Yes, I know it’s July. That’s just how busy things have been around here. With the garden having overcome the cloudy weather and slugs, and finally starting to take off, we’ve been busy weeding, watering and harvesting. On top of that, I’ve been busy with all my off-homestead work trying to make ends meet by doing everything from handling cocoa bean orders for two weeks to repairing coffee roasting equipment to harvesting lavender. It takes a lot of irons in the fire to have a homestead and earn a living. In the mean time we have been enjoying strawberries, peas, lots of salads and blueberries (more on that soon!)
The raised beds are coming along with strawberries, rhubarb and asparagus. A few fun volunteer flowers popped up in the soil we got from our friends herb farm, adding a little extra pizazz.
After re-seeding some of the garden rows FIVE TIMES, setting beer bait traps every night, and finally resorting to Sluggo (which is still natural and seemed safe enough to beneficial insects in its granular form), I finally achieved rows of pumpkins, gourds and sunflowers. With a week of rain followed by some very hot, sunny days, things are going bonkers out there now. Not giving up does eventually pay off. I am also very glad we newspaper and straw mulched the pathways, because when the weeds went bonkers, it cut our work in half to only weed the garden rows.
My little front yard oasis is coming along nicely, with all the flowers I planted in the front flower bed starting to bloom and the small patch of lawn I painstakingly aerated, fed and re-seeded turning into a lush green carpet. I turned a small livestock watering trough into a little pond with aquatic plants and goldfish, and we have a hummingbird who has claimed the feeder on the front corner of the house as his territory. He sits on the archway above our gate and guards the front of the house. It’s a wonderful spot to take a break in the shade on a hot afternoon.
All of our hard work on the blueberry bushes has paid off. We have all the blueberries we could ever want, and enough to freeze for our year’s supply. This is a long time goal achieved, and I could not be happier about it.
The quail agree. They have been enjoying little lettuce and blueberry treats every day and laying us lots of tasty little eggs in turn.
Della Mae has been busy keeping the chipmunks and mice out of the garden, along with the barn cats, and doing an excellent job. She almost makes up for all the mischief she causes.
The chickens are doing well and moving on without Paul Bunyan around. We are still in need of a farm rooster, but I really just want another big old Brahma. Paul Bunyan set a very high standard to follow. I am hopeful that one will come our way.
Ms. Frizzle and her chicks got moved outside to their own little coop and pen. We had tried integrating them with the flock, but one of the cats caught one of the bantams and brought it up to the house. I managed to rescue it in time, but we realized the bantams were just not big enough to be around cats yet.
They’re a very pretty bunch, and I’m hopeful we might have a little bantam rooster in the mix.
The other big news is the bees. When we moved in, a colony of honeybees was living in the wall of our woodshed. They disappeared over the summer, much to our disappointment, and we were never quite sure what had become of them. This spring they returned, and now the colony is busy and thriving as ever. They don’t bother us and we don’t bother them, and we get the benefit of great pollination without having to care for a hive. We aren’t getting the benefits of honey, but I’ve been told if we wanted to pry a board or two back from our shed we could possibly harvest some. With plenty of other things to do around the place, we are busy as bees, so I think for now we will just let the bees be.
Now that July and hotter temperatures are here, I’m looking forward to more of the busy hustle and bustle of summer on the homestead and all the rewards that it will bring.
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