What has been happening on the farm!

Good morning! I haven't posted on here for a while because we have been SOOO busy!!! First of all, I hope you all had a fantastic Independence Day. We spent our weekend celebrating Abby and Ethan's birthdays with family and friends. Now, what is happing on the farm? Let me just say there is a LOT happening right now. We took a bit of a hit a few weeks ago with all of the rain we received. 10 inches of rain stripped our soil of a lot of nutrients and lowered the pH, so we found a wonderful new organic liquid fertilizer. In the high tunnel we planted 26 tomato plants and they are thriving! We use a process called hard pruning, in which we strip all leaves and branches from the first fruit down as well as any suckers in between. Doing this encourages the plant to push all nutrients to the fruit, and will result in a tall vine-like plant with vegetation only at the top with large bunches of tomatoes along the way. We are also putting in a well with new irrigation lines so that we can keep our greens as cool as possible in the summer heat.  In addition to all of that I started a new job outside the home, we continue to homeschool our beautiful girls, and the blackberries are BOOMING this year! So in a nutshell that is what is going on with us. See you next weekend!