The Black Raspberry Patch

The black raspberries are ripening. This is our favorite crop we grow on our farm. I grew up picking these in the wild with my grandmother from the time I was big enough to carry a bowl. She was a dedicated picker and pie maker. We picked a lot of black raspberries together, and they have always been my favorite berry. When my kids were young I would take them with me picking in the old patches that my grandmother and I picked, and when we finally bought our farm, I planted our own patches.

At first the plants didn't produce much, but now we have so many black raspberries in patches around the farm, that we really struggle to pick them all. We are still finishing up last years frozen berries in pie form, and this year's crop is coming in strong.

We also have about 30 blueberry bushes that are starting to produce a good bit now, but the birds compete with us for the blueberries more than the raspberries. The birds do eat some black raspberries, but there are so many of them that we still have more than we need.

The thing I like about the black raspberry patches is that every member of our family just goes out to the gardens whenever they like, and they eat as much as they like for about 3 weeks, and in spite of all of the eating, we still froze about 100 quarts for pies last summer.

Now the 100 quarts also includes the red raspberries that come in right as the black raspberries are finished, and they last for about another three weeks, but we don't have as many of the red raspberries as the black ones.

And finally when the red and black raspberries are finished we have some patches of wild blackberries that we pick. These are the only ones that can survive the deer around here without a fence around them. Their thorns are terrible, and for some reason the deer do not eat the new growth on the blackberries like they do with the raspberries.

We planted the beginnings of a new patch today in an area we fenced in for gardening this spring. The berries around here generally will replace themselves each year, and spread into as big an area as you will give them. They require no pesticides or fertilizers, at least in our area of Pennsylvania, and the only maintenence on them is pruning. The black raspberries need a winter and a summer pruning, and the reds require only the winter pruning.

Well I am going to close for now. Hopefully I will be picking some berries tomorrow. I am going to put a few links here to my pruning videos from my YouTube channel so you can see some of our patches if you like.
Jim

Summertime Pruning of Black Raspberries

Winter Pruning of Black Raspberries

The Baler Failed

I was looking for a picture for this post, and I just liked this one that one of my children took of a young hen next to our John Deere 24T baler as we were greasing it up for what we expected to be a great haul of hay. That didn't happen, and I am trying to be philosophical about it. It's 1 AM and the pouring rain just stopped. This means that my hay that was prime and all raked into nice windrows is now a reclamation project, and my baler is going to the shop.

We could not get one side of the twine to tie. This was puzzling because the baler worked fine last season, and it was kept inside the barn all winter. My son Michael, the "farm mechanic" changed the twine and tried multiple rethreadings with no success. He then found the problem. A small piece of the knotter was broken off - end of story at 5 PM on a Saturday night in Western Pennsylvania.

We took a bit of the hay off using pitchforks and our small trailer, just to get the broken bales off of the field, and we were hoping that the 51 % chance of rain wouldn't come to fruition, but it rained for about an hour near midnight.

I have considered getting rid of the baler and using the Gene Logsdon approach, or a modified version of his "Cheapskate Haystacks" - rakes are much more reliable.

Last year was the first year we had baled hay in a long time. I had baled it about 15 years ago, and then just gave it up along with the cows when the kids were young. Since we've brought back the cows, about four years ago, we have bought hay, but we also have just cut it with the tractor and mower and brought some in by hand with pitchforks and the trailer. This would get us about half of our hay needs for 8 cows, and if done right it's kind of a fun family project.

Last year we bought this old baler and a New Holland rake for very reasonable prices and made some hay for the first time in a long while, but right now I kind of wish I had cut about 1/3 of the field and we had brought it in by hand.

However, this stuff happens when you are making hay. The baler is the lynch-pin to the operation. I spent many hours of my youth helping my grandfather to fix his Oliver baler with a field full of hay raked and ready. We got rained on some back then, too. And come to think of it that Oliver baler and his New Holland before the Oliver were decades newer than my old John Deere is now.

The "lost" hay

Upsizing the Garden

I have deciced to give this blog a restart, and kind of use it as a farm/gardening journal, which will make it more useful for myself and hopefully for others. This post is going to be a past couple of days post, and then I am going to try to do this much more often. I don't know if it will be a daily, but I am going to try to write down what I am doing on our farm as it happens. I have gotten more involved with YouTube and it has kind of taken the place of my blogs; I also have a history blog, but I want to write some more, and I think this is the best venue for me to do so.

We expanded our garden with a 25 by 100 foot addition of fenced area to an existing garden back behind the house. We did this because we have added so many black and red raspberries and rhubarb, and strawberries, and asparagus - in other words perennials over the years that we don't have enough space for our annuals - tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers etc.... . It will take us a while to fill this new area in, and I will mow it and till it and plant it when I/We get a chance. My two youngest children are interested in gardening, and they spurred me on to upsize the garden.

So far the kids have planted red onions, beets, radishes, dill and parsley on this newly tilled area, which is actually a lot longer and wider than it looks in the photo.

I am going to sign out now because I am hoping to make some hay, but the weather predictions are now - emphasis on now saying there is a chance of rain tonight instead of three days from now as they were saying yesterday. I cut a field of hay on Thursday and Friday, and now I am going to rake it to see if I can perhaps speed along its drying. I'm pretty sure my New Holland 55 rake will do its job, but I hope my John Deere 24 T baler is going to cooperate.