Future House Farm

Hello

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 03:36:00 +0000

I love this song.

To all of you who have been a part of our lives through this blog, we miss you.

To all of you who leave advertisements on our comments, you're assholes.

poem from the garden

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:17:00 +0000

tan lines

left home

without

a watch today

remembered

a sandwich

ham and swiss

on pumpernickel

with mustard

and mesclun greens

a patch of purples

and greens in

a postage stamp garden

planted at the end of summer

when the sun still sings

on necks and arms

kelly r. allen

CSA

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 03:43:00 +0000

As I had mentioned forever ago, in our quest to be urban-dwelling-locavores we accumulate food from three primary sources: our community garden plot, our backyard garden, and from a CSA. I suppose that there should be a forth source, which is our farmer's market, but that input is pretty small (I'll still try to post about it).

Photoed above is what our CSA pick up looks like. We currently only get a half share, which runs us ~$400.00 a season; and a season is every week from the end of May to the end of October. This box looks a little light, because it doesn't have the abundance of squash and potatoes that we've been getting lately, but as tomatoes come into full swing it will start bulking up again.

We think of our CSA as the food producer for standard veggies that we could grow in our backyard, but by obtaining them this way it allows us to use our limited space for other veggie necessities.

Little Chores

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 03:21:00 +0000

Jude is over 19 months old and his curiosities in the garden are becoming less destructive. Earlier in the season he could dig and fling dirt and that was about it. Now his fine motor skills are becoming more complex, which is allowing him to help with things like cleaning garlic. The 15-20 minutes we spent on this chore was an absolute joy. Granted, his attention span didn't allow for the full hour we needed to complete the job, but that only meant we had something to do together the next morning, and the next.

Garlic Harvest

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 01:12:00 +0000

I finally got around to pulling the garlic. It's been sitting on this screen door for a few days and the plan is to let it stay there a few more. After about a week I'll cut the stems and trim the roots and then probably let it sit a little more. In the past, our garlic seemed to get a little funky unusually early. Hardneck garlic should at least keep until the next planting, but ours did not. My guess is that we never let it dry long enough, so this year I plan to let it sit a little longer. It's been incredibly dry and hot around here, so the conditions are perfect for this little chore.

The variety we got is called German Extra Hardy. Some of the bulbs got enormous. My plan is keep half for eating and then plant the rest. If time allows I may also get a second variety to diversify the crop a bit. We'll see.

Full-metal trellis

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 01:11:00 +0000

If I needed to attach an adjective to this trellis, it would be industrial. Other than a few short pieces of rope, the entire structure is made entirely of metal. As I said in a previous post, our community plot is designed to be low maintenance; which for us means build everything heavy-duty once and leave it be.

These trellises are for our shelling beans. The idea is to just let them climb, die, dry, and get harvested. Pretty simple.

The Blueberry Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 01:14:00 +0000

Jude (aka Blueberry) just figured out the harmonica. He now plays for not only us, but also out the office window for all our neighbors to enjoy.

First look at our community garden plot

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Mon, 28 May 2012 19:57:00 +0000

The video is a little shaky (take Dramamine before viewing).

Glorious Complications

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:30:00 +0000

We need to re-rethink our city garden philosophy. This year the intensive companion planting got way out of control. Our approach, knowing that we would have oodles of farmers' markets and a CSA to rely on, was to focus our efforts on the diversity of our flowers and veggies, as opposed to looking for food storage sized production. In one of our smaller beds (4'x16') we managed to squeeze in 20+ varieties just in the first planting alone. Needless to say, things got a bit crowded and then spilled over into out of control.

We're still learning how to eat locally and sustainably in a city/town. This year our food has primarily come from four sources: half of a CSA share, with a fruit and egg share; our garden; our community garden plot; and the occasional farmers' market visit. The key to this kind of food consumption (is that the word I'm looking for) is knowing your inventory at every stage of the season. Now when I say "at every stage of the season" that makes it sound more complicated than it really is. Well no, scratch that, it is complicated; however the complications aren't because we're having to check our inventory often, it's because we need to plan really far in advance and calculate into our quantities food that we're not growing. Here's an example:

Our CSA starts in June. One of the first items we received were greens and lot of them. However, on our garden production end we can produce greens much sooner (and dammit, if we can have it, we want it). The tricky part, we discovered, is that once the CSA greens start coming in, and our garden is still churning them out, we end up having far more than we could possibly consume. I think at one point I was eating three to four salads a day. Now I love salads just as much as the next gardener, but holy hell that gets to be a bit much.

Now that we know this, our solution for next year may be to start a cooperative community plot, grow and share our greens there, and once the CSA kicks in, we can surrender the excess plot greens to our partners.

We're also going to redesign the way we use our backyard and community garden plots. The approach will be based on time spent in the garden. We can obviously get to our backyard space every day; so our plans are to grow items that we would want to access frequently or would need daily care (peas, beans, cherry tomatoes, etc.). The community garden plot we want to use for low maintenance, space hogging plants (paste tomatoes, winter squash, soup beans, and so on)

I'm guessing that we may have this system down in another season or two. In the meantime we'll keep taking notes, cussing (and laughing) at our mistakes, and hoping for solid weather.

Cool Resource

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:30:00 +0000

I was searching for some cold frame plans today and came across this great site. Its a giant list of agricultural building plans, all in pdf format.

