lacostas

Here is some pics of the gourmet mushrooms we are now growing on our farm. With our own lab on the farm we can now make our own mushroom cultures and have grown White, Black , Chocolate and King Oyster

30 days after planting, the pear seeds are 6-8 inches tall. They are under a light and have a fan on low to stiffen up the stems. Will maybe have to transplant into their own pots, we were hoping to plant

Fort Laramie strawberries produces a constant supply of sweet berries throughout the growing season, they are a self-pollinating berry and grow best in hardiness zones 3-9 in full sun.They make a great

A few pictures of oyster mushrooms fruiting on a sugar maple stump in our back yard. We inoculated the stump about 2 years ago and it gave its first flush last fall. You can see the holes where a bird

Echinacea, which are commonly called coneflowers, is a perennial plant that give an abundance of flowers every year. Coneflowers will attract honey bees and other types of native bees, butterflies and

We are trying to go full permaculture on our farm in the future and wasps have their place here as a beneficial insect. We do have a problem with too many of them late summer and fall around our hummingbird

After our berkshire pigs exhausted the entire pen of plants and roots we move them to a new pasture pen. Our hog pens are fenced in cattle fencing and have one hot wire about 8-10 inches off the ground.

Staghorn Sumac fruit clusters or seed pods are beautiful and make nice autumn foliage on the homestead. Sumac can grow up to 25 feet tall and over 50 years old in zones 3-8. Sumac thickets provide food

Rhubarb is a herbaceous perennial growing from short, thick rhizomes. Rhizomes is a modified subterranean stem of a plant that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. It produces large poisonous leaves

Ginkgo Biloba commonly known as ginkgo tree or a maidenhair tree. It has various uses in traditional medicine and as a source of food. Most nurseries sell only male ginkgo trees. The female produces fruit

Citronella gives off a pleasant lemon like smell that helps keep some mosquitos and other biting insects from finding you. We plant it as a annual around our front door where we sit to have our morning

Some funfarmfacts that we have learned about our shiitake yard. Shiitakes can be grown by two methods, on natural hardwood logs and on sawdust blocks. The highest quality shiitakes are grown on oak logs.

One of the first things in the year that we do on our farm is collect sap from our sugar maple bush to boil down into syrup. We make a couple of gallons for our own use and to gift out. It takes between

Started apple seeds a couple of times this way and worked out great so we tried it with seeds from a local pear tree,that produces and abundance medium size sweet fruit. We bought a basket of pears from

Our farm has a few patches of different mints we have planted since we moved to our farm . However, spearmint is one of the herbs that has flourished long before we moved here on our homestead. Like most

For the second time in around 15 years we got a large triple yolk egg this past fall. We get a lot of double yolk eggs sometimes weekly from our small flock of Rhode Island Reds. We keep between ten and

Trillium grandiflorum is a very slow grower, it typically requires seven to ten years in optimal conditions to reach flowering size and favors well-drained, neutral to slightly acid soils. It grows very

A couple of pictures of a coyote from my trail camera less than a hundred yards from our barn. So far this is about as close as they come because of our farm dogs. We have lost chickens and ducks to racoons

Trametes versicolor Is a common polypore mushroom found throughout the world. Because its shape and multiple colors are similar to those of a wild turkey. Trametes versicolor is commonly called turkey

A couple of pics of our music garlic patch last year before we cut the scapes off and did a quick final weeding. All of our garlic came from 18 garlic bulbs we got years ago at the farmers market. Just