Total Eggs for September

11 eggs.

Egg count

This week: 8

Egg count

Eggs our first week = 3

Eggciting Day!!

Our first egg! Actually 2! We just found our first eggs from our little hens... so exciting!!

Pasta Sauce and Salsa!

This weekend will be spent making jars and jars of pasta sauce and salsa - two things that our family eats a ton of. Besides we have to find something to do with our excess tomatoes. I think we have about 100 sitting on the kitchen counter right now.

Canning... take 2!

After our first attempt at canning not going so well, Dan was determined to get the canning process down. There were several problems that needed to be solved. First, we need to get our giant canning pot full of water up to a boil the in the shortest amount of time, in the most economical fashion. Second, in order to avoid putting all of that hot, humid air into the house in the middle of summer, it has to be outside. Third, and most importantly, the water needs to return to a boil as quickly as possible after we put in our jars of food. That was the downfall of the firepit. It took so long to return the pot to a boil that it way overcooked our pickles.

So, what's our new method of choice?

That right... the turkey fryer!

Incredibly hot, intense, direct heat equals very fast boiling and minimal extra cooking of our canned goods. The bonus is that it comes to a boil, and returns to a boil, so quickly that we end up using very little propane.

Our canning will still be done outside. However, for 'take 2', instead of making more pickles this time will be salsa. Delicious, fresh, tasty salsa.

Pickles!

To say we have a few cucumbers is an understatement. We have a lot of cucumbers and we need to find something to do to preserve them... pronto.

Dan's parent came up a few weeks ago with all of his Mom's old canning supplies in tow. It's time to crack the boxes open to see what we have. Large pot? Check. Rack to immerse jars in pot? Check. Jars, lids and rings? Check. It's time to make us some pickles.

We thought it would be fun to have a pickling date night. We'd get our cukes ready to go together and put the pot on a hot fire on the fire pit. Seemed like a good plan. Although we had fun, our fire pit proved not to be hot enough to to keep the water boiling. The pickles are tasty, but not very crunchy. Oh well, you live and you learn. Dan has another idea... but that's for another post.

Freeze! You're surrounded!

By a fence, that is.

As Dan said, we started sinking fence posts and we have the ENTIRE garden surrounded by 7-foot high deer fencing. Granted, we haven't had a problem with deer, but since we were taking the time to put up a fence, we decided we might as well protect it from as many creatures as possible.

As you'll see in the pictures, we didn't use store bought fence posts. We used small cedar trees from the property. Dan, a true Yankee, is always looking for a way to use things we already have.

After we had two sides of the fence up, Dan saw a small bunny in the garden and went about his usual tactics to shoo it out. Deer fencing, if you've never seen it, is practically invisible. The bunny proceeded to run straight into the fence, bounce back and sit on it's behind shaking it's head wondering what just happened. It made another go at it, but to no avail. It finally figured out to root at the bottom of the fence to make it's way out. We've since staked the bottom so no bunnies will make it in or out.

Humans = 1 point
Bunnies = zero

Good fences make good corn.

It seems that every time I told somebody new about my plans for a garden one of their first questions was always “Are you going to put up a fence?” Then they would go on to explain how the deer would devastate our garden if we didn’t. My response was always that I would wait and see, as there had been very few deer sightings on our property.

Fast forward several months. The garden had been doing great, with nary a nibble from any critters, deer or otherwise (some insect issues, but that’s a different post). Our peas came and went; the tomatoes and cucumbers started producing like crazy, and still no bothersome animals. We also survived several heavy rain/windstorms that literally leveled every corn stalk in the garden. After each storm we stood each stalk up and hilled around the bases; very time-consuming, but the thought of that fresh, delicious, super-sweet corn made it worthwhile. In time the corn started putting on ears and it looked like we would have a bumper crop.
Then one morning I went out to the garden as usual and found one of our almost-ready-for-picking ears of corn lying on the ground, half eaten. The stalk it had been attached to was still upright, none the worse for wear. I was puzzled, but didn’t find any evidence pointing to the culprit. The next day, there were three half eaten ears; the next day, about eight more. Now I was beginning to be upset. On day four when I went out, there was even more damage, and right in the middle of it were two fluffy brown bunny rabbits chewing on ears of corn. As I stood there speechless, one of the rabbits calmly reached up to the nearest corn stalk and nipped off yet another ear of corn. Apparently the quarter eaten one at his feet was no longer satisfying.
That was the last straw, so I grabbed a handful of stones, and yelling some garbled, angry nonsense, began hurling stones at the marauding bunnies. Incredibly, they didn’t stop eating, even as I began moving toward them, still shouting and throwing stones. Finally a rock whizzed close enough to one of them that they decided it would be beneficial to them if they moved on. They darted away from me and scrambled through the fence that separates our property from the land next door.

