·:[ high hopes gardens ]:·
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About 20 miles form us a 150 MW wind farm is being constructed.  It is about halfway between our farm and Ames. It will contain 100 towers when completed and power 30,000 homes.

I liked this shot of the the old and new - the Sherman County one-room school house and a few of the new turbines.

These machines are massive next to ours - the towers are 260 feet tall and each blade is 125 feet long (compared to our 70 foot tower).  The generator weighs 100,000 pounds.  The interesting thing about this wind farm located in the middle of Iowa is that it is constructed and owned by Florida Light and Power!  From what I’ve read, the construction costs are about equal to a coal power plant, but once they are up, no charge for fuel for the lifetime of the turbines.

one year ago…”Hops Harvest”.

The shadows are lengthening, the yellows are turning to brown and another season is upon us.

Here’s a view down the road along Linda’s walking route.

one year ago…”A Small World”.

The latest round of apple-peeling was assigned to the girls and they approached it 2008 style.

They dragged out an extension cord, a clock radio that has an IPod docking station and an IPod player to help pass the time.  I much prefer the IPod in the docking station to the earbuds, even if that means I can hear music that I might not have picked.  Got to keep the help happy, productive, and talking to each other!

one year ago…”Marshall County Sheriff “takes out” Martin”.

We’ve had healthy south winds the past few days, which has made the migration to Mexico difficult for the butterflies.

So, they wait patiently on the lee side of the windbreak trees I planted many years ago.  I never intended the trees to be used in such a manner, but I’m pleased they are.

They’re not picky about the kind of shelter - here they are also in a maple tree.  It’s a nice sheltered place for them, and along with the resting accommodations, the nearby flower garden provides some food while they patiently wait for the wind to switch.  We’ve been pleased to be hosts to this Monarch bed and breakfast for hundreds of butterflies the last few days.

one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #88″.

For her birthday event, Claire chose to take a friend to the Des Moines Farmer’s Market, spend some time in the East Village, and eat out for lunch.

Here the day’s quirky food finds are displayed - elk jerky and caramel apple popcorn.

This fellow had a nice job - roasting peppers over a flame - they smelled delicious, but at 10:00 am, I wasn’t ready to bite.  We bought some t-shirts at Smash (I’ll display those later) and ate lunch at the Olympic Flame.

one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #88″.

Both the young ladies in our family celebrated birthdays this week.  Emma’s choice of a party is encapsulated below.

Good friends, a fire in the chimenia, a tent to sleep in all together, and a long night of fire watching and talking.  A bonus was the new mini-horse cart that the girls got for their birthday, along with the harness tack.  They had fun pulling each other around, to heck with the horse!

one year ago…”Banquet Flowers”.

The wet spring produced a bumper apple crop.  We’re relatively absent orchardists as far as spraying goes, so besides some dormant oil in the spring and being fanatical about picking up the deadfalls to feed the animals, our apples for the most part are not things of beauty.

But we get enough to eat, and preserve.  This year we’ve made raspberry applesauce, peach applesauce, blackberry applesauce, and apple applesauce.

Since the freezers are full, we don’t have much room for frozen apples for winter pies, so I tried canning apple pie filling.  It required a type of ingredient that isn’t readily available, something called Clear Jel A, a type of starch that holds up under the processing time in the boiling water canner.  The finished jars look wonderful!  Linda mentioned that someone at work wanted to buy one - my answer was - he couldn’t pay me enough to part with one of the seven jars!  Depending on how the time goes, I’d like to make some more.

one year ago…”Turkey Roosting”.

Even though getting great shots of food is an art I’ve not mastered - food stylists sure know how to do it, but I am not one.

Be that as it may, this fall nearly every meal is straight off the farm.  The homegrown mushroom logs have fruited again and what we can’t eat, we’re dehydrating.

one year ago…”Wild Chicks”.

Today was a carrot harvest day.

We pulled most of the remaining carrots from the ground - leaving enough in for more meals of fresh carrots until frost. Since our chest freezers (both of them) are filled up with the summer’s bounty, we have to store the rest of the crops in ways other than freezing.

I remember having one old ceramic crock laying around and most carrot storage advice (if you weren’t leaving them in the garden) was to pack them in moist sand and keep them as close to 32 degrees as you can. So I layered sand and carrots in the crock and hope to make a small insulated enclosed in the basement for the carrots. One day we’d like a real root cellar where the old fuel oil tanks are, but that is an undertaking I’m not ready for yet!

one year ago…”Mid-September Frost”.

This week we hosted tours from the 7th grade at West Marshall Middle School. It was ag day and they split into four groups and toured four local farms in rotation. We were glad to be included in the day. The tours lasted from 20 to 45 minutes depending how on schedule the groups were in arriving and departing.

This was the 2nd group standing near a garden near the wind turbine. We emphasized diversity, how we use science to try to mimic natural systems, and depending on the available time tasted berries, smelled compost, smelled herbs, and talked a bit about our farm businesses.

one year ago…”I Never Said ‘Over My Dead Body’”.

We’ve been here 12 years and last week was the first funeral we’ve attended from in the neighborhood. Jim Sinning passed away while vacationing with his wife in Nova Scotia. We immediately liked Jim and Kay when we met them. They are cut from a different cloth than many others.

Jim grew up as a the town (Melbourne) doctor’s son and decided he wanted to be a farmer. So his dad said he better find out if he really liked farming, so he created an “internship” for him. He was sent off to live with a farm family of which his Dad had delivered all the children to see if he really wanted to be a farmer. He did and he died a farmer.

Jim gave up his big pickup truck about 3 years ago (once again, he was ahead of the trends) and bought a Scion xB. As an old farmer, he just removed the front seat attached it on new rails to give himself more leg room. To top it off, he put a giant turnkey - like the kind you used to get to open kipper snacks or other metal fish containers - on a giant magnet that he put on top of the Scion!

Jim loved to cook and was known far and wide for his springtime roadside asparagus route. He had a route where he knew wild asparagus grew in the county road ditches and also delivered to old friends who couldn’t get out.

We’ll miss Jim and think of him, especially next spring when I wait at the bus stop next April and hop out of the car to harvest the first tender shoots of asparagus from the patch he revealed to me somewhere along Jessup Avenue one day this past spring…

one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #87″.

Whether or not you pay attention to the changes in the world around you, fall is one change you can’t miss!

The soybean fields are just beginning to turn yellow.  The beans turn a golden yellow for only a few scant glorious days before turning brown.  But with different planting times, the fields don’t all turn at once.

one year ago…”Horse Stalls in Barn”.

Aaah, raspberries.  Fruits of the Gods, as one of our customers is fond of saying.

Again, the fall-bearing varieties are not disappointing.  I love these guys because the bear so long and at the end of the season, they are just mowed down - no pruning out the dead canes.

This picture about tells it all - a few are already picked, some are ready to be picked, and yet others are still on their way.

one year ago…”File Under: It Works”.

The garden keeps putting out and we are struggling to keep up. Now we’re onto a batch of beans - we’ve canned a batch, made a batch of dilly beans and frozen and vacuum packed many packages.

The purple beans are a bit novel - they are easier to spot in the garden for kids when they are sent to pick beans.  Magically, when they are cooked or canned, the purple fades to green and they look like normal green beans.

one year ago…”Raspberries and Apples”.