Growing Home: Family reunion, mowing, fertilizer, milky spore.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Family reunion, mowing, fertilizer, milky spore.

Cooked up my beets that I gathered last (week before?) week while mulching the front patch. I made Harvard beets. I used the recipe that substitutes half of the vinegar with orange juice. It was about a pound of beets. I left out the sugar (I forgot) , but it was plenty sweet from the OJ and the white beets are sweeter they say.

Harvard beets

Katherine came along to the farm for the family reunion! Yay! Since Katherine made it, I wanted to go to the bulk/Mennonite store - so we did - with Mom and Tom & Julie! We got lots of baking needs, canning supplies (salt) and too much junk food - lol.

After returning home, I mowed the far field - mowers are in good shape now - except front right tire of Huskee is leaking now!

The reunion went well - we took pulled pork and rolls. The event was bigger than it was last year - so maybe its on an upswing. Joe B's entire family was there. Even Connie went! I think for first time in decades!

After the reunion I mowed some more - the "near" field needed mowing because it has been too wet for past couple of weekends. It was still a bit wet - but I didn't want to let it go any longer! Also mowed around the persimmon trees. Eventually, I mowed around the orchard trees too. The pumpkins are really making their way into the orchard grass! After mowing orchard grass, I applied a bag of milky spore (the japanese beetles are really working over my trees this year!) I really need to get a couple more bags of milky spore granules. I got this last bag at Zimmermans in Everett.

I picked several good sized squash and a handful of cuc's. The green beans need weeding. Everything looks pretty rough. I got some lawn high nitrogen fertilizer at Zimmermans last week - but wanted something "safer" - so we stopped at Southern States in Warfordsburg on the way up and I got some blood meal.