Monthly Archives: September 2012

More Barn Construction, Fall Composting, And The Farm Makes The News

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The Tack Room and Potting/Work Bench – made from more old barn wood and a pair of salvaged doors

The before picture…this corner of our barn served as the catch-all for all of the tools and garden supplies. It was in two words..a mess.

With the rains that came this past week – we had to hold off with work on the front entrance.  Instead, we turned our attention to the inside of the barn. Since erecting the barn last year – we have wanted build a storage room inside to store and organize all of our garden tools, seed and straw.  Up until now, those items had found a home laying around in every nook and cranny of the barn – making it hard to keep it clean.
So – this week, using more of the old barn lumber – we closed in 1/3 of the space underneath the loft  to create our “tack room”. We framed in the existing back corner and loft posts with a simple 2 x 4 stud wall – including the framework for a small potting and workbench area on the outside of the side wall.   For the wall covering – we used more of the 3/4″ thick reclaimed barn flooring boards.  The old flooring is all heavy red oak and cleaned up beautifully with nothing more than a simple power washing.  We finished up trimming out the walls with tongue and groove board siding saved from the Cardington barn tear down.

The salvaged doors

All that was left was to find a set of doors to close it all in – and luckily, we had the perfect pair in mind.  We had been holding on to a pair of old pocket doors I had salvaged out of an old building 10 years back.  They worked perfect.  For now – they are just resting up against the new walls.  We’ll finish in the coming weeks by attaching barn door track and wheels to the doors to match the rest of the barn.

News from the Farm

As for the rest of the farm…

The tomato and pepper rows from this past summer are growing their winter cover crops of annual rye

The Poinsettia Peppers In Full Fall Bloom

The mums are in full bloom as well

The cover crops in our raised row garden beds are coming on strong. They are filling in as a thick green mass of grass and will provide great winter cover for our beds – along with a nice dose of nitrogen when we turn them over in the spring. I know we say it often – but cover crops are one of the keys when growing a successful garden. They keep valuable garden soil from eroding over the winter and add great organic material back into the soil after crops.

The mums are in full bloom as are the Poinsettia ornamental peppers. We have been really impressed with this variety of ornamental pepper – it has held up really great through fall and a few light frosts. The Poinsettia, although ornamental – are edible…that is if you can handle the 5000 degree temperature in your mouth. I swear they are as hot as our Habaneros!! But they are a beautiful plant in the landscape.

Starting this week – we’ll begin to collect and shred the falling leaves to make our planting compost for next year.   In fact – Tuesday’s DIY post will be all about how to create great compost from leaves,  including what leaves are best to compost and how to get them to decompose quickly.

Last but not least – we were honored to have our little farm make the news this past week!  The Newark Advocate featured Old World Garden Farms in their Community Lifestyle Section – we included the link here if you would like to check it out:  http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20120924/NEWS01/209240309/Couple-builds-from-past-their-future?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage

- Jim and Mary

Shared On The Barn Hop, Transformation Thursday, Little House In The Suburbs

Homemade Tomato Soup Recipe – Fresh Or Frozen

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Struggling with what to do with the last of your tomato crop from your summer garden?

The last of our tomatoes from this year’s garden.

Homemade tomato soup is a great way to finish off your tomatoes. It can provide you with a healthy meal in the middle of winter or a quick option when you are recovering from those back to school or wintertime colds!  When coupled with a grilled cheese sandwich (aka toasted cheese as Jim calls them), your meal can be ready in less than 5 minutes.

The health benefits of homemade tomato soup are plentiful.  It contains key ingredients that help to improve your health — vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, which are all needed to sustain good health.  Tomatoes and tomato soup also contain antioxidants which work to protect cells from free radical damage.   By making the soup yourself, you are using fresh ingredients and can cut the salt content significantly than the varieties you find in store-bought soup.  Finally, tomatoes have a high vitamin C content which is needed to help absorb iron. These particular vitamins and minerals are important to women with osteoporosis and iron-deficiency anemia.

