Have a lot of pics..

So I finally downloaded my camera today. Heh, just a smidge over 100 pics since last October. I really should not do that.

Anywho, all the Halloween Village pics are now pulled, as are a couple tutorials- one on how I set up the winter composting bins, and another about how I make vanilla sugar.

Got some random pics to share too :)

This is a random winter dinner around here. A fussy one, but hey, sometimes fussy is nice. We were torn between open face grilled cheese or maybe some scrambled eggs and hash browns? Hmmm..

 In the front left corner are the little grill pans for the raclette grill. Butter, cheese slices...

 Mmmm, cheese. An assortment of white tomatoes and Dwarf Wild Fred black tomatoes. Fresh sliced onions, and a wee bit of sliced yellow pepper.

 This is a raclette grill. It has this nice grill on top, a potent heating element underneath- that serves as the broiler element for the little pans that were in the first picture. I put it on a block to help keep it safe and raise up the platform a bit.

A small loaf of homemade herb and wheat bread, sliced thin and ready to toast. Hash browns and scrambled eggs are in dishes sitting on a tableside dish warmer.

So dinner was fun and fussy, all of us chatting as we made our little sandwiches and mini egg dishes and ate them up.

Heh, I should post up more food stuff. I post a lot of gardening and preserving stuff, but not enough food stuff. We do a lot of good food stuff here. I did a stellar beef soup last night- we had one last package of a lovely beef roast that needed to come out of the fridge and get eaten up. The broth was so thick and rich, we left it as is and didn't bother thickening it into a more hearty stew form.
Found out that sweet potatoes require a lot more flour and a bit less mild when making scalloped potatoes and ham the other night. I wanted to use some of them up- they were ones grown in our own garden, and they were damn delish. I still have a small heap of fingerlings left to eat up too.

And little bits to use up... I found out recently that I can build a perennial garlic patch. Or rather, a couple of them, lol. We so run out of garlic scapes way too soon now that we have discovered them. Anywho. I came across a tidbit where some folks grow out their tiny garlic cloves, use them like chives in the late winter/early spring when your stored garlic sometimes wants to start sprouting.. then after a spring snipping, plant the clumps out into the yard where they want garlic to grow in the future.

So I potted up a bunch of little bits in an 8" pot.

On day one, not much to look at. But hey, any good gardening juju I can get going on, I'm a taking it.

And today, it's been a puttering kind of day. Snowing on an off, sometimes pretty bad, other moments the sun is totally out. So I cleaned out the fridge, and dinked around with my camera. I need to get out and refill some of the wild critter eats, but nuh-uh, it's shitty out right now, lol.

On a whole nother random note.. We had a sewer problem yesterday. Well, actually a couple weeks. The toilets on the main part of the house were gurgling. Then the laundry machine made the lines super gurgle. Then nothing, the toilets quit working. Well shit. Turns out the main drain line needed reaming again. This is something that is going to need to go onto a yearly schedule. I did actually remember to change the furnace filter at the beginning of the month :) That too is something not to fall behind on again. Now what needs attention next is our well, it's getting rather bad. I got the phone numbers of a couple local well companies from Town & Country. They steered us right with the furnace guy, figured I'd get reference again.

So, now I'm up and about again. Got lots to do any only so many hours of daylight to burn, even if we are getting delightfully into actual evening for sunset now.

BeesNeeds Etsy shop is open again!!!

Yep, the etsy shop is back up and running again. It has just been crazy enough of a summer with a lot of other things going on that I kind of had to let the listings just go out and take a deep breath and get through this time.

So now there is jewelry, hand knitted and croched slippers, and some really cook 3D printed stuff. Soon up I will get some more beaded goodness completed for the store, plus I'm starting to do up germination trials on the earliest of my harvested seed. And of course with Halloween coming up, I'm trying to squeeze in a round of getting some good stuff out.

The weather has been pretty wet- so I've been popping outside between the rain drops to do some harvesting and tending to gardens- but mostly cleaning and re-arranging the solarium. It has desperately been needing some care and clean up. It still needs a bunch of hours of work- hauling stuff to where it needs to be hauled off to and general cleaning. Sorting some stuff. But now that I'm thinking about it, it really is my entire workshop- art and craft stuff, gardening, and food stuff. So it's past time I take a bit of tending to that and get it squared up and useable.

