The last of the carrots have been dug, garlic along with spring flower bulbs planted, and the garden toys are tucked away for the winter. This seams like a good time to sit back and reflect on the busy year we had on this small scale farm operation.
With such good weather in April & May we were able to get into the gardens early and the kitchen garden is always the first up for tilling.
Someone once asked me “what’s a kitchen garden?” For me it is the garden located right outside my kitchen door. It’s great to have fresh herbs and produce so close at hand.
. . . and the view of the gardens and small chicken coop from the kitchen really makes my day.
East of the kitchen garden and in front of the big chicken coop run is a plot of grass and weeds. We decided this area would make a good “chicken garden”. It was tilled and planted with all sorts of goodies for our layers to forage through in the fall.
Over the summer months the layers were pastured out by the old willow that came down in last year’s wind storms. The iconic willow left such a big and cool looking stump, that we decided it would be a neat place for our fairy door and the chickens to play around on. 
This became one of their favorite spots over the summer . . . 
that big old stump provides them lots of shade and good cover from hawks.
This was the first year we were able to really map out and plant much of our rotational gardens, giving us a better idea of what we can get out of the allotted space. Rod planted three successions of sweet corn and we set up our first road side stand.
We really didn’t know what to expect by way of customers and the amount of corn our planting would yield, so decided to just put a sign out on the edge of our property.
We had lots of corn left, I was able to freeze eight dozen ears and the chickens did their part by eating the corn that was too old to sell. Next year we’ll add a sign out on the highway that should increase sales.
Our chickens will also benefit this winter from the harvest of millet and native corn, which was grown in the garden the meat chickens were pastured in last year. The native corn was so beautiful I took some along to sell at the UFO Art & Craft fair this year.
For the most part, I’d say this was a very successful year for our small scale farm.
Over the past couple of years we’ve sold our meat chickens and eggs. It was nice to be able to focus on the sale of our produce by adding sweet corn, potatoes, carrots, and leek. Next year we should be able to add asparagus to that list.