Well I guess our first season is almost over...We meant to get to market this year but with the spring flood, all the rain and me not necessarily knowing what I doing we didn't quite make it. Which is okay I think we needed to get a year under our belts just learning how to grow stuff. I have always had a small vegie patch with stuff I like to eat mainly Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Peppers and the like I guess the stuff that makes pasta sauce, salsa, and salsa verde and sometimes venturing into broccoli and beans depending on the year and the energy I just always seem to run out of time!
This year we expanded big time growing tons of Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Chilis of course but expanding into a couple of different varieties of Broccoli and Cauliflower and for the first time zucchini (damn is that the easiest thing to grow or what?), Bell Peppers (well I had one plant a few years ago and it gave me one pathetic pepper but this year did I think about 26 plants and they produced like crazy and still are!), Potatoes (love it its like xmas morning when you dig up your first potatoes), Eggplant (3 kinds), Sweet Potatoes still to be dug up, Cucumbers some for pickling and some for some seriously good eats, and Beets 2 kinds I forgot how much I like Beets which is good thing because there is more out there getting ready to be picked. Of course with all the success there are always failures and this year mine include not getting the tomatoes staked in time caused a lot of loss, my attempt at a mid summer planting of beans, snow peas, broccoli raab largely failed I think due to so much rain. I have some bean plants but only a few and of course that was the thing I was most looking forward to.
But that brings me to what I think is my favorite thing about this new endeavor of farming is hope. I think it was still late spring when I was already thinking well next year I am going to do this...next year I am going to grow this...next year I WONT do it like this. I have already started next years plan and look forward to spending the winter surrounded by seed catalogs and my sharpie.
All in all a good first year learned lots and learned I will always have more to learn which is never a bad thing. Look forward to getting to market Tommy and I have had a good time this year stalking the farmers market checking out what other people are doing and making are own grand schemes. I worry that we are too small that we wont be able to compete with people who have 40 acres or more. But then I look at it this way we might be small but we can handle the work ourselves only need to borrow a tractor once in awhile and don't have the hassle of hiring people. So fingers crossed our small piece of land will produce and become our own small piece of what has to be the ultimate American dream...becoming a farmer.
