Portage River Farm
Notes on our struggles and successes on our family farm in rural Michigan.
(Pinckney, Michigan)
09 Sep Wed 2009
Harvesting In Heaps
It would be fair to say that my garden plans will require some adjustment for next year. So
me items such as peas have been too few. Other things such as zucchini, collards and yellow summer squash are yielding in such huge quantities that it is laughable.
We have been harvesting the garden literally by the wheel barrow full for the past month. We have tried to find time to can some of it for winter use, have been having fresh vegetables at nearly every meal and chopping up some to feed to the chickens. Inevitably, some of it has been heaped in piles between the rows and left to rot in the sun.
In my defense, I only ordered one small packet of seeds per variety. The problem was that I doggedly planted every single seed in every packet no matter how impractical that might be. Now that we have this first year under our belt, I will be able to make some adjustments to the plans to better match our ability to consume what is grown. All of this may be reversed someday if we ever manage to start producing for sale at the
local farmer's markets but right now we are just too busy getting the kids back into the school routine.
In the quiet time between the last harvest and maple tapping season, I have a long list of website improvements and similar projects to tackle. Among them will be the final assessment of our garden's successes and failures. I also look forward to adjusting some of the varieties that we grew that didn't turn out so well.
But for the moment the sun is still warm and things are still growing. I think I may take the kids aside this evening and work out a special strategy to help with the problem. I'm starting to think that Janet and I could intentionally distract any visitor who comes to our house just long enough for the children to pack every cubic inch of their vehicle with squash!
me items such as peas have been too few. Other things such as zucchini, collards and yellow summer squash are yielding in such huge quantities that it is laughable.
We have been harvesting the garden literally by the wheel barrow full for the past month. We have tried to find time to can some of it for winter use, have been having fresh vegetables at nearly every meal and chopping up some to feed to the chickens. Inevitably, some of it has been heaped in piles between the rows and left to rot in the sun.
In my defense, I only ordered one small packet of seeds per variety. The problem was that I doggedly planted every single seed in every packet no matter how impractical that might be. Now that we have this first year under our belt, I will be able to make some adjustments to the plans to better match our ability to consume what is grown. All of this may be reversed someday if we ever manage to start producing for sale at the
local farmer's markets but right now we are just too busy getting the kids back into the school routine.
In the quiet time between the last harvest and maple tapping season, I have a long list of website improvements and similar projects to tackle. Among them will be the final assessment of our garden's successes and failures. I also look forward to adjusting some of the varieties that we grew that didn't turn out so well.
But for the moment the sun is still warm and things are still growing. I think I may take the kids aside this evening and work out a special strategy to help with the problem. I'm starting to think that Janet and I could intentionally distract any visitor who comes to our house just long enough for the children to pack every cubic inch of their vehicle with squash!
John_3
12:00 AM EDT