If you really want to know what goes into the food that you eat.  What better way to be sure than to make it yourself!

 

Homemade Tomato Soup simmering before canning.

Homemade Tomato Soup Recipe
6 onions, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
8 quarts fresh tomatoes (or 5-6 quarts of juice)
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons  salt
1 Tablespoon crushed black pepper
1 cup butter
1 cup flour
1/4 cup lemon juice

Tomato Juice – after put through the strainer

Directions:
1. Chop onions and celery.
2. Place in large stockpot with just enough water to keep them from burning.
3. While this simmers, cut tomatoes (remove stems if not using strainer).
4. Add to pot and cook until tender.
5. Place this all through strainer or food mill
6. Reserve 2 cups of juice and chill

Mixing flour, milk, and the juice

Mixing the flour, milk and the juice

7.Add remaining juice back into the pot
8. Add sugar, salt, pepper and lemon juice and heat until warm (not boiling)
9. Cream butter and flour together and mix thoroughly with two cups of COLD juice, until dissolved (or blend together in a blender), to avoid lumps of flour in the juice.
10. Add butter/flour mixture to warmed tomato juice. (Add before it’s hot, to avoid lumps of flour!).
11. Stir well.
12. Heat just until hot. (If it gets to a boil, it can make the flour lumpy).
13. Just prior to boiling, turn off the burner. (It will continue to thicken as it cools.).
This recipe is great fresh or you can freeze some for later – either way – it’s a great way to use up those summer tomatoes.

To serve, mix equal parts tomato concentrate to milk, and add 1/2 t. of baking soda per pint as it cooks (1 t. per quart).

***For an extra creamy soup, Wes, our 15 year old,  likes to substitute the milk for half and half.

3 Simple Tips To Plan Your Successful Garden Now For Next Year

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So maybe we planted a few too many peppers in the garden plan this year!  Next year’s plan will be adjusted :)

So the garden season in the Midwest is coming to an end – and the daily chores have certainly dwindled.  So what’s a gardener to do with all the time on their hands?  For us – it is the perfect time to plan next year’s garden.  Why now?  Because everything is fresh in your mind.  The successes…the failures, and the “I want to try that next year” are still at the top of your mind.  Before you know it – Thanksgiving and Christmas are here, January and February fly by – and all of those great ideas you had back in the fall get lost in the rush to just get a garden planted.

So here are 3 great tips to help you plan now for a beautiful 2013 garden!

Our garden plan for this past year.  Putting it all down on paper really helps to keep all of our plantings in order – and provides us with a great record from year to year of what and where we planted.

1)  PUT IT ON PAPER – NOW!

Hands down – if you do anything – do this!  It’s one thing to say that you would like to try this or that, grow more tomatoes or herbs, or a different variety of pepper.  But when you sit down and put it all down on paper – it’s amazing to find out how much better it all works next spring.   Planning now lets you easily remember what performed well – what didn’t – and what you need to try different.  It definitely made all the difference in getting even more out of our own space this year!    In addition – you end up with a great set of notes from year to year to help in your efforts.

Make sure to rotate your plants and grow them in different spaces each year.  We flip all of our tomatoes and pepper raised bed rows each year to opposite sides of the garden.  It keeps the plants growing healthy and helps to stave off soil borne diseases.  We also make sure to add plenty of compost to the beds each year to keep the soil charged up.

2) PLAN TO ROTATE YOUR CROPS

It’s so important to practice crop rotation – even on a small-scale garden basis.  If you keep planting tomatoes in the same spot – don’t expect to keep getting the same results.  Different plants require different nutrients -and the soil begins to lose those nutrients if you keep planting the same crops in the same place.  In addition – planting the same plants in the space is an open invitation to passing on soil borne diseases that can wreak havoc on garden plants.  So make sure you plan out different spaces in your garden plan – another great reason writing it all down now is so important!

Crops like cucumbers can benefit from a little more shade than full sun crops like tomatoes and peppers – planning now can help you find the best space.

