Farm Tour

I heard that you haven't visited the farm before, so I thought you might enjoy a bit of a tour.

What?  I didn't know you lived in a "gated community!"

Well, actually, I cheated a little bit there.  I thought a gate might be a nice symbolic way to indicate that we were entering the Genuine Faux Farm.  But, that's really just the bigger gate into the hen pasture.  From the hen's perspective, I suppose it IS the entry to the Genuine Faux Farm.


From your perspective, this might be a more likely entry to the farm.  You might be able to see this from the road - or at least near enough to it.  We ordered up some special blue sky and fluffy clouds to help dress it up nice for you.

Apparently, we have a penchant for red roofs that stand out well against the blue skies. We've had some decent rains through July and into August so the grass is still nice and green and you might be able to see the splashes of color the daylilies, helianthus, phlox and other flowering plants provide up by the house. 

Yes, the granary could probably be painted the REST of the way up, but we never seem to get that towards the top of our "to-do" lists.  


If we walk past the house and the buildings to the Western portion of the farm, you can see Eden, the smaller of our two high tunnel buildings.  The big blue harvestore silo towers over the rest of the farm, but it does little else than stand there and look important.  More important are the flowers you see in the picture.  Yes, the yellows and reds at the right are a flower planting of daylilies and other nice perennials.  But, it's the white and purple you see straight ahead.  That's an area of lawn we let go with some nice clover.  The Queen Anne's Lace is getting a bit too prominent, so we'll mow it down soon (just like we did some of the area in the foreground).  Hopefully, this will encourage a second, later bloom by the clover.

We've got a couple of peach trees.  They aren't the prettiest trees you will ever see, but we're a bit far North to expect them to thrive.  Instead, we're just happy they have lived as long as they have.  Maybe this year, we'll get to these peaches BEFORE the Japanese Beetles do.  Last year, our trees had the nicest and biggest peaches we've ever seen them produce, but the beetles got there exactly when the peaches were ripe.  We got to eat a little bit of them, but it was pretty disappointing.

We've got apple trees in two areas of the farm and we have some pears, plums and other fruit trees.  There are fruiting bushes and canes/vines as well.  Some of these things we leave for the wildlife, others we harvest for ourselves.  Sometimes, we have enough to share with others either through our CSA or with a few small direct sales. 


You might notice the small structures behind the apple trees in the Southeast pasture (just next to the barn that is falling down).  These buildings are portable, though they are heavy enough that moving them is a minor project some days.  We use solar powered chargers to keep the electric netting running.  That keeps the chickens in that pasture area safe from many predators.  It looks like it is time for us to expand their area since the birds have put on a growth spurt recently!

Speaking of birds, we currently have four flocks at the farm and we will soon be adding a fifth.  The main hen flock is in the Northwest in their new portable hen building.  The "henlets" are our younger hens that will be integrated into the main flock this Fall.  They reside in a horse trailer so we can move them around to new pasture every so often.  Hens are notorious for scratching things up, so we have to consider where they are going next to keep pasture areas healthy.


You might notice more of our apple trees in the pasture with the henlets.  We're going to move their pasture soon since a couple of the birds have figured out how to fly into the trees and take stabs at the apples.  We're not growing the apples for them!  They get all kinds of things and we would prefer they left the apples alone. 

We've noticed our birds seem to have a knack for determining just when we don't have the time for an extra job.  That's the moment they press an issue (like getting into apple trees).  After all, if we're so busy doing other things that they are not the top priority, then it is time for them to MAKE themselves more important.  However, what they do not know is that the farm supervisors (the cats) are ALWAYS more important.  I guess it is all relative.  Clearly, the animals are all more important than the farmers since they all get to eat breakfast before the farmers do.

We were talking about some of the areas we do not mow to allow clover and other flowers to do their thing.  YOu can see some evidence in that patch over there where a monarch is checking out a clover flower.  We also have various types of milkweed throughout the farm.  We still don't see as many monarchs (and other butterflies) as we might like for all of the habitat we try to maintain.  But, we are still quite happy to have a monarch floating lazily by as we move from one part of the farm to another. 

Speaking of milkweed, we added some Swamp Milkweed to the ditches by our other high tunnel (which we have called Valhalla).  The ditch is there to control the water that is shed off of the plastic during a rainfall.  These swamp milkweed like to be saturated every so often, so this seems to be a good combination.



If you can't see the swamp milkweed very well, you can walk up closer.  To do that, you just click on the picture and you'll see more details.

The area behind the milkweed has some of the crops we had in Valhalla before we moved the building to its West position.  That's the cool thing about our high tunnels, they are both mobile and we move them once a year.  This allows us to rely on Mother Nature to do some of the soil cleansing that doesn't happen when the ground is covered year around.

We also like to plant zinnias, marigolds, nasturtiums and other flowers throughout the farm.  In particular, we like to put in beds of flowers next to the beds of vegetables we have in our fields.  Perhaps you haven't noticed since we've been looking at buildings, fruit trees, flowers and poultry, but we grow about five acres of vegetables.  That's actually the main focus of the farm and working with these crops takes up the main portion of our time during the growing season.

The zinnias here are actually placed just South of one of our tomato rows.  We do like to increase the pollinators on the tomatoes if we are able.  While tomatoes are self-fertile and do not require a pollinator to set fruit, studies have shown that production increases dramatically with the presence of pollinators.  We also like to have a little vegetative height to the south of the tomatoes as the tilt of the Earth takes the Sun southward.  Fruit that are exposed to the sun too much are subject to sun scald.  The zinnias get tall enough that they can help to reduce that problem.  And... they're pretty.  And... the monarchs love them too.

One of our many crops is the broccoli.  We grow three varieties of broccoli: Gypsy, Imperial and Belstar.  We are running another trial for the Practical Farmers of Iowa Cooperators Program with the broccoli this year.  You will notice there are marigolds every thirty plants in each row.  This indicates a change in variety.  Each of these rows has 180 broccoli plants broken into groups of 30. 



Don't get too worried about the weeds on the left and right.  There are onions in those beds that we are harvesting.  As we harvest, the weeds will go away as well.  Of course, we would prefer to show you perfectly cultivated beds everywhere you look.  But, the reality is that we can't get everything done on the farm that we want to do.  Choices are made, weather happens and things get done as best as we can get them done.  Welcome to life on a real farm.

We added a new plot in the center of the farm that we call Middle Earth.  You can guess one of our favorite authors - especially if we tell you that the seven plots in the East are collectively called the Eastfarthing.  We had chickens on this field for a couple of years and now we're growing tomatoes in this plot.  So far, so good!

You can see the self-important Harvestore at the right and the Poultry Pavilion in front of it.  The granary gets to be in the center underneath the nice blue sky so it can show off its red roof and two-tone front. 

The northwest area of the farm has been slated as pasture area in part because some of it stays too wet for us to hope to grow veggies there.  You can see the portable hen building at the left.  It's red.  Imagine that!  I'm not sure we're that fond of red, yet we paint things that color.  We have put in several trees along the North and West borders and in the pasture areas.  Over time, we hope this provides some shelter for our flocks from some of the harsher elements.  Well, and we also like trees. 

You can see Crazy Ol' Maurice (the Weeping Willow) and Blaize (the tall Maple tree).  At right you can see one of the Bristle Brothers (Blue and Black Hills Spruces) and maybe you can see Gretel (the Austrian Pine) in the center.  Yes, we name our trees.  Or at least some of them. 

What?  You're leaving already?  Was it something I said?  Or does the naming of trees worry you?  I haven't introduced you to Rosie and Durnik, our tractors...