Tomatoes are in!

I love this picture of Spencer and Mies (pron. Meese), a friend dachshund that visits the market. Well, we worked really to get all our long-term crops in; tomatoes, peppers and eggplant - as well as the trellis system we engineer every year. We had 2 days from 6 am to 9 pm, and a couple other 10 hour days. Thankfully, it's all done, and now they can start growing! This is a huge annual milestone, and it feels good to be over that hump. Here's some pictures to show you what we've been doing:

Preparing the swale field - the last disking before laying the mulch.

Looking good - ready to lay mulch!

Thanks to technology - we used a mulch layer to lay out our biodegradable plastic mulch this year. This was a HUGE improvement over past years when we did it by hand. This would usually take us 45 minutes a bed. To do all 13 rows - 2 hours!

Spence up on the hay rick that housed our hay for mulching all winter.

Mr. Smeems needed to get in on the action and practice mountain-climbing for our up-coming trip to the Rockies.

I always feel strong when I carry bales of hay like this!!!

Mulching the paths to keep down weeds....

Installing huge guy-wire and 2x4 fence-post tomato trellis system!

Getting everyone in place....

Staying late at the farm stringing the tomato trellis...

Eggplants and peppers are in!

Mara planting the last field tomato - number 500 ish!

Can't forget the hoophouse tomatoes, too!

Spencer planting the last hoophouse tomato - number 500 ish! Total tomatoes at Half Pint Farm this year - around 1000! About double last year. I think we may be crazy.

Many people ask us what Mr. Smeems does at the farm all day. Here's a nice photo montage about a typical Mr. S day.

Investigating the hay rick...

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Coming next - pictures of our trip to Colorado, boldly taken at the beginning of the season; well - people do crazy things for their 10th wedding anniversaries!