New Year...new possibilities! We have blooming berries on the farm!

It's spring here at the Hufstedler Family Farm, and Farmer Karl has been really busy during the past year working on boisenberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and various garden type plantings.  This year may be our first pickable crop, and we are so excited! Here are a few photos that Karl took of the high tunnel as it appears this year.

Last year's beautiful blueberries! The promise of things to come...

 One of Donnie's brand new baby calves.  He still had his cord hanging from his tummy as he frolicked like a little nut all over the patch where his mama stands.  It was pretty comical! Thank you Lord for new life!

Gotta tie em up!

 Looking down on the cherry trees and berry bushes from the custom walkway that goes the length of the high tunnel.

 Time to water!

 Thornless boisenberry blossems!

Here we are! Our first farm blog post!

After approximately four years of planning, attending many workshops and farm visits, completing requirements for the Missouri Entrepreneurship Grant, and finishing construction of our customized high tunnel...we're off! During the past seven years Farmer Karl has been experimenting with blueberries, tomatoes, raspberries (yet to produce), pumpkins (gorgeous), lettuce, radishes, and a variety of other successes and failures.  We are a small scale operation with many processes yet to complete, but we are in for the long haul.  To get this "tour" started...here is a pic of Farmer Karl and two of our five grandsons after picking pumpkins from last summer's surprise pumpkin patch.  I say surprise because the drought caused us to feel the irrigated patch that was all but lost would not produce.  Much to our delight, we were able to harvest several beautiful pumpkins to sell, and also gave our local elementary kindergarten class of 50 students a pumpkin to take home! Maggie is a kindergarten teacher who has always wanted a pumpkin patch, so this certainly delighted her and her  students! More to come from the farmer himself...