March News - Love Farms Kelseyville, CA

 Prince 17 and Dusty 24 our Belgian Work Horses enjoying the snow.  They could of course go into the barn but why bother when you are wearing a waterproof fur coat.

 We have had 5 baby goats born this March 2011.  This is a picture of Annie.  Annie is visiting at a nursing care home in Lakeport.  She is two days old.  She was raised in the house for 10 days and will continue to need to be fed milk every day for about three months.  She is out in the barn now playing with her 4 cousins.  Annie and her cousins are pure bred boar goats.  

Storm Damage   You can see one of the large pine trees that fell during a wind storm in March.  We had three large trees come down and two of them hit something important.  This is a picture of one of our 20,000 gallon rain water storage tanks.... flat.   The second tree damaged a piece of farm equipment.  The third landed in the goat pasture which made the goats very happy.  They love pine needles.  Pine needles are a good source of vitamin C.

 The parts for the greenhouse have arrived.  As soon as the soil dries out we will be able to begin the construction process.  We are also conducting lettuce trials in our existing greenhouse.  The seeds were planted on February 13th.  We are testing three varieties of lettuce growing in trays with 4 types of soil mixtures.  Two of the soil mixtures were developed by Rick at Barber's Country Farm in Kelseyville.  The lettuce is being watered with a compost tea solution.

We are hoping to grow lettuce in vertically arranged trays to increase the capacity of the greenhouse.   Here is an example of one type of vertical culture. 

 If successful we can grow more lettuce in a smaller space than we could growing them on the ground.

 Truckload

of

Raised Beds

We found a source of untreated fir planting beds for an extremely  good price.  They are 4 X 8 feet and about 10 inches deep.  We have enough for 1,000 square feet of growing area.  We cannot wait to fill them with soil and plant some carrots now  and strawberries in the fall.  No gophers!  I keep telling myself this was a good deal as I wait for my back to heal after lifting more than I should have.