It’s good to be back working in our garden after our trip to Illinois, and being able to see all the changes that happened in two weeks. The sunflowers are getting taller than Dude the scarecrow, pumpkins are popping up everywhere, the green beans and potatoes were ready for harvest, and we had a yellow summer squash the size of a small child! With firewood to gather and split for the winter, crops to harvest and things to freeze and can, it’s a busy time around here, but the rewards are countless.
Our first day back, we wasted no time picking the green beans for canning as dilly beans and digging our potato crop. The potato yield wasn’t quite as good as last year, but the variety was better with Yukon Gold, Red, Purple and some French Fingerlings.
All the love we put into our garden paid off in the form of a very fine heart potato.
I noticed the onion tops had all fallen over, so we harvested them as well.
We hung the bunches of onions up in the attic with the garlic braids and lavender bunches. It is a very good smelling place to be right now, and reminds me of the description of the attic in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods. That has always been one of my favorite passages.
The sunflowers are staring to bloom and all the different varieties I planted are presenting some showy colors.
I had planted so many kinds with all the slug problems, I wasn’t sure which had actually made it, but a friend recognized these as Moulin Rouge. I think they’re quite bold and aptly named.
The pumpkins are vigorous this year, and having run out of room in the garden, started climbing the fence as a trellis. I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks in the fall with pumpkins and gourds hanging up there with their sunny colors on display.
The super deluxe hop trellis is finally done. With three stout 16 foot, 4X6 posts, I’m pretty sure it will still be standing when we’re old and grey. We’ve got 5 hop varieties going; Willamette, Cascade, Fuggle, Nugget and Chinook. They are labeled both with stakes and a map, so that we will know what we’re brewing with. My spring plans include hanging some swallow houses up there to help us out with mosquitoes.
Along with our bumper crop of blueberries, the blackberries have started to ripen and we are putting quarts of them away in the freezer for the winter months. I made a delicious blackberry crisp, and with the kids away on vacation with their grandparents, we decided there was no reason to set a good example, and ate dessert for lunch a couple of days this week!
With Paul Bunyan the rooster gone, the chickens have established a new pecking order. They pretty much follow the most assured leader, even when this is one of the barn cats. They hang closer to the coop now and we are getting more eggs in the nesting boxes and less in secret nests. I still want to find a new rooster, but it will have to be just the right one.
Our firewood is starting to pile up with all the trips out to the Forest Service permit cutting areas. Corey has been splitting the logs as soon as he brings them home, which will save us some work in the fall. The wild honeybee colony in the wall of our woodshed has gotten pretty vigorous, so we are waiting until it cools off and they become less active before we start stacking up the firewood in there. It feels good to be starting the process of preparing for the winter months again, and it feels even better to be doing it on this homestead where I am settled in for the long haul. Corey has been remarking lately that he’s looking forward to the winter and I know exactly what he means. I look around at all the progress we have made here over the past year, and I cannot wait to see what the next year holds!
Your garden looks so nice! We have had all sorts of deer troubles here, but are keeping our sights set on a better next year. I love that part of Little House in the Big Woods, too. 🙂
Thanks! I hope those deer move on to somewhere else and leave your garden alone!