3)  PLAN TO GIVE YOUR PLANTS THE BEST PLACE AND SPACE THEY NEED

Another advantage of planning – You get to see now how your plants are going to be positioned.  Tomatoes and peppers need the sun and lots of it.  The more space you can leave between those plants – the more light and air and rain can get to them – keeping the plants healthy and allowing their fruits to ripen better.  Cool weather crops – like cucumbers and lettuce – can benefit from being placed in the shadier parts of your garden – or in areas where fast and tall-growing plants and vegetables can provide some later shade.  Putting it down on paper now gives you the advantage of having a plan in place to follow.

And for those of you who container garden – plant rotation is just as important – make sure you change what you grow in each raised bed or container.  As for that soil – it’s so important in raised beds and containers to recharge that spent soil with fresh compost to keep plants growing strong.

So get planning now and get off to a great 2013 garden!!!    -  Jim and Mary

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Shared on Gnowfglins Simple Lives Thursday, Little House In The Suburbs, The Barn Hop

The Chores Of Fall On The Farm

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Fall At The Farm – clear blue skies and brilliant red and orange blooms.

It pains me to share this picture – the entrance as it looked early this week. Hopefully this looks really different by next year. We are adding stone edging to the hill, a pergola behind the sign at the top of the hill – and 50 to 60 tranplanted grasses and perennials in the early spring.

This was taken after laying a total of 4 ton of boulders in this week – still a lot of work to go on this project!

Betsy got a good workout this week – hauling 4 ton of boulder rock to the hill. She will get more this week as we bring in more stone.

The last of the green beans cold packed and ready to be canned this past week.

A single clove of garlic. Fall is the time to plant garlic in Ohio. It’s a simple process – separate your bulbs into single cloves and plant with the pointed side up a few inches down in the soil

The garlic row is all planted (front row) – the rest of the garden is in fall mode. Peppers are still coming on – but many of the rows have now been planted with a cover crop of annual rye.

Fall.  It’s like the best of times and worst of times.  On one hand – the great temperatures and clear blue skies make it great to work long days without the tiring effects of the burning sun and sweltering heat.  On the other hand – those cooler temperatures and falling leaves are a reminder for us in Ohio of what is soon to come – snow, ice and freezing temperatures.

So with that in mind – we have a lot of chores that we need to get wrapped up before Mother Nature drives us indoors for most of the winter.   This week we began to tackle the most neglected part of the farm – the entrance.  For the two years since the farm project started – the entrance has been little more than a narrow gravel hill with a giant pile of dirt and a thicket of trees.  Every time it rains – we get half of the driveway covered in mud. That needed to change.

Betsy (the old farm truck) got a work out this week. We used her to get a couple of two-ton loads of boulder rock.  We will use the rock to match the rest of the stone that we have placed around the farm and create a wall for the driveway entrance.

It’s a slow process – digging out the edging and then rolling the boulders in place.  But one by one we got most of the boulders in place.  This week – hopefully we can use the truck to get a final load of boulders and a few loads of large gravel to complete the entrance.  It is amazing how much having the old farm truck has saved us already.  A typical load of the boulders would run $200 to $300 to have delivered – and we spent a grand total of $40 this week getting them ourselves.  We really want to have all of the hardscaping in place by the end of fall – so we can be ready to fill all of the bed space with more ornamental grasses and transplants in the early spring.  Hopefully we can get the same results we got from the back barn area transplants we did this spring.

Other Happenings Around The Farm This Week…

The last of the green beans were picked this week and canned.  I would put our green bean crop in the “OK” category this year.  We need to do a better job next year of succession planting and protecting the crop from the deer – but we were still able to enjoy quite a few meals of fresh green beans with enough left over to can a dozen or so pints.

Fall is the time to plant garlic in Ohio – so our crop went in this week.  We use a ton of garlic in our house – so we expanded our planting this year to 100 cloves in a raised row bed.  Hopefully – it’s another crop we can eliminate having to ever buy at the grocery store again.  Garlic is super easy to plant – as simple as taking apart the cloves of a large bulb and planting them pointed side up – covering the bulbs with 1 to 2″ of soil.  Garlic does really well in well drained and nutirent filled soil – so it’s another crop that benefits from great compost filled soil.