It was on.

Here the dilemma though: I have to sleep at night, and I work a full time job 30 miles away from home, leaving me precious little time to stake out my corn patch waiting for thieving bunnies. In addition, we have neighbors living fairly close on one side so shooting bunnies with any type of firearm was out of the question. This meant that every morning when I went out there was more and more devastation, leaving fewer and fewer ears of corn that might mature enough to be harvested by the humans that planted them.

Last weekend my parents drove the 6 hours from their home to ours for a long weekend visit. My fervent wish was that we would at least have enough mature corn to cook for one meal while they were here. So, Sunday afternoon, my mother and I went to the garden to take a look. The scene was heartbreaking. After taking a quick inventory, I decided to pick every single remaining ear of corn, in the hopes that some would be mature enough to eat. Out of 450 linear feet of corn stalks we harvested 2 dozen ears. Of that 2 dozen maybe 10 were mature, with the rest somewhere between “throw it away” to “you might get a mouthful of corn off that one”. So, we cooked up what we had, and it was delicious.

This week I’ve started sinking fence posts.

Our first carrots!

Cute little guys aren't they? The little one on the left looks like it could get up and walk away. It turns out carrots need very moist and very loose, loamy soil. Unfortunately, this patch didn't get tilled nearly as deeply as it should have, and we also neglected to run a soaker hose down this row. So in other words, even though we're going to get a boat-load of carrots this year, they'll mostly be stumpy and woody like these two. Oh well, one more item for our live and learn list for next year!

Serves you right!

Remember the lovely hornworms I told you about? I did some more research on them and found out that a type of wasp exists only to lay it's eggs in hornworms. Ecosystems are a funny world. I showed Dan a picture of what an 'infected' hormworm looks like in case he ever sees one. Well... sure enough... we have a hornworm sitting on one of our tomato plants with wasp cocoons just waiting to hatch. Serves him right for noshing on our tomatoes, if you ask me! Anyhoo, the research advised that if not infected, you need to get the worm off pronto, otherwise you provide an all day smorgasbord. However, if it IS infected to leave it alone. What?? Leave it alone? The website proceeded to say that the worm will be immobilized (therefore not doing any more damage to your plant) and you want the wasps to hatch, grow up and go lay eggs in another hornworm, immobilize it, and so on. Hmm... this is a good thing. Interesting. Now we watch for the cocoons to hatch. They haven't as of this morning. We'll keep watching!

Cukes, cukes and more cukes!

Some things in the garden aren't doing as well as we'd hoped. Some are doing ok. Others are doing great! Cucumbers are in the 'great' category. We have no shortage of cukes this year! However, you can only make so many dinner salads and tomato & cucumber salad before you have to start looking for new recipes. That's when pickles popped into Dan's head. He went online and found a couple of recipes. We spent Friday night, our 'date night', making pickles. We had a blast! Turns out it they are beyond easy to make and delicious - better than any pickle you'd find in a store. I can't wait for more cukes to make more pickles!

Does the farm wait?

Today I am finally confident I'm getting a cold. I don't get colds very often, but when I do, they are usually 'doozies'. It's rainy and blah today, so I don't particularly have much to do outside. All of the plants were watered by mother nature. Everything that 'had' to be picked was early this morning.

However, my progressing cold has me thinking - a farm can't wait. It can't wait to be watered, harvested, chickens fed and eggs collected. Nor will it wait for an extended vacation. Or a short vacation for that matter. Once we have sheep or goats, they can't wait to be milked and fed and watered. Fences won't wait to be repaired. The larger the farm gets, the more that won't be able to wait.