I've been a good kid and keeping up with my putting up list- some of my dehydrating is stacking up- I got heaps of stuff in the freezer and the fresh is accumulating slowly...  and canning for real is accumulating. Bummer, another burner is no longer functional on the stove, so I'm down to using two burners very carefully and one electric hot plate. Good thing I've gotten good with small batch processing.

In cooking.. now that I have perfected the Southern Style Squash Casserole.. and I think I'm almost got it set with the Baked White Jambalya casserole... and want something else to do with squash. I'm testing out a Squash Enchilada casserole. I'm thinking about firing up the smoker this weekend to smoke up a bunch and then dehydrating it- the squash might suck up the smoking great then become some incredible smoked powder.

So now it's the 22nd, the weekend. I got the smoker running right now, filled with peppers and black tomatoes. Some of the bean seed in containers never popped, so I planted in some Sugar Pod 2 and Dwarf Grey Sugar peas for fall harvesting, well, hopefully harvesting. Top Crop beans down in the raised bed look great! Which is good because the other bean bed is starting to get shot. Squash plants are starting to crap out too, and it's time to leave a few on the plants to fully mature for future seed stock. The cukes are kind of crapping out too. Tomato cages have fallen over again, and been put back up again. Finally got some tomatoes for seed- a yellow in red out, and one lone snow white.

Got the solarium completely cleaned up, and wow, it looks nice. Actually makes me want to work out there again. I rearranged the counters and boards into one whopping big hutch along the south windows.

Now I have counter space- and the counters can be removed if needed to use elsewhere, say perhaps to make a halloween village? Plus the two shelves up top- obviously Nova decided I set that up just for him, lol. The top shelf currently has all my seed starting stuff stacked across it, but if I need to, I can use that for plants, or to hang lights up high for seed starting.

And I picked the biggest tomato in the garden...

Jack Whites really do grow huge!

But anywho, I got dinner to make and gardens to tend.. and everything else, lol.

Trying to keep up...

Gonna try doing a few days worth of entries at a crack to see if that helps me keep up with the blog more, lol.


So, today is 8/13. I got all the water out of it's catch tubs and bottled up. Planted in the rest of the asparagus plants on the back 40. Watered in containers and the new green bean bed. Moved the Martins Carrot pepper and Silvery Fir tree buckets to the kitchen porch side of the garden so they can get some extra TLC.

Got more tomatoes coming in.. right now I have on the table Beaver Lodge, Copper River, Wild Fred, Snow White, White Queen, Jack White, Tomesol, Totem, and Yellow Out, Red In. I'm trying out some picking at first blush and letting the fruits ripen on the counter to see how well or not that goes.

Right now the freezer and fridge are stuffed stupidly full. Local market had a buy two, get three free on cheeses and meats, and yep, super stocked up on that. Been putting in some serious cooking too- had to put moms ribs in the freezer today in a squeak in space, lol. So no putting tomatoes in the freezer to keep for now, bummer.

Yesterday and today have been cucumber slices on my new dehydrator... Oh, didn't I mention my new dehydrator? Belated birthday present. I made a note of it in my preservation list. Yes, this year I'm being a good kid and keeping track of everything I'm putting up in one blog post. The list is pretty long so far and I'm just starting to swing into the season. Sometime shortly after New Years I'll post it up.

And just a couple random pics.. one of the thirteen pounds of garlic I harvested this year, and just a nice pic of random produce that was sitting on the table tonight.

It's 8/16.. got a smidge of a catch up... On Friday, I worked then it was an evening of socialization with family.. an aunt and uncle in law that I hadn't met yet, then dinner with the inlaws. Mum of course made a smashing dinner, and my FIL served up some lovely wines. The company was wonderful :)
 Then on the ride home, we got a nasty but brief storm. How brief? About 30 minutes. How nasty? enough to topple over three of my tomato cages entirely, and it would have been four if the cage hadn't been caught by the webbing on the trellis. So it was a holy shit morning of getting the cages back upright again.

In a way, I think the cages were both the fault and the save. The tomatoes are really filling up the cages, making them columns of tippyness... but the cages saved the tomatoes from the super crush that a smaller cage would have suffered. Just resetting the tent stakes sufficed for two of the cages, but the one closest in this pic, a Snow White, needed a few re-enforcement rods and a pitchfork stuck in on it's lean side- the cage was really ganked up on the bottom. I think in future years I will be smarter to use 6 stakes instead of 4 in each cage. And keep on it with the inside trimming to help prevent top heaviness, though really, of the bigger whites the primary crop is down low from when the rains were great. Then there is a center section that don't have much, and now I'm getting serious topsets.

