Summer is here!

First off:  More kale chips!

I made some more Kale chips using the kale from our raised beds.  Actually, I tried something a little different this time.  I made two batches.  One batch I made with collard greens and the other with kale.

I used the Mother Earth recipe as a basis.  I will note here though that once all the green are "vita-mixed" down to a slurry it should be about 3-3.5 Cups of greens.  I used 1 Cup of almonds (unseasoned this time) and a teaspoon of thai-seasoning, a 1/4 Cup of nutritional yeast, and a half teaspoon of salt.  Be careful with the salt - if you taste the mix before you dry it it will seem like you want more salt - but remember - you are baking and then essentially drying these crackers so the reduced amount of water really concentrates the salt!  I have trouble getting a uniform thickness on these crackers so some of the collard crackers got browner than I would have liked.  I lowered the temp on the kale ones and they turned out a little better.  Taste wise, they are hard to differentiate. However, I will note that I had a little more Kale in the kale crackers.   Also, I am suspicious of these plants.  I used saved seed and while the "collard greens" are bigger plants than the kale, they look very much alike otherwise.   Of course, come to think of it - collards and kale do taste a lot alike anyway!  Only difference that I remember from last year was that collards are a bit tougher.

They look and taste alike!

The shell beans are up!

They are all up and looking good!  I hope that they get moving before something discovers that there is no fence and that young bean plants are delicious!  Also, if they get big before the weeds get started they will block out the light for the weeds!

You can see the two different types of beans - "accelerate" on the right and "velour" on the left

New fence and puppy problems

Well, the puppies didnt have problems with the fence, it held them in nicely!  I did have to place some chicken wire where there is a ditch though.  I did that right away when we got there Saturday morning.  I wasn't feeling well Friday (or Saturday morning either for that matter) so we delayed a bit.  Got to the farm around 1pm - ugh!  There was terrible traffic on 70W on the way up - the GPS navigation directed us up 40 for a good stretch.   Took an extra half-hour, at least.  Poor Sugar must not have been feeling well either as she got car sick.

Here you can kind of see the chicken wire at the base of the fence between the house and the wood post.

Poor Sugar got car sick on the way up!  That's her cage after being washed.

Elderberries are looking good!

Many are still blooming but a good deal have little green berries forming too!  The first planting in the "swamp" area are the best - of course, but even the ones in rows out by the "big patch" are looking amazing!

"swamp" elderberries are really loaded!

These are the ones next to the patch - some of these are HUGE!  at least one of these put up a 6 foot tall stem just this year!

And lots of blooms and berries here too!  Unfortunately, lots of deer damage as well! GRRR

Close-up of some elderberries that are in the forsythia row!  I had removed a elderberry there this spring and transplanted it into the row next to the patch.  I guess i missed some of the roots!

I weed whacked the far "sheep pen" elderberry patch - all new this year.  Then I added some mulch and some flags to help them out.  Damn deer really hit some of these hard.

Most of these plants look pretty good though, considering this soil is very clay laden

More deer damage to the trees

I don't know why the deer are hitting my trees and bushes so hard this year!  There is plenty of vegetation out in the woods and fields! They don't need to eat my stuff to survive!

Besides the elderberry damage that I mentioned above, my newly planted birch trees also took considerable damage.  So this weekend I spent a good amount of time putting up cages around some of my trees. 

They took almost all the leaves off of this poor thing!

You can't really see it in this picture, but there is significant damage to the bark of this tree as well.  I hope they survive!

More tree cages

Even though the grass wasn't near as tall as it was last time, I did run the mower over most of the farm.  While mowing I noticed that the black walnut, butternut, and even some of the pecan trees seem to have very dense growth inside the tree-tubes.   I looked into the tubes with the black walnut trees and decided I had better take those tubes off - but I don't dare not have some kind of protection from the deer, so I put up tree cages around most of the black walnuts.  One of the trees was a bit stunted - it look like it took some cold damage, so I left a tube on that one.  I may change the tube out for a cage later.

Caged all but one of the black walnut trees

I am really starting to think that maybe those tree tubes are only useful on a small variety of trees.  I suspect that they caused fungus growth and blocked light on  my fruit and nut trees.  

These walnut trees were really bound in there tight!  I hope they spread their limbs out as the summer progresses.

I really wanted to do the same cage exchange for the pecans and butternuts, but I was short on time.

Strawberry de-weeding

The strawberry plants were really being overwhelmed by the weeds in the front patch.  After loosing all my plants last year I really wanted to save these this year!  So Katherine and I went out Saturday evening and spent a lot of effort de-weeding them.  Then I used wood chip mulch to try to slow down the weeds!

The strawberry plants are now visible and actually doing ok!  We only lost a couple plants to the weeds.  I am hopeful that the mulch will keep the weeds at bay for most of the summer.

We also took out a great deal of weeds from the onions.  I put some mulch on them as well as a weed suppressant.  I will have to do more later.  Again, ran out of time this weekend.

The potatoes are blooming their little hearts out!  I saw some potato bugs on these plants though..

Cleaned up the new locust trees

They were getting a bit overwhelmed by weeds as well, so I cleaned up the new locust tree planting. Most of these trees look ok.  In fact most of the locust trees look OK, not just the new ones, despite the fact that i haven't been able to give the old trees much help so far this year.

All mowed and trimmed.  These trees are on a fairly steep section of hill there, although you really cant tell from this picture.  Last years trees are along the top and to the left.

Arbor Day survivors

While many of last year's "Arbor Day Foundation's" tree shipment died (they shipped them in the winter, literally just days away from the ground being too frozen to plant!), I do have a few survivors. 

Some kind of oak...

Another kind of oak? LOL