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.

Onions cause Headaches!

Onions Cause Headaches is the Headlines at Kirup Valley Farms.

Just recently we were ready to plant out 3000 of our torpedo onions when an email came from our seedling supplier saying that we had to bring more seed in to replace the dead ones. Well I thought that weird that 3000+ seedlings were dead.

In the mean time I thought I was going crazy in the head from Onionitus a rare whooping cough of onions. In reality I had the Whooping Cough and not the onions. I was looking at some of the rows and thinking we had some weird onion dieback disease. I was wrong. I could not have done anything that drastic to kill off over 3000 of our white Barletta seedlings. Yet they were dieing and I could not do anything about that. In blotchy areas the same thing was happening with our Torpedo onions. I checked on our gold grape tomato seedlings that were nicely in the ground and almost all of them were either dead or very stunted. I brought this up with our seedling people and eventually heard back from them . I went in for a meeting and verified that all the seedlings from that delivery date where affected. Here "I " thought that I was losing my mind and ready for the looney bin.


Since than we have had issues with germination rates and so our seed supplier kindly express mailed us 27,000 more seeds to sow out. Hopefully that will take up the slack of lost seedlings and such. Our leeks are looking well so far and the 1000 Brown and 1000 red onions are growing exceptionally well.

Since I wrote the post about planting our leeks, onions, torpedos and barlettas, I’ve had a number of emails from people asking about onion harvesting and storage.
The first thing I have to tell them is that in many ways it’s too late to start thinking about harvesting and storage now as many of the decisions have to be made before the crops go in.
So, I’ll wind the clock back to the start of the process and work my way through that before detailing the final means of storage.
The first decision made awhile ago was to calculate how many onions you want to store and for how long.
In our case, we need at least 10 month’s worth of onions. We use about 10 onions a week, which means aiming to have 450 edible onions in storage.
We then have to allow for spoiling – a noticeable proportion will have to be removed early on as examples with unseen rot or damage come to light, then a small portion are removed over the following six to eight months, and finally about one in- four go off in the final couple of months.
It means allowing an extra 20-30% for waste or rotting, to give about 600 onions.
But to harvest 600 onions, you also have to allow for seeds that fail to germinate, seedlings that fail to grow, pests, disease, wind damage, lack of rain (or too much), etc...
In our location and conditions, that means allowing an extra 40% for wastage. That means planting at least 850 - 1000 onions, which is a considerable amount of space and along with a big amount of work. Both of which have except my back aches when thinking about the work part.

The same calculation applies for our garlic and torpedo onions but with different variables.
In the case of garlic, there’s no point in trying to meet our year-round need unless I change our plans and plant several thousand cloves.

Torpedo onions on the other hand, have proved extremely reliable and free of disease for the third year in a row.
Having decided to grow 2000 onions, the next consideration is the varieties.
The best-keeping onions are late maturing onions with thin necks, transplanted from seedlings.
Onions grown from seed have to be sown thickly into trays in August, have their tops clipped to about three inches in late September then be set out in rows in October. This gives the onions plenty of time to grow, develop and mature through the long days of summer.
.
Thus far, the plan for harvesting and storing onions is to plant at least 2000 with the majority grown from seedlings and an emphasis on varieties that store well.

The key things to remember with onions are that too little water will result in a much stronger flavour, they must be kept free of weeds and they need the benefit of those long summer days so they must be planted out as soon as possible. We are growing all our onions under black plastic mulch.
Having successfully grown the onions, we now come to the part that I’ve been asked about – harvesting. The usual advice is to wait until a third to a half of the onion stalks have fallen over naturally, and then carefully knock down the remaining tops with the back of a rake.
You’re then supposed to wait another week or so while the onions dry in the ground before lifting them and allowing them to dry in the sun for three days to a week.
But that pre-supposes warm, dry weather. In our case, once about a quarter of any given variety of onion has fallen over, we regard them as ripe for lifting and keep watch on the weather.
As soon as we get a clear, sunny spell with little or no clouds in sight, we lift the onions and lay them out on plastic bread racks we got from a local friend.
The combination of heat from the roof, plus the direct sun gets the drying process off to a good start.

