Round Rock Funny Farm

Aquaponics, Fire Sauce and Quail!

2011-08-08T13:19:00.001-05:00

The greenhouse has been getting a few upgrades. There are now three 100 gallon ponds. The aquaponics has been a great success for herbs, lettuces and other green veggies. I experimented with peppers but the peppers we grew in the ground far outproduced the aquaponic plants; easily 10 to 1. Yes, it is a lot easier to grow in the aquaponics system but the harder work has been well worth it.

Genovese Basil in the Aquaponics

We purchased a gallon of habañero peppers from Two Happy Children Farm. This was a variety we didn't grow. Next season we will have these as well as Poblanos that we missed out on growing.

Two Happy Children Peppers

The peppers were turned into an amazingly hot but delicious Fire Sauce. I came up with a few inappropriate names for it but decided to keep it clean.

Round Rock Funny Farm Fire Sauce

Our quail have hatched. We have 12 baby Seven Bobwhite Quail running around the brooding box. They don't seem to eat as much as baby chickens but they sure run a lot faster. Our plan is to breed them and keep 25-30 around to be used as food for the dog and kiddo. The eggs should be yummy combined with sushi too.

The first hatchlings

So tiny!

A Summer Update

2011-07-30T10:19:00.000-05:00

We're having a rockin' summer here on the Funny Farm. The heat is blazing and it's the driest summer we've had since the Farm started. It's not stopping us though. Hand watering the gardens has been taking 2-3 hours per day.

The heat has brought out the predators too; we've lost a few chickens. I will be building some simple snares to catch whatever has been dining on free meals.

Our quail eggs arrived and put in the incubator right away. The hatching date will be August 6th or 7th. The intention is to have quail eggs for meals and breed the quail to help feed the dog and kiddo.

Seven Bobwhite Quail eggs

Our rooster is huge. Over 10 lbs and quite protective of his girls. I'm sure he's left a few scars on the animal that is taking a hen here and there.

R.L. (Rusty's Lunch) our Rooster

Our pepper experiment has worked out a little too well. I selected 8 varieties to see which tastes we like and how well they grow. All but two plants have done extremely well. The cubanelles (think pizza peppers), are almost 5 feet tall and producing new peppers everyday. All of the varieties will be grown until November or so of this year.

A day's harvest of mixed peppers

Mackenzie took a beekeeping class while she was home for a week during summer break. Round Rock Honey offered a nice deal on a kids' Bee Keeper Discovery Camp. She had a lot of fun and managed to get really close to thousands of bees.

Our new beekeeper

Bees getting drunk on honey

Honeybee brood comb with the queen at center

This post was started weeks ago, had to get it finalized. Expect another post shortly with pictures of our baby quail!

A Week of One-Ups

2011-06-16T00:20:00.017-05:00

The pressure cooker is getting to see some serious use this year. This week, we're canning 95 lbs of tomatoes. Our tomatoes didn't fare too well this season, so these tomatoes were purchased from various farmers at the Round Rock Farmer's Market. We bought 40 lbs from Johnson's Backyard Garden, 25 lbs from Two Happy Children Farm and 30 lbs from Bush Farms.

The pressure cooker getting a workout.

Most of the tomatoes will be quartered and canned with a small amount of lemon juice and salt. A few of the San Marzanos will be pureed into a plain tomato sauce. The select few, combined with tomatoes from our gardens, will be made into more yummy Yard Salsa.

Part of the process.

I've given my hand at baking a few different breads that we enjoy. Today, Pita Bread were made. The recipe was found on the web and quite easy to make. It's nice to see a yummy product that has 5 ingredients opposed to the 20 in store-bought Pitas.

Homemade Pita Breads

Outside, the gardens are still cranking. A new aquaponics bed was assembled in the greenhouse. This system is developing into a kit of sorts. In the future, a parts list and instructions will be posted. It can be made with parts from your local hardware store.

The basil sprouts have already started. We're not too concerned with raising the fish for food, so only a few will live in the pond. To stock the pond, we caught a few bream and a catfish in the local creek.

The upcoming aquaponics kit.

Aquaponics Basil Sprouts

Salsa, Bread and Crackers

2011-06-14T16:13:00.039-05:00

More homemade stuff is happening on the Funny Farm. Today was busy with Roasted Corn Yard Salsa. Made completely with homegrown veggies and a small amount of time, it is quite tasty. The final ears of corn for the year were harvested yesterday and roasted this morning. We've had a good harvest of heirloom tomatoes over the last 2 days and were perfect for salsa making. Of course, our peppers haven't slowed down one bit and we've been looking for more ways to use them all. These few jars may only last a week or two at most. Mackenzie and I ate the 5th jar today.

