December 21, 2010

Chicks are born and Elvis keeps calling




Some of our Apricots.




One Torpedo Onion





Hello again,

Summer is here when you know baby chicks are being born on a regular basis. I went this afternoon to collect eggs and check on the two nesting chickens when all of a sudden my daughter says look here is a broken shell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! with a shriek! Well Chicory our very male rooster did not like that and ran towards her. I warned her just in time and he backed off. He has a problem chasing the little kidlets going in there. Four baby chicks showed their faces


These two last weeks have been so busy with activity it is hard to figure out where to start.

We found out that we have lost thousands of dollars worth of seedlings that we planted out. We did everything by the book . We documented the planting the spacings the pre-plant fertilizers and everything was just right for a promising season. We noticed things were not right until one day the bell rang in my head that it was not "MY" fault. I got an email saying that 4000 onion seedlings were dead and could I send more seed. After investigating the death we were able to figure out that our seedlings had gotten nitrate poisoning on a certain delivery date.

Some of our seedlings were stunted and others refused to grow. The onions took the hardest hit and 3000 sets of our white barletta onions died while 5,000 sets of our torpedo onion from our second planting were dead. The chilies that were part of that lot are stunted but still alive.
Brown Onions


We have been picking our torpedo onions from the first planting and here are some pictures.(at top) The stunted onions are deformed and have weird markings with the roots curled up and growing vertical inside the leaves of the onion. The onions below were part of the first planting and are brown cooking onions. They are doing well and a majority of them can be classified as jumbo size potential. The first planting of Torpedo onions were mistakenly seeded into one per cell or two and three per cell and not per our instructions of 4 seeds per cell. Well the ones that were single cell version grew out to be these huge bloated looking torpedoes. I picked them and sold them to a local fruit and veg shop. Nothing beats a novelty !
Fruit is in "Full Speed Ahead" mode with us battling the Silver- eye birds along with the Port Lincoln 28's (parrots) eating the apricots. We picked about 500 kilos that is 1000 pounds almost for most of you American readers. Last year we had less than a kilo of Apricots.








We have been making jam, stewed apricots giving them away and basically trying to use them up.

Now last but most important on the news front is Boysenberries! Yes those yummy things that grow on vines full of thorns. Normally we get friends to come down and pick the fruit each year but this year they have been late in getting here to do that. So missus farmer has taken it upon herself to pick them all. We cannot wait for the friends to come when they have to so the fruit is going into jams. preserves, and even frozen whole.


There is nothing that tastes as nice a homemade boysenberry jam in the middle of winter.


Now for the final thought for those of you who are wondering about why Elvis was in the title. Well Elvis is alive and well in the form of one man show. You see Elvis is the floor salesman at the Canningvale Markets wholesaler. He sells all of our produce and every time I call him up he says to send him "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRE. You never send enough." At times he is hard to understand as his English can get broken up with Vietnamese sounding vocabulary. But at the end of the day everything is sold. Somethings in life are worth waiting for; baby chicks!
Have a wonder filled week.

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