They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
We have harvested the beets, pretty tiny haul compared to last year, but we have a backup plan. Buckwheat is taking over. It is tall and falling over into the pathways. I think this winter we are going to add t-posts every 10 feet or so along the rows so we can run twine when… Continue reading Beets in the Freezer
Thursday, the Feast of the Assumption, was a very busy day. We slaughtered two ganders, two roosters (for stew meat), five older hens (also for stew meat) and 27 Cornish cross meat birds. The work started the night before with setting up the kill station. We learned from last year it is good to have… Continue reading Chicken Dinner
Early this year, in January, I think, we had two big willow trees on the farm cut down from some 30-40 feet tall to about 6 feet tall. There were several reasons for this. Both were in inconvenient locations. One was shading the garden and slowing the soil warming in the spring. The other was… Continue reading Tree Hay
Green (and purple) beans are one of those gifts that just keep on giving. And giving... And giving. I told Seppi we needed to pick beans, and he literally sprinted to the garden with excitement. "Daddy! Let's have a pick race!" Five minutes later: "Daddy, I'm going to let you win." All the little kids… Continue reading More Beans
We finished threshing the wheat on Tuesday. It is amazing how small the actual pile of berries and chaff was, considering the size of the stack of wheat we started with. Threshing the last of the straw with sticks, baby girls is very much a monkey-see-monkey-do kind of girl. A great long stick of molding… Continue reading Winnowing time.
Harvest time is always busy on the farm. Plants mature, fruit and veggies are ready when they are reay with little to no concern for what we have going on in our non-gardening lives. Tuesday was a good example of that. Beans and blackberries are both coming in hardcore, but this is also the weekend… Continue reading Busy nights
Have you ever washed a chicken? Chickens need to be clean before they can be shown at the fair, but... This was the most offended looking chicken I have ever seen in my life.
Broccoli! Some of it survived slug-aggedon! Never mind the teethmarks. That’s what happens when you deliver vegetables to a four-year-old and tell him to take them to his mom. Quality control The ducks have been getting a little too big for their temporary, mobile shelter, since we haven’t built a permanent mobile shelter, or even… Continue reading Ducks and Broccoli.
About 10 days until they are ready! This year, when we butcher them, we are going to look carefully for the nuggets. The question is, does each chicken have a single nugget that is an individualized shape? Or does each chicken have the full menagerie pterodactyl, a Tyrannosaurus, a stegosaurus, and a brontosaurus?
It's that time of the year! Beans are coming in. We had our first picking on Tuesday. Nasturtiums, and a hummingbird. Six quarts, first haul of the year. (The purple ones turn green when they get pressure canned.)
