Harvest and wells

Its been a hectic few weeks here at the homestead. Its been a lot of harvesting and preserving and then theres the fact we haven't had water in over a week. Lets start with tomatoes and preserving.

Mabel with a days harvest

I have been harvesting more tomatoes that anyone could imagine. But you would have to expect that after planting about one hundred plants.
For times sake and when I didn't harvest large amounts I did small pickings and threw them in wal-mart bags and put them into the freezer until I had enough to make it worth processing. This works very well as the tomatoes let off a large amount of water when they thaw so that means less time cooking down. I do suggest that if you do this to core them first, it makes it easier. I always use the skin since I puree and I like to think you get some more nutrients out of them this way.

Some tomatoes thawing out

I have mostly just been cutting up the fruit taking out the seeds and gel, pureeing, cooking down and putting into quart freezer bags. I end up with large bowls of the gel, seeds are cores that make for quite the tasty chicken snacks/drink. They seem to enjoy this very well.

Tomatoes processed today

All 75 lbs. pureed down

The last processing that I did was also a batch of tomatoes and then some butternut squash. I also dried some tomatoes in the dehydrator, not too many but I filled it up and ended up with a nice baggie full. For the squash I cut them in half, baked until tender then I pureed and added some spices and onion and made soup to freeze, tasty.

The days yield

On to our well pump madness. In case you ever run into it and just to tell a story. We noticed for certain last monday that the water pressure indeed was getting to be pretty weak. By tuesday we had no water and knew the pump needed pulled. What we think may have happened is that our pressure tank was slowly taking a dump and in that process was making the pump work extra duty and wore it out finally. So, husband rigged up a support brace across the small space up high and fitted the winch on it that we had on a four wheeler. Then made a tool so we could clamp it to the pipe and pull up about 2 foot sections at a time.

Fine engineering on display

This had to be done as there was no way to do it by hand because it was way to heavy and the pipe was super slippery. We had it coming up pretty well when it started to get pretty tense. The rope and the wiring that were coming up along side the pipe had stopped so we knew it had to be caught up on something. So about the third day in of working on it the mother load of snags came up.

Yay! But only for a few minutes until I made the winch pull up instead of down and caused the well cap to fall into the hole. (Very sad time.) This whole time we are pulling the pipe out we are taking it out the basement window and laying it in the yard. 

Finally we see what we think is the top of the pump and then it stops. No more pulling up, its stuck really well. We dumped buckets of water in on top to clear some of the mud around it when we realized that it in fact was the pump because we could see something shiny. We took one last tug with the winch to see if it would move at all and the whole shebang came down. Really stuck, called it a night. The next day, of corse when I wasn't home to see it happen, husband got the pump free and pulled it up. 145 feet is the total length of our well. Its amazing to see it laying in the yard knowing that it goes down that deep into the earth to get our water. Now over a week without water, the new pump is on order and we should have water hopefully by this weekend. This time we are going with a type of pump that can sit at ground level so if there are ever problems again we don't have to dig to argentina to take care of the problem! 

Thats all for this week, remember to appreciate your plumbing :) And thank you gram and gramps for letting us use your water and shower!

Weeds everywhere!

I should start by saying that not much has happened around here this week, I didn't  do much at all in the yard I think I sort of burnt myself out a bit. There was non stop activity since March and I had to talk myself into knowing its okay to just rest a bit.
But...
I started looking around and realized that the weeds are not so slowly taking over our property. So today I emptied out the front bed of all the lovely prickly nasties and the bed next to our fence along the drive, then noticed that I should do the weeds along the trees. What do you think, I think it looks messy. Husband thinks it looks 'natural'.

Here is my load of weeds. 

And heres one that got stuck in my hair, it didn't come out easily either. Now that I look at it you can hardly distinguish it from the hair, its all a mess!

On to more interesting things. One of my ladies thinks she is a rooster. Which is quite funny. She has worked up a nice rendition of a cockilldoodildoo. Which sounds like rucka rucka wooo. And then I have witnessed her mounting some of the other ladies and simulating the deed. I told my mom this and she said "I didn't know they made lesbian chickens?!", that was a laugh out loud. This is an older picture, all her tail feathers have been missing for a while, I don't know what thats all about.

The ladies grazing this evening. 

And the most eventful part of my last week. I got a hammock! I have wanted one forever, I haven't got to lounge in it yet but this weekend I will have to for sure. I have it on the deck so it's not in the sun or weather so hopefully it lasts longer. 

Yay for hammocks, have a good weekend!

I feel horrible about the long absence!

I have honestly been wanting to update for ages now, and it seems as if every time I get ready to I find something else to do. It has been a very busy summer around here and the garden is now at the point where I am ready to start some fall planting. I am going to post some pictures as to what has been going on while I was not blogging and then I will be ready to get back to some regular postings!

First I will start with the garden, I dug up all the sod in between the beds and put down weed barrier. We are going to put gravel down over it. I read that if you put any material that eventually breaks down like mulch that weeds will just grow in that.

The various squashes have taken over in this corner. They are actually planted on the outside of the fence but grew so quick I couldnt keep them shoved through fast enough and when we went on vacation they just went nuts.

Here is the area where I planted extra peppers and melons. I didnt get around to weeding and then just figured I would let it go. The dogs love to get in it and root around.

