Monday, November 15, 2021

The Weaker Brother.

RC Sproul has been a "virtual" mentor to me for many years. There are several of his messages that persist in my thoughts over the years. This is one of them. 

RC Sproul's Sermon on "The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother"

I am so grateful for his heart for the gospel.

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Harvest 2016

This was our first year growing yellow onions. We've always had bunching onions, but this was new for us. We planted about a quart of tiny sets that cost about a dollar. We ended up with over 40 pounds. Great return on investment, right? We hope this will take us through most of the year. Next year it will be more. We have a bunch more still growing that we started from seed last winter. They are similar in size to these. I'm happy I've saved all my mesh produce bags which are very handy for onions.

We've got over 220 pounds of chicken in the freezer now and are out of room, so the rest is getting canned. They were huge again this year, with the males averaging around 12 pounds. The pullets are about 8 pounds each. I'm thinking it will be wonderful to have canned chicken on hand this winter when I don't feel like cooking much.

So I'm in the house canning the chicken while the rest of the family is harvesting tomatoes this evening. We're having another terrific harvest this year and as usual planted way too much of some things. I always seem to be optimistic in the spring, overwhelmed in the fall. We have hundreds of pounds of tomatoes out there. Friends can sure give me a call and come get some if they want! If you take some, I won't have so many to can. (I like to can several years worth at a time of any one thing. This harvest should take us through the next few years for tomatoes!)
This is the first variety we're picking. They are Black Beauty. These were prolific! They grew into fantastic strong seedlings, then vines and matured earlier than all the other varieties. We began with these and we have 3 more varieties left to gather in.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

The Mighty Broadfork

The broadfork. I had heard about them but had never seen one in real life. They are used for loosening the soil waaay down deep which is exactly what's needed for carrots and some other root vegetables. It's also a low-tech grid-down muscle-ready substitute for a tiller.

Last year we bought ourselves one. It's a monster and it's not even the biggest they have. I was a bit concerned about using it myself because it was so heavy I wondered if I would be able to handle it.
Turns out to be a piece of cake. Even though Tom is pictured here demonstrating it, I was the one who did a 14 x 6 foot section myself with hardly any effort. It couldn't have taken me more than 15 minutes. The toughest part was carrying it back and forth from the garden shed. It did a great job!
Balancing on the crossbar I moved the handles slightly forward and back pushing it into the ground, then pulled back to lift the soil. It was quick and rewarding. The chunks that were left raked out easily.
Tom plans to use it to loosen the soil for harvesting potatoes also. It worked great in preliminary testing. I love this thing and am grateful for it.

Harvesting Mint

Beautiful early summer weather, check. Lush growth, check. Absence of disease, check. Low insect burden, check. I kept tabs on my very small mint bed to find the factors for optimal harvest and I believe I did well this time. I have one small (18") circular bed of "Chocolate Mint" that I got as a small start from a friend last year. It's been prolific!
I asked Isaac to cut it all down for me to 4 inches and gather it in. This is the haul. I thought it was pretty impressive for such a small patch.
 
I began by clipping off the leaves using a scissor but decided just ripping those leaves off was much easier and faster. I used my trusty garage-sale dehydrator for about half of it.
 
The rest of them went on to these pizza pans (I picked up a bunch at auction a few years ago), then into the oven at 100 degrees. This temperature is reached by using a feature on my oven for raising bread dough. Very handy.
Here's the final product, after twirling in the blender for a few seconds. The scent is a really intense peppermint. I need to have about twice this much to get us through the winter with our homemade teas, so I'll either increase the patch size for next year or see if I can harvest a second time this summer.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Garden progress

Planting is mostly done and weeds are under control. We've been working hard on our garden but enjoying every minute. 

The pole beans are reaching for the sky and trellises are going in this weekend. These are Purple Podded Pole beans. I am trialing these because I thought it might be easier to pick beans that don't blend into the color of the leaves.

