Down on the Farm

I'm so glad I planted other vining green beans, since the rabbits stripped our bush beans down to stalks. I bought a package of "Yard Long Beans," just for fun. Here are some picks:

 

Yes, that green bean is 14" long! Not quite a yard, but still! I pick two or three each time I pick the garden, and I stick them in a ziploc freezer bag (my new preserving friend). I have quite a few. Each bean would break into 4 or 5 regular-length beans.
Did I tell you I made more tomato paste in the crockpot, and froze it in tablespoons? Worked quite well.

More Yard Long Beans. Aren't they cool? Here they are on the trellis:

My loofah plants are blooming away. The ants love them, and I'm wondering if the ants are nibbling off the flowers, etc., where the fruit (the loofah) would grow?

Anyway, thus far I have one nice loofah growing. I'll save the seeds and put the dried loofah into some soap.

What to do with ALL this basil? Honestly, we haven't figured it out yet :(
I may try drying and freezing it for later use. But that's a lot of basil for "later use."

Now I'll tell about the Chair Saga. Adam had a nice upholstered chair in the barn office, which is the doorway below with the white door. That room has a concrete slap and some shelving, but that's about all I can say for its civilization. Ned and Baby sleep in there, and it's pretty trashed. They chew everything and destroy everything, including that chair. We found its innards all over the field.

Adam came home late the other night and said, "I picked up a recliner on the side of the road." I laughed, thinking he was joking, but he wasn't. "I helped him," Julia said. I looked at her. I thought she deplored this rural-Pamlico-County-farming-rustic-slipshod lifestyle of ours. Didn't she know that picking discarded furniture (especially an upholstered recliner!) off the side of the road was a NO-NO for a cool, chic, urban college girl like she aspires to be?
I was not that surprised at Adam, except I couldn't believe he willingly added one stick of furniture to our already abundant collection of creaking hand-me-downs.

He put that recliner in the barn office, and (like any good sailor) wrapped it in an old sail to keep them from shredding it right away.
Last night they tore up the sail. They chewed and pulled on the sail. By the time Adam went out there this morning, they'd pulled the chair nearly out of the room and into the outdoors. Dogs!
Well. Adam will not be bossed by his dogs, oh no! Today he threw them out of the office. He has reclaimed his man cave!!! The dogs now reside in one of the barn bays next door, with a dirt floor (poor things). Adam will watch football this fall in a chair with stuffing.

Our garden continues to produce. I pick every other day.
Anybody know what kind of melon this is? It was a volunteer. We have three on that vine. The leaf looks vaguely similar to a cucumber, but smaller.

The bugs are getting to our cucumbers, so I picked all of them -- even the tiny baby ones. Many were already bad. But I made two quarts of pickles -- my first pickle making! The recipe is from my sister-in-law, Anne. I think it was her grandmother's recipe. I loved it years ago and wrote down the recipe. It's a lovely combination of sweet and dill.

I've made more pints of grilled garlic tomato sauce too. I'm running out of pint jars!

Why I Picked the Cantaloupe

 

Because I had to rescue it from Ned, our resident cantaloupe picker.
He picked and nibbled on this other, smaller cantaloupe (below) on Saturday. We'd been watching that big cantaloupe (above) for weeks. Waiting. (Adam is a lover of cantaloupe.) So I picked it, probably early.

 Ned chews EVERYTHING. He drags wire mesh out of the barn and mangles it.

 He pulled my bike basket off my my bicycle (which was hanging from a ceiling hook) and ripped it to shreds.

 He sticks his snout into the open end of Adam's big dehydrator and nibbles on the styrofoam.

 He reduced a garden hose to gnawed-on segments all over the yard.

 He chewed up a paint roller and the handle too.

 Oh, and I forgot to take a picture of the canister of liquid nails he got hold of.
He even attacks his own play balls and reduces them to trash.

Then there's the brand new bag of Miracle Gro potting soil he stole off the greenhouse shelf.

 Not to mention the many, many cardboard boxes Adam puts in the compost bins. Ned removes them, shreds them up and scatters them across the pasture.

The one thing I've never seen him chew, which he really ought to chew, is his chair.

It's a big upholstered wooden chair -- perfect for gnawing on.

Many of his chewing victims come from the worm bay in the garage (the far left bay). It had nothing covering the doorway, so Ned helped himself. He would even grab the old veggies Adam put in for the worms to eat, and nibble them down for lunch. (sigh)

 Ned's room is in the middle -- his chair, his food, his water. The door on the left has the worms. The door on the right is full of old lumber, equipment, scary things like snakes and mice. I don't go in there EVER. But I needed another board to put over the worm bay (as you see I did in the photo above). So I looked in the bay on the right right. And I saw this.

A snake. On its back. With its head tangled up fully in some mesh fencing. Ugh. I thought it was dead but then it wigged. I left it for Adam to deal with. Double ugh. I retrieved a big piece of wood, covered the doorway again, and left it to wiggle.

I do worry for my chickens a bit. They're in the enclosure on the left -- see one? They like to flutter up onto the fence or the gate -- see the darker wooden gate with the hook closure? They sit atop it. Today we'll be putting some of that loose black fencing all along the top of the more solid fencing. It's so soft they won't be able to sit on it, but it's high enough they won't be able to fly over. I hope.
Speaking of escape ... today at the pound, Adam and I found our second farm dog! So now Ned has company! Maybe he won't be so bored? Maybe he won't chew so many things?
Meet Marigold, aka "Goldie."

on the ride home

She didn't like it when Adam went out the door.
She pined for him.

Playing with a pound kitty.
Goldie is friendly, playful, maybe 5 years old.

It's good to have Adam back home from his long trip to Louisiana to officiate at his nephew's wedding. He's already mowing and cleaning up after Ned. Ned and Goldie have already escaped the fence once today, through a gate that has always been closed and bolted. Not sure how it got open. We are hoping Goldie is not an escape artist who will adversely influence Ned. That's all he needs!

The Junk Lying Around

I mentioned that Adam ripped out some fencing to use on the pea trellis. He did that in two places. As we were meandering around the barn area the yesterday, we found quite a few objects that Mr. M. (our previous owner) had left. An old farm, even a small one, often has so much junk lying around.
For instance, when we looked into the back storage room of the barn ...

... we found an old trouble light,

 copper pipes,

 a wooden wheel, (Mr. M. made lots of water wheels; we think he had a water-carrying system in the works.)

 a metal door,

 a whole roll of chicken wire Adam didn't realize was there (!!!),

 ... and last but not least, 25 feet of garden hose that Mr. M. had buried just underground, running it from his watering barrels to the orchard. That will come in handy.

We're still contemplating chickens. Here's their coop area, a part of the barn:

It needs lots of cleaning and tightening. The manure needs to be removed.
It opens onto this little lot where one of the removed fences used to be. It's a good size for a chicken yard.

We view any farm plan as a basis for change :) Until the chickens arrive, things may change. Adam wants to grow sunflowers this year as part of our chickens' food, and wait to buy chickens next year. But then again ... that might change!
Well! That was all written several days ago! Since then I've been battling respiratory flu, and just this afternoon Adam has succumbed to the stomach flu (ugh!). Before that descent, he did a little work at the greenhouse:

 Above, the garlic is WAY up!
And can you see the tiny dill sprouts coming along?

 And thyme --

 The golden wax beans are popping their heads up as well --

 Hmm ... what is this below? I can't remember. But it's sprouting also!

 Today Adam built a potato bin. As you see, his plans are always developing. The wire is stapled to the posts, and it can be unwrapped easily. We'll fill the bin with compost (and sprouted potatoes), and line the sides with cardboard to keep out the sunlight.

We had such stormy weather this past week -- gale winds and all. Adam took the plastic off of the greenhouse, and we moved the plants elsewhere. In spite of more forecasts of strong winds, he put the plastic back on. We cannot be dressing and undressing the greenhouse with every strong wind. But he did reinforce --

On the back edges he put rope into the plastic edge, along with duct tape, to strengthen it.
And he attached the plastic better along the bottom.

It was just stapled, but now it's screwed into strips of wood to spread out the tension when the wind hits.
But no more of that! Now we're both inside on the couch, recovering.