Mr Skunk Took Care of Our Yellow-jackets!

 I was surveying the property and came across the carnage the a skunk wreaked on those freaking yellow-jackets that stung me a couple weeks ago!  He really tore into the nest!  Look at these pictures!

Bits of the nest are strewn all over the place.  It was a pretty big nest.  There are still some bees floating around there, but most of that nest is gone!

Sawmill, tree-cutting, wood-chipping

I started by taking down a bunch of dangerous trees that were dead and threatening to fall on my buildings  or me on my trails.  One tree was in surprisingly good shape so the next day I popped it on the sawmill to see if I could get something out of it.  In fact, I got two nice long 2x4's (oak).  The rest I put through the chipper.  In fact, i put all the slabs and odd pieces I had collected in the barn through the chipper.  It made quite a pile - I figure about 3 cubic yards!

Two new 2x4's on top there

Wood slabs and end pieces from sawmill were put through the chipper.  I have more to go, but this was enough to mulch 10 trees!

I also chipped up some of the debris near the grass mulch pile near the big patch.

Here is where I put the mulch.  The brighter ones are new - 10 more trees mulched.  I think I have 6 to go.

I saved the peach trees till last since they seem to be in a good location - not terribly sensitive to frost or freezing there.

Just a random shot of some deer wandering through the pecan and butternut trees.  Quite a herd growing there.  There are 6 in that herd that I have seen.  I really need to get my trees protected - they will be rutting soon I bet!

The harvest

Decent broccoli harvest.  I keep being surprised about how much these things are yielding.  I blanched and froze this.

Tomato harvest is looking rough, but I was still able to use these.

I got 6 quarts of sauce from those tomatoes!

Cabbages - these are split so I harvested to make some Cole-slaw.  Also a decent yield of eggplant.  Katherine does the eggplant up into Parmesan and freezes it in individual portions.  Makes a nice fast dinner!

Post #200!! Fall is here. Orchard care and wood-chips

First off, last weeks preserving efforts

I finally tried the Mrs Wages Dilly Beans mix!  I used the best beans of the pick.  6 pints

I got 3 and a half quarts of tomato sauce.  If you look at the previous posting I had already made 10 pints of pasta sauce.  The remaining tomatoes were initially too green to use so i let them ripen and made them into plain sauce.

15 quarts of green beans!  I processed them an extra 10 mins to soften them up a bit more.

Blueberries

Well, i wanted to clean up the sawmill - there was a lot of debris, slabs, and sawdust cluttering the place up and its now cool enough that I could start milling some more.   So after I moved out a bunch of slabs and organized some pieces that I might feed through the chipper (I need more wood chips already!) I was able to get to the sawdust.  I shoveled out 3 front loader buckets full of sawdust and placed it on the blueberries - rather thick.

As a side note, I suspected that my sawmill base was out of level so i grabbed a carpenters level and checked it out after I had cleaned up,  The base was almost perfectly level side-to-side.  However, front to back it wasn't - and I think I initially set it up incorrectly!  I front-to-back is level from the top of the guide rail to the opposite bed flat - but i think its supposed to be leveled from one side flat to the other side flat!  I am going to have to check the manual to make sure.  

I have 22 plants and was able to get all but 10 of them dressed.   I will be running the mill more though soon so I will have plenty of sawdust in the future.

Wood-chips

I continued to place the wood-chips around the orchard trees.  I put a full front-loader bucket full around each tree.  I ran out of wood chips before i finished.  I am planing on chipping some of the mill ends next weekend.

I preferentially placed wood-chips around the plum trees since they are looking a bit harsh

Pumpkins are ripening!

I didn't have any decent pictures of these so I decided to take a few shots.  The "Cinderella" pumpkins are in the back nearest the house.

They are a striking orange.

A few spaghetti squash there.  Way more then I wanted.

I am trying to push these on people at work.  I have so much powdered pumpkin left from last year, I really really don't want any more!  Although i do plan on testing the new pumpkin type out and probably dehydrate and powder that.

Castor beans are ripening!

They are still growing too!  I need to put some sacks around the seed bunches otherwise they are going to exploded their seeds all over the place!  I want to have enough left for seeds for next year!  I have only managed to save 5 beans so far!

This guy is about 7-8 feet tall now (that post is over 6 feet tall).  Still shorter than the ones mom and dad grew - those would get 10 feet or more!

Harvest

I picked tomatoes, Kale, and broccoli before I left.  Sorry, I only got pics of the tomatoes.   I processed the broccoli (blanched and froze) and kale (braised it with sausage and onions - it was dinner) Sunday night and then sorted and processed some of the tomatoes Monday night.  I used the Mrs Wages chili mix again.  After reviewing how much tomato sauce I have in storage, i don't feel bad about making more chili base!

