September 2004 Gardening and Homesteading Journal

[A.T.Hagan]

It's only the first day of the month so there hasn't been time for anyone to do much yet, but I thought I'd get this month's journal going now in case Hurricane Frances comes along later and discombulates things.

One small entry is that this morning I picked the first seven key limes off my little tree and they taste great!

It's a container plant, we're too far north for it to survive our winters outside in the ground, but it's a productive little thing. Maybe about another four or five fruit on it still and it's got a new flush of blossoms for the next crop.

Think I may get another one to go with it. I want to harvest enough limes to make a real DunHagan key lime pie.

.....Alan.

 

[booger]

Alan, what is the difference between key limes and regular limes? I've always wondered!

Our first batch of tomato plants are about dead so I'll be pulling those up shortly. Potatoes need to be dug. Herbs are still going strong. Later-planted tomatoes are still doing well. Luffa gourds are going nuts! There are tons of them and they are huge!! The winter squash are still doing well but the vines are starting to die back already. I thought they wouldn't do that until later in the year? I'll be keeping an eye on them for the changes you all told me to look for. Can't wait to try the first squash! Everbearing strawberries haven't given us anything since spring. Blackberries are done. Raspberries, planted this spring, are buried in weeds and I have no clue what they're doing. My hot peppers haven't done too well this year. There have been quite a few peppers but not nearly as much as there should have been. This was my first year trying them in containers--I'll be putting them back in the ground next year. Nothing else ever did get planted for this year--just too busy getting established here and building the new house.

Grapes! Oh, the grapes!! *Drool* They were already here when we bought this place and I have no idea what kind they are. I know nothing about grapes. We watched the little green balls grow thorughout the summer, getting bigger and bigger. Finally, they started turning purple so we waited and watched some more. We just picked some and, boy, are they good!! Wow! The grapiest grape I have ever tasted! I'm thinking they'd make some great wine! We don't drink, though, I'm thinking of talking DH into a little once in a while just for these grapes.

I still haven't done any seed saving yet for the maters and peppers. I need to do that pronto before they die off.

 

[A.T.Hagan]

Here's a quick explanation of the differences between Key limes (also known as Mexican limes) and Bearrs or Persian limes.

http://erazo.org/chefrick/ingredients/lemons.htm

What are sold as 'limes' in your local grocery stores seems to depend on your geographic region. Some areas sell Key limes as 'limes' while other areas sell Persian limes as 'limes.' The flavor is different between the two so though you can substitute one for the other they're not really quite the same.

.....Alan.

 

[Gingergirl]

The fall raspberries are coming on strong, but with all the rain last week, the flavor is very week. They were better flavored two weeks ago, so I'm hoping this week's sunshine will improve that.
The rain has not diluted the concord grapes. Not bitten by spring frost, they are abundant this year. I've already started processing for jelly, DD2's favorite.
Tomatoes are done, a real disapointment. Only got about two bushels of useful tomatoes, and only for sauce at that. Some people tell me they got NONE.
However, the burgundy beans finally began producing in a sudden flush. Still, I prefer the steady production, color, and tenderness of the Slenderwax beans. They were outstanding this year. May have been the weather, but I will plant them next year for sure. Its also been a good year for the peppers: paprika, pimento, red and gold and yellow bells, jalpeno. The tabascos are plentiful, but haven't colored up yet.
Fall lettuce, beets, carrots, and turnips are up. Time to get them fenced against the rabbits.

 

[Para36]

Well, time I add to the journal as I enjoy reading the experiences of others.
This was a very good summer for about everything except winter squash. The vines got hit with squash borers as usual but powdery mildew was the worst culprit. I harvested the butternuts, acorns, and pumpkins just this week and they are curing. The numerical yield is about average but not quite as large as usual. The hubbards seem to be doing a bit better and I am letting them go.
On acorn squash I was extremely surprised how well they kept in a room off my bedroom. I had the last one from last year just a week ago and it seemed fine. I always thought acorns didnt keep quite as well as the others.

Tomatoes were and are excellent , grown in 5 and 15 gal containers . The yield on the romas in 5 gal containers is astounding ( I think ). I picked 38 fully ripe tomatoes from one vine this morning and there are many many more to ripen on it. The early cherry tomatoes are about done now, almost all yellow and i'll pull them up tomorrow. Also had real good yields on the homestead and longkeepers. For the first time I tried drying cherry tomatoes and I think they turned out good. Two days in the oven at 130 deg or so and a final day outside in the sun on breezy low humidity day. I halved the tomatoes and removed pulp and seeds. Dry and crisp now in pint canning jars, great for snacking.

