This morning I ate my first home-grown raspberry.  It was delicious!  There are a handful more for this evening and quite a few boysenberries and black berries coming along.  By next year, I expect we’ll have a real crop.  Some time after that, the fruit trees will start producing and the supply of farm smoothie ingredients will really start flowing!

In more immediate crop news, the past month has been all about planting, along with a lot of tractoring, weeding, and mowing.  The rain this winter made the grass grow like crazy compared to last year.  It seems to regrown right behind you, so we are pretty much constantly mowing, hoeing, and hand pulling very luscious weeds.  Let’s hope the marketable plants are as productive!

On the menu this summer are a large assortment of tomatoes (8 varieties of cherry, canning ones, slicing ones, drying ones), 5 kinds of cucumber,  summer squash in cute shapes and many colors, peppers to snack on or fry (padrons!), and hopefully the elusive sweet corn that did not work out last year.  At least half the space is filled with staples for the winter, like sweet potatoes, sunchokes, pumpkins, popcorn (yes, that’s a staple), and a rainbow of dry beans.  And of course we have a few unusual treats growing as well to share with any farm visitors.  So come by this summer and see what’s in season!

I don’t have any good pictures of the field to post, but will put some up soon.  In the mean time, these are some lovely flowers I picked earlier this month.  The peony smelled amazing.