New Fruit

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 02:49:00 +0000

This year we wanted to try some new varieties of fruits and veggies. Yellow Canary Melons (should all that be in caps?) were a must have after we tried some at last year's famers' market. The only bummer about these beauts is they are incredible space hogs; not good for a small city garden.

We're back from Ithaca and The Finger Lakes

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 18:19:00 +0000

I'm taking a break from a garden that needs some serious TLC. It's incredible how unruly a garden can get after just six days.

In the near future I'll try to give a full report of our trip, but until then, here are some of the highlight photos:

Businessman in Touch with Nature

Jude and I in front of Ithaca Falls

Meg, Jude, and I in front of Ithaca Falls

Sunset on Seneca Lake

Double Rainbow. Yep—look close, it's there

Seneca Lake

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:27:00 +0000

Seneca Lake is amazing. We are currently in Geneva and we would highly recommend the place to anyone looking to get away from the hustle and bustle.

Photos to come shortly.

Learning to blog with an ipad

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 02:35:00 +0000

I haven't figured out how to post photos with an iPad, so until we get back to our desktops, please pardon the text only posts.

The three of us are in Ithaca. We're on our way to a lake house in Geneva and we wanted to break up the trip a bit. The original plan was to camp at Watkins Glen State Park, but we unfortunately got rained out.

A heads up: New York parks don't give rain checks if you call the day of. Maybe no parks in any states do, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

So plan B is Ithaca. Actually we were going to stop Ithaca for a bit tomorrow, but we decided to hell with it and made the town a larger part of our agenda. We sorry that we didn't get to see Watkins Glen or take Jude on his first camping trip, but as expected, Ithaca has not disappointed us. This place is fantastic.

Out and about

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:42:00 +0000

7 Walkers

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:22:00 +0000

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may know, I have a bit of a thing for The Grateful Dead. I don't believe I'm a "Dead Head," though others might disagree, because I really don't know if I understand what it means to be one. But that's a completely different conversation than what I set out to discuss.

Bill Kruetzmann, who was the drummer for The Grateful Dead, is in a new band called 7 Walkers. Now typically I don't promote, nor do I really listen to, the bands that germinated from The Dead (another conversation not needing to happen here), but 7 Walkers—well—if you didn't know who Kruetzmann is, and you didn't listen to them on the internet, with all its experience-shaping links, you would never know there was a connection. Oh shit! and Robert Hunter is involved too. But that's not why I like them.

Listen to Chingo; and whether you're a Dead fan or not, think of it how you may.

More to follow

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:43:00 +0000

I'm not sure what my title is on this project, I think I'm an advisor or something; regardless, I think it's a project worth sharing. What you're looking at is the top of a storm water storage unit that will serve as a collection space for an underground water filter/rain garden. The student running this show will have a detailed post about the rain garden when it's completed. Until then, just think of this: during any single rain storm heavier than a drizzle, we will be able to fill a 1550 gallon cistern with water that is close to potable.

When the post is ready on my other blog I'll be sure to link it here as well.

Why heavy winds make me worry

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:14:00 +0000

This is a bean trellis I set up at my community garden plot. I made it with branches from the woods and twine I found laying around. There is a little sway to it, but nothing too much; the big concern is when the beans fill the strings and turn the trellis into a sail.

To be continued...

Striata D'Italia

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 03:08:00 +0000

Let's face it, whether you plant one zucchini seed or many, you're going to end up with a shitload of zucchini. Except for maybe one year when we got hit pretty bad by some squash vine borers, we have always had more zucchini than what can be eaten from typical everyday consumption (our excess is usually turned into soup and frozen for the winter).

The zucchini variety we've been using for a number of years has been the Striata D'Italia. There really wasn't any science behind our decision; we picked the Striata because it looked cool. Now that we're up to our eyeballs in these things, I am grateful that they're at least pleasing to look at.

No title necessary

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:31:00 +0000

Hello again.

Blog? What blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Meg) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:01:00 +0000

Hot. Busy. Baby. Etc.

Just in time

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Mon, 16 May 2011 15:20:00 +0000

This morning, Jude and I went outside to chase a rabbit and survey the garden scene. After a night of heavy rain, the dirt was charcoal-black and the greens had the perk of Spring adolescence.

Yesterday, the three of us spent the majority of our morning pulling a few weeds and relocating various volunteers. We had a decent rain the night before, so working the dirt was a simple pleasure. After we got the soil ready, we mapped out the beds and planted our seeds. As it stands, everything is in except our tomatoes and peppers; those we'll harden off and plant next week. (About a week after that we'll start another round of greens.)

Shortly after we planted the last of the seeds and brought in the tools it started to rain again—it's supposed to be a wet one all week. We really couldn't have picked a better time to plant. The seeds are properly soaked and by Saturday the sun should be out to spark their germination.

Community Garden Build: Day 1 (Photo Dump)

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 21:43:00 +0000

Obviously a great deal of attention went to the construction of the pergola. I'll have more detailed photos when the build is over.

Seedy Business

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 05:31:00 +0000

The seeds are officially started. In our trays we have:

Tomatoes
Sweet Peppers
Hot Peppers
Lettuce
Kale
Collard Greens
Pak Choy
Onions
Leeks
Shallots
Cilantro
Dill
Alaska Shasta Daisy
Chives

I feel like I might be missing something—oh well. After we pick up more seed starting dirt, we'll probably start some more herbs and flowers.

Ground Breaking

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly Allen) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 05:22:00 +0000

On Thursday we broke ground for the school community garden.