Before sorting.  I don't have all of them in there though.  I got the volunteers from the big patch and the front patch as well.

After sorting.  I am letting these ripen up before i process them into more chili base.

the chili base I made from the first sort of the tomatoes.  I was surprised at how much I had.  The mix is supposed to be used for 5 pints and I got 6.5.  I made chili with the left over .5 pint along with some of my old (2013) tomatoes.  It tastes great!

Planting peppers - here and there

Peppers

Well the weather has finally convinced me that it was going to stay warm enough to put out the pepper plants!  I put most of them in the city house raised beds.  I left one flat of 9 plants to replace any that don't make it (squirrels) and took the rest up to the farm.  I planted the 'farm' plants in the big garden.  I though that I took pictures of the raised beds, but I can't find them. No big deal though - they are just pepper plants!

Sweet potatoes

My sweet potatoes order from gurneys was in my mailbox when I got back from the farm last weekend.  They were in pretty rough shape.  I immediately put them in water in hopes of saving them.  These are "Beauregard" variety.  I can't remember if I ordered 10 or 12 - but I got 11!

Here they are soaking in water:

I planted these all in the paw-paw patch garden, as planned.  Fingers crossed!  They came with a note saying that they are tough and should survive even if dried or rotten.  We shall see.  I took up an old sweet potato that we have had laying around here for a year or two.  It had some sprouts so we figured we would try to plant.  I took the sprouts (or "slips", as I read they are called) and put them in water for the week.  I will plant them in the big garden next weekend.

Carpenter Bee Trap Status

We got one!  It was funny, when we got there this past Friday afternoon, the trap was empty - but by that evening there was a bee in it!

Blueberries

While it seems pretty dry up there to me, the blueberries are coming in fine I think!

Cherry Tree Damage (and Cherries)

Well, first off lets celebrate that we actually got to eat some of our sour cherries this year!  About 10 were ripe enough to eat.  The rest will probably be eaten by the birds.  Some had already shown bird damage.

These trees are in the front yard and there was no deer protection there, as you can see in the following pictures - we needed some!

Stripped clean of the tender new leaves!

Bugs don't bite off the end of the stems like that!  This is definitely deer damage!

So I finally put up the electric fence around the front cherry trees and connected it up to mom and dad's old 110V fencer.  I also found my deer pops and bait, so if they get their noses in there they will get a rude zap and hopefully learn not to mess with my cherries!

Dead Solar Fencer on Apple Orchard

I have been noticing some damage to the apple trees in the orchard and the new elderberry plants in the same fenced area but this isn't possible - that orchard is fenced and freshly baited... Well, I got to thinking that since that's a solar powered fencer (and the oldest of my fencers) that maybe the battery gave out.  I checked the next day and sure enough there wasn't enough zap to even get my attention!  So I took the fencer off of the blueberry patch and moved it to the orchard temporarily.  I plan on connecting the blueberry fence to the 110v fencer that also powers the cherry fence.  I have a new battery (SP3) on order in case I need to put a fencer somewhere else or make a quick change like i did this past weekend.

We saw a REAL BEAR!

Finally!  LOL  We were almost to our farm when a black bear goes running right across the road in front of us!  It wasn't a huge bear - I'm guessing about 1-2 yr old.  It was the first bear I have seen in the wild.  We have found bear tracks and scat on our property before, but I have never actually seen one until now!  Too cool!  It was way too fast and sudden to get a picture.

Corn

The sweet corn in the front patch needed weeding and when I was doing that I realized that quite a bit hadn't come up (or the crows had destroyed it).  In any case, I decided to plant more seeds in the missing areas.  We have had good rain this week, so I am hopeful that it might be up by next weekend.

Another weekend of mulching - 2nd garden patch done (mostly)

I went up to the farm Saturday morning - it was raining - again!

I spent some time putting the frozen greens away.  I used a couple old packs of beet greens and a pack of corn and a pound of sausage (italian sausage - purchased, I don't make that - yet!).  I fried it all up together and then added 2.5 cups cooked jasmine rice and some oregano.  Was edible - needed salt.  Beet greens are not my favorite!  I am tempted not to save of them this year...

I went to putting up the remaining high-tensile wire for the grape-vine trellis and trimming with the weed wacker.  That's about all that I got done Saturday!   Everything was so wet - this is getting serious!  I needed to get into the front garden patch to WEED and mulch.

