Family Farm-ing

June flew by. Late plantings, setting up irrigation "systems" (and I use that word loosely), and learning to move our 3 not-so-little-anymore pigs around the pasture kept us hopping. Speaking of hopping, we have several rabbit families invading our farm from the various hedgerows and neighboring properties. Seems that young beans and peas have been their favorite snacks so far this month.

We hosted my sister here for a few days last week which along with the semi-regular weekly visit from my parents made for an interesting "family farm" feeling. Mom worked with her flower beds, Dad did a terrific job weed whacking the out of control undergrowth in the orchard, and Sis put in several hours moving hay into position for mulching potatoes and mulched the paths in the 3-sister's planting area. It was great to see how much got done in a few short days.  Here's a picture of Sis and some of the potato beds.

I finished mulching up under the potatoes this morning. We're told that the potatoes will produce additional tubers up in the hay, and to harvest, we won't have to dig so deep to get them out. We'll see how this works out. If nothing else, it sure was lighter than hilling with dirt (by hand). 

You can see the buckwheat row in the left hand side of the picture. I'll cut them down before they go to seed, and replant for a second buckwheat cover crop for this year.