As usual, I have a pretty poor pea crop. I never seem to get them in early enough, sprouting was poor, and they succumb to powdery mildew every year. I saw a couple of plants going south this week so took raw milk mixed with water (33/66) and sprayed it on all of them. The enzymes are supposed to help the plants fight off the mildew. Last year I tried a baking soda mix with limited success. This year I also selected a variety (Kelvedon Wonder) that is supposed to be mildew resistant. We'll see how it goes. I sprayed the beans and squashes also since they would be vulnerable if the mildew continues to spread.

The peppers and tomatoes are growing well. The larger tomatoes to the rear in this photo are "Black Beauty". I have been astonished at how well they are growing compared to all the other tomato starts I did this year. They were expensive and only 15 seeds to the pack, but wow, have they been terrific so far. I am excited to see how well they produce.

Here are the potatoes you saw us planting a few weeks ago. They were in trenches and have now grown so much they have been  hilled into, well, hills. They look incredibly healthy and strong. These are Kennebec.
I'm growing enough yellow onions to hold us for the year, I hope. Two 45 foot rows. This is my first time growing onions for storage. Every year we try to add at least one more food source to our little farm. This gardening stuff is fun!

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Ready for Summer


The garden is in, the pool is finally up and filling, the deck pots are growing their herbs, greens, tomatoes and peppers. We've been eating some fine salads. I grew radishes for the first time this spring and am loving those right out of the garden. I never liked them as a child, but the palate improves with age. 
There are a lot of advantages to older age, I'm discovering, and I don't mind growing older one bit. But I would like to be able to squat in order to better weed my garden. Note to youngsters. Practice squatting so you don't lose the ability. Even if you never seem to need it. Someday you might discover yourself in a lifestyle change that requires squatting.
The chicks arrived this morning. Thirty-five meat birds and twelve for the flock. This year we selected six Partridge Rock which fit well here due to their gentleness, foraging, and mothering abilities. Their brown color also helps protect them from aerial predators. We also selected three Araucana for their beautiful aqua and green eggs and, new to us this year, Whiting True Blue for their blue eggs. It's always fun to have a variety of colors in the egg cartons. 
For our freezer, we chose Murray McMurray's "Cornish Roasters" again this year, as we have had great results with them, and they are capable of moving around, foraging, and living their lives well until the very last when it is time to butcher. We are well satisfied with these beautiful birds which produce a huge breasty carcass for the freezer.

We've still been "harvesting" our 2015 garden from the root cellar. The potatoes are still holding out, and these beautiful "Cosmic Purple" carrots held up better than the "Danvers Half Longs", which began to go south in February/March. These are beginning to lose some of their sweetness and flavor, but are still fine for soups and such. I am trialing a few other varieties this year, aiming for storage ability. 
We hold our carrots and beets in bins and layer them (not touching each other) with damp sand. The potatoes, once thoroughly dried in the sun go into mesh bags and are stored as they are. Any that begin to go bad need to be pulled out so they do not affect their neighbors. And they stink.


Monday, May 16, 2016

Potatoes and Canning Beans

We planted potatoes yesterday. I'm grateful for a strong husband. This year we're using the Kennebec variety. Last year, even though we harvested a whopping 450 pounds, some of the larger potatoes had hollow hearts. My organic gardening book tells me that it indicates a shortage of phosphorous which can be alleviated for the long term with the application of granite meal. These seed potatoes indicated they were "hollow heart exempt" so we'll see if we can eliminate the issue. We may do the granite meal also.

We planted 15 pounds of seed potatoes into 6 forty-five foot trenches so we're hoping for another bumper crop like last year.

We replanted our Kelvedon Wonder peas as the first planting mostly failed. I did not soak the peas that time and we were hit with a very long cold rainy week. So we're trying again. We also planted 90 feet of onion sets on  Friday. They are a yellow onion, bulk purchased but I do not know the variety.

I canned up 14 quarts of dried beans this weekend. The varieties I canned are some we grew and dried in the last two years, and some were purchased through Azure Standard. I used my tattler re-usable lids with 100% success this time. There is a bit of a learning curve with these lids, but once you understand what's required it's as easy as the single-use lids.