I did some work on the tractor: I bought new front tires and replaced the front wheel bearings. I also finally got around to tearing off the right brake assembly and replacing a badly damaged seal that was leaking the transmission oil out. The brakes work now that they’re not doused in oil. It will be nice to have the transmission stay full.
Hazel gave birth to two baby boy goats yesterday morning. No human intervention was needed. I heard goat sounds out my office window, but higher pitched, and went out to find two kids.
They’ve had a hard time getting the hang of nursing. We think it’s because Hazel’s teats are very big. We have had to help them latch on, and then they can suck and get milk. I hope they’re getting enough. They slept a lot yesterday. They looked a little better today, but I don’t think we’re in the clear yet.
The chickens got into the garden, so we locked them in for a week or so, and they cultivated it for us.
This past week was really rainy until yesterday. We’ll plant potatoes as soon as the soil is workable.
We finished splitting next season’s firewood. It will be about 50/50 maple and Douglas fir or pine. This year was mostly pine, which was hard to use due to some extremely pitch-filled logs.
We worked on some pasture fence repairs today, mostly pulling out some janky stuff and putting up new chicken wire to keep the chickens in the pasture.
We passed the cold frames on to a new owner today. They didn’t seem to make much of a difference in the garden.
We’re using some kale florets that we picked today in our stir fry dinner.
It was our first day of the season doing a little cleanup and weeding in the garden. We added wood chips to the extra area on the east side that was created by putting up the archway and deer netting last year.
The beginning of spring seems to be here. It was 69° today. The plum tree blossomed this week.
I worked on the mushroom bed. I removed the straw bale border, which was filled with grass and spreading into the walking path, and replaced it with wood that wasn’t able to be used as firewood.
I pruned the grapes, fruit trees, and roses over the weekend. The pruning on the fruit trees was very minimal.
The freeze a couple weeks ago kept temperatures below freezing most of the week (lows in the teens). There wasn’t much snow, but something whitish that resembled snow that took forever to melt… freezing rain or sleet, I guess. It took out the celery and chard, and the artichoke plants took a beating. Even the kale got “burned,” but most of the leaves were still harvestable. The Chard and artichokes will resume growing with new leaves. The alliums (leeks and garlic) were totally fine. Surprisingly, the lettuce also seems to have survived fine. The ice took down the deer netting fence in spots. I tacked it back up when the freeze was over.
A little January lettuce harvest before the temps go into the teens for the weekend. (It’s been growing since fall… super slow. The lettuce in the cold frame was larger, but just barely.)
An endless summer. Today’s high was about 65°. More mushrooms are still coming up. I picked a few more small peppers and some kale.
Heather made some grape juice from Merrie’s Concord grapes.
November 1st, and we’re still picking peas. They’re not as good as summer peas, but I won’t complain!
I was wrong about the mushrooms being done. We got one more flush, probably a couple pounds. They seemed to be fine through our first frost, too, which was last night. But it was a light frost that even the tomato plants survived.
We harvested a few acorns, and some Jerusalem artichokes that voluntarily grew by the outside water faucet, today.
We lit our first fire of the season in the woodstove yesterday. We still have a lot of splitting and stacking to do for next season’s firewood.
I think the mushroom harvest has finally ended. Wow! I’m pretty sure we have a year’s worth of dehydrated mushrooms thanks to Heather’s work.
The new growth on the artichoke plants looks great. They’re over two feet tall. Im excited to see what next year brings.
As of yesterday, we were still harvesting tomatoes and the late summer planting of peas. They’ve definitely slowed down, though, with fewer hours of daylight.
Heather pulled two potato plants today and got several pounds of potatoes. Here’s the biggest one:
She also harvested a rutabaga. There are several more out there. Plenty of kale and chard, too. And we haven’t even touched the leeks yet
Heather planted garlic in the garden and around the grapes around the beginning of October. It’s already sprouting.
We started moving some firewood into the carport for this season’s burning. We still have a lot of wood to split to get ready for next season.
Wow, the first rain of the season, and the winecap mushrooms are fruiting. It’s like magic! We’ve probably picked a gallon in two days. They’re huge.
Artichokes: I learned that they start their new growth for the next year in the current year. You’re supposed to chop down the old growth as soon as it’s done producing artichokes.
This evening brought the first rain of the season. We’re supposed to get a couple inches over the coming week. So we were busy outside today. We moved a lot of wood chips, put some tarps on things, and did a lot of general tidying.
Heather is dehydrating a bunch of peppers and onions. They smell so good.
We started harvesting our second pea planting of the season yesterday.
Heather pulled out the bush beans yesterday. We’ll get some dry beans plus some beans for planting next year. I turns out the beans kept on producing, and I think if we had kept harvesting, they would have kept coming.
The artichokes are sending up second sprouts now. I need to read up and learn what that’s all about.
Tomatoes are finally in. Here’s one picking.
We also picked 10+ gallons of purple plums from the tree across the street.
Oh my, so much to catch up on since July!
The deer are still in the neighborhood but not in our garden. Success! (They’ve gotten to Grant’s garden, though.)
Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, onions, coriander, green beans, celery, kale, and more kale… all doing well. We didn’t keep up with the cucumbers, so they grew huge and stopped producing more.
The corn didn’t get enough water this season, so some of the plants and ears are small. That will be pretty easy to fix next year.
And the rhubarb, wow! We just planted it this year, and I’ve had to harvest some stalks because the leaves were so large and heavy that they broke.
We got plenty of blackberries from our own land in early August, but even on September 1st we were still able to pick more. I have a blackberry rhubarb crisp with hazelnut topping in the oven right now.
The artichokes also delivered this summer. I had to give them each an occasional bucket of water to keep them going.
Plum harvest was not than sufficient; in fact, we didn’t even get around to harvesting all of them before it was too late… but we got enough. The Bartlett pears are coming in right now, and the tree is loaded. (It’s also loaded with Asian pears, but they’ve never been tasty from this tree.) Grapes will be coming ripe next.
To top things off: Heather bought a dairy goat yesterday. Day one was tough, but she had a comparatively smooth milking experience this evening. The goat is still experiencing relocation trauma, but it sounds like things will settle down over the next couple weeks. We’re keeping her separate from Karen the sheep, but we’ll get them together soon.
This is our second basket of beans, picked a few days after the first. It takes over an hour to harvest this amount.
Our trail cam recorded one deer the night after we put up the netting, and none since. Even the roses by the front porch are blooming again. Not sure why they disappeared so completely
With the deer gone, the peas have given another nice flush of pods to harvest.
We got a nice shot on the trail cam of a deer walking through the monofilament like nothin’. So we installed polypropylene deer fencing around the garden. It seems to be working, but we’re keeping the trail cam out there in case the deer try anything.
I planted the last batch of corn today. The previous plantings are all up.
We’ve been picking a few beans here and there, but I think we’re just days away from a good crop starting.