Roast Corn Yard Salsa

We're also looking into making all of our own tortillas, crackers and breads. Crackers were quite easy and today's experiment yielded some yummy Spicy Salt and Pepper crackers. Next time, I want to use baking sheets without edges so I can make thinner crackers. Today's were plenty crunchy, but some very thin and crispy crackers was the goal.

Spicy Salt & Pepper Crackers

Learning how to make bread really isn't that tough. Verifying the ingredients before assembly has shown tough today. By mistake, this Honey Wheat Bread has become a very tasty and high protein wheat bread.

Honey Wheat Bread?

The kiddo is shipping out to Camp Longhorn on Sunday. She's getting some customized gear to mark it as hers. The knot on the bottle is a Turkshead in a bight and the knot on the flashlight is a repeated Over and Under Heaving Line Knot, also called a "Rattlesnake Knot." I did retain some knowledge from being a Boy Scout for a few years - Thanks, Dad.

Custom Gear

A Few Updates

2011-06-05T18:16:00.047-05:00

We're still super busy around the farm. Anne has been photographing quite a few weddings lately. Which has left me to fill my time with odd jobs around the house. Sewing custom sand bags and light stand bags, lots of cooking, pickling peppers, and of course more gardening.

Preserving vegetables has become pretty important. It will allow us to become more sustainable by extending our harvests. At the last post, I had managed to make Kimchi. It was really tasty. This time I experimented with pickling peppers. It's very simple with vinegar, water, salt, peppercorns, carrots, garlic and peppers. One jar will be pushed to the back of the fridge to test the canning process. The other won't last very long since we like our foods spicy.

Spicy pickled peppers with carrots and garlic.

More aquaponic growing is going to happen in the greenhouse. These trays will be filled with gravel once the siphons are installed. They'll be used to grow lettuce, greens and herbs. We've found that fruiting vegetables grow much better in the ground as we can control the nutrients that the plants get. Higher nitrogen and lower phosphorous and potassium in the aquaponics grows great, green veggies.

new aquaponics for lettuce

We've found a variety of watermelons that are hardy enough for the area. Our gardens get full, blazing sun in the afternoons and it has roasted other varieties.

Watermelons!!

With all of Anne's wedding photography going on this summer, she needed some new gear. Sand bags usually come in plain back and sell for around $25 each. Getting out the old Elna SU, I managed to make 4 custom sandbags and 2 custom light stand bags for a total $60. Now Anne has some cool, custom gear and we saved a bunch of money. My Etsy store is coming soon.

Sandbags and lightstands

While the kiddo was out of town, I pulled out the old RC truck for repairs. Managed to get the engine running and tuned only to find the differentials are trashed. Trying to drive and steer with one wheel locked up was no fun. Parts have been ordered. While waiting, the entire truck will be cleaned and oiled. Then it's up for sale. Yeah, selling the truck to get a helicopter... too bad I can't do that with my real truck.

My truck exploded.

It's Been a While

2011-05-23T14:12:00.045-05:00

The farm sure has been a busy place. Updates haven't been made here in quite some time. Lots of updates have been going on with the farm though. We've expanded a bit in size and added a few more veggies to the mix. I will try to keep pictures better updated for everyone.

A new, small chick hutch was built as a staging point so they can eat some developer feed for a bit. That should help turn them into some nice egg laying hens. Unfortunately, we've been dealing with a few predators. Solved the problem with the cat eating chickens by installing a finer mesh screen for protection. Skunks however, don't mind digging underneath the entire building. Last night, our local skunk decided it needed 3 chicks for dinner.

Peppers in the aquaponic system have been growing well but not producing as many peppers as the ground planted variety. The plants look a bit healthier but that is mostly due to less wind exposure. The hot, dry winds have been wreaking havoc on the front yard gardens.

Potatoes have been hilled several times. We should have a nice crop of purple potatoes this fall. Golden celery was also planted to experiment with. It's handling the heat very well so far. The hardier of the plants will be left to grow out to seed for next season.

Watermelons are growing very successfully for us this year. Lots of mulch was key to keeping the soil moist for them. A few of the melons are nearly the size of an 8 year olds head. We should be picking and eating in just a few weeks.

