So much for commitment!

I guess I’ll get around to a seasonal post. Fall is almost over, Thanksgiving has come and gone 5 more weeks and the year is over. Where does time go?


The family is all good. Everyone is either in school or working. The flu has and still is making it's rounds. My work is good and I have my health. I have lost 30% body weight so far. I’m still looking at getting down to 200 pounds.  Although Thanksgiving week has set me back a few pounds.

The fall garden has done well this year. I keep experimenting with things and discovering more and more things that do well during this season.

My chickens are adults but I still haven’t gotten any eggs. It may be spring now before they go into full production.

The Girls in Their Home

I have gotten some great stuff this year. Of course the greens are great and have produced more than I can use. I have turnip greens, mustard greens, kale, collards, beets and Swiss char. All pictured above. Not pictured is a turnip that was 5 to 6 inches in diameter. Cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and brussels sprouts are in the pictures below.

Cauliflower

Broccoli

God is good.

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE

Well the summer is almost gone and I haven’t kept my commitment to maintain this blog.  I thought as I read my friends blogs that I wouldn’t have any problem keeping a post or two a week as a goal.  Kiss that good-by!

I will attempt to do a brief update here and recommit to doing a post a week (God willing).

In the garden:

My garden hasn’t produced as well as I would have liked it to have.  I got great corn 2 crops, jalapenos, banana peppers and bell peppers, okra, beets, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, flowers, green beans and summer squash.  The things that haven’t done well are my tomatoes, cucumbers, winter squash, and broccoli.  Some of these did well at first but failed early and I had difficulty getting a second crop going.  I still have the makings of a great sweet potatoes crop and have planted broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and brussels sprouts for this fall & winter.  I have also seeded mustard, kale, turnips, spinach, lettuce, beets, kohlrabi, and collards.  But I may have to reseed some stuff because I tried to second guess the weather (more on this later).

I am loosing apple trees (fire branch I think) and no fruit this year.  The few trees that did bare, the fruit was eaten by deer, squirrels and crows.

The chickens are adult now but not laying yet.  But they should start any day now.  And oh yes, one of them is a rooster (soon to be dinner).

Family:

Almost everyone is healthy.  I say this because we have had mono going through the family, on my side any way.  It started with Ada went to Amber then to Connie who still has it. 

I am still claiming Jesus’ victory in my life as I have at this point lost 100 pounds and I'm still going.

Amber was laid off from her job and is now in graduate school @ ETSU on her way to a degree in nutrition.  Ada trudges along in undergraduate school soon to graduate with a double degree.  Then on to graduate school and eventually on to MD/PHD in medical research if she realizes her goals.  Esther is a junior in high school this year.  She is doing well so far and playing soccer (always something).  Connie is doing OK except her issues with mono hopefully she will move past that soon.  Amy got married back in early summer and is a happily married woman now.  Rob and his wife Adelaide had a beautiful baby boy who is rapidly growing and paying Rob back for his own youth.  Laura graduated from graduate school in nursing and is now a nurse practitioner (smart girl like her mom).  

Well I will call it finish for now.  More later!

Garden Update

This is an overview of the garden, chicken pen and orchard.  The warm weather and plentiful rain has brought everything along quite well.

I mentioned before that the chicken pen was at the top of my do list.  And here is the finished pen.

Complete with chickens.  While still young in a few months they will be supplying all the eggs we can use.  A big thanks to Michael & Julie for getting them started for me.  

This is what I traded for the chickens.  Well not exactly, these are this years apples coming on.  I traded Michel & Julie some of last years apples for the chickens.  While a late freeze got most of my apples this year.  I will still have plenty of apples, maybe even some to trade or sell.

Salad anyone!  This is my salad bed.  the recent rains have made the leaf lettuce grow rapidly.  We are not at a want for salads.

More salad stuff.  I have never raised lettuce or salad greens before so maybe I over did it.  I have enough romaine lettuce to feed the neighborhood and then some.

Almost ready.  We will have broccoli by the end of next week.  The cabbage is making heads and I think we may have cauliflower this year.  The brussels sprouts are coming along but no sprouts yet.

Egg plants and basil plants.  Add some tomato sauce and cheese and yum.

Speaking of tomatoes here they are with peppers on the side.

Some summer squash on the side and a garden fresh meal fit for a king.

You've got to have some onions and spices to flavor the other stuff.  So here is some of that.

All this about food makes me hungry.  A state I have stayed in lately.  The good Lord has given me the will power to say no.  No to the excess I have enjoyed over the years and that has left me grossly obese.  Now thanks to His power I am shrinking back to a more manageable weight.  Since some time in February I have lost right at 65 pounds.  I praise God for His intervention in this because I know I didn't have the will power on my own. 

Make a Smilebox slideshow

How Does Your Garden Grow

Here is my most pressing project "the chicken pen".  I have the post in the ground, the gate hung and I'm in the process of reworking the inside of the shed.  Currently I have all the materials in hand, a plan and the chickens are ready for me to pick up.  All I have to do is finish.  

This was what I found a couple of weeks ago, sack worms and baby apples.  The sack worms are easy enough to deal with.  Soap water or tobacco juice have worked for me in the past.

 A late freeze got a lot of the apples this year but there will still be plenty for our needs with plenty to spare.

