Life goes forward

Life goes on, forward most days, but only one day at a time. This weather has been yucky, we have had too much rain for the garden. Might be hard to believe but the grass has about taken over. Its still far too wet to get in there to work so the grass will keep growing. We do have a few nice days forecast thru the weekend. We should also get a lil break from the heat as well with temps staying in the mid 80's. I can do 80, its those 90's that do me in. I don't acclimate well at all any more. I am either freezing or burning up. I don't have a happy middle any more. But at least my knees will be happy for a while. I got the last of the series of 3 injections in my right knee yesterday. It is a bit sore but not as bad as they have been after the injections. So there is a plus. Now if only this stuff will kick in and do its job and relieve the pain in the knee joints I will for sure be happy about that. But the doc said it would take a while and depend on a lot of factors. So we wait. I don't do well trying to squat down to weed beds and such. So guess that is out of the question. But I certainly have plenty of it to do. I did manage to finish the beds out back this evening with Rodgers help. Still need to get the strawberry bed by the drive and the remainder of the herb bed weeded. Rodger bought me 20 bags of mulch to put down on the berries and herbs to help cut down on the weeding. Maybe I can get a lot of that stuff done this weekend as it is suppose to be nice and not rain. After I get the mulch down it can rain a bit to settle it in but no downpours please.

Last week after my doc appointment we had to make a trip to Lexington to Sam's club to pick up supplies for the company and get a few things stocked back up for us here at home. As the rain destroyed our onions in the garden we bought a 50 lb bag of onions at Sam's. I have been slicing some of those and getting them dried out in the summer kitchen. I also bought carrots to dry an celery. I am surprised at how many carrots and celery flakes I use in cooking. Lots to say the least. Our carrots did not grow this year either, not sure if it was too wet or too cold when we sowed them. But we planted twice an none made it. I still have enough carrot chunks in the freezer to last another season but needed some dried to make my version of Ms Dash. It has been a challenge at best to dry things in the dehydrator in the summer kitchen for a while. The humidity is high outside and it takes longer even in the dehydrator. But we making progress. Still got a lot of onions, all the celery an carrots to dry. Maybe by time I start canning beans I will be done with all the dehydrating. Rodger did make it to the garden last weekend and picked a bunch of cukes and we made bread and butter pickles with those. Tomorrow evening we will pick again and make more. We do use a lot of pickles. Rodger will eat the pickles as a snack if I don't have a dessert made. We try to make at least 20 quarts of bread and butter pickles and about that many kosher dills every year to last all season. When I have cukes that get too big to make good dill slices or spears I usually chop those and can them as chopped dill pickle for use in deviled eggs and such. Lots easier than chopping as you need them. Just open the jar an take out what ya need for the recipe.

Our yard had gotten beyond over grown before Rodger could get it dry enough to mow. Kinda resembles a hay field right now. Wont take long for it to grow back tho. He even ran the weed eater in the garden between some of the rows of veggies to get the grass out that was really tall. Its hard to believe it is almost mid July already. Where the heck did the summer go. Well I have lost most of mine going to the doc once a week for the past 6 weeks for the injections in my knees and before that we were on vacation. With the injections I am suppose to stay off my feet for 48 hours after so that has knocked out 3 days per week of not being able to get anything done. But we done with all that.

My hens are all trying to set I think, I have 6 sitting on eggs and the layers are still laying with them. That is a waste of good eggs. I have 4 hens that have been setting long enough to hatch 2 batches of chicks and have not hatched one. So if its not unbearably hot out tomorrow I may try to get the eggs out of those nest an trash em. The chicken house needs to be cleaned out again but not sure how spunky I feel with a wheelbarrow. I could use the waste on the beds in back where my Lima beans and tomatoes are. The broccoli I planted late is not doing anything so I think I might get it out of those beds and put a layer of chicken manure and bedding down on the bed and cover it over with black plastic or newspaper, if I have enough here at the house. That should break down nicely and make a good spot of fall cabbage and maybe some greens, or lettuce and onions. But definitely cabbage. Not sure the cabbage in the garden is gonna do any good or not. Rodger said the cukes have taken over the cabbage row where we didn't get those trellised. Not much you can get done when the weather wont cooperate.  It has stayed so wet that we still don't have the greenhouse taken down and stored away yet. I sure wanted it nice and dry before we try to disassemble it and put it back in the box for use next year. It was dry this evening but was too late to get it taken apart after Rodger got in from work. Maybe this weekend. I think our weekend list is growing by leaps and bounds. Our plan for tomorrow evening is the pick cukes and put the net fence around the grape vines here in the yard. The vines are loaded with huge grape clusters. The nicest ones we have had yet and I sure don't want the chickens to see the grapes and start eating them before they get ripe. My luck we will fence the chickens out and then wild birds will find em and eat em all. I see a good amount of grape juice coming from all those nice grapes this fall if we can keep the critters fooled. I don't think I will make any more jelly as we still have a lot that I had made a few years ago when I had a good grape harvest.

Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella