The Fall Garden

This week Adam is working hard to transition into our fall garden. That means ripping out all the tomato plants:

 They were still bearing, but they were massacred by horn worms and other pests, and the fruit was awful-looking.

 I made one more quart of good tomato sauce from a last picking, and then the plants went into the compost.
He also removed the first cucumber bed ... nice and clean now!

He's put Wando sweet peas in these three beds. We discovered in early summer that we could eat about as many peas as we could grow, haha!
And he nourished the soil with Worm Tea from our worm bin.

"Black Gold! Texas Tea!"

The asparagus is looking fine. In the other small raised bed, and in the old cucumber bed, he'll plant lettuces and spinach for autumn salads.

Today he's also weed-eating the bean mounds. Our beans were pitiful this year, in spite of doing a second planting. Molested by bugs at first, they did recover, and they've bloomed, etc., but never really yielded many good beans.

Our pepper plants are bearing well now:

But one of them is decimated by something eating away at it. Not sure what.

Our second planting of zucchini and squash are looking quite healthy -- they are on the far left in the photo below:

 Oh -- the purpose of the photo above is also to show that we didn't rip out absolutely all of the tomato plants. We have about six plants left that are still bearing well. We kept them.
And our two horseradish plants are looking fabulous now that Adam ripped out the old broccoli plants around them:

The dogs love to play while Adam works.

But Beau sometimes tires of these antics and hides under the truck.

While Adam poured Worm Tea into the beds, I sat in a chair in the shade and perused our little farm that he's worked so hard on. He is the labor; I am the photographer, chicken lady, and occasional help. Here's a short video, complete with road noise and insects humming:

It's so peaceful sitting there. I'm very thankful for where we live.

More on chickens and hostas in the next post!

That First Cool Morning

(Note - this post was written in late August. I saved it in a draft and failed to publish it for days and days.)
This morning was it -- the first morning when Adam said to me, "Go out the back door and feel that air. It's cool." And it was.
He scythed in front of the bees, always a nervous thing.

They get after him, and he has to come back later to finish up.

My camera went caputee last time before I could take all the veggie pictures I wanted to share with you, particularly this tall tomato plant. Look at it! One of the last ones I put into a bed, it didn't seem a likely candidate for Best Tomato this year. It's about 7 feet tall.

Most of our other tomatoes are perking up a lot with somewhat cooler weather. They're growing again, putting out new flowers and fruit, and looking happy.

See? I don't trim them or cut out suckers or anything. As one gardener said, "Why would you take away the plants source of food -- the leaves that photosynthesize?" Good point. And my tomatoes have done very well this year, better than any year when I pinched anything off.

We've had a few pretty peppers this year too.

Our beans. They've finally slithered up those strings, but we've never gotten many actual beans off them. We live in hope.

The little asparagus bed is looking good. Of course, when you take plants from the greenhouse and put them into a bed, they're a bit shocked. But they've put up new shoots, so their roots are establishing.

Horseradish. We have two nice clumps.

Our corn failed because of weeds. Our sunflowers also, probably because we went cheap and didn't buy good seed. Live and learn!

September on the Farm

We survived Tropical Storm Hermine over the weekend, and now temperatures are definitely cooler compared to a month ago. Phew! We're weary of that heat!

The hens continue to give us about three eggs each day. I think maybe my Rhode Island Red is the freeloader holding out on me :) Goldie loves going to the field with us and rolling around in the grass. We call it her "Salsa Dancing."

Hermine dropped lots of rain, but she moved quickly through during Friday night while we slept. She left a soggy yard.

 Lines of pine straw indicated to us how high the water washed up, but it didn't stay long.
This is the bottom of our house deck ramp, just a bit of water.

 The path to the out-building was soggy too and scattered with fallen pecan limbs. One large one punctured the ground.

 On the other side of our house deck, I finally told Adam to remove the huge holly bushes that flanked the steps.

 They were quite tall. Walking between them each morning was a little creepy. The spider webs were significant.

We'll find something else to go there eventually.
Yesterday Adam had a big fire in the pasture for all the brush; it was cool enough at last. Soon he will pull almost all the remaining tomato plants out of the ground. They still have fruit, but the tomato hornworms have found them at last. I pulled off and squashed about 25 of them yesterday. Most of the remaining fruit doesn't look good. A few plants we put in later are still thriving and healthy. Adam is putting in peas in the two tomato rows.

