Milling and mowing kind of day!

The sun came out and was out all day - NO RAIN!!

It was still a bit too wet to do any mowing in the morning, but the temperature was fine for milling.  I got to work on that cant that I had made last evening.  It was easier to see in the daylight and it had dried a bit too, so I could tell the pithy wood from the good stuff.  I considered just taking the cant out as it was, but I thought that with pithy wood it would just get wet and retain moisture, probably quickening the decay of the remaining good wood.  So I decided to go ahead and cut some boards.  My goal, for the time being, is to cut only even increments of boards.  So 2, 4, 6, 8, etc are my targets.  I am using the one inch mark on the blade depth guide which I understand means I am getting somewhat less than an inch thick board.  This is fine since I plan on using these boards for cladding on the wood shed.  The 4x4's, 8x8's, an 2x4's will be fine as well.  It's nice to be able to make these decisions since I am the end user!  

Here are some pictures of the pile so far:

A few more pieces from the log I had started last night.  Again, this wood is fairly stressed - thus the wavy 2x4's.  A lot of those old trees were leaning and stressed, so this isn't surprising.

I did a lot of cleanup of slabs and odd boards.  I made the pithy boards into stickers - throwing away the pithy part, of course.  I only did one log today (the one I started last night)

End shot to show creative stacking.

These stickers are made from wood from the same log.  I got quite a few fully intact lengths.  Not all of the boards length was pithy.  The stickers are all 1x1" (nominal).

Flail mowing

After it started to get hot outside (and the grass had dried), I decided to get to work mowing (seems strange, but mowing is really not hard physically so its ok to do while its hot).  I greased up the flail mower as best I could (not really that many accessible grease nibs - and one was broken) and connected it up to the tractor.  After some adjustments for alignment and such I was ready to start mowing.  Of course, I did the hill beneath the locust trees first - ugh.  It's unnerving as it has quite a slope!  Anyway, after running over at least 2 moles (there must have been 50 moles out there running around!), here is what I finished with:

Considering the amount of trees and big weeds in this mess, the flail mower did very well!

I can't be sure but I think this took me about 45 minutes!  Either that or an hour and 45 mins..  which seems too long.

I did run over some of the areas twice to knock down weeds and tree trunks that insisted on standing back up!

I think it looks pretty decent!  More importantly, this keeps the trees and nuisance weeds at bay!

After I did that field I rested and got a drink.  Its very dusty work, even though its not that dry outside.  In dry weather this work would be REALLY dusty!  I went back out to mow the pecan tree area.  It went smoother since it was not left wild for so long.  It only had locust tree sprouts coming up in one section of the field.  Here are some pictures:

See the deer back there near the wood pile?

Mowed nice.  Only problem I had was when mowing around that would pile I made really sharp turns without raising the mower - this evidently caused some of the cotter pins to shear off on one side of the 3-pt hitch lower arms - which let the connecting pin slide out.  This made the mower dig in a bit - which I noticed... fortunately I had an extra pin!  Eventually, I found the missing pin in the grass near the wood pile

Quick look at the big patch

After I did the flail mowing, I went and got the zero turn mower and mowed the orchard and paw-paw area.  While mowing near the big patch I noticed there were some cucumbers ready.  I also noticed that the grapes look a little better!  Maybe the copper fungicide is helping?  I loaded up some more fungicide and sevin and went to the orchard.  Before I sprayed I decided to check out those cucs.  Wow!  I thought I would find one or two big ones but here is what I got:

Nice cucs!  But some had marks on them like maybe a SVB might have tried to bite or lay eggs on them!

I don't trust those SVBs!  I am worried that they might have planted eggs in the cucumber stalks - in which case its just a matter of time before these vines will succumb!  There are plenty more cucs coming on now.  I bet by next weekend there will be another pile like this!

Broccoli is starting!

For some reason I thought broccoli was later - but maybe this wet weather?  Or maybe I just have a different variety?  Well for whatever reason, I have some ready!

This one is ready!

Another on its way!

Eggplant are doing well too...

I am a little surprised since they are in the bad-clay area of the garden...

