No shit, I put him to work

Having used Minnesota Wolves as labor to clean up my own house, I decided I should take him to The Farm and put him to work there, too. Naturally, I enlisted Cpl. Wolves, as well. Since we needed to dig two new beds to house the squash and the cucumbers, I decided I didn't want to dig those. Hmmm, what to do? Enlist young strong backs and weak minds, of course. Fortunately, they were willing:

They stripped the sod from two new beds:

Really, much faster than I expected:

I'm not saying they liked me for it:

I tilled one, then Farmer Tom tilled the other:

Naturally, I surveyed the progress of the early crops. Here we have some kale:

This is something like kale that isn't kale. Fuck if I know:

Spinach:

Radishes:

And the newly created beds (they look they same, so I just took one picture. I mean, really):

Those boys worked like field hands. Seriously, why else do you have sons?

Independence Day farming

Did some farming on July 4th and am just now getting around to putting up a post. Sure, you can call me lazy, but that somehow seems contradictory to me. Anyway, Mrs. Farmer Tom put out a nice patriotic spread:

Some kind of white cheese, blueberries and strawberries, with crackers. Keep it simple, right" Always works:

Got down to a survey of the condition of the crops. The onions look good (yeah, I could weed more, but I'm only there once a week):

The squash and zucchini are flowering heavily, but we need more sunshine (without all the thunderstorms) before we'll see good production:

The peppers in general have been suffering from the same lack of sunshine/too much rain problem, but these jalapenos look like they're doing OK:

Banana peppers starting to come along:

And, finally, some habaneros are showing up:

The beans look good:

The second-crop beans are coming in nicely:

The lettuce is leggy as hell and needs to go:

The second spinach crop seems to have failed and is being overtaken by weeds:

The garlic is on a two-track course, apparently. The bed on the right is rapidly approaching harvest  (when the stalks are brown and down, you harvest), while the bed on the left seems to want to keep growing:

Need to thin the carrots some more:

Fuck that lettuce, I pulled it. Not sure what is going in this bed next. Might put in broccoli or cauliflower for a fall harvest:

These two cucumber plants are kind of just hanging out:

But the tomatoes are doing well. A good spell of hot, no-rain days and we'll be cranking:

Lots of cherry tomatoes on the vine. They're small and should ripen first:

All in all, the bed looks good:

Harvested some carrots just to thin the herd a little:

Not a bad day on the farm. Kind of in a slow period where mostly we watch stuff grow. We've been harvesting beans like crazy. Eating them, of course, but mostly freezing them, which frankly is a lot easier than canning. Those go into Farmer Tom's freezer, though, as I lack the space. Canning is better for the zombie apocalypse, of course, but we're gambling a little here, I guess.