The blackberry plants are healthy and doing well.  This is one of the easiest crops to deal with. The toughest aspect is thinning the old canes out in the fall.  Painful work!

The late cold snap affected the asparagus.  We were able to get a couple of messes out of them I only cut them once because they seemed to be struggling, so I let them bolt. 

This picture is a couple of weeks old as seen by the date on the photo.  After the recent rains things have grown leaps and bounds the plans have doubled in size.  
Below are the tomato & pepper plants. Their roots have taken hold and are starting to grow with the rain and warmer days and nights.
The crows devastated my peas this year, so I filled the empty spaces with broccoli.  Don't ask me why, because I have way too much broccoli.  To the right of the photo below is the romaine which is doing nicely.
The lettuce is also doing rather well.  We are eating lots of salad and loving it.  We have also given to family and friends.

Ah, the collards have seen their day.  They bolt!  But not before suppling several good meals for me and others.  As soon as the ground is dry I will till this area in and plant more hot weather plants.

Growing Springing

This is a picture of one of my four blueberry bushes.  The nicest one, I'm still working on getting the soil PH right.  from the looks of this plant I'm getting close.

Early bee food, these are 2 of the early flowers that the bees feed on.  The hairy vetch is a very early bloomer.

The first blossoms.  When I was out working on my chicken enclosure yesterday I noticed one or 2 blooms.  This is what I found today.

 In a few days this will all be a beautiful pink and white landscape full of bees making me honey and apples. 

This was one of the things I was working on yesterday.  My daughter will be gone more this summer so I'm using more mulch to help me combat the weeds.  I stopped at the onset of the rain.  

In the foreground  is my asparagus and past the broccoli under the straw is romaine lettuce.  I covered these plants earlier this week expecting a freeze.  The cover is now so much mulch, I will add more to it.

These are freshly set tomato plants.  I will set more later as some of the early spring crops fail.

The cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower are coming along nicely. As are some other things like the onions and romaine.

Hobby Bee Keeper

This is a trailer load of packaged bees, ready to be distributed to local beekeepers form K&K Bee Farm. 
This is a package of bees.  It contains 3 pounds of bees, a queen and a can of sugar water for food.
This is an existing hive the one I thought I had lost the queen from.  Next to it is the wood ware and the 2 packages of bees staged and ready to start.
A closer look at the wood ware and packages.
Done and walking away.  I left some trash, I will pick it up in 3 or 4 days when I remove the queen cages.

This is a queen cage with a queen and 3 or 4 nurse bees.  The white area under the penny is candy.  This is what the worker bees eat and feed to the queen.  When the cage is placed in a hive the workers will eat their way through the candy from the other end releasing the queen into the hive.  This takes several days allowing the bees to acclimate to each other.

My new bees came in today as seen above.  After doing some tilling in the garden and setting out a few more broccoli plants I ran to K&K Bee Store and picked up my 2 packages of bees, a queen and a few supplies.  I didn’t need the queen so I will try to return her or ask them to sell her for me. 

When I checked my hives earlier this year I failed to fine the queen in one hive.  Because I didn’t find the queen and although there was capped brood, I didn’t see any fresh eggs or early stage larva.  And because a mouse had gotten into this hive during the winter I thought she might be dead.  So I ordered a new queen.  Today as I prepared to insert the new queen I discovered a very active and healthy hive with lots of new brood and fresh eggs.  This is good, because it means I will get honey from these girls this year.

 

God is good,

Patience

The spring rains have set in and while I have seed in the ground, I whish I had planted other things.  This rain will bring things springing to the surface and beyond.  In the past I have worked some stuff in the garden while it was wet.  If setting plants it works well if you have raised beds but I don’t, so I wade though mud up to 8 inches deep sometimes.  

I have been enjoying our asparagus I love to just pick and eat it raw, on the spot.  But alas I have to put some on the table for everyone else.

We have finished the apple trees and they are now budding leaves out with some red showing.  

Waiting again!

 

I have cobbled together all the supplies needed for the new bees I ordered and again I wait for their arrival.  They should arrive this coming week.  I will try to get some pictures of them.  It is hard as I need a second person when it comes to getting pictures of them.  For some reason no one wants to be around when I get into them.

Yesterday I went to the nursery and bought some more plants; more broccoli and some tomatoes plants and some jalapeño plants (yes I still buy plants but I’m working on that, next year).  Sunday I will set the broccoli plants and after the coming cold snap I will set all the rest of the plants.  Yes I gamble sometimes but I think this will be the last freeze/frost. 

It’s Sabbath and what a relief it is to sit quietly and feel God’s arms around you. 

Almost finished

I took off from work today and pruned trees.  We almost finished.  We are down to about 5 to 8 more trees.  As I was pruning I noticed that some of the trees were starting to show some green. So at the end of the day I mixed some deciduous spray and sprayed the trees.  This will burn the green that was showing and cause them to be undersized this year which affects the size of the fruit but there wasn’t that much.  The benefit for the rest of the trees will far out weigh any harm done.

Esther and I will finish the rest of the trees this week.  I will move on to planting more stuff in the garden next week, getting 2 hives ready for the 2 packages of bees I ordered and reworking my chicken house and yard.  It may be a busy week.