Sigh. This doesn't particularly sound fun or relaxing to me. Part of the reason we moved back to the country is because we wanted a slower pace of life. A simpler life. Room to breath. We will be able to breath acreage-wise, but what about workload-wise? I'm not so sure. There's no conclusion to this post - just a thought being typed out. I suppose I will just have to either 'wait it out and see' or adapt. I foresee adapting in my future.

If I could only get to those birds!

Dan calls Buddy 'the BEST cat EVER!'. He is very cute, but sometimes his 'bossiness' is a bit much. "King Biscuit" we call him. This morning though, was one of his cuter days.

Over the weekend, Dan installed a new storm/screen door on the back of the house so we can have a cross-breeze blowing through the house. However, Buddy thinks the door was installed so he can see the chickens even better (as this is now the best vantage point from inside the house).

This morning I went out to take some pics for the blog and when I turned around, Buddy was tirelessly trying to get out to the chickens (aka 'his girlfriends'). He doesn't seem to understand why he can see them and now even hear them(thanks to the screen), but not get to them! Buddy is all the entertainment a person needs.

Grow, Garden, Grow!

Some of our veggies are doing great! Others, not so much. Cukes and tomatoes are growing like crazy, but green beans are just kind of sitting there not doing much of anything. Lettuce is doing pretty well, but aren't getting as big as I thought they would. And even with all our poor corn has been through, it still seems to be healthy and is getting tiny little cobs on it.

Tomato Killers!

Hornworms are EVIL! We never see them on the ground, nor on anything except our tomatoes! Where do they come from? Straight from hell, that's where! One evening we pulled 15 of the fat suckers off our plants. The next morning 2 more. Tonight we pulled 2 more off. Annoying little buggers!

Just a thought...

Ok, so we've learned a lot since Spring arrived. Who knew sticking some plants in the ground could be so labor intensive and scientific? I'd like to know why weeds grow with no assistance at all.... yet flowers and veggies that you give tender loving care are so resistant to grow?!?

Rain & Corn - not necessarily a good combination!

One thing about summer in the Midwest- weather moves in fast and furiously. A huge rainstorm moves in early afternoon. Well, not much to do outside now. We decide to head to town to do some shopping.

Upon arrival home, our once proud, and vertical, corn is now horizontal. You've got to be kidding me! We chuck our cold grocery store goods in the fridge and head out to try and salvage our 9 rows of corn. First we carefully straighten it up and pack soil around it. It's mostly vertical now. It's late and we need to make dinner. After dinner we head back out to 'hill' the corn. This seems to help give it extra support. I'm curious to see how it holds up during the next rainstorm.

But what did we learn? Planting corn 1 1/2 inches deep is not enough to build a strong root system. Next year, we will plant deeper. Oh also, as a reminder for next year... plant rows 4 feet apart so we can get the tiller in between the rows. Good tip!

What does every farm need? That's right... a big honkin' tractor! In our case, a big honkin' tractor with a loader. Trouble is, tractors are expensive, and even more so with a loader. What we needed was a fixer-upper. And what better place to find a fixer-upper than eBay?!
Our tractor criteria was pretty simple: it must have a 3-point hitch, a loader, be within 100 miles of home, and be under $2,000 dollars. The search began.
4 months later (!) my eye caught a listing for the tractor in the photo above. It was the first one I'd seen that met all of our criteria. So I watched and waited. The starting bid was $1800, and I figured that it would soon ne out of our price range. A day passed with no bids. Another day passed with no bids. And another, and another. Finally the final day arrived, and I checked the listing every hour to see how high the bidding would go. Hour after hour, and still no bids. So, I figured that I was not the only sniper waiting for the last moments. Note: A sniper in eBay world is someone who waits until the last possible moment to place a bid, knowing that other bidders won't have time to react and re-bid. Sneaky? Maybe, but effective. Anyway, at last, with 60 seconds left and no other bidders, I placed my bid for $1801. By the time I clicked "Submit Bid" there was only 30 seconds left, not enough time to bid higher if another sniper bid $1802. On the edge of my seat I refreshed the screen every two seconds, fully expecting to be out bid. With the last refresh I saw the wondrous message "Congratulations, you have won this item!". Huzzah!! We had a tractor. Now we just had to get it home, and that is a story for another post.

Garden's Growing!

The garden is doing quite well! We're very happy that we aren't having too much of an insect or animal problem - which is really exciting considering we are growing completely organically - no nasty pesticides!