Chicama Run Family Farm

It's amazing that we start planning now for spring and summer.  The seed catalogs filled our mailbox this past week and over the weekend we went through "What do you want?"....

Now for veggies we try to keep it simple YET interesting.  Such as finding an orange sweet bell pepper.  Yep that was not easy to find a big one.  We could find red, green, "white", and even purple -- but me being difficult chose orange. I like to add orange to my foods as I think it makes it more interesting (a green on green salad is just boring).  Purple might be interesting - but for some reason purple also can scare people off - no idea why but it can.

Do I want a yellow tomato?  No I do not.  I don't like the looks of them.  Frankly - I make most of my tomatoes into sauce - and yellow tomato sauce just doesn't look appetizing to me at ALL.

Beans - I want the flat italian green beans..... simple and straight forward.  I freeze these (ok last year was a complete waste because of time - but we are planning better this year) since I'm not a big fan of canned beans - but I might try some dilly beans this year as well :)

Cucumbers - pickles and salads.  Nothing is better than a cold cucumber salad on a hot day.  Then there are the pickles - well I think that says it all there.

Squash - yellow and green and we are set to go.

Herbs - basil, dill, rosemary, chives, cilantro - those are my staples

Then we move onto the animals.

We already have butchering dates set up for the entire 2011 year starting in February when we will say a final goodbye to our breeding stock of Large Black pigs.  Sad but much needed moment in our lives.  I love my pigs - but she hasn't gotten pregnant the last 4 times she's gone into heat.  PLUS the babies take a year to grow to butchering size.

Over 1000 baby chicks have been ordered as well for us to butcher!  That doesn't include the ducks we will be trying.

We bought goats to butcher and also for breeding so that starts now actually (if they would be nice enough to give birth).

Then we may be in for a new adventure with COWS!  That's right - I am talking Joe into getting a dairy cow that is only 36-40" at the shoulder so that the kids can walk around with them as well and you can see them close up.  Fingers crossed this will work - but we shall see......

Onto more planning :)