Even in a drought, tomatoes can be over-watered. I managed to stunt their growth a little by keeping the soil too saturated which locked up some of the nutrients. After backing off for a few days and then adding a foliar feed spray, they've turned back around and started setting tomatoes again.

We've forgotten the name of these but they'll just be Backyard Grapes for now. They're ripening up nicely. We won't have enough for wine making but we're learning more about growing better grapes for the future.

In order to determine the best growing pepper for our yard, we're growing 8 types. The jalapenos, serranos and bull nosed bells are all doing great. In fact, I'll be pickling peppers this week as they're producing quite a few peppers every day.

The raised-bed corn experiment is doing very well. Next year, we'll need to make sure it's in the ground 2-3 weeks sooner than this year. There won't be a big harvest but it should all be pretty tasty.

One of the fig trees out front. Hopefully it will start setting fruit. This one hasn't been a producer yet.

Here are a few bottles of the spicy kimchi I've made. All the recipes I could find varied with seasonings and vegetables. I decided to use what we had and make up my own pickling recipe. It is really tasty and will be a great way to save money. This much kimchi at the farmer's market would be around $30. I made all of this for about $6.

Greenhouse + Chickens + Math = Round Rock Funny Farm

2011-01-26T19:58:00.000-06:00

Well the greenhouse is finally ready to be a greenhouse. It gets quite warm and roasty in there during the day. Only took a year or so to get it finished up with no outside help. The next step will be making the solar collector for the radiant floor heating. However, my Urban Greenhouse Controller is still in the works for the Renesas contest. It gets priority for a few days now.

Front view of the greenhouse.

Potting soil has been made from sifted compost, peat moss, vermiculite and a bit our homemade organic fertilizer blend. We've started a few seeds and the rest of the trays will be filled this week. This is only a start. We hope to have 3 tiers on each wall of seedlings. There will be plenty of tomato seedlings for sale and trade. This year we are planning on a lot of Cherokee Purple tomatoes. Sliced with Buratta, they can't be beat.

The start...

The baby chickens have been outside a bit. Temperatures are still a bit cool to let them roam. They don't seem to mind getting a little sun on a breezy day.

The new chickens, 1 month old.

We've also been working hard at making a math game. If we can hurry, we'll make it an instructable and enter it into the microcontroller contest at Instructables.com. All of the hardware is solved. It's on breadboard now with a custom printed circuit board in the works. It is powered by a ATMega328p (as a barebones arduino) and programmed with a Bus Pirate. The software is being tweaked and should be done in a few days.

Our Money Math Game

Christmas Chicks on the Farm

2010-12-27T21:59:00.000-06:00

We received an incubator for Christmas this year! It came a little early which was really nice. We found a local farmer that had fertile eggs for sale at a great price. The timing was perfect to have little chicks hatching on Christmas day. Some of the eggs were a day or 2 older than others when we purchased them so we've got a few chicks left to hatch. This video shows the first 4 chicks. We have 8 total now and 2-3 more should hatch. Hopefully, there will be 2 or 3 roosters. We would like to have more fertile eggs to make sure we can raise enough chickens to feed a dog and a kiddo.

(Strangely, this video is slightly chopped at the bottom. It appears fine on my youtube page but not when viewed by other users. I will look into getting it corrected. If the video is not attached to the emails, you can see it here.)

Greenhouse Update

2010-12-16T15:19:00.003-06:00

Yes, it's a green greenhouse. The bell pepper green paint is really bright but looking great. The vent window frames are going on and then the paneling to finish it out.

Super Green

Greenhouse Specifications:

8' x 8' x 8' (peak of roof)
Wood structure, paint for sealant
Polycarbonate "Tufftex" panels with 90% light transmission
Decomposed granite floor (high silicon dioxide, to work as a thermal sink)
Passive radiant floor heating using solar collector (PEX tubing with 3/4" foam-core, aluminum reflective barrier)
GWDeveloper Urban Greenhouse Controller

GWDeveloper Urban Greenhouse Controller on Renesas RX62N

Urban Greenhouse Controller

Plug-and-play operation using regional ET data
Configurable Sensor Array
- Humidity
- Temperature
- Barometric pressure
- Wind direction & speed
- Daylight collected
- pH & EC
- Vent and door positions
- Water flow rate
Hardware Control
- Vents
- Exhaust Fans
- Misters
- Irrigation
- Aquaponics
User Input
- Touchscreen display in greenhouse
- Web accesible controls via wireless access point

My electronic specifications may be slightly changed due to the cost of sensors and linear servos. Most sensors will operate on the I2C bus while a few will have simple ADCs. I will probably find a different method of opening and closing the vents as well.

