Results Of Busy Day #1 & A Picture Of What William Does Best

The corn ready for the freezer.



William got up early this morning to water the garden, put the garbage out for pickup, and check on the chickens. He did all this before I ever woke up.

After working outside until eleven o'clock this morning then making a run into town for a few items from Wally-World and to pick up the chicken plates we bought from Kaileigh's cheer fundraiser, he decided it was nap time.

William snoozing in his recliner

Busy Day #1

Late yesteday evening Dub came to bring us sixty-five ears of sweet corn. It was late and I was tired enough that I didn't want to start on it last night. We spread it out and kept the air on it all night so the corn wouldn't spoil.

I got up this morning and started. I shucked the corn, silked the corn, washed the corn, cut the corn off the cob and put it in the oven to cook enough to go in the freezer.

There is a soup pot full of corn on the cob to go in the freezer also. I got tired of cutting corn off the cobs so I broke some of the ears in half to put up on the cob.

The corn is cooling. I will put it in bags in a little while. Then it will go into the freezer.

This is the first of any vegetable that we have gotten to freeze this summer. But from the looks of our garden this won't be the last of the busy days.

William went to Mom's and Dub's this morning to dig potatoes. He brought a plastic tub almost full of new potatoes. I think I will can some of them. They would be good in soups and stews this winter.

I don't mind busy days. When I think of what we are getting accomplished it gives me a feeling of satisfaction. I know that if "stuff hits the fan" we will not go hungry. Neither will our children.

Dinner, Anyone?

The fixings for our veggie dinner tonight. We grew the cucumbers, squash, beans and peppers. The onion, cabbage and potatoes came from my stepfather's garden. All fresh vegetables served with homemade bread. Can't get any better than this.

One of the reasons I love gardening:

Everyone has their time!

This is going to be short and sweet today. I have a confession to make. William and I have been gardening for thirteen or fourteen years. We are pretty good gardeners...at least I think we are.

Yesterday I wrote about the butternut squash plants that came up volunteer....WELL....I checked them out closely late yesterday afternoon. They NOT butternut squash. Are you ready for this? They are burpless cucumbers. How do I know? There's a cucumber growing where a butternut squash should have been. At least where I thought a butternut squash would be.

Just goes to show me. I don't know everything and I should never take William's word for it.

Feeding A Garden So It Can Feed Me And Other Stuff

We gave the garden its bi-weekly feeding this morning. We soaked the ground with the tea and poured it over some of the leaves.

I noticed that the green beans are blooming profusely along with the butter beans. William said he found some tiny hulls on the butter beans. YUM!

The squash have loads of blooms as noted in a previous post. There's not many squash on the vines as of yet.

Yesterday I found a baby cucumber. When there are tiny cukes one day there will be cukes ready for eating in a couple of days or they will be too large for anything. I will check the cucumbers again in the morning and hope that there will be some ready to eat for lunch.

I have to thin the okra. Some hills have three or four plants in them. That will keep the okra from growing like it should. I will thin them down to one or two stalks in each hill. I may need to give it a little beating. The plants aren't growing as sturdy as I would like. The beating will make them start growing. Yep, it works. I've done it before and the okra shot up overnight.

There are some butternut squash plants that came up volunteer. William has a trellis for one of them to run up. The other one is on the north end of the garden. We gave them some food this morning too. If they do as well as the one plant we had last year we will harvest all the butternut squash that we can use from these two plants.

The tomatoes have a good many small tomatoes on them. Not as many as in years gone by but we will be planting more tomatoes this coming week for late harvest. This way we should have all the tomatoes that we can use until frost hits us.

The peppers are looking a little better. The leaves are greening up a bit.
I will pick the peppers late this afternoon.

The field peas are growing. They soon will be blooming also. We will have to watch them for mold if we keep getting rain of any measure and watch them for lice if it turns dry on us.

As for other stuff: William put one of the Barred Rock hens in a coop with eight eggs. She was trying to set on a nest where the other hens were laying. Now she has her own nest with her own eggs to hatch, I hope.

One of the ducks has started setting on about a dozen eggs or so William says there's a dozen under her. If she hatches any of these eggs the ducklings will go to a brooder. I'll be danged if I'm having ducklings hatched just to feed raccoons or snakes or whatever ate the last eight that hatched about a month ago.

William is building a covered pen for the young chicks that I bought the last of March. He is closing up an open shed and then dividing it so we can seperate the Buttercups from the Americana/auracanas (Easter Eggers).

This has nothing to do with gardening or raising animals. Just a note of appreciation to the man who knew nothing about growing anything when we began our homesteading venture. William sees what needs to be done and quietly goes about getting it done. Thanks Honey. Think I'll keep you! I hope for a LONG time.

Blueberries....Blueberry Pie?

NOT! We transplanted three blueberry bushes earlier this spring. They have reached around two feet tall but have clusters of blueberries on them.

The three blueberry bushes all in one hole just as Felder instructed. That's the blueberries in front of the walkway.


The nurseryman we bought the bushes from told us that we would have blueberries this year. Look what I picked this morning. A whole handful of blueberries!


A closer view shows that I picked some unripe ones too.


Not enough for a pie but enough for a little snack. There's more on the bushes that aren't ripe. If they had all gotten ripe at the same time we could have had a small blueberry pie or cobbler.


William can have a little snack later on. I just want a taste for the time being.
I'll wait until we have enough for the pie.

First Peppers Of The Summer

I took a stroll through the garden this afternoon hoping to find some more "Big" squash to go with the ONE that I have in the refrigerator waiting to be cooked. No squash but I did find some peppers.

I gathered the jalapeno, sweet banana and cayenne peppers. The sweet bell doesn't look like it's going to make it!

Anyway, I cook a pork tenderloin that had been massaged with a Memphis-Style dry rub and then doused it with homemade barbecue sauce (Memphis-Style of course) and oven baked fries. I piled the meat on wheat buns then topped that off with fresh homemade cole slaw (cabbage from Step-Father's garden). Piled some fries on the side along with a jalapeno and a cayenne pepper.

I have noticed in years past that the first peppers are tender without much heat. WELLLL...not these two. The cayenne was purt near warm but that danged jalapeno threw the roof of my mouth into spasms. No Joke! That pod of pepper was about the hottest pepper that I have ever put in my mouth.

But...I ate it. Every little bit of it right down to the stem. After the spasms died away the roof of my mouth, my tongue and every part of my mouth welcomed that wonderful, hot jalapeno.

Now before you call the men with the white jackets to come take me away I must tell you that I don't consider summer "arrived" until I eat a jalapeno from my garden that is so hot that it makes me cry. Now you can call those guys with the white jackets to come take me away but be sure to tell them that I want to go where there's jalapenos.

My first peppers of the summer.