Harvesting the second cutting of hay has begun.  We swept some debris from the swather, as required to maintain our organic certification, and now the process has begun.

Susan has braided the garlic we harvested.  We have two soft-neck varieties that are suitable for braiding.  One is the Italian Late garlic we have grown for years.  The other is Lorz Italian, which is favored by the Slow Food Movement with an entry in their "Ark of Taste."  They are hung to air dry in our garage/machine shed.  The large braids on the left are seed garlic for next year.

There is an old variety apple we would like to preserve.  The goats have been pretty hard on them, so we'll put up this fence.  The chickens will still be able to eat the bugs in the tree's vicinity.

Fence is going up

 

Clip to the posts

Tighten the clip

Ouch!  That's a little thistle the goats have missed!

The cover crop we seeded in the north 10 acres is maturing.  Some is grain and some is rye grass.  We have not mowed this part.  The alfalfa came up strongly in spite of the tilling and is in full bloom..

Triticale (wheat) with blue alfalfa blossoms

Lots of triticale

More triticale growing in the alfalfa

Not sure...  This might be rye grass.

Pretty blue alfalfa blossoms.

We have started to harvest garlic.  This is a hard-neck variety called Romanian Red.  This pile is the output from one of our five rows planted with garlic.

It comes out of the ground looking like this.

Susan cuts the root strands and some of the neck off.

This is what they look like when they've been trimmed and washed.

More work on the farm stand.  Jan smoothed the surface of the plywood and Susan is shown here painting chalkboard paint on it.

Me, smiling in the shade...

We picked some cherries.  These are bing cherries and are delicious.  Susan is better at it than I am.  The chickens loved it when we dropped a cherry, especially the ones with a fly stuck to it.  The goats had to be put in a pen elsewhere.  They might have tried to follow Susan up the ladder.

We got a call yesterday that the farm stand building we ordered would be delivered today.  Quickly, we started digging and ordered a lot of gravel.  The digging was done at about 11:00.  The gravel arrived at 11:30.  The building was delivered at about 3:00.