L & R's trip to the farm

Ryan and I have been members of a local CSA for almost two years now (or at least that's what I think, our time here in Merced has all just merged together). The farm we get our weekly produce from, Rancho Piccolo, is about 7 miles away from where we live. It's located between Merced and Atwater and is run by Michelle and David Silveira, who are thoughtful, socially conscious farmers who are dedicated to sustainable ag practices.

We headed out to the Silveira's farm for a fall open house yesterday. We took a hayride through the 63 acres to check out the produce growing, met some of the other members (membership is now up to 200 people and a lot of those out at the farm yesterday were from out of town in Modesto and even Stockton), and had some soup that Michelle had made.

It was lovely visit and a great opportunity to get a sneak peak at what we can expect from our CSA box in the next couple months!

Here's a couple of pics from the day:

Farmer David leading a hayride tour of the farm.

Looking out over all the yummy produce growing.

There were so many kids at the farm yesterday. Here they are making bird feeders. The boy in the back is Antonio, one of the Silveira's boys. It's funny, we think we know Antonio because Michelle writes about him and his brother Joseph all the time in our weekly newsletter but he has no clue who we all are.

Ryan getting his soup on!

Paintings all the kids did while out at the farm.

Fall gardening: mystery plants and zombie artichokes-- how appropriate for October!

I am loving gardening in the fall! I actually didn't even know fall was such a fantastic time to garden until this year. We all know spring is considered the season to be out working in the yard but fall has just been a time where I've found myself being more motivated and wanting to spend lots of time outside so it's a perfect time to be gardening.

We've been working on the backyard this season and we started by replanting the veggie garden. I ripped out all the spring/summer plants and now have fabulous fall veggies, including broccoli, cabbage, sugar snap peas, mint, rosemary, brussels sprouts, spinach and:

Mystery plants
So last season we ended up with a million squash because our compost didn't get hot enough to kill the seeds, well this season we have new mystery plants, can you identify them?

We have about seven of them in the yard. I hope they are some mystery veggie but seriously at this point I'm wondering if they are just non-flowering weeds that need to be pulled. Any ideas? Let me know!

Zombie artichokes
Last May Ryan's mom gave us artichoke seedlings (is that what they are called? oh well) and we planted them. We had been told that the Valley is too hot to grow artichokes but I figured if Mary could get them to grow in Red Bluff we could make them work here. Sure enough I planted five and they slowly died. One by one they were taken out by the summer heat. One plant held on for months but come August when it had just one leaf left I figured it was a lost cause. But in September our evenings started cooling down and that one little plant that had held on made a comeback. And it wasn't just that plant either, two of the other artichoke plants came back from the dead. Now we have three thriving plants. Incredible! I don't know if we'll get any actual artichokes from them before the cold gets 'em but it's pretty neat to watch them grow.

Beyond the veggies we've got new vines (carolina jessamine) on the fence and five new trees too! Four against the back alley fence, in the hopes that they will eventually create a screen for the backyard, and a new flowering pear. We'll post pics as they grow!