That plant is over a foot tall!  All look like they are growing nicely.  Meanwhile, in the row right behind them the cabbages have died (or are dieing) because of all this rain!

All of the eggplant look good!   Good, I hope we get a good yield this year.  Last year was not great and we need our eggplant parmesan replenished!

Castor beans are small - but some are getting ready to bloom!

I have to remember that its only mid-July so they have a little bit of time to grow yet.  Still, I don't see these getting to the 12ft mark that I have seen them o in the past!

See the blossoms in the middle there?

Most of these have red stalks - but there are a couple of them with green stalks.

See?  Green stalk!

They are big, and pretty - but they aren't getting to 12ft I think!

One lonely sunflower...

I didn't plant sunflowers this year - but a little guy came up all by himself and I didn't have the heart to pull him out!

Canning potatoes and, of course, more tomatoes!

Canning Crazy!

I am getting a bit overwhelmed with the harvesting and canning activities so what I am going to do here is just post some pictures that i took over the past several days and add captions to explain things.

14 quarts and 6 pint and a half jars of tomatoes that Katherine cleaned and I canned on Sept 4 evening

This is a picture of the cucumber relish (I think) that Katherine made on labor day weekend.  16 pints.  She didn't like the recipe so I won't post it.  It has way too much liquid in it.

 We made it up to the farm last Friday, Sept 5, in time for me to gather some of the rough potatoes from the potato harvest and can them!  We ate 3 of the jars shown below during the weekend to see if we liked them done this way.  Personally, i loved them!  Katherine cooked them in potatoes, eggs and onions breakfasts!  Used our own onions too!

This is the next morning immediately after taking them out of the PC.

Closer view

I didn't get a picture of them later that day, but I will state that the "clear" liquid in those jars gets thick and white with starch!  I personally did not work to get them out of the jars after canning so I don't know really how hard they are to dislodge.  Katherine said it wasn't too bad and she votes for canning more of the damaged potatoes.  They are convenient and don't take freezer space.

More broccoli and our first cauliflower of the season!  The cauliflower looks super good!

We haven't eaten it yet.  That's the problem when stuff comes in this fast.  We just finished eating the broccoli from LAST weekend!

I sorted the potatoes according to damaged vs non-damaged and color.  Looks like we got a total of about 175 lbs this harvest!

The ones in the bucket are next years seed potatoes

Brassica patch is looking quite nice actually!

Late cabbage

another late cabbage, heading up nice!

Quite a few late cabbages made it!  We might have to figure out what to do with all this cabbage!

The cauliflower and broccoli plants are still going strong.  Not sure if we will get enough to freeze or pickle though. 

Yep - that's my green globe artichoke!  Katherine says that they are perennial, so even if this doesn't produce this year, maybe next?  I just need to figure out a way of moving it - its in the center of the paw-paw patch!

Another artichoke.  I have 4 in all.

The kale!  Lots of green leaves!  I sprayed all the brasicas with BT.  I didn't harvest any kale this weekend.  I think i will harvest some and start drying it next weekend.

Smokey, checking things out!

Harvested the sunflowers (most of them) this weekend.  I put them on the garage floor to dry.  I thought about putting them in the red-barn on the trailer bed, but i was afraid that squirrels would help themselves!  The garage is a bit tighter.

Trying to get a record of the tomatoes.  I think we will just have to inventory them after we are all done at this point.

this shows 28 quarts plus 6 pint and a halfs

We brought 3 bus trays full of tomatoes back this time.  Katherine is already a bit punchy over the weekend canning activities and she thinks there is no end in sight.  We did give some of the heirloom "pink lady" tomatoes away to neighbors and friends at work.  She is going to put some of these in trays (after juicing) to try to get a thicker sauce going.  She did a bunch of sauce on the farm on Sunday night - it was very good!  It does take some cooking though. The idea is that on trays, in the oven, there will be more surface area for the sauce to evaporate faster.  We will see!

Buttercup Squash

Those green squash with the little cap on the end are called "buttercup squash".  We probably got the seed packets mixed up with "butternut" squash (since I don't have any of those - lol).  Well, we finally tried one and it was GOOD!  Wonderful flavor and a great texture.  Bright orange!  We will be saving the seeds from these for sure!