A brief tour of Habitat Farm, spring 2014.

Here's a view of the farm standing near the Northeast corner and looking toward the chicken coop. Note the tall stand of yellow flowers at about two o'clock: that's the cress that was covered in frost and snow a few months back. The small yellow flowers of broccoli-family crops like this one are a favorite of bees and other insects beneficial to the garden. Behind the cress, toward the center of the frame, is a tall stand of dark green: the crimson clover we sowed back on August 25th, that will be flowering in the next few weeks. Between the clover and the cress is a narrow strip of soil where our "cocozelle" zucchini seedlings, sown April 7th under cover, are coming up and showing their first set of true leaves. The bright green dots beside the cress flowers: "black-seeded simpson" lettuce, started indoors on February 2nd and planted out on March 24th. At three o'clock are three rows of "white egg" turnip, sown March 23rd, now ready for thinning. What looks like bare dirt at about eight o'clock is a bed of "atomic red" and "yaya" carrots, sown April 7th under cover. We just removed the cover a few days back, when the seedlings first began to show.

Here's a closeup of our "cocozelle" zucchini seedlings. We're planning another row of zucchini that we'll sow as a succession to this one, in about a month.

 

 

Here's one part of our chicken run. We've kept the chickens off the green grassy area in the background for a few months, so that it could grow thick and lush, better able to survive the chickens' routine grazing and scratching. We opened the space back up to them on April 20th, just for a couple of days. In the coming weeks we'll let them return for longer--a stretch of a few months-- while we give another section of their run some much-needed rest.