We keep the doors open during the day to ensure good airflow and let the onions cure for at least a three weeks – longer if there’s any green or moisture in the necks. The stalks are cut off to one-inch stubs after the first week.
Once the onions have cured, we put them in net bags and hang them up from the rafters in the shed. The good airflow keeps them cool and dry over the coming months.
Onions intended for immediate eating - our purple torpedos and barlettas- have their stalks cut slightly longer and are bundled into packs of four. These go to the wholesale markets or to the farmers markets we attend. They are popular sellers.
If the onions start to sprout, they’re not wasted as the green tops make a delicious addition to soups, salads and stir-fries in later winter and early spring. Even our chooks like them.
And when we’ve lifted the very last onions of the season in early autumn, it’s time to start planting garlic for the following year and to plan the next season’s harvest of onions .

On a brighter note we have finished planting out thousands of watermelon seeds along with thousands of Rock melon seeds too. Some of you know them as Rockies or Cantaloupes.

We have several rows of white Lumina "Ghost" pumpkins which we liked last season as they had a really nice eating quality to them. Also planted were two long rows of Gem Squash ( a South African delicacy) and two rows of JapPumpkins aka Kabocha Pumpkin. Still left to plant are 1000 gold grape tomato's, a few thousand yellow butter beans and a few thousand of purple bush beans.

Ok I am tired of thinking in thousands. Wait till the time comes to pick all these "thousands"
Another headache yet to come.


Until next time,

take care

Boys and their Farm Toys

Some how I always thought one needed tools and more machines to farm. I was right.
When we first started "farming" we did not know how like most everyone else starting out to work the land. Mind you we had a collection of books but like most other beginners books are great for theory but when it comes to practice it is another story.
A neighbor came by one day and gave us a hand for a few hours and that opened our eyes to implements that would help us. Our region is a fruit growing area and so vegetables on a large scale are few and far between. That friend grows tomatoes for a living.

So finally after planting thousands of transplant seedlings by hand we had built two implements and modified a third implement. The third one was imported from USA and a few things were added to it to make it more efficient. The implement on the left is a plastic mulch layer which uses 1200 mm wide plastic mulch. It has been converted to use 900 mm wide plastic mulch.

It can dispense two rows of T-tape ( irrigation lines) or single row. With the wide plastic we can do our onions and any intensive crop now. Previous seasons we did not use it and lost plenty of money due to weeds and water evaporation.

The transplanter is the large green thing. When this picture was taken it was not finished. Since than it has been wrapped in Shade cloth and can carry 3000 plus seedlings at one time.There are two 200 litre tanks given to us courtesy of James that are attached and with them we pipe into the ground liquid fertilizer mixture for pre-planting the seedlings. We use a blend of Molasses, Liquid Humates and a small amount of natural fertilizer to place the plant into the bed.

With this implement we can plant 3000 onions in an hour while if we had to do that by hand it would take two adults a few hours almost the day in labour to transplant. This way we can transplant 2000 chili plants in an hour or 3000 onion sets in an hour. We can do a entire area in short time. I had custom made transplanter wheels welded up to do 4 rows at one time. We have Pepper,Eggplant wheels, Pumpkin,melon wheels and other various wheel spacings to help us plant to the right spacing.

With transplanting 10,000 chili plants last season it would have taken us a week to do it in this fashion. Now, it can take a few hours to do and still be shaded. Last year the Farmers wife was pregnant and helping to transplant by sitting on the ground and crawling along. This way is a HUGE way better. It will also allow us to plant intensive seed crops like melons and pumpkins along with sweet corn in plastic. Just the other day I commented how I hardly spent any time weeding the onions. We do want to use the bio degradable corn based plastic mulches and we did shop the prices but being twice to three times the price of the normal plastic we did not have a budget to buy them. One of these days when we convert to certified organic we will.

