here's an update on my life. perhaps i will get in to blogging again, as it's the "down season" (as long as my mac holds up, anyway)

we grew over 40 different vegetables this year. big winners were corn, tomatoes, hot peppers, and greens.

the farmer's market downtown was great.....when it didn't rain. it is absolutely horrible when it does rain. it is terrible to have to bring all that produce home.

this convinced me that we need to start a CSA next year. we're starting small, aiming for just 12 families this year. we will still sell at farmers markets, but the long-term goal is to grow the CSA because people at farmer's markets are so fickle. for now, we will only distribute from our farm directly.

one thing i LOVE is our chickens. mark got me 10 hens for my birthday this april. they are fun, and i view them as pets, not livestock. anyway, the eggs were a *huge* hit at market. so we got 30 more chickens this october, and they will start laying in march or april. the chickens live in the barn, where our farm is, and we have moved in to our house, about 4-5 miles away, in town.

it is much easier to make money from selling eggs than it is to sell vegetables. we have yet to make any profit on the farm (this year, our expenses were very high, and last year our harvest was poor). mark and i are hopeful and confident that year 3 will turn this around.

so i work as a bookkeeper on the side (i really like doing this, and i hope to expand this business.) and i also do income taxes. i do not like this job at all, but the seasonal work is exactly what i need.

so far, it's been a great growing year. our garden has vastly expanded, and our knowledge has grown even more. plus, it's a lot of fun to be your own boss.

i wanted to let everyone know that i am selling at the downtown buffalo farmers market on thursdays. it's on main st, near lafayette square from 8am-2pm. so come over to say hi if you're free.

i have sold out of veggies almost every week (turnip greens, however, did not go over very well). we make about $100/week, which i think is pretty good for our second year of this enterprise.

mark and i are buying a house. we are just in the early stages. basically: we made an offer, they accepted. we're going to the bank tomorrow, getting the home inspection on Sunday. this is very exciting!
i really hope it works out, we love the house, it's the perfect location, it has room to expand for our future pets and kids, and gives us a great base from which to run our farm.

i really needed a job, so i went to the temp agency. it turned out that they liked me so much that they asked me to work for them, at their agency.

i now have a job giving other people jobs. i actually really like this job. and they really want me to stay.

i now have a dilemma.

i've been studying income taxes so that i can be an income tax preparer. i thought this would be the ideal job for me while i spend much of my time farming. pretty much because
1. tax season is January 15-April 15, which won't interfere with my farming
2. i am really good at math
3. i already know a lot about income taxes
4. the training only cost $80 (after reviewing my life, i realized that the only thing i regretted was wasting so much money on education that i didn't end up using)

i suppose i don't have to decide what to do soon, but i am wondering if i should stay at this job or actually switch to an income tax preparer job.

we were protected, at least for a lot longer than most farmers, especially the organic farmers, who can't use poisons to prevent the disease.

but late blight came to our farm this week. one week ago, our tomatoes were perfectly fine. but today we were forced to pull all of our 450 tomato plants. the signs appeared on tuesday. by thursday, i was fairly convinced, and friday i was sure. it took me a full day to convince mark, but he gave in today as well.

late blight is a disease that exists all the time, but it doesn't usually appear until after tomato season ends (after the first frost). but this year, a major distributor of seedling tomatoes (bonnie plants, in alabama) delivered infected plants to walmart, lowes, kmart, and other large stores in that vein. so everyone who bought their plants from those stores got infected plants. and although we had started organic plants from seeds, we eventually got blight, because the disease travels by air.

rochester has had no tomatoes this year. and pretty much everyone east of us didn't have any either. it is really sad.

we were actually lucky. despite the cold, rainy weather, we got to harvest vine ripe tomatoes for about 10 days before we got the blight. we got about 50 pounds of fresh, red tomatoes and enjoyed every single one of them. they were so good! i love tomatoes!

today we harvested the remaining green tomatoes that did not have signs of blight. about 200 pounds. they will ripen inside, but never taste as good as they would if they were ripened on the vines. 450 plants should give a harvest of about 4000-5000 pounds. we pulled the other plants out of the ground, because keeping them there would only help to spread the disease.

here are some photos, although the disease doesn't show up nearly as well on the photos as it does in reality. there are black splotches on the stems, the foliage is dying, and the fruits have darkened, leathery splotches. it is suggested that anyone noting this disease pull their plants right away. there is no cure, not even pesticides or fungicides at this point.



close up of green tomato. the "dead giveaway" sign of late blight is the white powdery substance, which contains the spores that are widespread by the wind.



nasty partially red tomato that rotted away, also containing white powdery spores.



our large harvest of green tomatoes.



beautiful harvest of heirloom tomatoes from the previous day.

despite this problem, will we grow tomatoes again next year?

hell yes!