Mowing and harvesting stuff.

Mowing first

Finally got the flail mower setup again and mowed the hill and the swamp/flat areas.  I didn't get to the "sheep hollow hill" yet.   I had to mow most of these areas twice because the wild carrots were really tough!  The quality of the mow is a bit rough, but its good enough to keep the thistle and trees at bay (I hope).

Elderberry picking continues

I am not sure if we are half-way through yet, but we have about 13-14 gallons picked and in the freezers!  The freezers are about full too - so .. we might try drying some?

I picked the berries into this container so that we could take them back to the city house to de-stem - ran out of time to do it on the farm over the weekend!

Lace-wing larvae surprise

While de-stemming the berries Katherine got bitten  by something was very painful!  We located the bugger - a very little bug it seems - and looked it up on the internet.   Found out it was a "lace-wing larvae".  Here it is:

They are not venomous but they still hurt like a nasty, evidently.  Only Katherine got bit.  I think my skin is too thick for them to get me.

Sorry for the blur but it was small and this is zoomed in a lot!  

Garlic Harvest

I have been letting the garlic sit in the ground a bit longer than I wanted to, but it has just been too busy and hot to harvest it!  Probably should have got it out of the ground 2-3 weeks ago.  Anyway, we only deweeded it once and had no mulch on it - so the weeds dominated the plan pretty bad.  Here is the entire harvest!

There was a bit more - but it had rotted.  Sigh.  Oh well,  it was a last minute planting anyway so I didnt count on a huge harvest of garlic!

Strawberries and Blackberries

There were finally some blackberries ripe this weekend!  They were hiding down low and many were damaged, but I got some.  I also pulled in some more strawberries from the ever-bearing plants.

Not enough for a pie (unless I used both strawberries and blackberries!).  Enough for dessert or snacking though.  These blackberries are awesome!

Potatoes and tomatoes

While I was down picking the garlic I got carried away pulling weeds and discovered some potatoes and tomatoes!  I dug a couple hills of potatoes.  I picked all of the ripe tomatoes - all volunteers I might add!  One was a bit far gone but it was huge and I was still able to get a couple meals out of it!

Sorry, somehow this is the only picture and I don't show the biggest tomato.  It was delicious though!  Some of the potatoes got stabbed - as usual.  I will sort them out later.

Cabbages

While doing the regular orchard mowing I noticed that many of the cabbages were ready to harvest.  Seems a bit early, but looking back in blog entries from previous years I see that it is just about right.  What is weird though is that I found that the Brussels sprouts are very far along!  The sprouts are almost where they should be in October or November!

One head of chinese cabbage and 3 of regular cabbage!

Sprout!  Eating size already!

Deer Like the Beans, evidently

While I was out flail mowing the fields, deer moved into the front bean patch and had dinner!  Katherine saw them and chased them out - she said there were probably 5-6 in there eating away!  I decided that to be sure that I get some beans to harvest I had better put up some kind of defense.  I placed a flat-tape style electric fence around the patch and connected it to the solar fencer.  I didn't get a chance to bait the fence - so we will see how effective it is.

Deer eat the plants - not the beans themselves evidently.  My harvest will still be ok if there isn't too much more damage.  I think.

Corn status

The status is "sad" - but I think we will at least get some.  I see ears and corn silk on the stalks.

The squash plants are doing well too.