The 3rd implement on the far right is a multi purpose tool. We designed it to carry two people on the back to either hand weed or to harvest onions , or garlic. You could also use it to harvest any ground crop. It can also remove the plastic mulch cut it and dig it out. It wont rewind or wrap the T- tape up. We have the parts to build that one later this year. This winter a friend James and myself spent days of slogging around int he mud removing last seasons plastic mulch and T-tape. This will make life easier. That is the goal for this farmer.

So until next time,

Farmer John going to work the fields

Watermelons are not going to be my Friends

Recently in Japan ( see photo above) a farmer came up with a novel idea of growing heart shaped watemelons. Here at KV Farms all we want to do is just grow plain ol' melons. We love the shape of them but at the price they are selling them I dont think the farmer was growing too many of them. He probably makes more money in a season of growing heart shaped ones than we do working all year.



It wasn't until 1615 however that the word "watermelon" first appeared in the English dictionary. Nutritionally, the watermelon is fat, sodium and cholesterol free; an excellent source of vitamins A and C; and contributes fibre, iron and potassium to the diet. Watermelons also contain an important phytochemical (plant compound) called lycopene. Lycopene is a powerful anti-oxidant. Apparently helps mens prostates and reduces blood pressure. For that part I am not sure it reduces the farmers blood pressure as mine was raised high by the farm help recently.



You see we decided to grow 2000 watemelons via transplants. The idea behind that was to get a headstart on the growing season. Well the day chosen for the work was COLD. Perfect I thought for doing the transplanting as the plants will set better into the soil and take. The two people appointed to plant them did not want to come out of the house as their complaint was it was tooooooo cold. Farmer John being the resident tractor operator was not happychappy.



They eventually got over it and 2000 seedling transplants were put into the soils. Next to them is a funny story about how we trial things here at KV Farms and follow them to a success or to a failure.



Last summer I grew a small row of Bannana Squash, a large watermelon shaped pumpkin like squash. Well we only grew it for our personal consumption. One day Elvis our man on the floor of the wholesale markets asked if I had anything else to send up. I said yes on a joke and mentioned the BS words and he said send them up. I called to see how they were selling the next day and by 9 a.m. they were sold. He wanted plenty more and I sent them up. We ended up have the miserable small ones at the end of season cleaning time. Well this year we have planted over 1000 of these little guys

Dismal year reults and start to a new season newsa

Dismal year 2009-2010 crop results were poor but we closed out the year owing money to various entities which shall remain anon to protect their rights. Many things went right and many wrong. Some of the crops we planted here on the farm for our own consumption turned out to be best sellers. We never got any to eat but that is the life one leads when farming.


This year we are changing our work gears and gearing up for certain crops that we know will give us some better returns. And yes like last season I am planting certain crops for the house and friends, namely Leeks, Red onions and Brown ones. In additions we are planting about 20,000 torpedo onion sets in bunches of 4. Also 20,000 of the white Barlotta Onion which looks like a spring onion with a golf ball attached!


We are in drought mode at the moment as the rainfall we have gotten has been dismal to say the least and not much rain does not help. Our soil is dry and for that reason I am placing more organic matter into the soils . I ordered 80 tons of compost blend to improve the soils and help with moisture retention. This winter I have to plant out a major crop of Green Manures into the soil to help hold the moisture for next season.

We are putting in some different varieties of Grape Tomatoes, Pink ones, yellow pear and 2000 of gold grape tomato.

Bannana Squash is going into the ground as well and sweet corn is getting a late start this year as we were hoping for more rain.

10,000 chili seedlings are going to go into the ground as well, gold ones, red ones, jalapenos and brimstone and elongated fruity Habanero style chili. Hope to see how they perform.

Until next time happy farming

Just the Farm Facts Please!

Well time is flying by so fast that one forgets that one should take more time out to update this farms blog. Oh well. Please forgive the Farmer John for being slack in this department.

