It’s that time of year, when mom’s are frazzled and busy, but secretely grinning from ear to ear… yes, the kids are going BACK TO THE BIG HOUSE, er, um, Schoolhouse. Alright, alright, just school, but really, it can be just the emotional respit we all need after a lomg hot summer!

This last week has been filled with booster meetings, parents information meetings, paperwork and a lot of time spent appropriately dressed for such. I prefer my around the house dresses and comfy clothes, but I put on my “parental wear” when I head toward the school to represent our daughter. So between this and that meeting I haven’t had much time to get a lot on the farm done!

We’re pulling in about 10lbs of peppers each picking for the last 3 weeks, selling some at market and freezing the rest. Tomatoes from the dog run setup are coming in just now and are working out great I think. I’ll get some pictures of the progress published in the next day or two.

We’re also FINALLY buying the perch system for the hen house and will have the ladder perches installed soon, pictures to follow.

Gotta run now, late for market prep. I’ll post back in a couple of days with our perch progress.

I love our local Farmer’s Market. It’s small still and very much still in the startup phase, but the folks who try to grow the market each year are dedicated and concerned with the health of this community. That is primarily why, through my internet business, I sponsor the market by providing an online presence for them, as well as marketing and design services for print and advertising. But, I would really like to be able to sell extra foods and my extra eggs as well as have some time chatting with and meeting other locals with common interests, like homegrown food!

Unfortunately growing food for sale is in NO WAY easy. Even with a nice garden, I’m still unable to get enough surplus to bring to market. I keep loosing new garden spots to the monkey grass and weeds! One flowering vine in particular is relentless and attempts to strangle everything, and it moves quick! I’m still not that great at the whole gardening thing yet, and what I find is that I don’t really have a good enough plan each year to really make it work. Finally, the crops I prefer to grow, cool weather stuff, really isn’t in season when the market is open from May through September. I always have stuff in May, but June-August is only peppers and tomatoes time here, and we can never grow enough peppers to store and I’m not yet good at those unruly tomatoes yet. It isn’t until September and October really that the production picks up again around here, with spinach, radishes, lettuces, carrots and this year I plan to try some beets too. But again, by that time of year the market is closing down, because the majority of our growers focus on warm weather and summer crops. Someday I hope our market can become year round, or at least open for a longer season AND be able to sustain those farmers interested in expanding the season.

Visit Online: www.NewportTNFarmersMarket.com

In conclusion I guess I just want to say, we’ll see you at tonight’s market from 5:30 – 8:30! Our daughter will be tending to the table because we have a booster club meet for her Navy JROTC. This year is her 4th and final year, and we’re very proud that after graduation next year she will enter the military as an Officer.

Our first Concord Grapes!

I’m proud to reopen my blog today, August 1st, 2011. This year has been very good to me so far, and I’m thankful every day. I’ve been incredibly busy and productive. Our daughter has experienced a similar upswing this year and is excitedly about to begin her Senior year of high school. I can just SMELL the potential in the air for the future, and I hope you too are excited about your own. If not, just TRY it.. find something to really GET EXCITED about and GO FOR IT!

Now, let me update you on the food crops:

Today we clipped our first haul of grapes, EVER! Concord for jelly and juice, someday. I expect with this small amount, we’ll only be able to toast a sip each! As the years progress, the yield should increase. But never the less, it’s all very encouraging.

Peppers are in full bloom right now. Banana peppers seem to yield more than any of the other peppers I’m growing, which include Italian Red, Giant Green, California Wonder and some Yellow Bells. But I just can’t live without the others.

This is the last of the Yellow Roma tomatoes, as I didn’t care for them as I should have and they become lost, so to speak, during my July hibernation! However, there are still 8 more tomato plants, JUST NOW starting to really bloom & fruit, although there aren’t paste tomatoes in there, we’ll have some great big juicy varieties for salsa and sandwich slicing.