An interesting experience on my red southport globe onions. I had some small onions last fall that i didnt want to bother with and i just buried. This spring they all sent up shoots and I decided to keep a few for seed. Not only did I get a good quantity of seed but each produced a large red onion which I just harvested. Another addition to the veggies I like to over winter outside. Others include the usual potatoes, carrots, parsnips, but also swiss chard and kale. The idea of all those edibles ( as well as rhubarb ) sitting under a couple feet of snow with no work on my part is rather comforting if we had to confront an emergency situation. Oops, forgot garlic too which had an excellent yield.

I just transplanted lettuce and collards to a raised bed to join brussel sprouts , kale and spinach. Almost forgot about the green bell peppers; these did very well in 5 gal containers too.

Having read all the benefits of blueberries I'm plotting out a patch for next spring. I'll get my son to backhoe out a stretch and backfill with peat/acid soil.
Para.

 

[booger]

Thanks for the link, Alan. Now I'm craving limeade.

Just got in from starting to dig the potatoes up. Looks like bugs got most, if not all of them. *sigh* This was our first year growing potatoes so this sucks. Will have to do some research on what little critter caused it and what I can do to avoid it next yet.

 

[gardia]

We have had such a cool and damp summer here that things have ripened very slow....just getting our first tomatoes. Powdery mildew has been a real problem with many things, including some of my favorite flowers. Peppers have been abundant and huge. Root crops have all done well, as well as the slaw types. I need to fire the incubator up and hatch some chicks. The rooster I had last winter was sterile this spring......the winter must have gotten him. I noticed his comb was damaged but didn't think too much about it until all the broody hens sat forever and never hatched anything. The new fruit trees and berry bushes we planted have done very well.....at least most of them. We did have some deer damage, as well as a dumbass attack on my part when I sprayed some with deep woods off thinking that it's bitter taste would deter the deer. Just call it agent orange :bwl

I have been enjoying reading the journals and couldn't help but jump in!!

 

[Beetree]

Time to clean the dead plants from the summer garden and prepare the soil for the winter garden. Harvesting pears now. Made some pear cobbler, and have a big bowl of pealed and pared pears in the fridge. I will freeze them tomorrow. Tomatoes in containers did not do well -0 harvest. Out of the ten plants in the garden I only got maybe twenty good tom. The cherry tomato plant did great! Got some figs - tree just starting to produce. Grapes went to waste, but were some what bitter. Plums were great -got a lot. My thumb is not green but I try!

 

[nutkin]

Thanks for doing this thread, I too love reading what other gardeners are doing.

Well, these past couple of days....

Cycled the cockscomb heads I've had hanging for seeds and boxed up those cured heads to make room for more to hang on the racks. Tomorrow, will harvest more.

Am slowly making my way through the different beds, weeding & cleaning... getting ready to pick the glad seed heads & several others...just got done pulling the spilanthes seeds ...this is ongoing.

Mums are beginning to bloom, trimmed some of the new lavender starts that were getting leggy.

Peppers have done VERY well this year...have canned MANY zillions of the little beggars, and for the first time my chiles are doing great...have started on my second ristra (am putting in tons more next year! Love those things!!)

Marigolds have taken over, I swear. They're everywhere!!!!! This variety we are growing gets about 3-4 ft tall and takes over anywhere it's at. I've already trimmed them viciously back several times...going strong. Tomorrow...pick more seeds heads.

Moonflowers still going vigorously and setting their seed pods...

Our canteloupes didn't do well this year...stayed very small, and had a rather bland taste...our diamond watermelons have stayed puny too. Cukes are about done in...may get one more good harvest.

Winter squash is going like gangbusters...expect to get a good crop from those...and the dipper gourds are slow but, getting there.

Our second planting of bush beans is about ready for its first harvest...most of the herbs are an ongoing thing and still going strong.

Things are starting to look bare in a few spots.... Saw some leaves dropping off the neighbors's trees....(sniff, sniff)

 

[Dinghy]

Hey Booger, My pototoes are getting eaten up too!! I found the same rotten little slugs in them that have gotten all my strawberries and most of my veggies too. I've never had this much trouble with slugs before, and I even used Sevin and sat out beer! They didn't just eat the tomatoes that fell on the ground, they climbed the plants and are getting the good ones now, and they've gotten into my green peppers. I think next year I'm going to dig a moat all the way around the garden and fill it with beer and drown every one of the little suckers!!!