Aquaponics Updates

2010-11-25T12:45:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, I had been putting too much food in one of the tanks. That combined with the venturi uptake clogging, caused a few fish to die. The best thing I could do was buy a large stock tank and move the fish to clean everything. One of the grow beds has cracked as well. We're making some major changes this week but they'll allow for better filtering and more growing space.

100 Gallon Stock Tank with autofill valve and a temporary circulation pump.

The new filter is based on "Jim's Crazy Bio Filter". It will allow for easy emptying of fish waste to be dumped in the compost pile or other garden spaces. The missing piece will be a homemade venturi to aerate the dirty water being pumped to the bottom. I combined cornstarch and silicone to make a sort of rubber concrete and filled a 3/4" piece of pvc. It's nearly set and I will use 2 different step drill bits to make create the venturi effect. I will also be adding a skimmer to remove protein waste and further oxygenate the water.

We really didn't have enough growing and filtration space available to support this many fish and make up for small mistakes. Tilapia grow fast and poop a lot.

The new bio-filter setup near completion.

Chicken Pen

2010-11-14T20:07:00.001-06:00

The chicken pen finally has a proper roof. The old roof was made of recycled, corrugated plastic sheets. They only lasted about a year before dry-rotting and causing a huge mess. The new roof is galvanized steel and should be good for a long time. I doubt the chickens will miss their skylights, especially after a hail storm.

It's going to be noisy in the hail storms.

The Greenhouse Frame and Updates

2010-11-07T09:29:00.001-06:00

The greenhouse walls are ready to go. Roof trusses are nearly all assembled. They will be painted before installing. Once those are up, the polycarbonate panels are going in place. The floor was built with a insulated, reflective surface under the decomposed granite. There is about 70' of coiled pex tubing in the floor for a radiant heating system. Once the roof is installed, the collector coil will be mounted to get the most sun.

It's really green... "Bell Pepper Green"

Here's a small video of our chickens with the re-framed, new-to-us nesting boxes. 3 hens have pretty much stopped laying so we're looking for new homes for them. In January we plan to add another 10 hens to our flock.

The aquaponics are still doing well too. Had a small problem in one of the beds with aphids attacking the arugula. We pulled all of it for chicken food and restarted seeds. The basil and beans have been growing fine without any pest issues. We just got in a new high power water pump and it's going to allow us to add a few more beds with more bio-filtration area.

Lettuces, Basil, Beans and Baby Arugula

The Auto Filling Bucket Waterer

2010-06-21T23:11:00.001-05:00

With a few parts from the nice people at http://www.avianaquamiser.com and some modifications we now have an auto filling bucket waterer to keep our hens happy. It was about $60 in parts and only a few minutes of labor to assemble. It's a short and simple parts list:

5 gallon Bucket with Lid
Avian Aqua Miser 3 pack kit
Toilet Fill Valve Assembly
7/8" to 1/2" Toilet Supply line
1/2" brass nipple
1/2" to 3/4" hose swivel adapter
teflon tape and silicone glue

Make sure to snip the edges of the lid, at the perimeter markers. You'll want it to be an easy off lid and you don't want an airtight seal. If it sealed airtight, the pressure would block the flow of water from the fill valve.

Drill a 1" hole in the bottom of the bucket for the toilet fill valve. Use the rubber grommet and plastic nut to seal and hold the valve in place. The supply line, nipple and swivel adapter will need teflon tape at all the brass on brass junctions. Drill holes for the Avian Aqua Miser watering nipples, thread them in and seal lightly with silicone glue. Once the silicone has cured, hang your new auto filling bucket waterer in your hutch and attach a garden hose. Adjust the height of the water level with the fill valve. We're going to keep the level around 2-3 gallons so it's always super fresh.

These projects save us time and allows that to be directed into more and better gardening.We love our funny farm.

A Farm Expansion!

2010-06-20T20:31:00.000-05:00

Well, the farm is going to be growing (haha) quite a bit. I approached the church behind our house about using some of their empty flower beds and empty lot to grow vegetables in. The beds have been grassed over for years, the empty lot is just that, empty. This morning, they had a vote and decided to allow us to till and plant the flower beds to show them what we can do. The Round Rock Funny Farm is adding 400+sqft to it's growing space! I've got to get it tilled, fed and mulched pretty quickly so it will be ready for a fall garden. The idea behind the potential use of the larger lot (4400+sqft!) would be to plant native plants and flowers as well as have a vegetable garden and donate 25% of the produce to the church members or a food bank of their choice.
Here's a snapshot of the plan I've laid out for the initial fall garden. (I'll tell everyone more about the "Tenth Acre Farms" part another time)

I've also put together the layout for most of our backyard. It's crazy just how much we have going on back here. The front yard is growing a lot of tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, corn, squash and eggplants. Eventually, we'll also have artichokes, olive trees and more fruit trees.

The Greenhouse... plans

2010-05-12T18:54:00.000-05:00

Well, the greenhouse plans are pretty much ready for the permit. It's been a busy spring and the greenhouse construction has been delayed a good bit. It will definitely need to be ready for fall. We plan to have early seedlings next year so we can keep improving our system.

It's a basic wood construction. It will need some reinforcements to stay put in the winds we've had. The roof and walls will have clear, UV protected polycarbonate sheets. Cooling in the summer will be made possible with lots of ventilation and a water mist. Heating in the winter will be a combination of a passive solar radiant floor heating, forced convection solar heating as well as thermal mass inside the greenhouse.

Hopefully, the permit will be in hand by the end of next week so more construction can begin. The floor reflector, tubing and gravel will go in first. 4 yards of gravel will be moved from the driveway to the back yard. Anyone else want to grab a shovel and wheelbarrow?

Chickens on the Farm

2010-05-04T06:59:00.000-05:00

We never posted videos of our chickens before. Here's a couple of videos showing them doing what they do best, scratching the ground and eating.

Taking care of the chickens has been a lot of fun and very rewarding. Even the kiddo gets involved and collects eggs for us. Her school invention this year, she made a belt designed to carry a 6 pack of eggs back from the coop.

With the 8 hens we have, we get from 6-9 eggs a day. They are fed a local organic grain blend daily. Scraps, greens and grass clippings are all supplements along with any foraging for bugs. Mondays are usually big eggs after getting the weekend grass clippings.

Enjoy the videos!

Today's Harvest!

2010-04-28T10:49:00.000-05:00

We love the Spring here on the Funny Farm. This mornings bounty consisted of eggs, strawberries, arugula, red lettuce, chard, snow peas, pak choy and a turnip! The arugula was harvested from the aquaponics system in the garage. It's some of the spiciest I've tasted.

I think the Chard and Eggs will be breakfast tomorrow. Arugula will become pesto along with some local garlic and onions. We can't stop eating the snow peas raw, so that's easy to prepare. Turnip au gratin? And of course, strawberries and vanilla ice cream for a late night treat. Yumm.

School Field Trip

2010-04-25T08:18:00.000-05:00

The 1st grade field trip last week was out to Crowe's Nest Farm. They run an educational, animal farm dedicated to conserving the knowledge of farming. We weren't the only 1st grade class out there, hundreds of kids got to check out all the animals.

Our Aquaponic EcoSystem

2010-04-10T11:50:00.000-05:00

I've managed to post a few videos of our aquaponic ecosystem. Everything has settled down, the water is crystal clear and the plants are flourishing. Technical details will be coming soon with drawings and notes.

Using the venturi based overflow system made a huge difference in the filtration operation. Allowing the waste solids to be pulled up from the bottom of the tank into the bio filters to break down has kept the water crystal clear. So clear that fish swimming on the bottom, 34" deep, appear to be at the surface. The fish are super happy and live at all levels of the tank, showing a good water temperature.

The high pressure sodium grow lights were turned off for the video. They produced bad scan lines on the video. The veggies are currently under a 430 watt High Pressure Sodium lamp. If you are playing around with flourescent or led grow lights, that's all you are doing. The plants need a high power light source and flourescents can not produce the same lumens in the proper light spectrum for strong growth.

Soon the eco system will be out back with a small lean-to roof for shade. The delicate lettuces are no match for the Texas sun.

Keep checking back for more updates on our aquaponics system.

Aquaponics in the Garage

2010-04-09T21:19:00.000-05:00

So far the aquaponics system has worked out nicely. Once we added the fish, the water clouded a bit and a good few of the fish died. We monitored the water temperature and ph only. Feeding the fish the proper amounts while waiting for the plants to begin to grow was a tough balance. Now that the Arugula, Buttercrunch Lettuce and a few Beets are growing, the water has cleared up perfectly.