Tonight I will get some detailed photos of the chickens once they’ve gone to roost. Its that time of year, when I begin to thin out the flocks, to accommodate those birds that are coming up and will soon begin to lay. I will have laying hens and a few pullets to offer for sale. My newest group of Blue Australorps are SO beautiful, I can’t wait to show them off to you and begin offering babies next year!

Ok, that’s all for now,
If your not following along on Facebook, and your a regular there, please look me up!

Take care!
Dawn
http://www.Facebook.com/Dawnonthefarm

All good works take time, and this website upgrade along side of my farm restructuring is no exception.  It’s been nearly 3 months in the works with little time to sit behind a computer, I’ve managed to get NEARLY FINISHED!!!  The blog programming is now worked out, and our menu on the left has been upgraded as well and all is fully functional.  Pages will continue coming online a few at a time until all has been spell checked, double & triple checked.

I plan to resume regular blogging starting again on Monday.  See you then!!

Please be patient, website upgrades are almost complete!  My discombobulated blog here is proof of it!  Working now to correct the left navigation menu.

This weekend we’ll be planting sweet potatoes, purple viking potatoes and around 50 new strawberry starts!

Thanks so much for your patience!

Dawn Suiter

Please have a look at my new Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dawn-on-the-Farm/189564277744623 where I am posting quick updates & photos during this website rebuild.

I would like to start out by saying, WOW!  Being that this is my first year with a big garden, I gotta say, ” It’s a LOT OF HARD HARD HARD tiring, long, hot & dirty work.”  At the end of each day, I find myself exhausted!  Starting early, ending late and in the heat of the summer it is in fact torture.  Heat indexes here in excess of 100* and us without any air conditioning.  🙁

We’ve been plugging along though.  At the Farmer’s Markets I’ve been busily selling baked breads as well as pounds and pounds of my famous Pinto Bean Fudge!  At the Thursday market at the Cocke County Farm & Garden I’ve sold lots of chicks and chickens.  I don’t have a lot of summer produce, as most of my cucumbers & tomatoes were destroyed by mice!  But I have a few pumpkins and spaghetti squash too.

It’s been survival for the poultry too, these temperatures are nearly murder for them!  Each day I fill up gallons upon gallons of cold water, two pools for the geese to swim in and my hose hand set on “mist” hanging from the clothesline.  The mister works so well to offer a cool breeze for those in the coops, and for the Hen House who run around free with the geese nearly all the time have lots of choices on places to stay cool.    The only good thing about filling so much water up and small pools is that I can dump them each day into my gardens, pots & tomato bags!  Which saves me from having to water, depending on how you look at it of course.

Inside the house not much at all has gotten done, as I said we’ve been without air conditioning, so the computer has had to stay off as MUCH as is possible.  Believe it or not, the monitor, power supply, computer and so forth actually put out a LOT of heat!  Heat that we did not need inside the house.  During this month even the nighttime temperatures were above 80* which is pretty awful for sleeping.   At night I would get as much done as I could, but in the end it wasn’t a whole heck of a lot.  So instead I have been educating myself on food and culinary interests, getting ready so that when our A/C does get fixed, I can really get to work on some new sauces and dishes!  I’m excited beyond belief to really get some new recipes online for you all to try.  I’m sure your going to love some of these things I’ve been working on.  There is still plenty of summer left to enjoy the fresh produce too, you’ll see.

Well, I intend to post more regularly again as the A/C is scheduled to be repaired.  YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!  We’ll cook, chat and get everything ready for fall and winter together!  This winter I have to think about how to keep my geese pond from freezing up!  Any suggestions?

Take care, and talk soon,
Dawn!

It’s hard not to feel how abundant life can be, even in these tough times.  These last couple of weeks have been consumed with canning, dehydrating and of course garden maintenance.   The cucumber vines are coming to an end with the heat, and due to my inexperience with giving them proper climbing structures.  The lemon cucumbers however are thriving in their location, climb very well and are not very heavy, although abundant with fruit.  The flavor is nice & clean and I am certain I’ll be planting these again next year and perhaps in my greenhouse!

