The homestead

We’ve been a little busy on non-farm related stuff lately.  As stated before, we bought a fixer upper so we’ve been concentrating on getting some much needed repairs done before winter.  Here’s some pictures of work on our foundation and new drainage we put in.  We are currently working on new windows for the house.  Gathering up wood from various wood piles throughout the property.  Still haven’t put the greenhouse up yet.  Today I spent half the day picking up trash.  There was an amazing amount of trash left behind by the prior owners.  MAJOR AMOUNTS.  We’ve be picking up trash for a very, very long time.

Update

No pictures this time.  It’s been a while since I posted.  Lots of struggles with growing this year.  We put lime down, then gypsum, then bloodmeal, manure tea and then compost to try and get things growing.  The last two seemed to do the trick.  We got beans, but had very few leaves on the beans.  They looked funny.  We’ve been getting summer squash and zukes.  Our green peppers aren’t very big and new ones don’t seem to be coming.  Our glads are looking great.  Still no red tomatoes.  Killed a couple tomato hornworms.  Those things are nasty but I have to say they are pretty.  Potatoes – some flowered, some didn’t.  Now we have the stupid potato beetles.  Should be interesting to see how much if any potatoes we get this year.  This may be the last year of growing them.  They take too much space and the last few years, the harvest has not been the greatest.  Couldn’t grow lettuce; couldn’t grow beets.  Had to buy beets to make pickled beets.  Bought 2 pecks.  Canned up 90 pints!!!  That should last me a while.  We’ve been getting plenty of cucumbers – they seem to be unaffected by the soil.  The weeds are beginning to come.  Not enough hours in the day between working a full time job.  The markets have been pretty good.  We have a lot of work to do on the house, i.e. dig a trench around the house and put in drainage, hoping for a roof and need to split some more firewood.  All before winter of course.  Really need more time.  Haven’t even got the greenhouse up yet – so much for fall/winter growing.  The list keeps getting longer and daylight keeps getting shorter.  Also, we lost both bee hives.  The joys of farming!

June 26 a very productive day!

Well I’ve just had the week off and was it nice.  Sure would like another week off!  Back to work tomorrow.  Of all the days this past week I have to say this was the most productive and it was only 1/2 a day!

It started when we got a visit from a friend yesterday who had tons of extra veggie plants that he was tossing out and wanted to know if we could use them.  So off I went this morning to pick them up.  316 various plants consisting of broccoli, cauliflower, egg plant, brussel sprouts, hot peppers, bell peppers, and cabbage.  Got them all planted today.  Here’s some pictures.

cauliflower and cabbage.

Sometimes a picture just doesn’t capture what you are looking.  In the forefront are 3 rows of potatoes that I just hilled up, then cabbages and lettuce and squashes plus others.

Another sideways picture that I don’t know how to make straight!  Annoying!  Hot peppers and cauliflower.

Strawberry garden and other plants.

Other half of strawberry garden:  glads, onions and radishes.

Chicken in the strawberry garden!  Why can’t they stay in their fenced in area which has nice green grass!

Pictures about the land

Tons of old fashioned rose bushes.

A very fragrant plant but not sure what it is possibly honeysuckle?

Comfrey, comfrey everywhere!

Little apples – tons of them!

Beautifully fragrant deep pink rose bush.

Pictures about the land

Here’s some various shots around the property.  Tons of old fashion rose bushes – very fragrant!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garden planted

 Here’s some various pictures of the garden planted.  Just put in 250 glad bulbs this morning before the rain got to heavy.  Also put in the kale and some basil.  Started more flats inside with cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage and basil.  Those will go out later to continue our succession planting.  In the pictures our huge garden.  At the beginning in this picture is field peas and oats just starting to come up.  Nothing planted here yet – just trying to improve the soil a bit since this is our first year here.

Next is our tomatoes on our trelis system:  cow panels.  Also have a bit of cucumbers on the trelis system too.  Works great!

Next are various shots of beans, zukes and squash and overall size of garden with view of back of house and beautiful barn (ha ha, its coming down).  You can also see the pooling water in between the rows as its been raining all day.  That goodness for raised beds.

 

 

 

 

Too much water!

I’ve got flats of veggies ready to go out in the garden but as you can see there is mini-lakes out in the field.  Very depressing.  Also, deer, turkey, fox and dog tracks too.  Need to rototil again and put fence up before planting but can’t even do that because it’s still too wet.  It looks like it will be a very late harvest year.

Saving in silver?

www.silversaver.com is the way to go!

May 7, 2011

I love weekends.  A lot seems to get done.  Finished planting the 500 strawberry fields in the wet muck.  My husband says we should be planting rice instead of strawberries!  Picked up our 20 week old chickens today. Here they are on the right meeting the existing chickens on the left.  Also planted some black currant plants.  Hope to add some of these each year as I want to dabble in wine and jam and it is yummy!  Also I’ve included a picture of the seedlings that are started:  tomatoes, peppers, basil, kale, lettuces, cabbages, cucumbers.  Will be starting squash and zuke this weekend.  And, last but not least, finished off with the vest I started knitting in November.  Yep, it takes a long time for me to get a knitting project done.

Testing

Just seeing if my new social media “Hoot Suite” will post my feed to my facebook site.  Hopefully it will work.