054 – From Strawberries to Corn Mazes: Embracing the Summer Months

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Conversations with Gary’s Farm. Hello everyone, welcome back to another conversation with Gary’s Farm. I’m always being hard to get along with. As usual. What’s been going on? Not a lot, how are you? Hanging in there. It’s July the 6th, 2023.

I don’t remember when we last recorded. A while ago. But yeah, thought it was about time to catch people up on what all we’ve been up to. Okay. For the last month or so. So go ahead, the floor is yours. Well I was going to interview you this time and you could tell me what all I’ve been up to. Well I don’t know what to say about anything. We wound down Strawberry Season. Yup. We closed the Pick Your Own Patch on June the 18th I believe. Somewhere along there. It wasn’t the 19th, Father’s Day. I don’t remember. It was the Saturday before Father’s Day. Yeah, I think that might be right. And then yeah, that was the last day for Pick Your Own and then we picked a few for the store for the next while. But those were have wound down as well. Yup. So all in all, it turned out to be a fairly good Strawberry Season.

Much to our surprise. And that seemed to be sort of the theme. Mostly what I heard from other people. There were apparently a few people that had very bad seasons. So it was either feast or famine kind of? I don’t know. I think probably. I haven’t. It’s still probably being discussed but that’s what I heard anyway by and large. Because of the cool spring really extended the season, extended the plants fruiting and it just helped to make up for some of their issues that they may have had. Such as being burnt by the Christmas Freeze or the very late planting that most people had. So like usual, it ended up being a unique year. Right. It seems like most years are a little unique. Yeah, I certainly can’t remember a spring quite like what we’ve had. So anyway, we were thankful that it turned out as well as it did. And we’re already well into making preparations for more Strawberries coming up. Beds get made in what? A month? Hopefully so. Yeah. So plants are married off and just about to start lifting plastic. Hopefully not. Hopefully we can get a cool week to do that. Yeah, good luck. Eoretically that would be it. It was a really nice cool spring up until about six days ago. Seems like a flip got switched. I mean this really isn’t extreme. We’re complaining and it’s maybe we just didn’t ease into it as much or something. It’s just been pretty humid but it’s not like 100 which it could be at this time of year. I guess. Yeah, this is true. Yep. So let’s see. If plants are ordered and kind of figured out our rotation and what we want to plant in varieties and so forth. Fair enough. We’ll try to get them in hopefully a little earlier than we did last year because we can’t always rely on a spring like we just had. True. So we’ve transitioned to our summer kind of stuff. We’re actually picking sweet corn. We started picking that really first part of this week I guess. Yeah, first of this week. A few days ago. So we’re doing that. Probably have sweet corn for another three or four weeks I’m guessing. It’s the month of July and we’re picking tomatoes still in the one greenhouse. Cleaned out the one. Need to clean out the other. So you know that hot and dirty work that we enjoy so much. Yeah. Like cleaning out greenhouses and lifting plastic. That all needs to happen. Yeah. While it’s nice and warm. We should figure out a rotation where we could do all those things when it’s cooler. Yeah. It just doesn’t really work. Good luck with that. And then we’ve switched to thinking about fall which is our fall season which is right around the corner. As we always say everything is right around the corner. Man. I just got to plan ahead for things so almost wrap up with pumpkin planting. They’re popping up looking pretty fair. Yeah. So hopefully they continue to look fair. Planning more varieties than I ever had before probably. You’re like a variety man. A lot of people just do a couple varieties. I really want to hammer down. I really should count it up. I think sometime we could do a podcast of me just reading the names and it would probably take about 10 minutes. Yeah. Well I was thinking we should redo that video we did a number of years ago. People got to kick out of it. It would be pretty long anymore. Well there you go. No not actually I have to figure out what variety made what pumpkin. I usually do a fair job of keeping track but if you plan a little bit of this and that sometimes there’s something that can fall through the cracks. Sure. Or maybe you could get like 10 or 12 of your favorite varieties or something so it was so ridiculously. Or we could do the specialty ones which that’s where the variety is. You can have six different kinds of jackal and pumpkins and they have differences but yeah they’re still orange. Yep. Very good. Let’s see the corn maze is planted and up good. Now we’re just like a really good stand hoping for some rain as we always do. Hoping for continued rain. Yeah. We had a pretty nice rain or two on it. Yeah. Already. I got an outline. Yeah. So yesterday buzzing around the field so I could theoretically start on a design. I think I used it last year but I did it a little different this year so it wasn’t so annoying but okay. You know we learn things slowly every time sometimes theoretically. Yeah. So why are you going to design it sometime before you cut it. Yeah sometime before I cut it. I don’t know I need to do a little math to make sure I get my calculations all right for my for the trails separation. The grid size and then once I have that set up I can roll on any time. Good. Yeah. Let’s see. I’m sure that people could write in with suggestions if they had. Well they could text you specifically. Text me about that. Yeah. Put in the maze. Yeah. No. Other than that it’s what mostly farm store and wrapping up the greenhouses which we’ve touched on a little bit. That’d be another month at least before we run out of tomatoes. Hopefully. They’re actually doing pretty good at the moment. Sometimes we struggle with our tomato quality because the greenhouse gets so hot but the BHN’s are they kind of rebounded. They went through a little bit of a slow spell a couple weeks ago and then they picked back up. They’re a little bit of a wavy tomato. They’re pretty consistent. Yeah. Really good flavor. They’re pretty nice for July the sixth tomatoes. Getting closer to the flavor of a garden tomato but still not quite. Oh they’re probably better. I never eat garden tomatoes though. Right. These are fine. They’re pretty good. We have a tractor tower flat on our Big John Deere 7400. Oh. Why? I don’t know. I just saw it. Huh. So that’s not happy. Oh that’s frustrating. Well. I looked to see if there was like a big deer antler stuck in it or something. Sometimes that happens. But I didn’t see anything. Weird. So that can get expensive. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just frustrating. It’s also a big tractor. Hard to handle. Yeah. I just used it yesterday so must have picked something up. Weird. Well that’s too bad. Yeah. Anything else you want to talk about or will we just go ahead and call this the shortest episode ever? Yeah I just don’t feel like my words are really flowing today very well. Yeah. I’m hot. It feels like everything is kind of tailing off and it’s just kind of weird coming here to do a podcast. We just want to kind of update people on you know. Wish them farewell for the summer. Yeah it might be this fall till we get back on the horn. But I don’t know. There’s always you know strawberry stuff in August so. September. Well we’ll make the beds. Hopefully by the first week of August. Yeah. My man is already texting me wanting to come soon. Really? Well not soon but. Huh. He’s wondering how soon we can be ready. Yeah. Which puts the fear of God in a person to. He was wasn’t he trying to schedule everything in January or he has so many people that he’s yeah works with that he has to. Go start or he’ll never get done. Fair enough. All right well I guess if you have any further questions you can see our website and text Ellen email and anything there is mostly up to date I think. Hopefully. Yeah. If it’s not who would we blame text you. Yeah. Very good. Well if you’ve made it this far. Thanks for listening and we will talk to you again at some point. And when we have more words in a number of weeks. We have more words to say. Yeah. All right. Dad saw a bear the other day. True. I forgot about that. I don’t know if they really care about that. Yeah. I don’t think we want to tell them where they saw it. Well it’s harvesting honey. I just remembered that. Yeah. I could talk about that. Oh yeah let’s talk about your honey crop. How’s your honey crop looking? It’s okay. Yeah. All right. Fair. Thanks for listening. I have some and I need to get some more. Yeah. So you brought it up here mostly or not mostly? Yeah. It’s back at the pond I brought up here. I really like skateboards. If people aren’t using the skateboards they really should. Makes sense to me. You put them on in a day or two later you just go back and take the supers off. Yeah. Let some go one way but not the other way kind of. Yeah. It’s like a hundred percent free of bees. Some people use fium boards which is just a big strong smell basically. And it literally stinks really really bad. And it just clears them out. It stinks a bit. I don’t know. Then you can pull it like right afterwards. Okay. At least that’s what I understand. I’ve never used them. Interesting. But this just you just pop them on and go back and pull off the supers. So you kind of harvest half the honey that’s there or does it kind of vary? I pulled them down pretty far. Okay. This time I’ll either feed them some or they’re probably it seems like maybe there’s a little bit of a flow still going on that it’s probably. What’s a flow? I’ve heard several bee people talking about flows. The nectar flow. Like it’s coming in. Like there’s blooms and whatever that can get stuff from. They can get nectar which they can turn into honey. Right. So we beekeepers call it the flow. Yes you beekeepers do. But a lot of places well even here in you know late July or in July and August there’s like really nothing. Yeah. That comes in. In the fall you get a little bit of a fall flow. Like goldenrod and some of those less desirable honeys. Goldenrod, axelrod. Supposedly goldenrod stinks like dirty socks. That sounds like some good honey. Like you can smell it. That’s what they say. It’s pretty strong. But they can I usually I don’t harvest the fall honey so they can the bees can eat it. They can eat the stinky honey. Well they collected it I guess. Yeah. It’s up to them what they want to eat and what they don’t want to eat. Maybe it’s kind of like cheeses. Today I actually saw a few working soybeans. Which I’ve heard that they do sometimes but they’re actually working soybean blooms. Yeah. So that was interesting. And then I climbed up and checked that swarm trap which is up on top of that elevated location. Where some people sit to view the field. Right. With a rifle. Okay. It’s called a tree stand. Yeah. Anyway that place I put a swarm trap on there and caught a swarm. And then I put I decided I didn’t want to move it at that point in time or didn’t have the ability to. So I added another box of foundation to it. And it got heavier. Which they nicely they’re drawing it out really beautifully. Okay. Yeah. And filling it with honey. So yeah now it’s going to be really heavy to get down from there. I think I’ll have to go up in the skid later bucket. That’s funny. And pull it down. But anyway I was kind of tickled that there. You’re all in now. A nice. Yeah. Thing. Do you even know what foundation is? I don’t know what foundation is. But you can explain to the listener what foundation is. You do know what foundation is? Yeah. I mean more or less. I mean it’s just. So it’s what I’m hoping to do is get a bunch. Well not a bunch but some more foundation drawn. So that maybe next year I can bump my half numbers up a little bit. But then I have a lot of combs that that’s really how you can produce a pretty good honey crop. Because it takes a lot more energy for them to draw the foundation and put honey in it if you have already drawn combs and you can just whack them on and they fill them up. Just in. So I might even do a little bit of feeding. If you feed during times when you don’t have a flow. Yeah. Then you can still stimulate the bees to draw it out. Yeah. And sugar water which you can’t harvest for honey. But I think I could actually feed it back to the bees then in the late summer early fall. Yeah. And help some put on some bulk and overwinter them that way. So anyway. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. They are. Yeah. They are pretty fascinating. They are. They are critters. Someday I’ll probably get you to take care of some. It’ll be good for you. I don’t know. Good hobby. I don’t know. Seeing how addicted you got. I don’t know. Alright. That’s all I got. Okay. Well thanks for listening. Goodbye.