 

[Deena in GA]

Most of our garden is done and we've pulled up the plants. We got some cantaloupes but many of them were rotten in the middle. Too much rain I guess. We have one tomato plant that my husband put out a couple of weeks ago after the others had finished. This one is doing well. We also have one corn plant that has come up over the past couple of weeks! Guess it's a volunteer.

We do still have butter peas going good. I've put up two gallons of them so far and there's lots more to come. The sweet potatoes are still in the ground waiting to be harvested. The grape vines we planted this year seem to be doing great. And the pears seem to be neverending, lol. I've canned 12 quarts of pearsauce and we've eaten pears like crazy in different ways. Today I'll be doing some more pearsauce and also some pear preserves.

As soon as the ground dries out some I plan to put in some lettuce. As of yesterday afternoon we'd already had in excess of 8 inches of rain from Frances.

 

[Sarrah]

Seems to have been a lot of losses this year for folks. But we gardners know next year will be better.
My winter squash are still on the vine. They are really big and we should have enough to do us the winter. The tomatoes have been so so. We have more than enough to eat, a few over a pound in weight. None for canning. Same with cukes. Enough to eat but not to can. It is ok I have jars still in the cold room. When I get a good year I always can enough for a few years.
The stinking rats are eating the tomatoes as they get ripe and avoiding the traps. We suspect mice are in on the feast but DH finally trained the dogs to kill the mice. At first the dogs would pick up the mouse in their mouths very carefully, carry it somewhere and set it down. DH had to convince them to get a bit tougher. It is working as the young dog has brought me in her kill a few times. This is a bonus. The chickens get them if they can. Don't know what the cat does.
Of course this time of year the rotters are looking to move in with us for the winter.
I've written on another post the chickens got into one of my fenced off areas and ate all the swiss chard. It will come back but a nuisance. A good hard trimming is sometimes great for a plant. I'm not too upset seeing as how the chickens at least return the food they eat in eggs.
I got the star thistle cut and raked up and a start done on tilling my new asparagus bed. Of course equipment failure has slowed me down but when I get to town and find the part I'll be back at it. I've saved card board boxes and after I get it all tilled I'm going to cover it with these flattened boxes for the winter. I am hoping they will completely rot before spring. Then I'll till it again before planting.
DH got his super duper new compost container finished and we've started loading it up. He got fancy and put some old hinges on the side for the front then cut the wood so it closes securely. Just lift on one side and it opens wide. Lots of air in there and in theory the good dirt should come out the bottom. We'll see. I think it has to be higher for that but we'll see.
I was out of action for a week or more with a yellow jacket sting on my foot. I was too swollen to get my shoe on till the beginning of this week.
I haven't put my fall garden seed in yet. It is still hitting 90F and I figure it is too hot to germinate. I may do it tomorrow as a rain storm is expected on Sat or Sunday. Overall it is cooler by 5 or so degrees so it is more comfortable.
I sent the motorhome off to the mechanic on Monday. Get it ready for a trip perhaps in February. By then we need to get to some place that the sun is shinning. We also want to see the grandchildren. At the same time by February I want to have my garden plants started. Always choices in this life.

 

[ShepInTheValley]

Strange year weather-wise. Our garden is winding down, the tomato (and other) plants are dying and being eaten by the grasshoppers along with what little produce is left.

I'm canning various things, tomato based soups, salsa, peppers, dehydrating apple slices and soon hope to be canning apple pie filling.

The fruit off the trees ripened much sooner than normal this year.

