Sidney Orchard Farms

08/29/2026

Our goats got turnip tops for the first time today!

08/07/2026

This hot and smokey August week the pumpkins, squash and tomatoes are plumping; flowers are feeding the 🐝🐝, peppers are starting and the kohlrabi is ready! We love this time of summer 🥰

08/07/2026

08/07/2026

This hot and smokey August week the pumpkins, squash and tomatoes are plumping; flowers are feeding the 🐝🐝, peppers are starting and the kohlrabi is ready! We love this time of summer 🥰

07/27/2026

PSA - Crab apples contain:
✔️ Sweetness
✔️ Crunch
✔️ Vitamin C
They do not contain:
🦀 Crab
🐟 Fish
🍤 Seafood of any kind.
Thank you for attending my TED Talk.

07/24/2026

🌱 Sidney Orchard Farms – Summer #10: What's Growing This Year 🌱

Ten years ago this was mostly grass, blackberries, and a dream.

One raised bed became two. Then came fruit trees, flowers, trellises, irrigation, greenhouses, perennial beds, and little by little...a homestead garden.

This is what ten summers of learning, experimenting, and growing has become.

🍅 Tomatoes (16)
• 5 Cherry Tomatoes
• 8 Roma Tomatoes
• 3 Heirloom Slicing Tomatoes

🌶️ Peppers (20+)
• Jimmy Nardello
• Fish Peppers
• Banana Peppers
• Jalapeños
• Serranos
• Ancho/Poblanos
• Bell Peppers
• Giant Ozark Peppers

🥒 Cucumbers
• Trellised slicing cucumbers

🎃 Squash & Pumpkins
• 3 Zucchini
• 3 Yellow Crookneck Squash
• 3 Acorn Squash
• 3 Butternut Squash
• 6 Warty Pumpkins
• 6 Sugar Pie Pumpkins

🫛 Peas
• Shell Peas
• Snap Peas

🥬 Salad & Cooking Greens
• Red Romaine Lettuce
• Curly Endive
• Bok Choy
• Kale
• Spinach
• Rainbow Swiss Chard

🥦 Brassicas
• Broccoli
• Kohlrabi
• Cabbage
• Collards

🥕 Root Crops
Growing:
• Carrots
• Beets
• Turnips
• Parsnips
• Red Onions
• Walking Onions

Already Harvested:
• Garlic
• Shallots
• Yellow Storage Onions

🍆 Other Vegetables
• Eggplant
• Tomatillos

🌿 Herbs
• Thai Basil
• Italian Basil
• Parsley
• Cilantro
• Sage
• Oregano
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Lovage
• Curry Plant
• Multiple varieties of mint

🍎 Fruit Trees & Perennial Food Crops
• Persian Mulberry
• Dwarf Mulberries
• Pawpaws
• American Persimmon
• Medlar
• Hardy Kiwi
• Nanking Cherry
• Artichokes
• Cardoon

🌼 Flowers & Pollinator Plants
• Marigolds
• Lavender
• Roses
• Prairie Smoke
• Hydrangeas
• Sunflowers
• Mixed pollinator flowers
• Cut flowers for bouquets

🌱 Succession Plantings
• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Bok Choy
• Curly Endive
• Carrots
• Beets
• Turnips
• Parsnips

It's amazing to look back and realize none of this happened overnight. It happened one season at a time—one bed, one tree, one fence, one success, one failure, and one lesson after another.

Today this little farm feeds our family, fills our home with flowers, provides produce for friends and the food bank, and reminds me every single day that good things really do grow with patience.

Here's to ten summers at Sidney Orchard Farms...and to whatever the next ten years bring. 💚🌱🍅🌻🥕

05/10/2026

Just a little Sidney Orchard check-in 🌿
The garden is waking up fast now. Peas are climbing, the hoop houses are finally behaving (mostly 😅), the birds are everywhere, and the hens are busy raising the next generation of tiny feathered chaos.
Some days out here are exhausting.
Some days are peaceful.
Most days are both.
But this little farm keeps growing one season at a time. 🐔

04/30/2026

Sidney Orchard – Salad House check-in 🌱
This little tunnel is officially in motion… again.
Had a bit of a learning curve early on. I thought opening both ends and the windows during a windstorm would help—turns out it just turned the whole thing into a sail and sent it flying.
Everything in here got tossed around, but we’re a few weeks past that now and things have settled back in.
Spinach is coming in strong, and the romaine + buttercrunch are starting to look like actual food instead of hopeful intentions.
They’re sharing a tub and doing surprisingly well together.
Arugula got a little too comfortable—leggy and dramatic—so that’s getting cut back and moved outside where it can behave.
Also apparently growing mushrooms in the tubs now, which feels very on brand for a forest garden.
And there’s something sprouting in the back that I definitely planted… and absolutely cannot remember what it is. We’ll find out together.
A few weeks out from real harvest volume, but it’s moving.

04/26/2026

FOUND: today 4/25 (around 4 PM) on SW. Lake Flora Rd. by the powerlines - TWO MEDIUM SIZED DOGS,

(This was unincorporated Kitsap between Belfair and Port Orchard)

[I did not get a picture - there was too much going on, but they will be posted at the Kitsap Humane Society]

One male Shepherd (on the smaller side) mix and the other one was a white American Staffordshire terrier mix (pity mix). All white female smallish very very sweet. Both around 45 lbs?

Both these dogs are incredibly sweet. (If my great Pyrenees wasn’t so jealous I would bring these two home in a heartbeat - assuming they needed a home).

They were in the (50 mph) road. My husband and I stopped. They came right to us. Several cars stopped. One person said that they had seen somebody with them by a car by the power lines about an hour earlier. It appears to be a case of a pet abandonment(?)

If you know these dogs, they are now at the Kitsap Humane Society. The staff was very kind and stayed open late as we called them on our way there. The dogs are in great shape and very happy.

Thank you!
SOF
Marianne and Mark

04/16/2026

The orchard is waking up! 🍒🌸 I’ve battled some pretty awful hard pan underneath our orchard area. This spring I added Bocking14 Comfrey. I am hopeful that that will help break up some of this layer. In the meantime things are looking better with more frequent watering.