It is not stopping anytime soon...

There is so much going on here; I have been keeping very busy, so busy that it is hard to pay any attention to the blog. I first wanted to talk a little about our compost; it is one of the most important parts of this farm.  Our compost is doing so well and next year we will have lots of really nutritious soil to spread around the farm...sure to make lots of vegetables happy.

120 degrees

It is down to 120 degrees today, but just the other day I saw it at 140 degrees.  We will be adding grass clippings at the end of the week and that is the compost piles favorite food, we will surely be pushing 160 degrees by Sunday.

Last years compost, very fertile soil

You can tell the soil is fertile because it is completely overgrown.  Most of what you see here is gourd plants but there are also a bunch of tomato plants and then there are of course some weeds.  We are just going to let them go, and see what we can get out of it.  When it comes time to use the soil we will yank everything out and stir it using the bobcat which will kill any of the remaining weeds.

We are growing three different kinds of onions, red, yellow, and super sweet.  They sure are growing fast, but we wont be harvesting these for at least another month.  The picture below shows how tall the stalks are getting and below that you can see some of them starting to poke out of the ground.  I love onions and am looking forward to eating some of these.

Check out the onions

Onion flower, they are pretty cool looking.

I have never grown potatoes before and learning about them has been pretty great.  I didn't realize how long it takes to grow potatoes, these were the first thing we put in the outdoor garden and it will still be another month before we dig them out.  They grew from tiny sprouted potatoes, flowered, and are now starting to yellow; these potato plants will continue to die back but the potatoes will continue to grow.  at the end of the month we will start to dig hills and John says I will be shocked to see how many potatoes come out of there...can't wait. 

We dug a couple hills of potatoes to sell as new potatoes, these are fingerlings and red potatoes.  They are looking good.

Cucumbers are also making some serious headway.  I remember being excited when they looked like this...

 Now they look like this and are producing lots of delicious cucumbers.  We are growing at least 4 different kinds of cucumbers this year including white and lemon cucumbers.  I had the pleasure of trying my very first lemon cucumber yesterday, it was good.  It doesn't taste like lemon it just kind of looks like one. 

I spend a lot of time poking cucumbers out of the netting.

This is a white cucumber

I have taken some beautiful pictures of vegetables and flowers around the farm and thought I would share them with you.

Green bell pepper

Raspberries are in full swing, we are picking every other day

Purple and yellow beans

Dragons tongue beans

Fresh picked turnips

Cleaned and cut turnips, ready for CSA buckets

Cosmic Purple and Scarlet Nantes carrots

Colorful tomatoes

Sunflowers are starting to bloom

Sunflower

Gladiolas in the hoop house

This is my favorite gladiola

I have been working just as hard as the farm and I think I deserve a break...I am heading to Duluth this weekend to see Willie Nelson.  I am super excited and will make sure to let you know how much fun I have.  A while ago I did a post about guest hosting on KAXE (a local radio station).  I have completed the class and have done a few demos, so on Sunday from 1pm to 4pm I will be hosting my very own radio show.  I can't wait for the masses to hear my excellent taste in music. You can hear it at 91.7fm if you are living in northern Minnesota or stream it live at KAXE.org.