 

[blue gecko]

I had to keep my vegie garden small this year...we've been doing alot of construction clean-up, dirt work and landscaping (the criteria for plants was that they had to be practical, edible or medicinal....or just so pretty that I couldn't help myself). We put in several new beds with a top soil base made up of a sandy/clay loam. I amended with peat , compost and vermiculite as I planted. Most everything made it through the summer, we were cool and wet...I guess the gods were smiling on us. As for the vegie garden, we had quite a decent crop of tomatoes and chilis (several different types) at least enough to put some up or dry. There's a monster watermelon vine growing in my front flower bed...from that Fourth of July seed spitting contest. It has 6 or 7 very nice melons on it, a couple of them must weigh over 5 lbs. It will be interesting to see if they can mature before frost. Right now I'm concentrating on oil spraying my tender plants so they can be moved into the solarium and collecting seeds from my perennials and peppers and mulching. We planted several berries, grapes and fruit trees in the spring and so far most everything has made it. I'm currently preparing to move my business to the house and there is alot involved with that which also affects my gardens. I'm very low on compost so I'm working in peat and alfalfa pellets as the beds clear. I figure the added organic will help in the spring...we'll see! BG

 

[pkchicken]

september in the pkchicken gardens

this report may sound negative but I don't feel negative about my garden, every failure is a lesson learned and I am always grateful for the food I pick from the garden.

The apples are ripe but wormey....guess we didnt spray enough.

the pears are ready to pick but the kids don't like them....not to worry...the fruit flies like them just fine.

the wind from francis blew over the jerusalem artechokes, but the stems are turning upward and maybe I can cover the exposed roots with compost and soil...they still might do ok.

The tomato plants have been slowly dying from that fungus thing that we get every year. If it cools off enough, the plants sometimes set up more blossoms...we shall see. But!!! on the plus side, I've canned 106 jars of tomatos, frozen many containers of sauce, and dehydrated a buncha bags. Got plenty for the winter.

Unbelievable year for okra here. We're still picking. The plants are 6 and 7 foot tall and still healthy.

The collards are getting bigger and have less bugs. They really grow best here in the fall. when the air gets cooler.

Many of the swiss chard plants survived the summer and as soon as the air gets cooler we'll have swiss chard on the dinner table again.

Raspberries !! I forgot that the kind we have set fruit in the late summer too! We have raspberries!!

Our zuchini never recovered that problem we had in the early summer, I think bugs were eating the blossoms but the plants are still alive so I'll just watch them.

The lima bean trellis's fell over in the wind and reduced the output .

the blackeye peas that we grew for the first time this year are doing great. We've been cooking them and making a salad out of them with green beans onions and italian salad dressing.

Kids are back to school and I have a bit of time on my hands again to collect firewood and play with the composts. Good thing too, the weeds are taking over!!

Can't think of anything else right now. I love my garden!!

pk

 

[ShepInTheValley]

PK dang girl, you must have a huge garden. Congratulations on having raspberries.

I'm so excited... I canned a bunch of jalapeno pepper rings today. That's not what I'm excited about tho.

After our neighborhood Bible Study Thursday night I was talking to my neighbor about wanting to can some pepper rings but that I wanted to do them in really small jars... like baby food jar size. But I wasn't sure if the newer baby food jars would work since they make the lids differently than they used to. I asked her if she thot the fluid might seep out and she thot it might too.

But she went to her cupboard and pulled out a bunch of small jars that had screw on lids (just like the pickle jars are nowadays). She'd been using them for storage jars for her kids toys beads, etc.

Today I washed them up, boiled the lids, filled the jars with the pepper rings, garlic, some oregano for flavoring then covered with a boiling brine solution. Then I water bathed them in a canner and THEY SEALED!!!

So NOW we know those jars CAN be reused for this type of thing! DH will go crazy cause now I'll be saving all THOSE jars too (giggle)! Ok, ok... so maybe some of you already knew you could reuse those jars, but I didn't.

 

[dexev]

My little city garden had a tough year:

* The cats found my seed-sprouting bed in the basement, and did what cats do to a nice warm, sunny spot in the dirt. Gave up on the peppers completely, bought tomato starts at the nursery.

* Crows ate all my corn the day after it sprouted. It was heartbreaking -- the first time in three years of corn that I'd actually gotten the planting time right. Zero corn this year.

* I pushed my squash seed too far -- zero germination (or did the crows get that, too?)

* Bought my asparagus crowns; was later informed that the asparagus bed was really a cutting garden for the Mrs' flowers. Crowns died in the box before I could give them away.


Some good news:

* I'm overrun with tomatoes this year. I may run out of time to get them all ripe, but at the least there will be plenty of green salsa. Strangely, all of my tomato varieties are ripening to an orange color this year -- most of the first flush rotted on the vine while I was waiting for them to turn red!

* If the weather holds on for a few more weeks, it looks like I might get three honeydew melons out of my single hill this year (Don't laugh, southern folk!)