Many things have transpired since our last update here at Kirup Valley. The entire Southwest is abuzz with farmers getting in their vegetables. All the neighboring farms are planting and getting their veggie patches ready. So far this season we have gotten our second batch of seedlings around 8,000 with the first batch of 13,000 in the ground and growing. Of the second batch of seedlings we put in 1000 sets of between 2 - 4 Italian torpedo onions right away. This week and next we are hoping to plant the rest.

I am still working the local Farmers market in Eaton Fair Shopping Centre located inside the mall itself. It is still new and small at this stage but hope to see it grow in the future. Once the season kicks into full swing we also hope to go to Fremantle again.

Rain showers have come and gone and the weeds have gone ballistic in growth. For some unknown reason our chili pepper patch has tons of grass weeds growing where none was growing before. This is odd but that means I have to go out and weed that much more. I have already done one pass of hand weeding of tomatoes, capsicums and sweet corn. Wild rabbits ate up and down two rows of sweet capsicum peppers AKA Bell Peppers. I hope they come back. I was forced to place bait out for them as there are way to many all around the farm multiplying.

I saw some other pepper rows eaten while doing the hoeing.

We have transplanted several thousand sweet corn seedlings and they are growing well. I interplanted several varieties of pumpkins and also a row of Coriander AKA Cilantro. My children call it Stink Bug Plant because they say it smells like them. I like it anyhow.
The four rows of about 500 sweet corn per row that were direct seeded are doing well and sprouted up quickly They seem fine and possibly will catch up to the other corn.

I planted a white pumpkin, regular pumpkins and plenty of Butternut Squashes as well.

This coming week has a kilometre long TO DO list of things like Get more rows ready for Tomatoes, transplant more Bulgarian Carrot chilies, eggplants two varieties, plant the heirloom tomatoes, and several rows of zuchinis.

The hours are starting to stretch from sunrise to sundown with work. I think I am sometimes over doing it, but perhaps need to learn the meaning of the word "efficiency".


So until next time,

Farmer John

Spring is finally here!!

Spring is here! Finally. I was getting stir crazy in the month of September as my seedlings destined for planting were pushed back for a good reason. We had 22 days of rain out of 23 days in that month. I looked at them and they were too small to plant out.

This caused some trouble for me recently as I got all the September seedlings delivered the first week of October. 13,000 seedlings to be more exact. This was just the first Springtime Delivery.

We will be getting seedlings all the way into January for a total of 62,000 seedlings this year.
We have decided not to plant any more winter crops as the amount of rain and cold did nothing for us but ruin the crops as the tractor could not travel over the ground than. The weeds took over as well as the wild ducks. They ate all of the Collards. So much for growing Collard Greens.

Anyhow this past week has been busy with getting the ground ready and planting out Chilli plants and Habaneros. We also will be planting 4500 tomato plants as well.

Sweet Corn will be transplanted for some early starts as well. While planting the colored capsicums ( for those of you in USA Bell Peppers) the planting assistants mixed up the seedlings and now will have them all mixed up Yellow, Orange, and Red.

We were able to throw out some Dolomite Lime as well onto the fallow ground that we are going to use this year. I know it is a bit late but oh well better late than never. We had a few spring showers so that helps.

So until next time. Take care.

Chile Lovers News

Greetings Chile Lovers

When we started our little farm5 years ago, I knew there were other chile heads in Australia. What a pleasure it has been to discover so many of you share my passion. Last year, we grew so many varieties of chilies here at KV Farms that it became almost a nitemare. The seedling factory complained that we had to many varieties. Later in the season we had some sweet mini bell pepper seeds we had saved from the previous year come out hot. Not every one came out but one in 10 came out hot to the point that one customer at the farmers market came back and told me that her daughter loved them until she came across one hot one. I did warn the buyers about it in advance.

I was so busy last summer that I had planned on attending the Perth Araluen Chili Festival with my main Taste Tester Jaques. I live for making him cry with all the hot chilis we try to grow here. I make myself cry when I eat our super HOT Jalapeno peppers. For some reason I just grow them extra hot. I cannot share the secret with you but trust me it makes the ones you buy in the jars pickled taste sweet. I had a wholesale buyer track me down to complain about them as well. He mentioned that the Mexican Restaurants wanted more but not as HOT!

