harvesting

More Elderberries!

I picked a couple more flats of elderberries this weekend.  Katherine was great and de-stemmed the entire lot!  Just before we left I picked again and got this many:

Picked just before we left!

The elderberry total is up to about 12.5 gallons (as measured by how many gallon freezer bags full we have - they weight about 4 lbs each).

Paw-paw patch clean up and shell bean picking

I got back into the paw-paw patch to pick the beans.  I pulled and picked all the shell beans, accelerate and velour and also picked a few green beans.  This took almost a day and a half as there was plenty of heavy grass in the shell bean rows.  The pumpkins had also grown into the rows a bit so I had to be careful!

Here are some pictures:

The sweet potatoes and green beans - cleaned up a bit!

Small amount of green beans in the bag.  The shelled out accelerate beans are in the bowl.  Just a few, but enough maybe to use as seed for next year!

A closer shot of the beans

The whole patch now.  Just sweet potatoes, some green beans and pumpkins are all that's left.

While picking the shell beans I found this!  Its a snake skeleton!  I don't think I ever saw one before!

Possibly the last of the Cucumbers?  The plants are looking pretty rough.

A little corn left.  Enough for dinner anyway.

First Eggplant!

Broc is still coming in!

Finally enough tomatoes to do something with!

Lactino Kale.  

Pumpkins

Not as big as I was thinking they would be

Hopefully weather effects do not cause these to spoil too fast...

Broc plants hanging in there

The sprouts on the right there are looking good.

See the little sprouts forming?

These should be ready far before they were last year.

Bell peppers are looking ok.  Not as good as the ones in the city, but still pretty good

Eggplants are kicking it!

Looks like a good year for eggplants, thats for sure.

A few cabbages survived.  Maybe get 6 or so this year.

Thats a butternut tree coming out the top of the tube!

English walnuts are freaking going crazy!

Nut trees seemed to have a good year all around

Locust trees are fighting.  Some lost the battle.  I will have to mark some volunteers around the property and transplant some next spring.

Castor Beans about to bloom!

These are going to be fantastic i think!

Can hardly wait to see these full out!

Stupid birds are doing this all over!  i saw moms peaches pecked up like this too.

Peache trees seem to have stopped loosing leaves now.  Thanks goodness

I put this brace on te asian pears - even after taking about 15-20 off it was still bending the tree too low!

Total take for the weekend.

Tomatoes made up into chili base using Mrs. Wages mix!  10 pints plus a little more.

Canned the remaining peaches!

I brought the peaches back to the "city" house to process.  I got to them Tuesday night.  Thanks goodness that I didn't wait any longer - they were well on their way to decomposing!

Anyway, they took ages to clean and process because they were so small!  I was up until 11:30pm.

After all the processing, I got 6 quarts and a bit less than one pint.  Total  from mom's peaches is then 4.5+6.5 = 11 quarts.  Not bad.  Unfortunately, one of the quarts I processed last night did not seal, so I placed it in the fridge.  I will make a pie or just eat them.  I looked at the lid and think it was a bad lid seal that caused the failure.  There were 2 indentations in the rubber portion that may have caused the issue.

The one with the canning band on is the one that didn't seal.  The pint in back is mostly full, but not entirely.

Castor beans are looking pretty!  Still growing but many of them have some nice blooms on.

Photo does not do justice.

I found a few pattypan squash!  I have 2 of each type of summer squash (that I am familiar with anyway).
2 pattypan, 2 crook neck (yellow), and 2 zucchini.  

Big elderberry weekend!  Picked and destemmed 5.75 gallons!
Katherine did the bulk of the destemming - thank you!

While Katherine started in on destemming the elderberries, I took off to Mom;s to get pick some peaches! I got about 1.25 bushel.  Some of them were in pretty rough shape.  

I was able to sort out the worst and can 4 quarts and one pint.  I have about a half bushel left to process yet.  Taking them back to process this week.

Picked most of the corn in the front patch this weekend!

Here is some more of it!  Despite being an off year because of the rain, the corn did quite well!
This was the least amount of corn I have planted and the yield 

All blanched and cut off the cob - ready to bag and freeze.  Ended up with 19 pints!  That means the total yield for that small  patch was 23 pints (plus probably and 3-4 pints that we ate along the way).

While Katherine was blanching and cutting the corn off the cob, I built and installed some tomato trellis!  

I hope these are good at holding up the tomatoes.  They installed fairly easily.  These were made from those "sticker strips" I made from the old oak and locust "crap" logs left over from the garage excavation.  Waste not, want not!  They just need to last the season.  Except for some screws use to attach the frame to the posts these should be easy to chip into mulch after the season is over.