The cover crops of annual rye we have planted in some of the rows are coming up strong – they really help to retain the soil from washing away in the winter months – and add a lot of nutrients to the soil when we dig them under in the spring. Hopefully we can get the rest of the rows cleaned out and planted this week and be one step closer for being ready for Winter.

- Jim and Mary

Shared on The Barn Hop

Tomato and Basil Chicken Pasta Recipe

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Tomato and Basil Chicken Pasta Recipe

This week’s recipe was born out of necessity.  We have had a busy week between work, school, football games, and “farm” work.  We’ve all been there…you come home from work – you need to make dinner – and you take that long look in the fridge and pantry and think…what can I make?  With plenty of tomatoes and fresh basil sitting on the counter – and a pantry with a box or two of penne pasta – this one turned out to be a winner.  It’s a great feeling when  a ‘throw together’ meal turns out as a family favorite!

Fresh Tomato and Basil from the garden being washed before prepared

Ingredients

4 skin-less and boneless chicken breasts
4-6 tomatoes, quartered
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup fresh basil, loosely packed
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper, ground
1/4 teaspoon pepper flakes, optional

Ingredients mixed in the food processor

Preparation:

Combine garlic, tomatoes, vinegar, oil, basil, black pepper, and salt in a food processor. Reserve a small amount of tomatoes (chopped) and basil (chopped) for garnish.

Begin to boil water for pasta of your choice

In a large skillet add 1 tablespoon of

Sauce and chicken simmering in the skillet.

olive oil and heat to medium-high.  Once hot, add chicken breasts.  Brown on both sides.  Once browned, remove and cut into bite size pieces.  Return to skillet.  Add sauce mixture.   Heat on medium heat – simmer for 10 minutes.  While simmering, boil pasta for required time.

Drain pasta and add to chicken and sauce mixture – and enjoy!

-Mary

Shared on Little House In The Suburbs, Funky Junk SNS, Six Sisters, Gnowfglins Simple Lives Thursday Too Many Jars in My Kitchen

Building With Pallets – How to Disassemble A Pallet With Ease For Great Building Projects

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Here is a great pallet to use – nice thick wood and untreated

As most of you know – we love to build with pallet wood.  If you spend some time looking  - it is usually pretty easy to find a source to get them for free – and if you find the right kind – the building potential is limitless.  I thought for today’s DIY post I would show how we go about taking a pallet from its current state to great usable wood in just a few minutes

Working with pallets – the first thing we realized early on is it is nearly impossible and too time consuming to worry yourselves with pulling out the nails.  It is too easy to damage the wood with the claw and hammer or pry bar.

You can get a corded or cordless sawzall – but they are the king of dismantling pallets.

Instead, we opt for our sawzall method – which can disassemble a pallet in less than two minutes into 10 or more pieces of great usable wood.  Besides – the left over embedded nail fragments actually add a ton of character to pieces when either stained or painted.

So – 1st Tip – Invest in a sawzall.  They are the key to quickly destructing a pallet – and without damaging or splintering the wood.  Yes, it’s an expense – but the inexpensive ones will work just fine with pallets.

Throw out the little 5″ min blade and Invest in a 12″ Demo/Construction Blade. They last forever and can rip apart a pallet in a few minutes.

2nd Tip – forget about the little 5″ blade that comes with your sawzall.  That will only frustrate you.  Buy a couple of 12″ construction blades (trust me – the few bucks are worth it – and they last forever).

3rd Tip - How to disassemble. You can follow below with the pictorial below on how we do it – but in a nutshell – set it on its side and simply slice through the nails on each end. Then – head down the middle row doing the same thing and in no time you have a lot of pallet wood great for all of your crafts!  You can also click here to see some of the items we have made from re-using pallets : http://oldworldgardenfarms.com/category/recycling/

If you would like to follow along through the year and receive our weekly DIY and Gardening Posts – be sure to sign up to follow our blog via email in the right hand column of this blog, or click the link and follow us on our Facebook or Twitter pages.

