Breaking Ground April 22, 2009

I'm a little late posting this, but just over a year ago, on April 22, a beautiful, bright, spring day, not unlike this year's Mother's Day, two teams of horses, Harry and Sophie, and Blue and Bell, pranced and danced their way across the tender young grasses sprouting in the field, dragging heavy plows behind them, their drivers bumping and bouncing uncomfortably on the solid metal seat, carving out the very first row of what is now the Harvest House Farm's large garden.  Here are the pictures of the horses breaking ground.

Horse Drawn Plow Pictures HERE

Mother's Day

Mother's Day this year turned out to be a wonderful bright Sunday.  With all the cold blustery weather lately, it was so nice to have just one day of blue skies, and the wind even died down to a strong breeze... how wonderful!  So, we took advantage of the beautiful afternoon to help Lori put the greenhouse together.  Caution, this post is picture intensive!

The greenhouse frame March 3.

A farm volunteer installing the end panels.

Volunteer Dylan cleaning some plastic.

The resident rooster struttin' his stuff.

Shaun helping measure the greenhouse.

Then to measure the plastic...

We folded the plastic accordion style and pulled it into position.

We then borrowed a couple tennis balls from the dogs and a climbing rope from a volunteer...

... and pulled the plastic over.  One rope on each end, one in the middle, one person on each end of the greenhouse keeping the plastic pulled tight to the ends, and Dylan running around inside helping push the plastic over.

The dogs, from left to right, Jefe, Jasmine, Harvey, and Suka, waiting patiently to have their tennis balls back.

Once the plastic was up and over, we used 'wiggle wire' to hold the ends in place.

We then screwed boards to the outside to hold the sides in place.  The bottom portion of plastic will be able to roll up for ventilation.

Shaun trying out the finished greenhouse.

In other farm news... Some really beautiful tulips have started to bloom by the house.  Three different colors, red yellow and orange!

Other volunteers have started replacing the worn fence rails.

Old rails...

... new rails.


And to start off the growing season with high hopes, we took a moment to compare this years developing pumpkin crop to the last of the previous season's.

Huge thanks to all the volunteers who had their hands on the greenhouse and Happy Mother's Day!