Our aquaponics system has 3 stages of passive biofiltration. The video posted below shows the startup of the system without fish or plants. The water was a little cloudy due to residue left in the gravel, even after hours of rinsing. The overflow system change to a venturi overflow system which will be shown in the next video. I will also post sketches of the biofilters I made.

We've realized that is truly the way towards a sustainable food supply for our home. Once the system is moved, we will use Tilapia for fish in the system and the beds will be expanded to grow more veggies. Want to know how our chickens and vermicomposter tie into our aquaponics system too? Don't be afraid to know where your food comes from.

Strawberries will never be the same...

2010-04-09T21:05:00.000-05:00

Things are really taking off this Spring. The strawberries we are growing taste absolutely amazing. Juicier, sweeter and more tender than any store-bought berry ever. This season we have about 45 berry plants growing, I can already tell next year we'll need room for double that.

The peach trees are doing equally as well. In about 2 weeks, we'll need to trim back the peaches so only 1 per 6-8 inches are left. We don't want the young tree to be stressed or crack under the weight.

The drip irrigation we had installed by my now employer, Lupton Irrigation has been perfect for irrigating our strawberry patch. It lets us keep the crowns and fruits dry while getting plenty of water to the roots. This prevents any rotting of our berries!

Wipe that drool off your chin. :-)

Strawberries and Peaches

2010-04-01T15:15:00.001-05:00

We've had so much going on around the Funny Farm, it's been to keep up. It's spring time and things are blooming again. The weather is a wonderful 79 degrees today. Here's a few pictures for everyone to enjoy. We can't wait to eat some fresh, homegrown strawberries and peaches!

Peaches are in the shuck stages.

Broccoli we've let go to seed.

STRAWBERRIES ARE GOING NUTS!

The Round Rock Funny Farm is Still Around

2010-03-28T19:53:00.001-05:00

We're still rocking on the Funny Farm! The blog was put on hold for a while. It was becoming a chore to keep the pictures updated. We'll continue to post pictures just not for a daily timelapse video.

Our growing space has doubled in the backyard and we've expanded into the front yard as well. A greenhouse is in the works and will hopefully be ready by May. We found a few designs we liked, but had to modify and design our own to get things just right.

In a few days, we'll have some pictures to post of everything we already have growing. Be on the lookout for strawberries, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage and tons of other stuff. There's also a new aquaponic system operating in the garage. Running on goldfish, we're growing arugula, beets and lettuce in the grow beds. Expect to see some videos of that soon.

The Pumpkin Patch and New Blog Look

2009-10-26T11:53:00.001-05:00

If you're visiting the the Funny Farm's website at RoundRockFunnyFarm.blogspot.com you'll notice a bold, new look. Some colors were adjusted, content added and a new layout was built for the farm blog. A few more changes are in order, but things should be looking good enough now for the world to see.

There has been a lot changing on the farm as well. The pumpkins have been growing like crazy in the cooler, sunny weather. More cherry tomatoes are growing and being harvested everyday. Bees have been extremely active in the mid-day keeping everything pollinated. We sure appreciate their help!

The next posting will have pictures of the new chicken pen. It's nearing completion with only 1 section of fence left to finish. They'll be happier in their new 8x12 pen. It will have a small coop, a hanging feeder and a new float watering system. All of these changes should make things a lot easier for us.

The mixed up patch.	A growing pumpkin!
Strawberries still growing.	Bees snacking on a pumpkin flower.
The artichoke sprouts.	Cherry tomatoes!

Update from the Funny Farm - October 5th, 2009

2009-10-05T14:54:00.000-05:00

It's been really tough keeping up with the farm blog pictures -priorities have been adjusted in the Funny Farm household. The 1st grade and kung-fu lessons have thrown us all for a loop. All that, along with trying to maintain the farm and chickens with all the cooler, wet weather, we've been getting has definitely taught us to juggle better.

We've taken our first, very small harvest of corn that will be enjoyed at dinner this evening. The tomatoes are fruiting very well and if we can get some warm weather again, they should ripen quickly. Our first canning experiment has gone very well and we look forward to canning a lot of our own tomatoes and beans soon.

Hopefully, the chickens will be moving into their new pen in a week or two. We'll be cutting close with the much cooler weather. They'll need a nice, warm spot to rest and keep laying eggs for the winter.

Daily Farm Pic - September 28th, 2009	Honeydew Melon
More melons and butternut squash.	The new chicken pen.