Cucumbers continue to bear a bit. Our watermelons have come .. and come ... but each one rots. Adam investigated and found they were deficient in calcium. Next year we'll know better. I've picked two pretty gourds and one pumpkin. They sit on the front porch.

Not an impressive return for the massive gourd plants twisting their way 'round the garden!
Adam admits that he spent an inordinate amount of time MOWING, all summer long. It eats into his available time to do other farm work. Next year, if finances permit, maybe we'll get a better mower. Maybe!
Next year:
We hope to get grapes from the vines, if they're getting enough sunlight.
We hope to use the dehydrator.
We hope to harvest honey.
We hope to double our greenhouse space.
We hope to have successfully had a winter garden and corn and sunflowers.
We hope to have a Sheltie and for Goldie to have moved outside full-time.
And many other things ... we hope for.

The Hint of Fall

Temperatures are a little bit cooler.
Humidity is a little lower.
The air feels a tiny bit fresh.
The trees' leaves are brownish.
A few are yellow.
It's not fall yet -- still a month away. But fall's prelude is happening, that vague and indescribable turning of summer's corner. And lo, there is much rejoicing among those who suffer through summer!

 Adam's favorite farm activity is beginning again. It's time to make dirt!!! He's mowing and bagging the grass. Soon he'll be raking leaves and pine straw.

We picked the gourds from the massive plant, and Adam pulled out the vines for compost.

The gourds don't look that great, but then again, this plant was a volunteer and we weren't planning on gourds.

And I picked one little pumpkin and one pretty gourd.

Ned the Farm Dog is still on watch.

 

 Last night he chewed up Adam's water hoses that runs water from the barrels to the pool. A bit of a mess. Adam says clearly it's time to work on the underground PVC piping for water collection to remove the hose temptation.
Some of our garden plants are on their last breath, like this cucumber vine.

 Or this indeterminate tomato vine which looks a little tired on the bottom but is still growing on the top and putting out fruit.

Another cucumber is younger and more vibrant on the left.

And our pepper plants are doing great on the right.

 

Our newly planted zucchini and squash plants are looking healthy.

Our bees are quite happy in their location facing the morning sun each day.

 The chickens are delightful.

 Isn't Bernie getting big and handsome? He's a true roo, and pesters his ladies and does his fancy chicken dance side-stepping at them.

 Above, he dances with Punkin.
Below are Ruby and Lucy.

 I was collecting one egg daily, and then one day I collected three! They were laid all over the coop, but always back in the corners where I had to dig through the straw to find them. I asked myself, "Why do they lay back in the corners instead of using those nice, comfy nesting boxes full of straw?" I answered myself, "Silly woman! You've turned the whole coop into one giant nesting box with all that straw on the floor! Rake out the straw and give them a dirt floor like all the other coops you've seen. Put straw only in the nesting boxes, and they'll lay eggs there."
So I did. I raked out the straw. It went into Adam's compost.

Did they use the nesting boxes then? No, of course not. They're chickens.
But I'm back to getting only one egg each day. I think I scared those other two. Punkin laid one of them (because it was blue, and Ameraucanas lay blue eggs) and either Lucy or Ruby laid the other. Poor girls!

 
We're always tweaking their coop, improving the fencing, etc. The next job is to fix their little coop door. The barn siding is deteriorating because of termites, as you can see on the "threshold." Adam plans to put a new board there and cut a new door in it.

And that brings me to yet another big project that he's in the middle of: termite treatment of all the buildings. We know we have termites because of the damage in the barn, but he wants to prevent them from damaging the house, garage, or out-building, and to stop the damage to the barn. Paying someone else to treat the buildings would cost about $1400-$1500.

So Adam read up on the job, ordered the equipment and chemicals, and is doing the job himself for about $350. It's back-breaking, unpleasant, and a little dangerous, and was really nasty during the bad heat. But he's about halfway done.

Never a dull moment here! He is working on moving Goldie outside more. Julia has returned to school for the fall semester. I'm about to begin working again. Hi-Ho, let's be happy!! Autumn is almost here, my favorite time of year!!