Wonderful Pumpkin Season

Our first year was SUPER!!! The pumpkin season is over now. The patch was successful, we had several different types of pumpkin and squash plus beautiful mums. We worked hard to fight the squash bugs, cucumber beetles, powdery mildew, and wilt. We learned a lot about pumpkins and mums and are already planning for next year.

One the agenda for next year we have 9 varieties of garlic to plant, 10 new types of mums and at least 30 different types of pumpkins and squash. We will continue our attempts to grow seasonal heirloom veggies.

Until then we will continue to post our cleaned fibers and yarns on our etsy site. Our winter will be full of spinning, dyeing and felting.

Enjoy some of our pictures of the pumpkin stand and the small events that we had, such as community day, with pumpkin painting, petting zoo and guess the weight, and the pumpkin carving day.

Natural Grass Mower

There are a hundred and one things to do today and the only thing I did was sit in the middle of my yard, surround by the goats, enjoying the warm breeze. I held the new baby kitten as Meow ( our daughter's cat) sat by my feet. All I could hear in my head was," with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard, Now everything is easy cause of you and our..." Oh how I love Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I have never been more at ease.

We invested in a portable electric fence for the front yard. We staked off an area with some shade and left the three older goats go to town on the high grass. The goats seemed to enjoy the change of scenery and liked grazing on the tall grass. If we move the fence around we might never have to use the mower again.

Also, the weather finally worked with us and we were able to do our May Pole dance and spring celebration.

Plus - Our local FFA (Future Farmers of America) and the 4-H had an auction to benefit the two programs last night. We enjoy going to help out the organizations and to score a couple of good deals. We ended up getting a rain water barrel. We have an open top barrel, but this one has a spigot and a leaf screen on top. Just the right thing to collect rain water to water the giant pumpkins. We also picked up a bag of feed for the animals, a garden hoe, and a great cow hide looking lamp shade.

Pumpkin Patch tilled under

Finally we had nice enough weather to disk the field under. The field had not been plowed in over a decade so the turf was hard to turn over. Mike ended up driving the tractor for the first time.
They ended up finding an attachment to dig rows so that the black plastic mulch can be laid down and then the dirt be pushed back onto it. Once that is done we intend on punching holes in the plastic to plant the seedlings.

The New Year with a New Focus

We have successfully set up our farm as a business. Dusty Bottom Acres, LLC. We have a goal for the year and that is to plant, grow and harvest some of the oddest and coolest veggies and pumpkins in the area. We have redirected our blog from being just our crafts and everyday life to what we call confessions of a first year farmer. See, we have no experience with growing much of anything. So, this is going to be our diary as we learn, grow and mess up.

Our farm includes fiber animals, so we have plenty of wool and mohair for sale. We are currently working on the Etsy store now.

The Blacksmith might find some time to post a project or two, but who knows because of his ambitions to grow the largest pumpkin. It looks like the largest is over 1600 pounds!!! I think he will be happy with anything over 200 pounds. But still that is a huge pumpkin!!!

Join us in our adventure for 2010!!!