The new superhot varieties were the best-sellers of the 2008 season, along with a upswing in Spanish varieties. People must be cooking up some hot tapas plates. The Nagas, Bhuts Jolokias and Jalapenos sold out quickly and I already have a long waiting list for this season. In 2007 we grew the Bhut Jolokia, the worlds hottest chili pepper which made my Chief taste tester Jaques cry. Mind you he cried when he bit into our Mustard Habanero as well. I gave Robert at Harvey Cheese a sample to make the Worlds HOTTEST Cheese from them. They have success from that and I have tasted that cheese. Makes your sweat pour out.

I prefer not to grow hybrids and favor the superior taste of open-pollinated varieties.However many times Hybrids are the only available types for certain sweet capsicums and chilies. Keeping heirloom seeds alive and viable is the key to preserving our biogenetic diversity. My plants always have been and always will be grown naturally, without any chemicals or pesticides. When you see me selling fresh fruit and vegetables ; yes that includes hot chilies, you know you are purchasing a product that has been produced with methods to protect our environment and for future generations as well.

We also grow sweet peppers, tomatos and tomatillo plants. There is nothing to compare with eating a salsa fresh out of your own garden. Add some fresh Jalapeno to spice things up a bit too. It can make the difference in the flavors. We hope to trial some Jicama as well as some Papua New Guinea Jolokia Chili's

I enjoy meeting customers face to face at the Farmers market. Ask about all the varieties we have available. I had many requests for more of the Ancho style chiles from Mexico so will try to grow a few this summer. We have regular customers like Susan from Twisted Pickle Gourmet Pickles and Relishes who buys many different varieties of chilies and sweet peppers for their sauces, relishes and sauces. (www.twisted pickle.com.au)
If you wish to order just call or email and we can try to fulfill your order with a free delivery to Perth when we come up. I will publish in a few weeks the various varieties of chilies we plan on growing this summer.

Thinking about chilis, well we have made our own Chili Infused Olive Oil. We used our own home grown Bulgarian Carrot Chili to infuse our own Extra Virgin Olive Oil with. That is available this summer in 250 ml bottles.
Here's to a good growing season!


Farmer John

More boring farm news

Hello Again, For some reason the combination of raining days mixed with sunshine and bits of hail have driven this week into forgetfulness. I thought I had Spring Fever for a minute. I ended up tilling some new areas of the farm to get ready for Summer planting and never finished it.

By the time Wednesday rolled around I was ready to go to a local auction to see if any bargains were available. I got three rims and three tires with rims for $35 dollars. I will send them to a friend in PNG. All the other farm implements went for too much money.

I planted around 700 sweet corn seeds into trays for an early planting of corn. This is one way we can get a head start on summer sweet corn. I will plant another 1000 next week as well to get ahead. This way if we start them off a week apart I can plant them a week apart in the soil and hopefully pick them a week apart. A friend Simon Callcut taught me this trick.

On Thursday The same Simon came around and gave me a hand with the groundwork needed to start the new greenhouse. He imported it from the USA and is now moving to the USA so he ended up selling it to us to have on the farm. It is 30 feet wide( 10 Mtrs) and 100 feet long (30 mtrs). We have room for two more of the same size all next to each other. Just a dream at the moment. One will be enough work to get used to.

We worked hard all day till dark to pound the 50 steel pipes needed to hold the arches going across the greenhouse area. This is the most important thing to do right as they all have to be precise in height and distance from each other. The plastic will not lay perfect across them if that is not done right.

This morning was cold and raining so I got a break from farming and relaxed after breakfast. When the summer season is here that will only be a memory.

I was able to finish leveling and pounding in the steel pipes with my son helping me holding the level and he actually finished tapping them in.

We than went to pound some wooden stakes to place the corners of our new chicken coop house.
So far the size is 6 metres wide and 12 metres long. We hope to have 150 chickens by next year to have our own full production of eggs for farmers market sales. Eventually when we apply for certification they will be included.