First Step – take your sawzall and cut down through one side of the smaller boards all the way to the bottom

Next cut down the opposite side – followed by the middle if there is one – the boards simply fall off

Once you have the front side finished – repeat for the back side – which are usually the largest of the boards

This is what you are left with – great boards to get building with!

This hutch was made from pallet and shipping crate boards

Bambi and Friends Have Struck. The Sunday Farm Update

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Sadly – this is now a “before” picture of how our fruit trees looked right after planting.  I will be heading out with camera today and post “after deer have destroyed them pictures” later.

We have always heard and read from so many about all the damage and destruction deer can do to their yard, garden and plants.  Whenever we talk to anyone about our garden – it doesn’t take long for them to ask – “What about the deer – do they destroy it all?”   Most are astonished that we just haven’t had much of a problem.  We joked quite often that we must have Bambi and her friends in our area – the well-behaved and friendly deer. In fact,  up to this point – I don’t think we could quite empathize with those that have had so much damage.  Other than the once this past summer when they enjoyed a meal of our purple green beans –  the deer had all but left all but our little farm alone.  That was until now.  Upon heading out to water our newly planted apple trees Saturday morning – I noticed driving into the farm that one of our yellow delicious trees was leaning heavily.  I just figured the little bit of wind we had the night before had made them a little wobbly – and decided that I would go ahead and get them staked today.

We are still getting good amounts of peppers in – I am so glad we planted the Italian Roaster Variety (the red ones). Great taste and perfect for roasting or stuffing.

I was wrong.  It wasn’t from the wind.  And no amount of staking was going to help or for that matter, save the tree.  A deer had completely destroyed it.  Taking its rack to the 1 to 2″ thick trunk – he had stripped every bit of bark and had all but splintered it.  No amount of first aid was going to save this tree – it was a goner – courtesy of Bambi’s crew.

So – needless to say –  today will be spent fencing in the remaining trees and their trunks to prevent us from losing any more.  I think what scares me even  more – is that the trees are only about 50′ from the start of the 4 long rows of grapes that we put in this spring.  Are they next?

As for the rest of the farm – the summer garden is down to mainly peppers, onions, carrots and potatoes now.  We picked over a bushel this week of  Big Bertha and California Wonder green peppers, Italian Roasters, Marconi’s and Hot Banana Peppers.   We have pulled all of the fading tomato plants, spare a couple of late planted ones that we keep for fresh tomatoes to eat.  The fall crops of sugar snap peas and lettuce are up and growing well – and this coming week we will be planting our garlic.  Garlic is one of those strange crops that needs to get started in the fall to have a successful harvest next summer.

So far – this is about the extent of the landscaping for the entrance to the farm. This week we hope to get started on the rest.

We have also begun to work on the driveway entrance to the farm.  Up until now it has been pretty much an overgrown thicket of trees and a large hill of dirt.  We started by adding the old barn window address sign a  few weeks back at the top of the hill.  And now – with the help of Old Betsy the farm truck – we will be getting a few loads of large rock to install as a retaining wall up the hill.  Hopefully we can create a nice landscape bed behind the wall and all around the sign.  We want to get it in now so we can start early next spring to fill in the beds with more transplanted ornamental grasses and perennials.

One thing is for sure – the temperatures have cooled of nicely – into the mid 70′s for highs – right where we love it to work outside!

- Jim and Mary

Shared on Gnowfglins Simple Lives

A Big Week For The Blog!

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Today marks an anniversary for our little blog –  our 100th post!  Since starting the blog about 8 months back on a cold day in February – we never imagined how far it would come in such a short time.  Our 100th post also coincides with two other milestones – our 1000th follower  to the blog and our 600th follower to Facebook.

The first few weeks of the blog we spent writing and filling in a few posts from the previous year to provide the background for our little farm’s story.  After that, we settled into our current format of posting 3x’s a week  (Sunday-Tuesday- Friday) about life at the “farm”.

