Two beds of cover crops. The bright green one has various mustards including "Mighty Mustard" that will be tilled in before garlic planting to reduce the incidence of rot. The bed to its left is oats and Austrian field peas and some weeds. Soon we will be sowing many of the beds with an overwintering mix of cereal rye and Austrian field peas.
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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Black Krim tomato seed ready for packaging and selling.
Now the seeds have dried and can be crumbled up for storage.
After fermenting the tomato seeds in jars, the good seed falls to the bottom of the jar, skins etc can be ladled off and the seeds rinsed for drying.
Here's the milking set-up.
Amish paste tomatoes can get pretty big.
A crowbar was used to aerate this pile of composting goat manure.
We had a very nice carrot crop this year. 15 buckets like this one. These are round-tipped Scarlet Nantes carrots that Chrys has been saving and improving for many years. The best looking ones are put away in soil in the root cellar for growing out to seed next year.
Pulling 1200 lbs. of alfalfa off Chrys' truck.
Bu Bu has learned to pick pears right off the tree. He loves pears. Not so crazy about apples.
Bu Bu has learned to pick pears right off the tree. He loves pears. Not so crazy about apples.
That time of year again.
The hoophouse on August 31.
Comfrey patch, lower right. Raspberry patch upper right. Rye/vetch cover crop, left. Aug. 28.
Shallots are amazing. Plant one little bulb and end up with this. We have shallots available to plant. Plant the same time as garlic and mulch for even bigger yields.
These are our two hardest working members (on break).
Amish Paste tomatoes. They are HUGE compared to Romas plus they are indeterminate vines and keep on producing while when Romas are done, they're done. Poof.
This is a Black Krim tomato. The variety originally comes from the Crimea. Great taste.
We had over 50 participants at the Spokane Permaculture Symposium back in August. Chrys was one of the event organizers.
Three and a half gallons of goat milk curdling its way to becoming cheese.
Taking down an oat summer cover crop. Once it's broken down we'll plant a mix of mustards, clover and daikon radish to prepare the bed for garlic planting late in the fall. Two weeks before planting the garlic, the mix will be tilled in along with composted manure. The mustards seem to having the desired effect of reducing rot in the maturing garlic which has been a problem in the past. No rot in this year's garlic crop which we prepared for using mustard last year.
Chrys selling garlic and other things at the China Bend Vinyard and Winery annual Garlic Festival. The winery is a little less than an hour south of the BZ Farm on the other side of the Big River.
Putting troublesome weeds to good use: Feed them to the goats and drink them as milk in a day or so.
Here's the crew. Left to right: Raven (born in the spring), Buckie, Cinnamon and Spice. The rooster is a rescue. BuBu brought him home in his mouth, uninjured, when he was a small cockerel. Now he thinks he's a goat.
The summer of 2026 was a smokey one.