Apple orchard status:

Sunday morning I removed more black plastic from around the trees - didn't get all of them up, but most I think.  Found 3 good sized garter snakes under the plastic of the trees in the far right highest portion of the orchard.  I was careful not to hurt them.  Fortunately, I didn't find any other kind of snake!  I weed whacked around the trees that I removed the plastic from.  I definitely think the black plastic was a mistake.  I want to advise anyone looking into putting in trees - use the tubes, but not the weed protectors!  Do not use the plastic weed protection if you are able to mow around the trees!  The plastic gives varmints and bees a place to live and if you are able to mow, then the plastic gets caught in the mower!  BTW:  the fruit looks good on most of the trees.  I did see some insect damage.  I applied Sevin before I left this weekend.

Cherry orchard:

I observed some damage from deer - I think.  I noticed that the cherries were gone last weekend.  This weekend I looked closer and noticed some of the limbs broken down....  I figure the deer were able to reach up and snatch the cherries and broke the limbs off in the process.  I don't think that varmints can climb the tree protectors.  I also  noticed that the Japanese beetles were starting to really eat - so I sprayed them with sevin.  Some of these trees have significant growth of foliage inside the tubes - tempted to break the tubes and trim that off to keep disease under control.  Not sure - will do some reasearch.

Mom's patch status:

I may have a crop failure on the corn there. I checked mom's patch - only about 6 plants survived the onslaught of the crows.  Mom over-planted with a small pack of short season corn, hopefully the crows will leave that alone!  If that comes in then maybe there will be enough to eat fresh corn, although not likely enough to put any up.

Big patch status:

The corn in my big patch is growing - poorly.  I think I still need more nitrogen (and way less water).  The mulch has helped, I think.  General improvement in all plants.  The eggplant survived the flea beetles.  I applied Sevin to the eggplant and some tomato plants.  I hate to apply sevin when plants are blooming, so I left most of the tomatoes alone.  No sign of pests there yet anyway. We will see.  Squash, cukes, and pumpkins look OK.  Looks like I may have inadvertently got a couple pumpkins planted inside the garden fence - I am trying to train them to run to the garden fence and away from the squash and tomatoes. The pumpkins and sunflowers on the outside of the fence are coming along.  I need to put supports up for the sunflowers and tomato trellis up - SOON!

Paw-paw patch status:

The paw-paw patch is looking really bad.  I think tilling in the straw and wood chips was a bad idea - they weren't mulched enough and I have read that is they mulch in-place in the soil that they steal nitrogen from the soil.  Along with the water issue hasn't been a good year so far.  Even weeds aren't growing in most of the paw-paw patch!  However, the transplanted plants still seem to be holding on.  I see some beets and carrots up - but not many.

Front patch status:

The weeds were so prodigious that I really couldn't see most of the plants.  I had to wait until midday to get in just because of water on the plants.  The ground really was too wet to be walking on it - but I had to!  I had to use the weed wacker to get the bulk of the weeds under control.  I did find about 6-8 parsnip plants that had survived!  Long story short - I busted my ass and got it mulched!  I didn't get the potatoes mulched.  I think I will use wood chips to mulch around potatoes.  I hope its no too late to put mulch down - at least I hope to keep weeds at bay later in the season.  Right now the potatoes are pretty much blocking all the light from the bulk of the weeds.  Some of the potato plants are 4 ft or more!  I did find some potato bugs eating them up - so I treated the potatoes with sevin as well as many other plants in the main garden (carrots and kohlrabi).  Here are some pics:

Front patch - as I was leaving - taken from my car, because thats how busy I was!

potatoes!  They still need mulch - but at least bulk of weeds are gone.

onions and kohlrabi (garlic on far right - just a few - up front) .  The beets and carrots are behind the kohlrabi

Dehydrator Arrived!

I finally bought the dehydrator from cabelas!   Katherine had brought it to my attention again about 2 weeks ago when she found that it was on sale.  I had stumbled onto another dehydrator ad - I forget where - maybe a google suggestion? and after some reading I went and looked at the commercial dehydrator in the Cabelas sale page.  It was actually a good deal and got great reviews.  So I pulled the trigger and ordered it along with some special trays for fruit leather and fruit slices.  Here are some pictures:

I haven't assembled it all - I just took it up and unpacked it.  Seems very well built and solid.  It must be run indoors - I was hoping to run it in the shop - but maybe that wouldn't be great idea anyway.. I will have to think about where to run it.  Maybe, during the day - on the porch?  Maybe I could make a special structure for it?  I am thinking about moving the canned storage downstairs (need to either beef up the shelves down there - or build new ones) and then use the upstairs storage room for running the dehydrator (I would leave the windows open to help keep moisture levels down).