I have to build a fence on three sides to keep them in . About 1/2-3/4 acre of land will be their free range. We are not sure of the exact size so have to measure that soon.

Our vegetable picking machine is still not ready to be delivered hopefully next week as the final touches are getting installed. The mechanic started it up for me and showed how much has been done to it. I will post pictures later on of this contraption.

Well, there is much to be done this weekend so until next week See ya.

Farmer John

Winter Blues More News

I am hoping that winter is almost over and Spring is here. The peach trees in the various different orchards have been pruned, fertilized . I think I have to spread a bit of lime around them as well to sweeten the soil. A friend told me that to make them sweeter in taste I should place some around them . I know they are sweet but a bit more sugar never hurts.

This past Sunday we fertilized the pears, white peaches,nectarines and a few plums. That is hard work to shovel composted cow manure around the trees. We also set up an extention to our Boysenberry Patch as we had tons of baby berry bushes in a school but they were not getting the care they needed to graduate into our Boysenberry University so I decided to send them to TAFE. In the USA they call that Junior College. We ran new posts and wire to hold them all up in the future and this coming weekend we will transplant them all. We have Loganberries, Thornless boysenberries and plain thorny Boysenberries.

I think our row of boysens will be well over 200 metres (600feet) long. On a hot morning that is a long way to pick a row of berries. I always admire others who sell berries for the intensive labor that it takes to harvest them. Nevermind eating them. I promised myself not to make jam from them anymore. Boysenberries are from the blackberry family. The old canes have to be cut off at the ground, and the new canes have to be tied up on trellis wire. Fruit is only born on one year old canes. It is a lot of hand labor, and the canes are thorny. Hopefully time spent on tender loving care now, will result in a bountiful crop of sweet delicious berries really soon.

Two days this week was spent pruning and fertilizing the boysenberries. At times that can be hard. We have had spring like showers where it rains hard for a while , stops and starts all over again. Hopefully three more days of intensive work will have them ready for summer.

Today we will plant some sweet corn in trays to get a small headstart on the corn season.
about 500 should be enough. As soon as our new seeding planter arrives we can plant out an acre or so of the sweetcorn. Our plan is to plant about 500-600 a week. That way the staggering effect will give us enough sweetcorn for the summer sales we plan on having.

Well back to work, seeya real soon.

Farmer John

New Farm Surprise

I seem to have this ongoing headache virus that is going around these days so not much went on today. I had to go to town to pick up the sprocket shaft and new sprocket that was SUPPOSED to be ready at the engineering firm . I showed up and it was not even touched.

Anyhow the shop leading hand said it would be done in the morning. I had spoken with the owner the other day about needing a trailer to carry our fruit bins around the farm when picking fruit. I could not afford the $2000.00 to have one made that does the same job. I saw an old trailer sitting in the corner of the yard. I offered to buy it from him but he told me that I could have that one for FREE! Was I happy. Mind you it weighs a ton and is HEAVY DUTY ; has plenty of rust all over it too.

It has one new tyre and an older tyre which I don't mind. It will be used on a seasonal basis so those things do not affect the quality of fruit we will pick. I had the workman load this trailer onto the back of the ute and off we went. It was a good surprise gift.

I purchsed more steel to add to the Tomato Picker along with bolts and a few odds and ends and by the time I arrived back it was dark. So much for getting anything done during daylight hours.

I have a friend coming in the morning to help me install a new fence to keep the horses out of the rose bushes. I just don't understand why they like to chew on those things. It must be sweet to their taste buds. Definately organic. I have to clean up all the peach prunings as well so busy days ahead of me.Some days on the farm one hopes to get many things done yet the "To-Do" list never seems to get any shorter. I won't mention the " Honey-do list" in this blog. That will get me in trouble!

When something occurs on the farm we call it NEWSA.

This past week was a busy one as we are gearing up for SUMMER! yes the time of year we love and hate. We love the fact that everything grows quicker but hate the fact that we have to work twice as hard to move all that winter fat from our bodies.

