Nearing the end of the Penn State cabbage seed saga. Got to harvest the seed pods before the pods shatter.
Folks!
Here's a chronicle in pictures of some of the goings on here at the BZ Farm starting in March 2022 and updated when we can.
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A care package for one of our wood splitting helpers.
Nice looking garlic harvest.
The goats are keeping their hooves trimmed by digging out this pile of fill dirt in their pen. The young chicken was a pullet that BuBu the dog brought home in his mouth, uninjured, having found a feral hen with a clutch of chicks somewhere out in the fields.
Garlic harvest, July 18.
Chrys keeps trimming the flowers off the Lady's Thumb in the beet bed, at beet-top level, to reduce the amount of seed produced by this weed. The beets are holding their own. Ten days after this photo was taken Chrys harvested some 2" to 3" beets despite the weed competition.
Freshly weeded onion set crop. We sometimes leave the weeds on the surface between rows to act as mulch. We'll wait for the weeds to wilt and then water the onions and they will perk up.
BZ arrives in the Solar-powered ATV with a load of just-harvested garlic to hang to dry indoors. BuBu wonders "what's that smell?"
Chrys is attempting to salvage an open-pollinated indeterminate yellow cherry tomato from a commercial hybrid (a la Alan Kapuler). Last year was the first grow-out of seed saved from the hybrid. Results were 75% red cherry tomatoes and 25% yellow ones. He saved seed only from the yellow ones and planted several plants from those this year. This is the first tomato from this year's planting. This particular tomato was precocious, fully ripe on July 14 while the rest are just beginning to set fruit. But it's yellow! And very tasty! It will probably take several generations to get a stable yellow cherry tomato. The variety will be called Solar Flare.
This is a bed sown with a spring cover crop of oats. There's amaranth coming up also so Chrys decided to till it all in before the amaranth can set seed. There will probably be another summer-sown oat crop here once the first crop is decomposed. We might let that later crop winter kill or sow a rye/vetch overwintering cover crop here.
This is a bed sown with a spring cover crop of oats. There's amaranth coming up also so Chrys decided to till it all in before the amaranth can set seed. There will probably be another summer-sown oat crop here once the first crop is decomposed. We might let that later crop winter kill or sow a rye/vetch overwintering cover crop here. First pass.
Beginning the garlic harvest. One of the garlic varieties we grow is the hyper-local variety Inchelium Red. Read the article "Inchelium Red Garlic: A Sleeping Ethnography" by Shannon Rosenbaum, Director, Inchelium Cultural Research Center in the July 2026 issue of the North Columbia Monthly (p. 27). The BZ Farm will once again have our garlic for sale at the annual Garlic Festival at the China Bend Organic Winery on August 15. We also grow Zemo, Georgia Crystal, Romainian Red, Purple Glazier and Ukrainian.
The potato hilling is done. Time to give them a little water.
Got the firewood bucked up. Next we'll get out the big splitter that's mounted on the backhoe. Splitting gives any green wood we have harvested (there were several large windfalls last winter) a chance to dry thoroughly before winter.
In the foreground is a little peek at the 400 sq. ft. patch of raspberries (that should be ripening soon) and in the background is the 6 ft. tall rye cover crop that is taking up about a third of our lower garden space. Neither crop has received any irrigation.
The potatoes in early July in the lower garden. The wide-angle lens makes the patch look small, but it's 100 ft. wide (which is still pretty small as potato patches go, but it's big enuf for us).
Here's how Chrys hilled the potatoes this year. The soil was loosened on both sides of the rows by a pass with the rototiller (also did weed control). The potato plants were gently pushed over to one side, using the back of the shovel blade, and the stems and top growth (except the tips) buried with soil using the shovel. In a single day the plants are growing upright again and the hilling encourages them to form tubers on the buried stems, hopefully increasing the yield.
Here's how Chrys hilled the potatoes this year. The soil was loosened on both sides of the rows by a pass with the rototiller (also did weed control). The potato plants were gently pushed over to one side, using the back of the shovel blade, and the stems and top growth (except the tips) buried with soil using the shovel. In a single day the plants are growing upright again and the hilling encourages them to form tubers on the buried stems, hopefully increasing the yield.
Here's how Chrys hilled the potatoes this year. The soil was loosened on both sides of the rows by a pass with the rototiller (also did weed control). The potato plants were gently pushed over to one side, using the back of the shovel blade, and the stems and top growth (except the tips) buried with soil using the shovel. In a single day the plants are growing upright again and the hilling encourages them to form tubers on the buried stems, hopefully increasing the yield.
Here's how Chrys hilled the potatoes this year. The soil was loosened on both sides of the rows by a pass with the rototiller (also did weed control). The potato plants were gently pushed over to one side, using the back of the shovel blade, and the stems and top growth (except the tips) buried with soil using the shovel. In a single day the plants are growing upright again and the hilling encourages them to form tubers on the buried stems, hopefully increasing the yield.
Cabbage starts planted into mulch.
Cabbage, kale and broccoli starts under shade cloth outdoors.
Upper garden looking north on July 3rd. Center: Oat cover crop.
Upper garden on July 3. Carrots, red cabbage and beets (hidden in the weeds).