* There was a bumper crop of 6 artichokes in late July.

And that about does it. The cole crops went in last week (fingers crossed), garlic and shallots go in when the tomatoes come out.

-mike

 

[ShepInTheValley]

Blue Gecko - why do you spray oil on "... tender plants so they can be moved into the solarium"? What does that do? And what plants do you do that to?

Dexey - I love those low-acid orange tomatoes. I got lucky and had plenty of those and the yellow ones this year for meals and BLT's... and used all my roma and regular tomato plants for canning.

I was told if you had vines with green tomatoes not fully ripened and expecting a hard freeze, you could pull the plants up and hang them upside down in a cool, dark space inside, allowing the tomatoes to ripen the rest of the way.

I'm hoping to dig up a couple tomato plants and bell pepper plants to bring in before winter. The tomato plant I brought in last year didn't do so good, but I'm still working on getting a green thumb. Boy the grasshoppers are bad!

 

[ioujc]

GOOD LORD....I'm TIRED!!!

Just finished cleaning out underneath 40 rabbit cages and cleaning the cages, nest boxes and feeders, water bottles, etc.
Also more than DOUBLED the size of my garden over the past two weeks......gotta dump all that bunny poop somewhere! Anyway, should have a REALLY BIG garden next spring!!! Have 3 - 40 foot raised beds, and 1 - 30 foot bed.....SO FAR!!!! Plan to raise ALL my foods, except for some basics, next year! Still gonna buy coffee, sugar, flour and beans, but everything else is gonna come out of MY GROUND!!! And the rabbit poop continues to MOUNT!!!
I am really looking forward to it...been trying to get to this level for awile now!
Continued to experiment with fresh foods for the bunnies that I forage. Have ID'd the broadleaf weed that they SO DEARLY LOVE...they almost attack me when I bring it to them!! It is....CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?????....GIANT RAGWEED!!!! But, I'm not allergic to it, and they ABSOLUTELY ADORE it!! I even gathered a small coffee can of the seeds today from the plants that are still standing!! OK....so I'm WEIRD!! Who else do you know would PLANT RAGWEED???? Also have narrowed down the vine they like so much...it is either Climbing False Buckwheat (that's what I think it is) or Black Bindweed, they look very similar. I am waiting for the seeds to ripen on those, which will help to further ID the plant, and also to gather the seeds for sowing this coming spring. The problem here is we have a fairly heavy flood every spring, and most of the seeds wash away down to the National Forest Land right next to us, and by gathering the seeds, I can have the plants readily available, instead of stomping through the woods, since the bunnies put quite a dent in the available plants growing on our land!
Continuing to get tomatos, zukes, green beans, and eggplant from the garden. My cukes are dying out, and the eggplants are too. I'm still waiting to harvest the sweet taters, they did well, as far as vines in the tires I planted them in....how well they made taters remains to be seen....should know in the next coupla weeks.
Two of my does had litters about 10 days ago, they are just opening their eyes now. One had 8 on her first breeding, and I'm not sure how many the other one had...she's skittish and I'm afraid to mess with them or try to even count them. It was her first breeding too. The first bun, Blackberry (she's solid black, lost 4 of her eight kits, two of them stuck their heads through the wire and got stuck and died, and two of them got stuck in the wire floor.....too bad, because they are BIG HUGE babbies! I bred her with a NZ White, and she has 2 white babies, one BEATIFULLY marked brown, and one solid black left alive. The brown one is a light beige, and has white tips on his ears, and a white "necklace" of fur....a real cutie!!
All 4 are gonna be BIG rabbits! This makes at least 39 rabbits for us!
The ones that didn't make it were another brown one, a black one, and two more whites...we WILL do better next time!! She didn't have a very good nest box and that was the problem, had no lip in the front.....She is my FAVORITE bun....she was a pet for a little girl, and when we bought her, she was ALREADY spoiled...now she's worse!! Of all my rabbits, she begs and comes to the front of her cage whenever I am near...I REALLY LIKE her!!
I have been feeding them all tomatos, eggplant, and cukes all summer, in addition to carrots, wild plants, as mentioned above, hay, bananas, cantaloupe, watermelon, corn, (which most say NOT to feed, but I give each of them about a 2 inch section of corn on the cob about once a weekand they LOVE it, and have had no problems). Also blackberries, (the plants too, wild grape vines and leaves, maple leaves and twigs, and sassafrass leaves and twigs. They also got wild carrots, Indian wheat, grass, and apples. I have HEALTHY rabbits!! Most of the advise I have read says to feed only rabbit pellets....but they are doing fine. I also feed about 1 cup of pellets to each one every day...they are BIG rabbits!!
Let's see....what else is going on????
For some reason ouyr pear tree dropped all it's fruit at the end of last month. It was no where near ripe. So, I guess no pear butter or jelly this year....dog gone it!I have to prune the peaches and the plum and pear trees yet...gotta do that SOON!
Oh yeah! Caught a MAJORLY BIG SALE on GARDEN SEEDS at Big Lots! The seed packets were 2 cents each!!!! Bought EVERYTHING...especially CARROTS...for the buns you know! Got just about any kind of seed you could want...except crooked neck squash...for some reason there were no seeds of that! Bought lots of herbs and flowers too, but mostly veggies.
With my garden growing in size, I am planning how I will arrange things. I am going to put a bird bath in the middle, and maybe some sort of fountain....maybe, our well can't handle continuos free flowing water, so it will have to recycle. Also am going to plant okra and corn in a BIG patch at the back of the property, at the bottom of the hill, for the deer! As well as clover and some alfalfa to attract deer...comes in a packet from NA Hunting Club, you know.
Also gotta plant some peach seeds I saved, and go get some persimmons when they start to fall, and plant the seeds along the side of our property, again for the deer, as well as to make my FANTASTIC Persimmon Walnut Bread! Our walnut trees started bearing this year....about 10 of them, but not many nuts yet, they are too young. DH planted them when he bought the place, about 8 years ago. That's about all I can think of right now....