Ripe Lemon Cucumbers are BEAUTIFUL!

I’ve decided to help my friend open a weekday Farmer’s Market here in Newport and that adds quite a bit to my plate, but I’m VERY excited to do it.   Cocke County Farm & Garden is where I get all my animal feed and raw grains and I couldn’t possibly think of a better location to have a small weekday market and fall time weekend market!  I’m happily preparing baked goods and home canned items to offer at that market along with fresh produce!

The mixed Australorps have hatched, along with a couple of the potential Olive Eggers.  I got a large percentage of blues, which is just what I prayed for.  Now if I can have a mix of boys and girls from those blues, I would dare say the poultry gods were smiling down upon me. 😉

I have MUCH to get done today, I bought pounds of apples from our local orchard, Carver’s is only down the street a few minutes from me, and I have juicing, jelling and many jars of jam & pie filling ahead of me.  I have produce to pick and a market to get ready for, as well as a few signs to paint from some simple plywood to help out the Newport Market.  I have updated as much of the website as time allows this week, both mine & the Farmer’s Market site, so I will leave you with a few more shots of the ‘farm so you can enjoy them too!

Yellow Pear Tomatoes

I’m having a wonderful time this summer so far! Last night I put several quarts of pickles, relish & pickled slaw into the storage closet and I couldn’t be more proud! I’m currently picking twice per week, once for us and once for the market. I can see that very quickly I’ll have to step that up to 3 times per week minimum as more produce comes into season. Lemon cucumbers are doing so well and I picked my first one of those as well as a lovely banana pepper. I have no idea how either will taste, so I’ll try and remember to report back on that! 🙂 Bell peppers are weighing the plants so much they are falling over, so I actually had to stake them as well. I have a GEORGEOUS Spaghetti squash in the back and it has several fruits on it for me to pick soon I suspect. I have seriously underestimated some of the growing potential of certain plants and overestimated on others. Next years garden will be so much neater, I can hardly wait!

I have 2 incubators whirring with mixed Australorp eggs and a few potential Olive Eggers as well and I can’t wait for their arrival in a couple weeks. A week later I’ll be expecting another dozen or so that are currently under a hen. It was her decision, really, I just went along with it.

The egg laying in general has slowed down a bit in the heavier Orpingtons, it is a bit hot. The last week has provided us all with suffocating humidity and seemingly lethal heat indexes. Our smaller grow outs, the splash & GLO chicks have moved up to the main bank of coops. I’ve been thinning out the flocks because in my early excitement as a chicken owner, I frankly got too many of the wrong kind of chickens for us. There was no way to know this though until I really got into it, had enough of the different breeds & types to know what it is we really wanted. I’m happy to report though that all of our chickens are getting wonderful forever homes where they will continue their lives as breeders of fine quality chicks.

Today is Friday and that means HARVESTING day! I get everything ready best I can the day before so it is easier to get out the door on market morning. This week I have very little to take to market as I put up a bunch of the cucumbers for our own purpose. But others have started bringing great amounts of summer type yellow squashes, cabbages & zucchini! When I don’t have much to sell, I can socialize or go with a basic setup and leave early or spend my time helping out. Its nice to have the flexibility to decide.

Well, on that note, I have to go! The cukes are awaiting me!!

These last couple of weeks have been really nice here ‘on the farm. We have harvested many pounds of food, including chicken, green beans, lettuces & spinach, basil and now today our FIRST cucumber of the season! I’m very excited to use it in tonight’s salad and see how good this variety is.

We’ve been very busy getting started in our Farmer’s Market booth. I only wish I had planted more of everything!!! I’m enjoying all this gardening a great deal and look forward to the long season ahead of me.

I’m working hard to keep the Farmer’s Market website updated too, so bear with me as we drum up business for the season! If your local, please DO spread the word!!
http://www.NewportTNFarmersMarket.com