The Flurry of Field Work

The Anderson farm plaque 

It's a flurry of activity here on the Palouse as the window of planting the Spring crops are drawing to a close  and farmers all around our area are busy getting their crops in the ground. We had to wait on a few wet fields, but now we are now completely finished planting garbanzo beans and Spring wheat. At our Genesee farm, we planted about 400 acres of regular garbanzo beans and about 200 acres of "billy beans" which are smaller garbanzo beans used for hummus. So if you purchase the brand "Sabra" you may find comfort in knowing that the main ingredient probably came from this area as not only our farm but many  other area farms  grow the billy beans.


Thankfully the weather for this week is all sun, so with a collective sigh of relief, most of the farmers are finishing  up.  After last year with the non-stop rain, many farmers were unable to get their Spring crops planted, so we were all a bit nervous that this was going to be a repeat of last Spring.  


I wanted to give you a quick tour of what our main Genesee farm looks like.

A view down our farm lane. Notice the other neighbor across the road
planting his spring crop

 It takes a lot of big equipment to feed America....
 

This is where we store our combines until needed. Notice how big the combines
are compared to the semi truck parked at the left

 Here is a video of Farmer Joe as he talks about spraying for weeds.  This will help our winter wheat by eliminating competing weeds.  As the Farmer says " America doesn't like weeds in its Wheaties cereal"....

(IF unable to view the videos, click here)

Because when we do this (keep our crops free from weeds) hopefully we get to do this (see the video below).  Each season farmers all over the country plant their crops with great expectations and optimism that we will get to harvest what we planted.  We hope we get timely rains, no hail or other weather hazards, and we are always watching the crops so we can keep on top of insects who also like to eat our crops too.

A picture of Spring wheat down at the Tammany farm

A pond behind the shop at the Genesee farm.  This was a great place to play in the water for
Farmers Joe & Jay when they were little

A ride in our little all purpose tractor brings a big smile from Miss B getting to ride with Papa

Lastly, one of my new-found loves is Pintrest and I came across a Braided Spaghetti Bread... yumm a new found favorite for dinner.  So check out my Pintrest page.  I will be making this next week and promise to take a step by step picture process for the Good Farm Eats page. 

As always, many thanks for stopping by and if you have questions  feel free to email me at idahofarmwif@gmail.com or leave a comment.  So for now, I'll sign off as I need to spend some "quality time" with my backpack sprayer as the weeds are never ending. =)  All my best, Gayle