Some garlic varieties sprout early

In late November, the Thai Fire was sprouted. Duly noted for next year's planting plan.

3 Flat Acres is officially certified organic! Our certifier is MOSA.

Our relocate to Wisconsin date is getting closer - we anticipate moving in mid to late March. I've started packing!

Garlic planting begins!

We are in Wisconsin. I've spent the past two days popping cloves (breaking open the bulbs into individual cloves). I clocked in 11 hours while Bill was tilling the fields, picking up the tractor and fixing fences since the neighbor's cattle have been discovering that the grass is indeed greener on our side of the fence.

Music - a Porcelain variety

Spanish Roja - a Rocambole

Simonetti - an Artichoke

Bai Pi Suan - an Marbled Purple Stripe

look at that beautiful toffee marbling!

Various varieties in netting

And then today, Thurs, 10/6/11, after 6 years of planning and 5 years of farm ownership, we finally planted a crop! (I'm not counting the farm garden which was for personal use.)

Field #1 - before planting

Varieties all organized by type

tools include clipboard, tapemeasure, scale

7 hole dibbler - homemade by Bill out of Black Locust

(even our lumber is local!)

Dibbler in Action!

3 rows / bed. 39" wide bed. 12" between rows. 8" between plants.

Planting on the grid - it makes life easier!

We each have carpenter's aprons to carry the cloves down the rows

Me putting garlic to bed

After Day #1. We have more garlic than will fit Field #1;

looks as if we'll be tilling up part or most of Field #2.

As we were leaving the farm, my cellphone rang and now we have an appointment with our organic certifier for Saturday!

Rural Landowner Conference

On Saturday, March 26th there is a rural landowner conference in Grant County. We have two friends that will be presenting one of the breakouts. (Driftless Market and Two Onion Farm) Other items of interest - Barbara Ingham, the guru of food preservation. A very exciting opportunity that we are looking forward to - especially since we missed MOSES this year. http://grant.uwex.edu/files/2010/12/RLC-Brochure.pdf Our MOSA application has been mailed! It is very exciting to be pursuing organic certification. We are in Wisc and tomorrow we try some frost seeding of a slope stabilization native mix. We don't want to re-create this previous mistake. Over the seed we are installing an erosion blanket. It will be a long hard day of work - can't wait! And the Family Farmed Expo is next weekend. Hope to make some connections for future sales.