Us at the farm during our first barn party

The past 8 months have been a blast for us.   I never imagined how fun this journey to carve out our little “farm” space would be – and documenting it with the blog has made it all the better.  Our blog has really helped us to stay focused and working toward our dreams – putting down in words and pictures our efforts to build the farm.  The blog is a great motivator on days when your tired and don’t feel like you’re accomplishing enough.  When those days hit – sometimes we will just reflect back and read some of the old posts and quickly see that we are slowly getting there.  It serves as a great re-energizer for us to keep at it.

We really are more committed than ever to a more simple approach to life and the farm, conserving the resources we consume, and being responsible for the food we eat.

We have tried to incorporate simplicity and responsibility into every facet of “The Farm” as we slowly work on our dream.  Our goals to be responsible for the majority of our own food – and to re-use existing materials and products as often as we can have helped us build the farm at a fraction of the cost.  At the same time – we want to show that it can be done in a way that can be pleasing to the eye – and without all of the stereotypes that come with “recycling and re=purposing”.

We have been able to get in some apple and cherry trees for our little orchard. The hard part is waiting the few years to finally eat something from them!

There are a lot of exciting challenges ahead for the farm.  More work and plantings to grow the garden, orchard and vineyard areas.   The building of a greenhouse from recycled windows.  The installation of a Sensory Garden.  And hopefully, at some point down the road, the process of designing and building our house to go on the property.

Simplifying the Old World Garden Blog:

Much like we do at the farm, we also thought this was a great time to simplify the blog.  It didn’t take long to realize all of our posts fit into the three categories that we love most.  The Farm, Food and our DIY building projects.

Moving forward – we are going to stay with the 3 post-a-week format – and simplify it into a day for each category.  In the coming weeks we will also organize all of our old posts into those 3 categories, with links on our side bar to make them easier to find.

TUESDAY:   DIY DAY.   Each Tuesday’s post will feature something to do with one of our DIY projects – from building, landscaping or  re-purposing something we found.

FRIDAY :   FOOD DAY.   Each Friday’s post will focus on recipes, canning, and food from the garden.

SUNDAY:   FARM DAY   Sunday’s posts will be all about the farm – with updates on the garden, the chickens, plantings and everything in-between.

The Farm is starting to take shape…but there is still so much to do!

Our blog, farm and our lives are really are about having fun and staying simple.   Thank you to everyone who has followed along, and thank you as well for all of the great comments – we love reading them all.  We hope this blog helps spread the word that living a more simple life really is enjoyable.  We hope you continue to like Old World Garden Farms and stay with us on our journey as we grow!

-Jim and Mary

Shared on Six Sisters and Homestead Barn Hop

Preparing The Garden For Next Year – 4 Steps To Take Now For A Great 2013 Garden

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To have a healthy garden next year – take care of your soil now

This is great time to dig in compost made through the summer months into your soil

Good Soil = Healthy Plants

Annual Rye makes a great cover crop to feed and protect your soil

Wintertime.  There I said it.  I always hate thinking about that time of year – especially right now when the fall weather has turned beautiful here in Ohio.  So…instead of thinking about the cold winter months ahead, I choose to stay positive and think instead of next spring and summer’s garden. Actually, much like a great lawn – what you do now and in the coming months can make a huge difference in the success of next year’s garden.  Here are four things you can do NOW to really jump-start your 2013 garden.

1.  DON’T COMPOST YOUR TOMATO AND PEPPER PLANTS

Although contrary to what we normally do – which is compost everything we can – we don’t compost our pepper and tomato plants from the garden.  We actually throw them on our burn pile and burn them with fallen sticks, etc.  Why?  Just too much chance for any plant disease to get passed through to the soil for next year.  In addition – the odd green or damaged fruit still on the plants, along with their thousand of seeds, are something we prefer to keep away from our compost pile.

2.  CLEAN OUT THE WEEDS FROM THIS YEAR’S GARDEN

Don’t let those weeds overwinter in your garden.  Clean them out now and prevent weeds from going to seed, digging deeper roots – and doubling your weeding efforts next year.

