Farmer Nemo

Happy winter everybody!

Christmas Tree

Happy holidays everybody! Our tree will spend the remainder of winter as ground covering to keep the cats out.

Brooklyn Farm in the New York Post

In March we were contacted by a writer who was working on an article for the NY Post about Urban Gardens. The article coincided with the announcement of an enormous 100,000 sq ft rooftop farm developed by Bright Farms in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. They are hoping to produce 1 million lbs. of produce every year. Stiff competition! Anyways, here's images of the article. Read it on their website.

Beginning of June

June has already begun and we are still busy planting crops. You can see only a few of the boxes have been opened up on the left.

Farmer No. 1 has put up bamboo trellis structures for the Avocado Squash and cucumbers to climb. We started all of these from seed and transplanted them a few weeks ago. Looks like they'll make it.

Seeds in action

There's a lot of little activity on the farm. All the seeds that we started a few weeks ago are progressing along and are being transplanted now. The new box has been deemed a lettuce, basil and beets box.

It's not all weeds back there

We are finally getting serious about the farm for this year. We really thought the entire farm was infested with weeds. Well we were 90% right. In one of the boxes is a lively display of greenery. We thought that they could only be weeds since we haven't planted anything yet. Well… we are pretty sure that these are all tomatillo plants. Last year we planted three tomatillo plants in this box. The seeds must have survived the mild winter and are back at it. We do have to thin it out. 

We also discovered a luscious lettuce plant that has been taking care of itself with absolutely no help from us. Last season we planted lettuce seeds in this pot and none of them really worked.

Hopefully we are right about these two situations and they are not actually in fact weeds.

Fresh construction on the farm.

Before we get really deep in planting time, we decided to add another box to our Northern territory. We usually grow tomatoes and peppers in this area. But a couple things have come up in the last year. One is that with all the construction done last summer there's an abundance of dirt that we need to contain. And second, we want to grow fresh lettuce again and it will need to grow it in a new box with new dirt. So with confidence, Farmer No. 1 cut out the wood to fill up the area perfectly. Oops. Never round up, measure twice, cut once.

We leveled the ground, added two inches of gravel for drainage, and put the wood walls in place.
Next we'll add new dirt with compost and plant!

Happy New Year!

It's early, but we are already getting ready for another season on the farm. In the coming weeks we'll be doing clean-up and soil prep. Here are some shots of the current state of the farm.

We got smart and covered the boxes with scrap wood for the winter. This means we won't have spend a day sifting out cat poop.

That's our christmas tree on the left covering the ground.

And the barn made it through the winter! We never showed you the completed project, so here' s short video.

An Eggplant is born

Farm Dinner

Minimal preparation, just sliced tomatoes and basil, sliced cucumbers, steamed beans with thyme.

Farm renovation

There's been a lot of construction on the farm this season. The barn in the background is nearly complete. But the even bigger project has been to replace the crumbling concrete. We're laying down red brick (having it laid down is more accurate). It's been a few weeks of demolition and transporting 1400lbs of red bricks through the homestead. The upshot is that the brick will be stronger and taller than the concrete was. And it'll hold the dirt in. All the crops are doing well considering.

A very pregnant Farmer No. 1 surveying the land and harvesting.

Scaffolding

Since we excavated the old cucumber trellis to make room for the barn, we needed to build some new structures for the beans and the cucumbers. We choose bamboo because it's rot resistant and really strong.

The cucumber box is on the left, the heirloom beans on the right. Whoa! We need to cut these back a bit. They are getting unruly!

In Progress: The Barn

What we've really been missing is a barn. So Farmer No. 2's project of late has been barn construction. Well, truthfully, it'll be more like a shed. When it's done it'll be useful all around structure for farm tools… and maybe a bar.

More pictures to come.

Nick's Tricks

Nick the Farmer does not disappoint. Along our fence border he has been growing rows and rows of luscious scallions. He treated us to a bunch and told us that he was at the grocery store and saw a pile of wilted yellowing scallions and got them really cheap. He stuck them all in the ground and a few weeks later here we go. They were huge!

The grocery store rubber band is still on there. 

Cherry Hot Pepper

The Lettuce Bucket

We are putting to work a few extra pots that have just been laying around. Lettuce, beets, carrots.

Our Berry Situation

The farm has two types of berries growing along the Western perimeter; blackberries and raspberries. Both came from Nick the Farmer in the form of sticks with a little root ball at the bottom. We never thought they would thrive like this. 

You can see two shades of green in that bush. The darker green are the blackberries, the lighter leaves are members of the raspberry bush. Some of the raspberries are ripe. We had them for dinner last night with a salmon that was swimming in Alaska just a couple days ago.

Coming soon

History Beans

This year we ordered seeds from the Baker Creek outfit in Missouri. They've got a great selection of heirlooms like these beans that came over with the Mayflower in the 1620s. They've been in the ground for a few weeks now and we'll share the progress.

Also of note… these beans darkly named Cherokee Trail of Tears. Read more about these here.

What's Been Growing

Our most prolific crops so far are the diverse family known as weeds. We've been really behind this year so we are taming the beasts and finally getting the season underway.