165 foot long beds) and mulched it with 180 bales of hay.


Gaea, queen of the haywagon






The finished beds on the left and right will be for our caterpillar tunnels, which we will set up soon and cover with greenhouse plastic. All four beds will be seeded to carrots in late February for an early carrot harvest.






This is the beastie that dug a trench to put in a waterline to our washstation and greenhouse. It also dug out an area where we would pour a concrete pad for our washstation.


We got a load of gravel dumped off where we were going to put our concrete pad. We leveled it off, installed a form for the concrete, and the concrete truck arrived that afternoon to pour our slab.














What a trip! Our upcoming projects are putting up our caterpillar tunnels, covering our onions and leeks with plastic for the winter, preparing a shed and fenced area for Kara's goat, finishing the construction of our greenhouse, putting a roof over the wash station, installing our wood stove into the house, and updating our blog more frequently. Thanks for checking it out!