3.  ADD ORGANIC MATTER NOW

Chopped leaves and compost are the stars here.  Dig in generous amounts of compost to your raised beds or garden.  And start collecting those falling leaves now!  If you don’t have access to your own – make a trip around local neighborhoods and collect the bags or piles of leaves that accumulate at the curb.  We use our push mower to shred the leaves.  Then, we dig in generous amounts to our raised beds to decompose.  Even better, use the leaves as a mulch on your beds over the winter – helping to keep valuable soil from eroding.  Just dig into the bed’s soil in the spring.  For an even better mulch – try #4.

Make sure you clean your raised beds and garden rows of all weeds – don’t let them overwinter and go to seed

4.  PLANT A COVER CROP

Just like the “big farmers” do – our gardens and raised beds benefit greatly from a cover crop.  We have already begun to plant our cover crops in the rows we have cleaned out.  We use annual rye – a great choice to help add lots of organic matter and nutrients to your soil – and also protect it over the winter months from leaching all of the nutrients out of your bare soil.

A good cover crop will dig deeply into your soil with their roots.  This adds valuable organic material to your soil, along with adding plant loving nitrogen to the soil as the plants break down.  Then you can turn under your cover crop in the spring before planting.  We get a lot of questions on the cover crops – especially – “Won’t they become weeds?”  As long as you use an annual rye – and make sure to not let the grass go to seed, and turn over in the early spring –  you should have no worries.

All four of these steps are great ways to ensure a healthy, productive garden next year, and without having to use harsh chemicals and fertilizers.

If you would like to follow along through the coming year and receive our weekly DIY and Gardening Posts, be sure to sign up to follow our blog via email, Twitter or Facebook in the side columns of our blog.  - Jim and Mary, Old World Garden Farms

 

Betsy Joins The Farm

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She’s far from perfection.  A little big, a little loud – and a little old.  But Betsy is absolutely perfect for our little farm.   No, Betsy isn’t a long lost family member coming to stay with us.  And although a beast – she is not the newest animal being added to the farm.

Betsy is actually what every little farm needs. She’s a beautiful old farm truck!  Okay – beautiful to us :) .  To be exact – she is a 1991 Ford F450 Diesel with dual rear axles and an 8 ½ x 8’ steel flatbed that can haul about as much as you can load on her.

Betsy – Our “new” old farm truck

The front of the old truck – she needs a little work – but all in all she’s in good shape.

There is just something special about old farm trucks. As far as I am concerned – they are right up there with great farm dogs or an old farm tractor.   I’m not even sure what it really is – but we knew from the very beginning that we had to have one some day. The older the better.

Like anything else we seem to bring to the farm – she needs a little work.  We added wood stake sides to the bed – and we’re going to have her painted with a fresh coat of white paint over the winter months – complete with Old World Garden Farm logos placed on each of her two doors.  But other than that – she is good to go – and everything we could have asked for in an old farm truck.

Even at 22 years of age – with a little less than 100,000 miles  – she still has a lot of life in her. In fact – in just the first few weeks on the job – she’s hauled mulch, straw, gravel, large loads of lumber and became the perfect platform to watch one of our kids ball games from in lawn chairs.

Just four more to go on the list!

The purchase helps us cross off lucky number 13 on our “TO DO” list for the year – and leaves us with just four more goals to cross off to complete this year’s list.  When we made out the list earlier this year – we struggled over what we needed most – an old truck – or a dedicated mower for the property.  We knew we could only do one – and we had originally decided on the mower.  Then came the drought.  We only had to mow the property five or six times throughout the first five months of spring and summer –  and hauling a mower out to the property didn’t seem all that bad for now.  However – hauling pergola wood – straw and a million other things to the farm was becoming a pain without a truck.  So when old Betsy became available for a great price – we decided to pull the trigger on the farm truck instead  –and send the mower to next years “to do” list.

We hope Betsy is here to stay with us for a long long time!

Shared on The Barn Hop