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Produce Progress

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One reason I haven't been writing much lately, is because of my garden.  It has been one fantastic garden year, which has kept me busy almost every day for at least since the beginning of August, slicing and blanching and freezing and pickling, harvesting and cooking and weeding.   I've never gotten so many vegetables in my life, and it's been a real education for me in being steadfast and showing up every day to do the work whether I feel like it or not.  It has been so rewarding in so many ways, and I'm so glad I've been able to put up so much good food for the winter.  However, I'm so glad it's coming to a close! My garden was hit by a bad storm about a week ago (that's a future post!), and so many plants are finally done producing.  What's left won't requite so much work to put up.  Cabbage and carrots and rutabagas will happily sit in the fridge for months, staying fresh and delicious.  Ground cherries just need to be picked and frozen, pret...
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The Storms and the Floods

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Hey everyone, it's guest author Chad here today.  At the end of July, we had quite the rainstorm come through the area.  Apple Weather figured it was about a quarter inch (haw haw), local news eventually settled on 4.5", but this is what our rain gauge had to say about the portion that came down on overnight: There was a lot of runoff.  Following our creek downstream, it came up into the field, around our cabin. And it pushed up over the walkway leading to the cabin. In the aftermath, there was a bit of mud on the plants around the back of the cabin, so it may have gotten under there a bit.  But we couldn't get in there to observe it first hand.  Thankfully, the cabin is raised about a foot and a half off the ground, so it had no trouble itself.  Downstream, it came up over the banks and into our neighbor's yard quite a bit. More water was being problematic elsewhere.  Across the street, it couldn't all fit through the culvert under the driveway int...
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Getting the fields hayed

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We had our fields hayed this year, which means we're really farmers now!  Or maybe it means our place is a real farm?  Either way, we got to watch our fields being hayed, and it was pretty neat. The (real) farmer at the end of our road has had a bad hay season.  With the cold, wet spring, his hay crop was very poor.  Whereas in most years he would get 12 loads of hay from his fields from the first cutting, this year he only had 3!  So he was asking around the neighborhood if anyone wanted their fields hayed, and of course we said yes.  Last year we had to pay to have the whole thing brush hogged, so this would help save us money too.   Because the fields are rather hilly on the one side, and rather swampy on the other, the farmer was only able to hay about 1/3 to 1/2 of our fields.  I tried to be very sneaky about taking pictures because I didn't want to seem like a townie who has never seen a field being hayed before (which I haven't!), so s...
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Garden progress 2026

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 Life has been pretty busy around here lately, with the garden, visiting family, working on the house, and getting ready for winter (already!).  So today, we're just going to have a photo post, full of pictures from my garden.  Enjoy!       
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