Rest of the day was spent tinkering around with jugging up water, and trimming some plants, bla bla bla. Made a chowder of all sorts of dried veggies, fresh taters, and ham. It was frigging good.. but with all the other cooking I've been doing in the last few days, we have a few days worth of leftovers to eat up or freeze soon..  and not much room in the freezer either. Hurry up and shuffle, eat it up, freeze it- vacuum seal for the fridge- eat it up, dehydrate it.. lol.

I know I'm a farmer year round- well almost, I get a winter break for a couple months like teachers do for summer. But hoo-boy this time of year really packs the days in for what to do with it all. I want to get a second chest freezer to sit down in the pole barn for "seriously deep freeze" kind of action so I can do up all the seasons produce, make ahead meals, plus be able to get a side of beef, or pork, or both and have room for hens once we get that going on too. Sometimes I just need prep room in a freezer that I don't have. Sometimes I need to mega put aside stuff. Sometimes we lose power and... shit, I need a pressure canner too, for a lot of other food preservation. It never ends :)

Today was more of the same. Fussy early morning tinking around in the garden picking and such. Afternoon spent in the kitchen frying up a ton of bacon that got pulled out of the freezer and forgotten about- so hours later I had to fry it up or lose it all. Boiled up a dozen eggs for lunches this week, I got a lot of work. Prepped up four trays of sliced tomatoes for the dehydrator- Wild Freds, Tumbling Toms, Beaver Lodge, and Yellow out Red in. Diced up a gallon of various white tomatoes for canning in the morning- the earliest of the blushes have indeed broken and it was time to get on it. And a gallon of dice is pretty good for a couple small batches of canning up pints. Tomatoes take longer to process than pickles, so I would rather go smaller than bigger. Or go really fucking big and hook up the outdoor brewing kettle- but I don't have enough tomatoes for that.. yet.

But it's time to post and get on with more stuff, lol.

How does my garden grow?

So for my second post, this one with all the gardening pics in it. A lot of stuff is up and growing right now.. plus I have a whole heap of pics from when I built the tomato cages to share.
On with the pics!!

This is the kind of fencing I used- 2x4 inch holes, 6 feet tall, 50 feet long. Perfect to make 8 cages with.

This is what the roll of the stuff looks like.

Measure carefully, every section. The sections were each supposed to be 6 feet, 3 inches, but in order to make life easier, I snipped to one side of a square, leaving me long legs to wrap with. This meant I went between 6'2" and 6'4" cuts. I used the wheelbarrow to weight down one edge, and the weight of the fencing to hold it on the other side.

Use the wire cutters carefully, the stuff wants to roll up once the cut is made, and that stuff is sharp!

The stuff wants to roll up after being cut, but that's ok, because it helps it make it's nice big circle instead of the tight on the roll circle.

A closeup of how the leg part of the cut gets twisted around the square side to secure the two sides together.

One done cage, showing the edge where it's "stitched" together.

Three down, only 5 more to go!

They are super light to carry, but kind of awkward because of how big they are and how short I am, lol. But well worth the investment and time used to make them.
So now for heaps of garden pics...

 So.. the kennel garden. Not much to look at from there. That crazy vine thing to the right is the hops. I lost the Cascade, but the Nugget came back right fine- it's already so big I've started training it to cross over the top of the runs. My stringing project of a couple years ago is finally getting used!!

The west side of the kennel garden. To the right snugged up against the ropes is Eye of the Tiger beans, and the far end is supposed to be melons, but I haven't had much luck with that so far, lol.
To the left, in the front is a Yellow out, Red in tomato, and behind it are two of the white tomatoes. In the very front is my Futzu black squash.

The north side of the kennel. To the right snugged up against the fence are succotash pole beans, with 5 of the white tomatoes spaced in between. Since the beans are just a grow and forget it till this falls harvest, it can share space on the fence. I only had one Great White tomato survive to planting out, so it's one one in the wayy back.
In the middle is a row of peas- why yes, that does seem like close spacing, but in a month or so those will be wiped out by the heat and taken down, leaving the full space between the fence and tomato cages. On the left are two each of the rest of the white tomatoes. And in the very very front is a pair of my Italian round zukes :)

Here's a closeup of the lone Bloomsdale spinach that actually came up, sharing space with a white cherry tomato, that tiny little plant in the center to the right of the big spinach. The spinach will be allowed to go to seed, which it will do when it starts to get really hot, then it will be pulled, just in time for the tomato to really need the space.

