Tales from the Bramble

Things have been going great on the farm.  My squash and zucchinis have been producing so much I've made some friends very happy.  We've already put away a couple pounds of green beans and I have two huge bags of peas that need to be shucked.  The greens bed is still putting out more than we can eat and who knows maybe we'll get a few cucumbers here this month.  

The raspberry bramble is also finally starting to mature.  This is a picture of the first ripe raspberry.  I ate it, I did not share and it was delicious.  The bramble looks like it's going to put out gallons this year.  I had some great looking 1st year canes last year and they didn't disappoint this year.  I also loaded up the bramble with all the compost I'd been cooking.

That's it from the farm, I'll have a full update this weekend.

Rambling and Brambling

The raspberry bramble in the yard has by far been the best and most consistant producer on the farm.  We routinely take well over 5 gallons of berries off a year and probably way more than that.  We already made a huge batch of jam with last years leftovers and some of this years crop.

 I thought it would be fun to show the progression of the summer all over the farm and lets start with our raspberries.

Early June. We had just got back from our whirlwind family visit in the lower 48 and I started to go to work on the yard. One of the first things I did was put up some fencing to help rein in our bramble. I also did quite a bit of pruning and next year I'm not only going to do a good prune, but I have a bin of compost ready to fertilize these guys.

By late June the Bramble is in full swing and made the bees very happy with all it's flowers.

By mid July new canes are starting to pop up and we are already harvesting fruit.

By mid August the new canes have come up and the bramble is getting really bushy.  Those canes should be big producers next year.

Here we are at the end of August and the weather is starting to turn cooler at night.  The fruit producing cane's leaves are starting to turn.  Still quite a few berries left in the bramble I just hope we have a little while longer to harvest.