Rye not use rye?

It has been more than a week since our last posting, so we figured that we would let everyone know what we are up to. :)  Andrew and I have both been working Mon-Fri during the day at our jobs, working on wedding planning on evenings and weekends, and then working the farm on weekends as well.  So we are both taking tomorrow off and going out for a picnic lunch. :)

There has been a lot done at the farm lately.  The Rye Grass that we planted last week is coming up great!  We planted another field of it today.  The field that we seeded today had hardly any rocks in it, which we are so thankful for!  It's hard to find farm land in NH without rocks in it.

The first field of Winter Rye that we planted is coming up great!

There has been a third and final field cleared and de-stumped, ready for plowing this coming week, and then we will seed that this coming weekend.  It is a very decent sized field, nearly two acres.

All this land has been cleared in the last week or so.  A good 2 acres for next year! :)

We have also started clearing woods on the other side of the road (that is where the bulk of the property is located.. It is just an old dirt road that isn't very busy) for planting in the coming years. 

Clearing across the road

A good sign that we found last week at the farm is an old abandoned apple orchard in the woods next to the first field that we plowed.  This lets us know that this is an area that apples will definitely survive in, and that this part of town is not too cold for them.  We will be putting a thermometer up this winter to see exactly how cold it does get here, to check to make sure that we can plant peaches and grapes, as they are not as winter hardy as other kinds of fruits we want to grow.

An old apple tree in the woods

The view from the road

Andrew harrowing the field

 P.S.- We have come up with the agreement that I (Cristina) will write the posts, and Andrew will title them.  So I am not responsible for post titles. ;)

Seeding!!

Last Saturday Cristina and I went up to our farm and seeded the entire field that was plowed by my Uncle with winter rye grass. It was a interesting adventure because all we had was about 112 Lb of Seed and a little hand seeder and a sporty 4wheeler. What we did was I drove the 4wheeler and Cristina sat on the back with one of the bags and seeded as I drove across the field. It took us 4 hours to completely cover the field with the winter Rye. My uncle had this wire mesh that we though might work to gently and lightly cover the new seed with dirt but it ended up dragging the seed with it and didnt do what we wanted. So we got the  disc harrow and adjusted it so it ever so lightly disturbed the soil. I spent about 45 minutes driving up and down the field and then across is so it would lightly cover the seed with soil.



there is another plot of land that my Uncle is going to plow up for us to rock pick and seed before the end of this month.

~Andrew

Canning

Today Andrew and I spent the day canning!  We went up to Butternut Farm with my family and picked apples and peaches in the morning, then we canned for the rest of the day.  We canned some peaches, applesauce, and apple juice.  Some of what we have canned is in the picture below:

Apple juice, apple sauce, and peaches!

We also canned some peaches at Andrews house last week when hurricane Irene came through and my house didn't have any power.  We also froze blueberries in July, so we are stocking up on a few different fruits for the winter.  :)
Later on this year we plan on canning apple butter, pumpkin puree for pies, maybe some jams, and anything else that becomes readily available.  :)

~Cristina

Church, Food, and Clothes

Cristina and I got up early to go to church in Eliot today. Church was good though it was a bit cold... It was a good message and there was even a except from Rev. Bill Cosby from his Noah sermon. We found our way back up to my house (Andrews) and went out to lunch with my parents at Applebees. We spent the rest of the afternoon suit shopping for me, my Dad, and Joshua over in Concord. We first went to Sears to look for some suits, we found some but none that really fit. Eventually after looking at other things at sears we made our way toward the Jcpenny in the other part of the mall. They had a larger selection but again we could not find what we wanted, not even the deep chocolate brown ties that go with our wedding colors. My parents had one last idea before we started heading home, Burlington Coat Factory. I looked up directions on my fancy new phone and we arrived there in 10 minutes. If you haven't been to Burlington Coat Factory, they are HUGE!! you could fit a entire walmart super center in there. The entire building was just clothes. Burlington had a 10 th of the store was suits, that's still 3x larger section than any of the other stores. After a hour of suit shopping Joshua and I found suits and a vest that we thought fit us. My dad had no such luck because of his odd size. So we went and checked out and went out side, only to see that there was a little suit shop across the road and they had a buy one get one free deal. The family piled into the rav4 and drove across the street to the little shop. My parents went into the shop first and started looking around while me and Cristina stayed in the vehicle and started typing this post that you are reading now. My parents were in there for 10 minutes when my Mom came back out and got us. Because my Dad was such a odd suit size he would have to get one tailored to him. So at the end of that visit we got two suits, 4 ties and pocket handkerchief. We are one step closer to getting married :D