 

[A.T.Hagan]

This is sad.

Here it is twenty days into September and what have I done this month in the way of homesteading stuff?

Well, one time near the beginning of the month I pulled up the nutgrass from the camellia bed. Not that you can tell from looking at them right now, it's all come back and more!

I've pulled sandspurs up and pulled sandspurs up and still couldn't get ahead of them.

I picked the first persimmon off my tree yesterday and the day before yesterday I finally got a chance to mow the grass right in front of the house where I'd put the most fertilizer down and where the most sandspurs were growing.

That's IT.

What have I been occupying my time with?

Mostly with hurricanes! Until this last weekend if it were daylight, not raining, and I was at home I was getting ready for Charley.

Then Frances.

Then Ivan!

Sigh...

Ah well, one bright spot is that my dad bought my tractor so I could order my John Deere LT180 mower. Supposed to be here on Wednesday. Haven't mown the grass in over a month now and it's completely out of control. I'll have to raise the mower deck to it's highest level and take the grass down in stages I think.

We got so much rain from Frances that the dry lake bed behind us has begun to fill. The part right next to my property is now somewhere between a small pond and a really big mud puddle. The downside of this is the ENORMOUS number of mosquitoes that have suddenly appeared. We've never had much of a mosquito problem up here on the sand ridge (relative to the rest of Florida) but not any more! Man, in the evening when I go to close up the hen house they try to carry me off bodily.

I'm investigating the possibility of stocking some sort of fish fingerlings that will eat mosquito larvae which seems a better strategy than trying to simply spray them all.

This morning it was quite cool outside, in the low sixties, and it felt wonderful. If it stays like this through the weekend maybe I'll be able to start cleaning up from the storm. I really wasn't looking forward to firing up the chainsaw.

.....Alan.

 

[Freeholdfarm]

Let's see if I can remember all the things that popped into my mind as I was reading this thread!

Asparagus: we just had a visit from one of my uncles. He lives in Walla Walla, WA, which is a major growing area -- huge wheat fields right behind his house, and lots of other stuff. I hadn't known, though, that asparagus was one of the things grown there. He said that the packing plant for asparagus is going out of business -- henceforth all canned asparagus in the stores is going to come from South America (at least according to what he said). I was already planning on planting asparagus in the spring, but may make the bed larger than I'd planned.