For those reading this in the Western Hemisphere our seasons are upside down and back to front of yours. We start planting seeds and transplanting seedlings in September and October mainly. From that point on we keep transplanting all the way into January& a few things into February.

This past week I was able to get the seeds out to this really nice lady that manages to listen to all my ideas, talk about travelling and all sorts of things. I found out that I forgot that I had a order of seeds planted to get an early jump on the growing season and they will be ready as soon as I want them or the weather turns. As of now the days are still cold. Just today we had hail and rain.

This year we should have about 15,0000 seedlings and about 5000 direct seeded plants like melons, zuchs, pumpkins and cukes.

We have a contract to grow Yellow Grape Tomatoes, Red Grape Tomatoes and Costco sized Mini Capsicums as well.

That will keep us busy as well during the week. On the weekend we still plan on selling veggies and fruits in season at Fremantle Farmers Market in Fremantle.

We bought a second hand plastic greenhouse 30 feet wide by 100 feet long from a certified organic grower who was moving to the USA. This will help us to increase our winter and summer production of veggies. It will help us get a big jumpstart on any produce we wish to grow.

This past week I was so busy pruning peaches getting them ready for this summer that time flew by. I was able to meet with my neighbor farmer Jonny. He gave me a un-used piece of machinery we call the Cherry Tomato Picker. I am the fourth owner of this "antique" . I call it that for the simple reason that it is held together by 1/2 ton of steel welds. Over the years anytime something broke, it was repaired by adding a few welds and some more steel onto the machine.

The machine did not have a motor and was missing a few parts. I was told the bearings were shot and it was missing a hydraulic hose. No worries I thought. Well so far I have ended up taking it to the local mechanic to fix. The bearing were gone on the drive shaft, the whole mess was frozen in place and could not be removed. I also found out that the axle below the drive shaft was bent in the shape of a banana . A oil leak on the oil tank was found as well. So several hundred dollars later it is still in the shop and awaiting a motor, new shaft, machine shop replacement of a sprocket and cleaning up of the shaft. Than when this thing is finally finished we will come up with a name for it. IT should run like new once all the repairs are done to it. So, if you can think of a name go ahead and post it.

Welcome to Friends of Kirup Valley Farms Blog

Hello and welcome to Farmer Johns Blogspot. I am new at this so please bear with us as we work through the mechanics of this "Blogin" thing.

Many of you have wondered what goes on in the daily life of a farm. Well for one thing we are at this point in our lives working towards organic certification. Because of all the ramification in becoming certified we classify ourselves "Spray Free".Chemical Free is another. This is the terminology used by those of us who farm this way as "limboland" farmers. We cannot place ourselves into any particular " label" .

We do not spray chemical or chemical based pesticides on the vegetable and fruits that we grow.
We do believe in using no chemical based sprays and organic formulations that help control the bug population.We do however use on a rare occasion when pests are out of control an OMRI and Australia approved  natural sprays.

This season is going to be year number 5 for this farm. We found out looking through some papers we found that this farm was abandoned for many years but was Organically farmed beforehand.

Our goals this year are to increase our production of vegetables as well as fruit.
We have already bottled our own Farmer John's Olive Oil, We also have this year a new line of Lemon Infused Olive Oil.

We eventually  plan on bottling a Kirup Dew Drops some  year. This is a yellow jalapeno chili pepper sauce.
We also have on the planning board a Habanero Peach Salsa and also a Kirup Champagne Sauce. This is a Habanero Chili based sauce for those who like it a bit hotter than normal heat.

We had a complaint that I grew our Jalapeno peppers too hot this past season from a Vegetable Buyer who said his Perth based Mexican restaurant buyers complained to him. Oh Well one cannot please all the chili heads in the world. I normally grow all of our chillies HOT!!!! that is what they are there for. I recently burned my own tongue with a hot OP  Jalapeno.

We had over 87 different trials last summer of vegetables and have narrowed the selection to a few this year.