My blog :)

After being gone so long and coming back now, I missed it! I cant wait to get back into the swing of things, and there has been an addition to my gardening space! I cant wait to get in there and get going, and with the way this winter has been I could have already started. Heres to getting the blog rolling again, cheers!

I royally burnt out.

After the no water situation which lasted 3 days shy of a month, I lost all steam. All I did in the garden was pick tomatoes and stew them up to put sauce in the freezer. I did not make my cold frames, nor did I sow any fall lettuces or anything for that matter. I didn't plant garlic, which I will regret when I have none next summer to pick. But i'm not going to dwell on it. I have already started planning for next year. 

The main emphasis for me is to keep it simple and easy. I don't need the extra stress that I seem to cause myself, so everything i'm doing from here on out is going to be questioned first with "Is this the simplest way I could do this?". First off, I have eliminated mulch from my life. Not that I don't think it doesn't look good, its just that free ranging chickens like to distribute it all over where you don't want it. So I scooped it all up from the beds around the house and from around the ponds. I will be replacing it with rocks around the ponds, which goes well with the hens and chicks plants that I am trying to get going there. We shall see what happens with the beds around the house, hopefully I can get them going nice and full with perennials so you wont see the ground anyways. 

Second on my simplifying plans I have started my list of vegetables to start for selling. Last year was a seat-of-the-pants type selling situation. I planted left over seeds that I had on hand. Now I have a pretty good feel for what people want, which for one thing is peppers. I have chosen a good variety, I will have some hot, some sweet bells in a few colors and some for drying. 

My list for things to grow for home is going to be less adventurous. I am slowly starting to go against the inside crazy person who feels that at the beginning of spring I will want to do all that is necessary to produce the fickle things that I wont eat five bushels of. Another thing I did learn is that I will be using row covers to keep out the damn cabbage worms that ruined my life this year. They ate the cabbage and the cauliflower and the broccoli. And in return I ate a couple of them, which I will consider the first and last time that will happen. The covers are pretty cheap, at 15 bucks for a 6' x 50' roll. 

Third, the garden has been put to bed for the winter, I covered all the beds with shredded up leaves. Next year I am going to try not even using the broad fork to turn the soil. I keep reading how you shouldn't upset the balance going on in the layers of dirt so I will just dig holes to put the seedlings in and let it go. Less digging, easier for me. 

Buckeye Rooster and Hen

Forth on list are the chickens. I want to be able to raise babies so there doesn't need to be constant purchasing. We will be getting a new flock of Buckeye chickens, which is a heritage breed that started in Warren, Ohio in 1896 by a woman named Nettie Metcalf. They are very rare and critically endangered. The reason I have chosen them is because they were bred for our weather, they have a very small pea comb so you dont have to worry about frostbite during the winter and they are a good weight for a dual purpose bird. I plan to get a rooster and hope that I get at least one broody hen so we can have our own chicks. I look forward to hatching out some babies and watching them be taken care of by their mother. Then we wont have to buy them to keep a flock going. It will also be easier when they all look the same, then theres less of a tendency to get attached to a certain bird. 

The hard part of the new flock is the old flock. These freezer bound birds have been giving me about 1 egg in the last week and maybe one more before that. Im not sure if they have went through a full molt or not, they sure haven't looked like any pictures of molting birds I have seen so who knows. They will quit laying when they molt and a bit after. But the light has also grown so short that that could be a reason also. The easter eggers haven't given me an egg in so long I cant remember when it was. It was before the other girls quit giving up the eggs though, I do know that. Im trying to get in the habit of thinking about chicken soup when I look at them. 

Last on my easy list, I am going to try my hand at some winter sowing this year. Its a system this lady made where you put containers out in the winter with seeds and soil and the seeds start when they know its ready. Then you have also taken care of hardening them off at the same time. I am going to try this with the veggies and perennials that can be done this way and see how it works out. There are lots of people who have succeeded with this method at the garden web site, check it out. 

 http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/wtrsow/ and http://www.wintersown.org/

I will add some pics in the next post, Im trying to figure out my blue tooth on my phone!

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.