Who left the door open?

I could have sworn I closed that door.

 Don't worry Moma!  I'll help you open it.  Jellybean isn't big enough to open it yet.   But not me!  I'm a BIG girl.  OOOOOOphhhhhh.

Let's see: bump and push, bump and push.

No fair!  Some day when I'm big, you just wait, I'll figure out how to open this!

Out in the orchard and down the hill

There is always something to do on the farm.  Surprisingly enough, most of the tasks are not manual labor but rather planning and evaluating for the future.

The Brookfield Gala and Gold Rush apples are all doing extraordinarily well.  We've been keeping a close watch for trouble this year.  Trees are individually inspected for signs of insect activity as well as any disease such as mildew or fire blight.  It is unfortunate that some people believe that not spraying their trees is healthier than taking preventive measures.  What happens is that their trees become hosts and sources of disease that ends up spreading to their neighbors' trees.  Organic does not mean not spraying.  Organic means using methods that are gentle on the environment and meet the EPA/FDA standards for Organic growing.
There are many excellent resources available for those who wish to follow organic guidelines when taking care of their fruit trees.  One of my favorites is by Cornell University: A Growers Guide to Organic Apples.
Provided that we can keep both the deer and the bunnies at bay, we may have some new varieties of apples this year.  Fingers crossed...

Children of the Corn

No this is not a story about some creepy, spooky children in some isolated town in the country.  This is a little story about the first sweet corn of the season and how good life can be...
Although we don't grow sweet corn at My Happy Acres, we are happy to refer people to the farm stand just down the road from us for some of the finest, freshest, most delicious sweet corn grown in New York.
What makes this corn so good, is it's almost guaranteed that the corn you purchase right now, was picked less than just a few hours ago.  That means that those lovely complex sugars have not started to break down as the picked corn ages.  The reason some corn on the cob (aka Wally world) tastes bland and chewy is that it was picked days and days ago.  The other reason is over cooking.  Real sweet corn only takes about three minutes, plunged into rolling boiling water, to cook.  I like mine with just a touch of butter.

Although the girls would love some fresh corn, too much corn is bad for little goat tummies.  Instead they get something better: the green shucks and silks.  Fluffy and Franny dove into leaves with gusto.  Fluffy carefully picked out the silks to eat first, while Franny preferred the tender inner leaves. 

"Yum! Yum! Crunch! Chunch! Thanks Mom!"

Dorothy waited patiently, then helped herself to a bouquet, tossing it about to break off a few choice bits.  Little Jellybean watched her sisters, then took a big crunchy mouthful, bleating gleefully bite after bite.

"those goats are spoiled!"

 Not to be neglected, the girls out in Chickenland also recieved their share: when the people finish their corn, the cobs are given to Missy and her girls to pick clean.  Happy days for all the children in the corn!