Last week of the Fruit stand on 99E

We should be finishing with our 3rd picking of the Bluecrop today so it may be the last day of the fruit stand...if we have a little left to pick tomorrow, then tomorrow will be the last day.

We also have 3 types of garlic for sale: Elephant, White and Red Garlic. $3/lb

We will still be picking for a few weeks after the fruit stand is closed, so call us at 503-991-7207 if you'd like to order a flat.

Thank you for all who came and enjoyed our blueberries!

Red Gravenstein apples will be available for u-pick in 2 weeks at our farm: 4925 Rockdale St NE, Brooks.

Blueberries, Blueberries and more Blueberries!!

Well looks like my pictures come up as words so sorry, no pictures again :(

Blueberries are never ending it seems. We are picking our late variety, Liberty, then we start again on our 3rd picking of Bluecrop.

We are soon to be starting wheat harvest, then combining our spinach and cabbage seed. I had great pictures to show you too which is a bummer.

The corn is growing well...about knee high right now. The beans too. Can't easily walk between the rows anymore. Sounds like we will be harvesting beans before 2 weeks are over.

Our fruit stand has been open the last week. We will be open again today (Friday) but closed tomorrow (Sat) because we are out of blueberries until Monday. We will be open again on Monday. Our new hours are 12-6pm. Blueberries and 3 types of fresh garlic are available at the stand now. Cherries and Marionberries are finished for the year.

Blueberry Availability Update

For those of you interested in we-pick/u-pick blueberries:

We are waiting for our blueberries to ripen again but are hoping we will have some ready by Monday for a guess. If you'd like to order some please call us at the phone number below, or look for the fruit stand to open next week.

We are planning on having the fruit stand out on 99E (1/2 mile north of Brooks) again this year when the next picking is ready. The days will be irregular because it depends on when berries are ready. We want the berries to be the freshest possible for you! We do know the hours will be 10am - 6pm when we are open, and we will have a credit/debit card available.

We also will have Sweetheart Cherries (Dark Red) Available...

If you are interested in u-picking, give us a call at 503-991-7207. $1.00/pound.

Corn, Chinese Cabbage seed and Beans

Corn trying to emerge. After we planted, it rained a lot, then it got hot. Because of that, the soil formed a hard crust. The corn seed sprouts are pretty tough though and somehow usually make it through. To help it along though, we decided to give the field a little water to try to loosen the crust.



Grandpa and I making plans of what to do next in the day :)

Chinese Cabbage (Bok Choy) This we are growing for seed. This picture was taken a few weeks ago. Right now the field is absolutely beautiful. The bushes have grown taller and the whole field is solid gold.

Beans starting to grow.

We use this hard hose reel to water the corn. We try to move it twice a day when we are watering.

More pictures to come....trying to load 5 more but the computer is being stubborn right now!

We did already pick the 1st picking of our early blueberries. Next will be to pick our midseason bluberries or do the 2nd picking of the early ones. Besides than we are working on keeping everything watered...especially with these 100 degree days.

Soon it will be time to harvest wheat....a few weeks...

Summer is slowly creeping in.

Blueberries are starting to turn blue so we had to put up our bird control right away. These are balloons that Noe puts up that are suppose to scare the birds. We also have a sound system to makes bird distress noises, along with stringing up a lot of metallic tape that flashes lots of light.
We also have a net that we put over 2 blueberry fields but we haven't put that up the last 2 years.

Below is a picture of a field getting planted with corn. It had wheat in in before but instead of working it up, it was planted with the no-till method. You have to be on the lookout for slugs and make sure to get them under control when you do no-till method rather than traditional.

Above is Chinese Cabbage (Bok Choy) we are raising for seed. I was over there yesterday and the field is blooming yellow! Need to take a picture of that to show you all.

And blueberries! This was a picture taken last week. I couldn't believe how much bluer they turned over the weekend! You could even find a few to eat, although still a bit sour.

This is a picture of the bird distress call system we use.

Well that's the update for now. A lot more happening than this but I need to haul my camera around with me today so I can take more pictures.

Beekeeper!

Our beekeeper. Can you believe they do it with their bare hands!? Not a job I would want :)



The wheat is growing.

Here we are getting the field ready to plant spinach seed. There was a grass field here last year so we have to plow it to get all the sod out of the way.
We are growing it not for the spinach leaves itself, but the spinach seed. This is our first year doing this so we are learning a lot. Who knew that you had to plant female spinach seed, then a week later in between the female rows you have to plant male spinach seed. Then a week after that you have to plant another round of male seed.
This afternoon, since the weather is finally nice, we are planting our cabbage seed...also grown for the purposes of making more seed.

Things are starting to pick up around here.

How would you like this header coming at you down the road! Actually this header is far too wide to drive down the road, so we have to take it on and off between fields and ferry it around on a trailer. It is actually a wheat header. We are working on converting it to fit on our combine.

We took out most all of our grassfields and are growing many different crops this year. Wheat, corn, beans, spinach and cabbage seed, along with blueberries and of course the u-pick apples.

Since it keeps raining so often, we are working on fixing/updating some of our equipment. As soon as the ground dries out more, we will be working up fields and getting ready for planting the crops.

We just finished fertilizing our blueberries...much earlier than normal this year. Pretty crazy. Below we are fertilizing the apples too.

Apple Blossoms.
This is the time of the year that it is most important to protect the apples from getting disease like apple scab, etc.



Next project that will need to be done in the future is thinning the apples. Once the apples are about the size of your thumb, we head out to start thinning. Some rows are especially more important to thin then other...The Gold Rush are really important to thin, otherwise there will be many many apples, but all a very small size. We thin to give the other apples more space to grow.

We also planted a brand new row of Honeycrisp. Since the Honeycrisp produce a large crop one year, and minimal to no crop the next, we are hoping this new row will produce opposite than the old rows. We would like to have Honeycrisp available every year.

I am also busy getting ready for our flower nursery to open on the 24th! The greenhouse is full of beautiful plants! We are also doing hanging baskets this year. Come check it out! M-F 9-5, Sat 10-5.