Garden: it has frosted every night for the last week or ten days. I covered the tomatoes and peppers with clear plastic held down along the edges with T-posts, and the plants are still alive. There are a bunch of Cubanelle peppers ready to pick (I'm down sick today, so don't know if I'll pick today or not), and some of the green tomatoes are starting to turn yellow. They are small, but if they will just ripen I won't quibble over size! Grandma picked beets and canned 17 pints (remember this lady is 91 years old! ) while I was busy with other things. We've been using carrots, though some are small, and potatoes. I had ordered a package of seven different varieties from Ronnigers, and so far all seem to have done pretty well, considering that the it's the first time there has ever been a garden here and the soil needs a lot of work. I really like Allred. It didn't get very big, but is so pretty! And maybe when the soil is in better shape they'll get bigger. I'm hoping to be able to keep enough seed potatoes through the winter that we won't have to order more next year, but we don't have a root cellar or a basement, so we'll see if the pump house works or not. I'm going to try to store carrots and flower bulbs in there, too. Let's see. I'm going to feed the corn to the goats. The ears are just getting ripe, but didn't pollinate well, so they are hardly worth husking. Next year I want to plant Painted Mountain, though Grandma will want some sweet corn as well -- garden isn't really big enough for two varieties of corn, but I'll try. I've got beans to pick, though the plants are frosted out. And I think we actually got a small pumpkin, a tiny Sweet Meat squash, and a few tiny acorn squash (the acorn squash plant is covered with a sheet -- it's a bush variety -- and only the outermost leaves are frosted). We ate peas until they came out of our ears! And I've discovered that goats like pea vines better than alfalfa -- and the milk production increases on pea vines, too, even when they are dry.


I finally got some of the surplus roosters butchered, have four left to do. The hens and other two roos are still in the plastic pipe chicken tractor, but the wood ones are nearing completion, finally (only a couple of months later than they should have been finished!). We started getting pullet eggs about a week or so ago -- one hen is laying double-yolkers. I let the hens out of the chicken tractor overnight before I butchered the roosters, so I could keep feed away from the roos prior to slaughter, and was wondering why the hens didn't seem to be eating any of the feed I put out for them. Then I looked around -- we've only been able to mow the place twice this year, and in addition to quite a bit of alfalfa, we have a quantity of some kind of grain, possibly wheat, gone to seed. I wish I could have left the hens out longer, but they were going through the fence into the neighbor's yard (she found two eggs in her flower beds -- I don't think she was too upset about the hens, because she brought us a whole bunch of apples from their tree later! ). Also there are frequently loose dogs running around the neighborhood. I've been debating about possibly getting ducklings to replace the chickens when they are through laying. The primary factor is that when I duck down to go into the chicken tractor, I'm a little worried about getting attacked in the face by one of the roosters. Another factor is that if we ever did have to bug out into the wilderness, it would be much easier to hide nice quiet ducks than noisy chickens!

The goats are doing great. Finally got the buck shelter finished (it's a cattle panel hoop house with a tarp on it) and got the little buck clear away from the does. He still has the wether for company so isn't completely alone, and he and the does can see each other, but there is no more possibility of illicit contact through the fence! I don't want kids in the middle of the winter, and I don't want my little does kidding before they get a chance to grow up. I like my Kinder goats, but am seriously considering replacing them with a larger breed, probably Oberhasli's (but definitely not white Saanans, which would stand out a little too well on a mountainside). Partly it's the bug-out factor -- larger breeds would make better pack goats. And partly it's because if I'm only allowed to sell milk from up to nine does without being a licensed dairy, maybe I ought to have larger does that will give more milk. I'm going to mull this one over for a while before making a decision. Wish we had space to keep two breeds here, but that's out of the question for now.

We have visited the local Farmer's Market the last two Saturdays and I'm encouraged and making plans for next year. I was afraid it might be too small and lethargic to be worth the bother, but it has about twenty vendors and seemed very active while we were there. I bought some nice clover honey, and am hoping to get my own hives going next year! Grandma bought some apples, which the vendor told her were Gravensteins, but they aren't. They also aren't ripe, whatever they are. I only saw one person selling flowers, which will probably be my best bet since we only have a small amount of land, so that looks hopeful, too.

The deer, which have been walking through the garden every single night without taking a single bite of anything, have finally started nibbling. Definitely needs a high fence around it next year! I have the stuff, just have had too many other projects to get around to it yet. Our major weed problem has been wild morning-glories (bindweed). I was pulling it for a while but it got ahead of me, so I have a lot of catching up to do now that the weather has cooled off. And we have a whole bunch of fall bulbs to plant. That will be a project, because I have to water the area for a while before the ground will be soft enough to dig. But next year I'll have a hundred King Alfred daffodils to brighten the spring!

Kathleen