August 8th-12th

Monday

We started the week with a general clean up; sometimes we forget about aesthetics when we’re working on new projects every week.

We stapled visitor information signs to posts:

Here are new and beautiful babies!:

Beans are reaching for the sky:

Paula’s prepared for rain or shine:

We also discovered that several pest problems have decimated our carrots, beans, and squash.

The new baby bunnies and their momma mercilessly devoured the beans. Here you can see the healthy beans versus the bitten down ones:

Japanese Beetles have also done a number on the bean leaves. Paula and I have been squashing them any chance we get. Here are the healthy leaves versus the hole-y ones:

The squash has a different kind of problem: BACTERIAL WILT. I’m employing the caps lock because the wilt is extremely contagious, and has destroyed an entire line of our squash L. The striped cucumber beetle is a carrier of bacterial wilt, and since they’re so darn hard to catch they’ve done a number on our squash plants.

Healthy versus sick:

The carrots, like our beans, were victims of those wascally wabbits:

To lift our spirits, Paula and I ventured to make kale chips! We harvested some of our beautiful Red Russian kale:

In the kitchen, we ripped up the kale leaves into chip-sized pieces (definitely not chip shaped)

After tossing these pieces in olive oil, we salted the kale and laid it out on baking sheets.

We baked the leaves at 325° F for about 5 minutes (some batches took up to 8 minutes) and viola! Cripsy, salty, delicious, healthy kale chips!!

The roses we planted are blooming and the pumpkins we seeded rather late are popping up:

On Market Day, Paula and I harvested a whopping amount of Yellow Straight Summer Squash, weighed it, and sold it under Mount Holyoke’s name on Thursday.

We also successfully sold our pickles!!!:

Tim and Professor Lipman teamed up to play and fun and talented Farmers Market gig Thursday afternoon:

Friday began the most eventful, tiresome, and exciting weekend of the summer: NOFA!

Pictured above is the wheelbarrow race that took place on the lawn by the pond. It was one of many fun and farm-y events by the tents that also held demonstrations, vendors, and people advertising everything from beekeeping services to tractor insurance.

Some homemade brooms caught our eye:

Here I am judging various tomatoes and peppers grown by attendees of the conference:

Paula and I got to know some animal friends as well:

We went to so many workshops our heads spun, but one of our favorites was a tour of UMASS Amherst’s Permaculture Garden. It is new as of this year, the sheet mulching having been done last fall and things have only grown there this summer. The great kids who tend to it (there are a lot of them!) are selling everything to dining services. Here they’re showing us how to make compost tea:

Which we all helped feed their beets with:

At another workshop we learned about some medicinal herbs that you can pick and use in your own backyard (or on UMASS’s campus, in our case). Here I am holding some yellow dock:

The other workshops we attended included “Traditional Diets vs. The American Diet”, “Cultivating Community with Permaculture”, “Transitioning Farms to Four Season Harvesting”, and “Synthetic Biology: The Frontier Beyond GMOs”. We ended the weekend with a tour of the Montview Neighborhood Farm in Northampton, a permaculture garden in the city:

We had a crazy busy week, hope you guys enjoyed reading up about it!

Ingrid