Welcome to the Ring Family Farm!

It all started with cherry tomatoes on the patio. My mom usually had a tomato plant on the deck so after we moved into our house, I decided to try it. It was great and we did it again th enext year. Then the next we decided to start our garden. We had two 4ft x 10 ft raised beds and had a lot of success with them. So this year we decided to add a couple more raised beds to the garden so that we can get even MORE veggies. We planned on adding a 2 ft x 20 ft bed with a trellis behind it because most everything we want can be grown vertically anyway--tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.

SO, we go to build those two beds, rock around them...and actually end up with eight more raised beds instead of two!!

Yes, yes, we are crazy, and yes yes, we realize that.

Because in addition to the eight new raised beds we also planted three blueberry bushes, four rasberry bushes, six grape vines, and two apple trees. Someone really should have told us how addicting growing our own food was. We have all the fruit I just talked about, plus we've gotten several crops of salad greens, kale, spinach, swiss chard and radishes, kohl rabi about ready, and then onions and leeks; big tomatoes and cherry tomatoes; strawberries; a couple different varieties of cucumbers; zucchini and summer squash; spaghetti squash, acorn squash, and butternut squash; normal peas and snow peas; potatoes; cantelope and watermelon. And we're going to be planting green beans now that its warming up.

Oh, funny thing about those patio tomatoes? The first year, they died before the end of the summer.

Here's the finished "main" garden. The two beds we put in last year are the two that are closest in this picture. We also put the lattice fence up and lined aroudn the real fence with chicken wire to keep the bunnnies out.

But despite that there was still a bunny in there the other day. It somehow squeezed its way in through the openings in the lattice.

My little helpers getting in on the watering.

Before we filled one of the beds Noah climbed in and drew all over the bottom

In the process...

Mom and dad came for the weekend to help us out with getting the garden set up. Here dad is putting some finishing touches on the lattice fence. and in the background I'm attaching the nylon trellis netting to the frame.

A couple more raised beds on the side of the house, which we're using for vertical stuff mostly, but also some lettuce along the bottom. And Brian is working on planting some rasberry bushes. But we're not sure that they're going to actually do anything this year.

And these rain barrels were our other big project. My big bro Joe snagged these barrels from a business acquaintence for free for us and mom and dad brought them down from Nebraska. Then we spray painted them, attached spigots and an overflow release (that's the pipe and hose on the left side of the screen) and hooked them up to the downspouts. And we can remove those overflow hoses to attach additional barrels to collect more water if we want to.

It was actually a VERY easy project, and we have one on each side of the house (you can see the other one in thepictures above where the kids are planting). Each collects 55 gallons of water so we're going to have lots and lots of free water!

Getting ready to spray paint.

Brian loved legos as a kid. Well...he still loves them! So he had fun putting together the PVC parts for the spigot and overflow.