Hot summer weekend.

Mom, Tom and Julie pay a visit

I stopped by Mom's place to pick up a gas can and some stuff she had for us.  I kind of got concerned when I saw her car in the garage but couldn't find her anywhere!  I went around the property, in the house, up and down the stairs - no mom!  I got in my car to head to my place, contemplating calling my siblings to see if they knew anything, when I got a call from Tom.  They were headed over to my place for a visit (Mom was with them)! Whew!

So, anyway, here are some pictures Tom an Julie took while visiting me and mom's place.

Julie, cleaning around some of mom's grapes

Mom, lol, great expression!

Looks like mom has a groundhog.

On mom's porch

The metal arbor there is something I made for mom and dad quite a while ago

These sunflowers came up from seed that the birds knocked out of the feeder

There I am on the left!  Dear lord, I need to get a haircut and loose some weight!

Looking at my "big garden" and the apple orchard

A panoramic view

Looking out across the valley

Hazy, hot day.  Still a nice view.

Obligatory family shot.  Tom on right, mom in center.

close up

I have no idea what we were talking about.

Friday night

I made a pie!  I brought up most of the 11 quarts of frozen green beans (from the beans I picked last weekend from the paw-paw patch).  I needed to make room for the beans in the deep freeze!  I will have bok choi and broccoli and corn soon and I will need more freezer space.  All future green beans will have to be canned.

I made this blackberry an rhubarb pie to use up some old pie dough and berries/rhubarb from the freezer.  I need to make room for the new stuff!

Work on the farm this weekend

I mowed around the locust trees and the hill next to the orchard after the family left.    The next morning I woke to a thunderstorm!  Well, it was too wet to do much outside, so I sharpened some of my chainsaw chains.  

I was able to get out later Saturday to trim around the blueberries.  I wanted to treat the blueberries with epsom salts (they are deficient in magnesium evidently), but I couldn't find any at the house.  So I went to the local hardware store - they didn't have any either but suggested I go to the local grocery store.  They had it!  So I got a couple of the small bags and took them home.  I used 1/4 C per plant, as recommended.   I sprinkled it at about 8-12 inches in a circle around the base of the plant.

The blueberries.  They aren't dieing... but they aren't growing either.

After that I went out to work on trimming the old pea patch in the big garden.  It took a while with the weedwacker, but I subdued the weeds enough to cover the patch with black plastic.  

On the left - no more weed forest!  The black plastic should help hold the heat and hopefully destroy the weed seeds.

Garlic harvested!

I cleaned up some weeds in the front patch too.  Used the weedwacker.  I can finally get in there to de-weed the strawberries!  On the right there you see where I dug the garlic.

Ugh.  The poor garlic was essentially sitting in mud!  Its amazing I got this much from my plantings!

Cleaned up a bit and dried, it looks more appetizing.  I used some to make a nice spaghetti sauce.

And speaking of pies an leftovers.. Broccoli and Bok Choi harvest and freezing

I harvested some broccoli and bok choi from the big garden.  I froze 2 pints of broccoli an 4 quarts of bok choi!  Anyway, I had also brought a half bag of broccoli and cauliflower from the city that needed to be used. So I made another pie!  A pot pie of sorts.  Broccoli, cauliflower, chicken breast, cheese and a sauce.  It needed more sauce, but it was still good!

I almost didn't get a picture!  It was going fast!

Farm pictures

The front patch where the squash are.  I swear I think I see some SVB bites on the squash plants!  I sprayed around the base of the squash with sevin.  Mom suggested that - she had heard it somewhere.  We will see.

The buttercup squash are actually doing quite well!  Most of the squash are blooming now.  I didn't get a picture of the pumpkins, but I did see one about the size of a fist - I am sure there are more I didn't see.

Big patch.  More broccoli is coming.  I dusted with sevin before I left.  The sweet potatoes are looking much better!  Oh, and the eggplant are starting to bloom! Also, I picked about 20 lbs of cucumbers - they are on the left in the picture - outside the garden.

The corn is filling out nicely!

Cucumbers and castor beans on the left side of the garden in this picture.

I spraayed all the trees and the grapes with sevin and fungicide.  The grapes seem to be improving.  The peach trees are looking quite alarming though.  Not sure whats happening to them.  They seem to be loosing their leaves for no reason.  Too wet? Fungus?

I put out new Japanese beetle bags too.  The old bags were full and stinky.

Whew - catching up - AGAIN!

Been so busy with work and the farm that I haven't had the time to post here properly.

The weekend of the 24th of May was memorial day weekend.  Katherine actually took time and came up with me!  I don't remember everything I did, mowing - I am sure! LOL  I do remember that I tilled and planted the garden over at mom's place that weekend.  I took my tractor and tiller over on my trailer - first time I moved the tractor that way.  Here is a pic:

The tilling was a little touch and go since I had an accident with the radiator fan blade on the tractor the weekend before.  A stick (large stick) had run up into the blade when I was moving some brush and it hit the blade while it was running.  Broke a lot of the plastic blade as shown here:

Because of the missing blade pieces the fan was no longer able to properly cool the radiator and it would get hot pretty fast when running the PTO (the tiller).  Anyway, I got the garden tilled and using the earthway seeder device I was able to plant corn and some carrots.  I also put a few melons in.  There is still room for a couple rows of beans - I will have to bring some beans up next time to plant in there.  

When we left for home we stopped by again and picked some rhubarb which we took home to freeze.  You only have to clean and peel rhubarb (and chop to about 1 inch long pieces) to freeze it.  I also vacuum packed them to help keep away freezer burn.  Here they are - 8 1 lb packages (about 4 quarts):

When we got back to the city I found that some of the turnips were bolting so I thinned them out and cleaned, blanched and froze what I had - was only about 2 cups!  I might end up doing that with the mustard too, maybe even the kale, since they are all ready.  In fact, the arugula was bolting too, but there isn't anything I could do with it - so I cut the bolting stems and we will see if they produce any usable greens.

More gardening updates

I have been lax at putting up these blog entries, which leads to poor record keeping!  I will try to do this more frequently!

Last weekend my family had an Easter get together; it was fun but it took a whole day of my short weekend. I was able to prep the "front" patch on the farm; I was putting leaf mulch on the patch until almost 9pm!  I worked my ass off and got the patch tilled and all planted Sunday - whew!  Here are some pics:

Here is a video of the description: