November Picture This

We have a few new photos to share, so we thought we'd use them as a way to tell everyone about some of our recent accomplishments.

First, many of you probably know that we move our high tunnel once a year - typically in the Fall.  Well, we got it done on November 2.  It was a bit later than we would like, but it wasn't that long ago that we picked a batch of tomatoes out of the building in the East position (Oct 23 to be exact).

A beautiful November day.

 Tammy was quick enough to grab the camera and take a picture of the high tunnel just inside the building to its East.  Here is the before picture - taken at about 4pm (the first picture was about 1pm).  You can see the door is already on the ground.  Take note of the grey carts at the right.

High tunnel in the East position (Nov 2)

 We were both a bit busy for the next few hours, so no pictures of that.  But, we did get the tunnel moved that day.  This picture was taken early on Sunday (Nov 3).

High tunnel in West position (Nov 3)

One of the reasons this happened on November 2 was the welcome help from a group of Wartburg students who spent a few hours on the farm Saturday morning.  Since it was a bit chilly, we focused on work in the high tunnel.  Though, we did get some portable buildings moved.  It's become a bit of a tradition to feed the birds at the end of the job.  This picture is pretty cool as it catches tomatoes in mid-air.

The last of the high tunnel tomatoes go to the chickens!

We've actually been graced with the presence of a few groups this Fall, and we've been grateful for each one of them.  The Environmental Biology class came out and got the nickel tour, then followed with a little bit of work on the farm.  We've had a couple of IS 101 groups out and we exchanged some food for a little work on Oct 18 as well.  The turkeys and hens were pretty pleased with the harvest these three ladies came up with.

Harvesting cull tomatoes for the birds.

Shifting gears.... we do still have some flowers on the farm.  But, I suppose the first picture might be construed as cheating a bit.... the plant is in the house.  But, when an orchid blooms, even if it isn't one of the more exotic ones, it is worth noting.

Our orchid rewards Tammy's efforts

The orchid was recently repotted.  It is our understanding that most orchids are pretty slow to show that they liked (or disliked) any particular treatment.  This plant is positively hasty for an orchid.  It flowered just four months after the repot.

On the other hand, we had a monkshood throw out a couple of flowers for us to see the first week of November.  It was shivering when I took the picture, but it still had flowers.

Monkshood

Shifting back to accomplishments....  We did manage to get our garlic into the ground this weekend.  Actually, some of it went in last weekend and the rest went in this weekend.  But, when you put in about 3000 garlic, who's worried about a week gap?

Northern White and Music garlic cloves to plant.

Tammy, caught in a picture!

We had some pretty strong winds from the East this week.  We noticed something looked a little different Friday night, but it was pretty dark.  The difference was confirmed Saturday morning.

The barn's new look.

Clearly, the angle of the wind had to be perfect.  It just rolled the entire lower section of the West roof line up and over the edge of the wall.

Nice of the barn to put the roof where Rob can work on it.

And, of course, we would be remiss if we did not make note of the Dream Big, Grow Here grant contest that GFF participated in this Fall.  We entered this program in an effort to raise some money towards a second high tunnel.  It started with a voting phase and our request for votes can be seen in this post.  We finished a close second (4 votes back) and earned the right to "pitch" our idea for the $5000 prize offered by the Cedar Valley regional contest.  The pitch occurred on Thursday of the past week and apparently went well.  We are now in possession of a big check that the bank doesn't want to cash.  Happily, the one they will cash can be picked up this week.

There's our start for a new high tunnel.