Spring (and Summer) on the Farm

So, it has been a long time since the last blog post because spring and summer are the busiest time of year on a farm, especially since this was our first spring on the property.  We had a ton of stuff we wanted to get done and we are still slowly working down that list. 

To start we ordered 6 bare root fruit trees, 25 red wine grapes, and 75 baby trees (spruce, fir, and white birch) all of which were delivered in April.  Bare root plants need to go in as soon as possible so my husband dug a lot of holes in a short period! We planted 4 apple trees, a cold-hard peach tree, and a sour cherry tree and hope to add 4-6 more fruit and nut trees each year until our orchard is complete. Our biggest concern is our zone; we are in zone 4 which limits our selection of fruit trees that will grow well here. If anyone knows of a sweet cherry tree that grows in zone 4 please let me know!

The 25 red wine grapes that we bought are suited to our harsh Wisconsin winters.  We chose the Marquette variety as these are cold hardy and although they are a new variety developed by the University of Minnesota, appear to make a nice dry red wine which we prefer.  In subsequent years, we hope to add more grapes including a white variety (likely Itasca) well suited for our climate.

Before we could plant the grapes however we needed to get the sod in our field tilled under.  We also wanted to put in a large vegetable garden this spring and summer so we also needed the sod tilled under for that as well.  We do not have a roto-tiller attachment for our little 955 John Deere tractor however a neighbor with a much larger tractor agreed to roto-till our plot in exchange for haying our field this summer for his horses.  He has also provided lots of horse manure for compost!

Once our plot was tilled, we needed to put up a fence as quickly as possible.  We have a large number of deer on our property and in the surrounding area (as evidenced by the fact that we hit three deer in a six-month period with our vehicles!) so a fence is absolutely necessary. We fenced in roughly a half acre, a 150’ x 150’ square.  We used poultry netting for the bottom 3 feet with an extra 1 foot that we turned outward at the base to discourage digging under the fence.  The top 3 feet of the fence we strung with 3 electric fencing wires.  Because we do not have electricity close enough by for the fence we bought a solar powered electric fencer to power the fence which works very well.
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Once the fence was done and the grapes and fruit trees planted we focused on our vegetable garden.  In addition to our large roto-tilled area where we planted corn, lots of vine crops, beans, tomatoes, and peppers, my husband made two raised beds for me (with hopefully many more in the future!).  One we used for asparagus, the other I planted with annual flowers for cutting and drying.

Other things we have done this summer include build a wooden play set for our daughter which we promised to do as we had to leave her other one in New York when we moved. We are currently in the process of sanding and re-staining our log home (a much bigger task than anticipated)!  We discovered some logs were beginning to rot so this was definitely a necessary task this summer. 

Lastly, we have spent the entire spring and summer fighting the ticks which will likely be a separate blog post in the future. We mostly have dog or wood ticks but have also found some deer ticks which carry Lyme disease. We had a huge problem with deer ticks in NY (in fact we lived in one of the worst counties for Lyme disease in the US) so we are glad to exchange them for wood ticks. But we have so many wood ticks here that we find them everywhere including our house, clothes, yard, field, play set, fish tank, and more. Daily tick checks are a must!
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