Whipple Family Farm

I am beginning our blog at the ending of this growing season. I had intended to start sooner but we have been harvesting and selling and there hasn’t been time. This was a good year. The sunflowers and other cut flowers did well but the beans and squash, not so good.

The first frost came a few days before we planned to pick the last of the sunflowers and zinnias so we did not get our last planting cut in time. They weren’t quite ready the week before and would have been beautiful in a few days, but for the frost. That is the way it goes in northeast Ohio. The weather can be warm and summer like this week and winter the next!

Next year we plan to expand the flower planting and do more preparation of the vegetable beds. We have a source for good fresh aplacha bedding to supplement our own rabbit contributions.

We started as bee keepers with two new bee hives this year. One hive did not do well. I don’t know why, but the queen stopped laying and the hive died in early summer. The other hive did great! We harvested sixteen pounds of honey and the bees should still have plenty in the main body of the hive to last them thru the winter. We still plan to supplement with sugar to get them started in the spring.

Plans for now, late fall to early winter, are to prepare as many beds as possible and build a small hoop house to get an early start on spring.