 Hungarian wax peppers- these were an unexpected add on when my sister discovered I did not start any from seed, and demanded pickled peppers which we ate the jeepers out of from last years plants. I did it with 6 plants last year, but I figured I'd only need two this time since I'm growing a lot more other peppers.

Sweet banana peppers- a critter snacked on the one on the right, I'm hoping it will survive anyway. These are to go into the pepper ring mix with the Hungarians.

Tequila sunrise peppers. A very pretty sweet pepper that is small enough to be container grown.

 Bins of container sized tomatoes of various kinds, and that messy looking straw bale has a buttercup squash growing out of it.

And more bins of tomatoes and peppers.

 Sweet potatoes

More sweet potatoes. I also have two more bins up by the porch that I need to eventually move.

 Lasagne bed #1- last years tomato jungle, this years pepper patch. Most of the peppers are planted in, but a few of the super hots just are not big enough yet, and are still in pots. All those craptacular tomato cages actually have a use supporting peppers!

 Lasagne bed #2- what should be a bean bed. And three tomatoes in the back.

Lasagne bed #3- another bean bed, with two Georgscu Chocolate peppers in the back.

The squash and bean bed down by the garlic. I lost my Musquee de Provence, but reseeded it, so here's hoping for the best.

The garlic beds, looking good. They look better now that we got some rain.

And check it out- proof that our cherry trees do indeed make cherries- it's just the critters get them all before we do, lol.

So there we have it.... the second set of pics from the sanctuary.

Picture Day!!

So yesterday I did an epic mow of the entire yard, including getting a section behind the barn cut in... and got 4 spots where there are wild asparagus growing. Now I just need to make sure I get those spots cleaned up and keep prompting the asparagus to grow! There is one stretch where there is an asparagus on either end, and I think I may cultivate that into my asparagus from seed patch. Can't hurt, now can it?
Today was a couple hours out in the woods, taking pics and building a several feet tall deadfall barrier in the back corner. But since I'm waaayyyy behind on posting any pics, I'm going to do that now. I had to cut it down from about 90 pics, lol.

First up, the mint border- it looks scrappy as hell, but just wait till a year or two when it all grows in!

The chocolate mint is in the foreground, and pineapple behind it. The other mints you really can't see.

From the bottom of the hill, you can see the cleared out swaths where mint got planted in. There's still a lot of grass clumps because I gotta leave something there to hold the soil in place till the mint really gets a good foothold.

And we have a Killdeer nest on the arch drive this year. Killdeer are super cute, and play the broken wing act when anyone comes too near their ground nest.

See those sticks on the ground? I placed them there so we wouldn't accidentally lose where the next is and smush the nest.

Here's a closeup of the nest.. those four little round "rocks" in the center are the eggs. Kind of weird that they lay on the ground, but very smart camouflage of the eggs themselves.

Some random flower pics from around the yard..

 Fancy Alliums I planted in on the edge of the herb garden last fall

This is kale that I left to overwinter, and is now in full bloom. Once all those seed pods are ready, I will pick them and have a whole new seed stock of kale for next year.

The rather large snowball bush is in full bloom :) I seriously need to clean that area up a bit more.

And the irises are starting to bloom :)

Moons white irises

Some of the irises blooming behind the solarium.

Iris close up

Nother Iris closeup.

And a lovely yellow iris growing down the row.

And now for pics from my nature walk and barricade building...

A view from the back 40 towards the house.

This is the barricade I built to help keep the crazy truck neighbor from driving onto the back 40. The bulk of it is about 4 feet tall, but the rest of the brush stackup makes it around 9 feet tall or so.

Another angle of the whole thing.

And this is what it looks like from the "approach" side off the property.

And now onto some pretty picture pics :)

Birdsfoot trifoil

Wild blackberry in bloom

Common Cinquefoil. I might also have Dwarf cinquefoil growing out there too, but they are hard to tell apart and I didn't know I was potentially looking for a second kind till after I came back in and identified this one.

Lanceleaf violet, AKA White Bog violet. This is a damn pretty and dainty flower I'm going to for sure encourage growth of the patch on.

Purple milkvetch

Some ferns

More ferny bits :)

I'm going to post this now because I don't want any one post to be too pic heavy... and of course there are garden pics to be had too! Gonna do a second post about that.