This is a super huge keeper squash.

This is a nice dinner of stuffed tomatoes. I put couscous, onion and peppers inside with the tomato pulp. Then I put a slice of tomato on top with some cheese. Good stuff.

This is the fresh blackberry pie I made for a reunion, it was pretty good I hear, I haven't ate the piece I brought home yet!

And vacation! We went to Summersville Lake, west virginia. It is the 4th time we have camped there. It is a very nice lake with clear water, you can see so far down that you can see the bottom in areas where its 20 feet deep. If you scuba there is clarity to 40 feet. We had nice weather, hot days for swimming. There was some rain too but not so much that it ruined anything. We actually kept swimming through a couple good rains. 

Here is our camp site.

Here is our favorite swim spot that we can get to without the boat.

Red efts. There is a tree on the site where we camped first several years ago that these live under and on. I took the girls to the site and was just saying "Last time there were these..." and looked down and there they were. We had a fun time playing with them. There isn't another spot in the campground where I have found them living at, it must be the perfect spot. We were joking that the tree was like the tree of life in avatar! 

This is a spot where people jump from a lot. There is a spot right to the left of the waterfall. And then there is that open spot all the way at the top on the left where there is a clearing. My sisters boyfriend jumped from there this year and then asked what a broken tailbone felt like soon after!

A turkey vulture that was hanging out above his home in the crack below. He looked very ominous.

We found out our herding australian shepherd is actually quite the water dog. She was dragging back honest logs, not just sticks! She swam circles around us while we floated in the water, I don't know if she just really loves to swim or just wants to be by us? I have to think she just loves it, I have never seen her so tired in my life. She was falling asleep sitting up, and that hasn't happened since she was a puppy.

Here is a picture of our log face. It got changed up everyday.

Well now we are back home and all settled in with all the laundry washed. I will be back to more frequent posting! 

Things are growing :)

Zucchini, I actually ate this today. It was 3x the size since I had taken this picture last week.

The lettuce, some is bolting, I give that to the chickens.

Ruby chard.

Romas.

Tiger like.

Black trifeles.

The ill effects of all this damn rain.

A baby seeking refuge from Mabel.

I ate this today also, it had also gotten very large and was almost starting to open. There are nice shoots starting on the sides.

Dinner.

What the garden is looking like right now.

The berries, and Molly.

The birdhouse gourds.

I set up this fence so the gourds can travel up over the chicken run.

This is the overflow area where I planted the extra tomatoes that didn't sell. There are about 4 growing that were there from the old compost pile. Also a couple of squash or gourds, I can't quite tell yet. We have almost 90 tomato plants this year. I know......

These are the cherry tomatoes, they will get as tall as the roof on the deck.

The greenhouse is finally empty.

If I posted as much as I wanted to...

Its really redundant to say how busy I have been. If you have or ever had a garden you know now is when there is so much to do. It is finally dying down a bit. Heres a couple pics of the tomatoes.

The sales of plants is now over and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised at how much I sold. I will for sure be doing this next year with a couple of changes. First off I now have a good feel for what people are looking for, so I have a mental list going of what I will be starting. Second, I will probably only sell at the end of the driveway. I'm sure by next spring I will want to cart the plants across the county to sell at least once but for now I say no, it's so much easier to just leave them out there. Third, the plants will be out a lot earlier. I've told a lot of people who stopped that they can look for it next year so it should turn out well. And finally I will place signs at a couple more intersections. Some people said that they usually go down another road and they just happened by, so more advertising.

I feel a small victory for turning on people to some new tomatoes that they had never heard of and it was nice to know that people appreciated the heirlooms and organic plants that I had. There will be a nice list of heirlooms for next year and plenty of peppers. Everybody was looking for those peppers, I felt bad telling everyone I didn't have them.

There was a small amount of tomatoes and broccoli left. Im sure someone would have bought the toms but they were at the point where they needed potted up and i'm just not into that right now so they are all getting planted. I just have a few left to put in, and this means that I will have tomatoes for sale later on in the season. I want to take them to the farmers market and see what comes of that. Or theres the table at the end of the drive, that sounds even easier.

On to the next project, i've been reading lately about keeping rabbits for meat. I'm not sure if i'm one hundred percent sold yet but I really like the idea of it. They don't take much space, are relatively inexpensive to feed and make babies like, well rabbits. Theres a couple breeds that seem to be the most popular to keep, I feel like I should opt for the less attractive ones as if that will help the processing process. Rabbits have a tad more protein than chicken and a bit less calories, that partnered with the amount you can process a year and the amount of space they take up it seems like a likely addition to our baby homestead. Any other option for meat besides the chickens just seems like too large of an animal for us to take care of, it may just be fear but keeping a couple big pigs just seems a bit out of my realm right now.

I stopped at a cool place near my house called Highmill Park. They have a CSA for veggies and meat,also have all kinds of animals, ducks, chickens, rabbits, sheep, alpacas, pigs and i'm sure there were more I didn't see. Heres their resident handsome man, he was shaking his feathers at all the chickens who would pass and not a one was intimidated or really even seemed to notice him. It was sad and very funny all at the same time. Check out their site at HighmillPark.com, they also have a blog. 

And I will leave today with this cute pic of mama and babies and my vets place.