CSA Week #6

I can never decide if watermelons are worth the amount of space they take up.... until, of course, we eat them at the end of summer.  Then I'm convinced all over again about how delicious they are and worth their space in the garden.

Cara is always up for hanging out in the garden with me.

The ground cherries this year have been super plentiful -- it's amazing how much only three plants produce!  In my opinion, they are best covered in chocolate.

There's nothing like the morning in the gardens.

In other exciting news, our fig tree is producing!  We may actually get to eat some homegrown figs this year!

CSA Week #5

I'm still so happy that even though it's mid-July, we can have so many good greens!

This week's share: lettuce, kale, rainbow chard, French radishes, beets, baby arugula, onion, and potted succulent.

As an experiment we are also growing leeks and potatoes this year.  So we had to pull some from the field for sampling and decided to go with potato-leek soup (my favorite).

Also in big exciting homestead news -- we bought a juicer and I have been in all my glory juicing all kinds of concoctions from the garden.  It was a pretty affordable masticating juicer from Amazon (only around $100), and so far I'm pretty pleased.

I've also fallen in love with celosia.  Be still my heart.

CSA Week #4

CSA Week #4 Share: kale, collards, cabbage, celery, swiss chard, lettuce, onion, and microgreens.

I also have enough flowers coming up that I can play around with and try my hand at arranging bouquets.  I still have a lot of learn, but I was pretty happy with this one I did on the fly.

Even though these tomatoes are "early girls," they are still not ripening!  I am so looking forward to tomato season...

As growers, we also support other local farms and right now we source all our herbal medicinal needs from Fields Without Fences, right here in Frenchtown.

CSA Week #3 & Almost the End of School

Farming and teaching high school at the same time is a madness I'm starting to love.  But in a few short days, the school year will come to and end and we can focus on our CSA full time!

In this week's share: collards, carrots, kale, lettuce, radishes, celery, microgreens, red onion, and garlic.

The weather has also been unseasonably warm for this early in the season and the breeze on the porch is just what I need after work + harvesting...

These Seascape strawberries are just unbelievable and I can't believe we've gone this long without growing strawberries!  We will definitely be adding more plants next year.

CSA Week #2 & Some Firsts...

This week's CSA included head lettuce, red/white onion, spinach, collards, arugula, kale, radishes, live microgreens, and a potted petunia.

Some "firsts" here on the farm are our first strawberries from our newly established Seascape strawberry patch.

And also here is the first flower I've ever grown from seed (I know it's hard to believe, but I'm only just getting into flowers).  It's an English Daisy.

Annnnnd, for lunch this week is.... salad again!  Truth be told, I eat salad all year long, but it always tastes better when it's grown right outside my door.  😁

CSA Week #1 & Spring on the Farm

Last week was the first CSA share pick-up of the season at Knapp Homestead.  It was a good early harvest of greens, mostly.

First share: head lettuce, baby radicchio, baby spinach, arugula, picnic radishes, kale, microgreens, and a potted herb seedling.

Other spring images from around the market garden...

Leaf and head lettuces planted out early spring in low tunnels.

Our personal potato crop is looking great this year.

We've also started a small strawberry patch of Seascape strawberries.  I'm looking forward to a long summer season of continuous harvest from these.

Den Renovation: Removing Black Mastic Again!

Although we did the lion's share of work on our hardwood floors last summer, there was still one more room left with tile and black mastic.  We put off starting this room for a whole month, and then we had to face the facts that if we didn't do this room now, it would be a whole year before we can get to it again.  (We do a lot of work during the summer because we teach school during the academic year.)

 Here you have it: tile, black glue, and beautiful floors underneath.

 I highly recommend using a mask, eye protection, and gloves when working on something like this.

Once the tiles are removed, we were left with a room mostly covered in black mastic (it's awful stuff for many reasons).  We know from last year that some of the mastic is surface, but that some of it soaks into the wood itself.  We also knew we (meaning Mike) would need to scrape off the surface mastic with a heavy dose of mineral spirits.  Again, we highly recommend protective gear and lots of good ventilation for this process.

Thanks to the awesome guys at our Home Depot tool rental, last year I was given a pep talk that I would be able to handle using a drum sander.  So once the surface mastic was up, I went down to HD to get my drum sander and A LOT of sand paper rolls.  I started with 36 grit, which is the exact aggression this kind of situation needs and went through about 10 rolls of sandpaper before it came out looking like this.

Sanded floors, pre-poly.

After the 36 grit removes the mastic and other imperfections, I moved to a 100-120 grit to smooth out all of the wood.  In addition, I used the edger from the HD rental to work on places where the drum sander cannot reach along the walls.  Once this step is complete, the room needs a really good vacuuming and tack cloth application to remove any dust and sawdust, and then you're ready for polyurethane.

Here are the restored floors after applying poly.

After about a week of letting the floors fully dry we will be ready to put down an area rug and furniture!

If you're thinking about gluing something to your hardwood floors -- STOP!  Don't do it!  At the very least, put down a subfloor to preserve the hardwoods for any future owners or future restorations.  There was no reason this should have happened in this house, and I blame it on the stupid house trends in the 1960s.