Bless This Mess › Life on the Farm

Behind the Recipe Farm Update: June 20, 2021

By Melissa

on Jun 21, 2021

This article is a weekly recap of some of the things happening in our lives, on our new farm, and is a behind-the-recipe look at the day to day of raising a family in Southern Utah. Enjoy!

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Fun things happening on the farm:

• Out of the 5 turkeys that we have we have discovered 3 are male and 2 are female. They have all looked the same but once a few days ago some of them had their feathers all puffed up and were making funny almost-gobbling noises. They still look the same most of the time but occasionally when something gets their dander in a bunch, they puff up and act like big boy turkeys. It’s so fun and really hilarious. We’re still really intrigued with these feathered creatures. They aren’t nearly as skittish as chickens and seem to really like us. We’re considering keeping 2 hens and 1 tom to see if we could get a turkey breeding program up and running. Raising turkeys: 10/10 highly recommend.
• We cut 1 of our 2 fields of grass/alfalfa hay and sold it at soon as we had it baled and didn’t even have to pull it out of the field ourselves. It was our first little cash crop. We are planning on keeping our next two cuttings, so our hay selling is over for the year.
• We sold Millie and Mabel to a good friend 5 miles up the road within a few hours of letting people know we wanted to sell. I’m so grateful with how it worked out and I know she’ll be really well taken care of (and we can visit!). The farm doesn’t feel nearly as farmy without some livestock in it though.
• I’ve gotten my first little harvests of the year! We have kale, chard, spinach, and a few little ripe strawberries ready right now and it’s glorious. Did you see the picture above of the head of iceberg lettuce? I’ve never grown a head lettuce before (I normally just do leaf lettuce and cut as it’s ready). I think the head of lettuce is just beautiful! I’ll be trying that again.

Things we are currently figuring out on the farm:

• We kinda winged it when it came to filling our raised beds and parts of them aren’t thriving and parts are. We have learned a ton about the soil, compost, and aged wood chips we are using. We added our first nitrogen amendment this weekend as some things are really struggling. In my decades of gardening I’ve never used an amendment before. I tried a plant based nitrogen that was supposed to be really natural as well as some fish emulsion. I’m hoping we’ll get things balanced out and help the soil to become a living organism over time.
• We’re knee deep in weeding season. We’ve discovered at a book on CD will keep us going loads longer than without (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a current favorite), timing is everything (getting up early and weeding before the sun gets hot is a must), and having something to look forward to later in the day (trip to the pool) is good motivation.

Things that were hard these last two weeks:

• Selling Millie and Mable was so right and so hard. If you’ve ever spent that much time with a creature you know what I’m talking about.
• I had an MRI done and the process was awful, I just didn’t know what to expect and it was the longest 30 minutes. And on top of that it didn’t show much. I currently don’t really know what’s going on with my back pain (which keeps me from sleeping) and I’m not wanting to do more tests. Stalemates in health are hard.
• I feel like I had one of those rough motherhood weeks last week – not enough sleep, Henry chipped half of his front tooth off and we had to do an emergency run to the dentist, my kids broke a window in the basement, I was so sick from taking many heavy antibiotics to help with my stomach infection, my phone broke. It was just a lot all at once mixed with not sleeping. Life gets like that now and again!

I think that’s the bulk of what’s going on here. We are navigating a record heat wave and drought, still working on getting our farm stand up and running, and our best friends from collage came for 5 days to visit from Seattle which was so much fun. This week will be more weeding, watering, and planning!