I hope spring is here, finally.

I sure hope spring has sprung here. I got my seedlings started earlier this year. Had them all growing under flourescent lights in the summer kitchen till this past Saturday. We decided that instead of the added expense of covering our little greenhouse with some type of plastic we would just opt to use a cold frame for the seedlings as I am not starting near as many as I normally do. But still a plenty. So Rodger and Jason took off Friday evening after work and went to Lowes to pick up 1 sheet of the clear poly carbonate panels to cover the cold frame. Less chance of hail damage in the event we have that. And hoping we dont for sure.  So they got my cold frame built and put inside the fence in my herb garden to keep the dog out of it. She likes to carry off things she finds with our smell on it. She gave the guys a fit stealing their building material and tools Saturday. Poor Sasha had many new not so nice names that day. But they got er done. Then I got all the seed trays moved in and watered with compost tea. I do have some nice sturdy seedlings this year. yay me.

 Monday we had rain off and on all day so I spent my day going in and out of the house to take the top off, put the top on, repeat. This lil cold frame can heat up really quick with very little sunshine. This is so much easier to heat than trying to keep my little greenhouse warm enough for healthy plants. Tomatoes and peppers need warmer soil to sprout and grow than some other seeds. I did invest in a couple heat mats that are made just for the seed trays I use to supply some heat from the bottom to warm the soil and speed up the sprouting process of peppers and tomatoes. They worked just great. I had misplaced some of my bell pepper seeds and could only find the orange heirloom variety when I was starting the seeds. The next day I located the other pepper seeds and decided to start some of those as well. I used a deeper, about 6 inch deep, crate that I had to line with a feed bag, add soil and sow the seeds. The soil being deeper I could not use the heat mats under this crate. So needless to say I have tomatoes and peppers started one day using the heat mats that are several inches tall and a crate with pepper and some Amish paste tomato seeds that are just starting to sprout and come up where I wasn't able to use the heat mats. Heat made all the difference in how quickly the seeds came up. Also this year I have been using all natural fertilizer on my seedlings. I procured some composted goat manure from some friends and am making compost tea to use on the plants. In this compost tea I added some Lactobacilli serum to the bucket in which I have the manure for the tea. I have had no problem what so ever with damping off disease this year starting seeds. That in itself is a big plus for me trying to start seeds really early. Normally I just start my seeds in the greenhouse in early April no later than the second week. When we get cooler nights the soil cools even with the warmth of the sun during the day and I usually end up losing a lot of seedlings from damping off. In the greenhouse I could use about 3 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to about 1 and half cups water in spray bottle and mist the soil where the seedling are and this will sometimes stop the damping off and save the plants. But dang who needs the extra hassle. Not had to use that this year at all. I am very thankful and happy with my little bit of success  with seed starts.

Saturday I got my herb garden weeded and all cleaned out of debris from last season and over the winter. Talk about hard on the damaged back and bad legs and knees. Oh mercy, Sunday was tough. Anyway, that bed is all ready to add more herbs seedlings to when danger of frost is past. Maybe late April or early May will be safe enough to plant them without protection. I still have the strawberry bed to weed and get mulched. I planted 25 new strawberry plants this year to replace some that were spent. I intend to use straw to mulch them in with from now on. I learned the hard way that wood mulch was just too coarse a material to allow the runners to reach the soil and make roots and renew the bed.  Some of us just have to learn things the hard way. Was nice to not have to spend much time at all weeding but dang in the long run cost me in having to replace some plants. Chalk that one up to a well learned lesson at the school of hard knocks. I seem to learn a lot of things at that school.

Last week on one of the warmer days I got the fruit trees sprayed for the second time. Most of the stone fruits and pears had already lost their blooms. Not sure if they were lost from the light snow and cold or just that they were done. But the other trees, apples and nut trees are in 1/4 inch green tip stage and time for a spray. Got the neem apray mixed and Jason put the spray tank in the bucket of the little tractor and hooked the pump to the battery and off we went to spray. We had to use the tractor as my 4 wheeler is out of commission for a bit till the guys get a chance to work on it. Got er done tho.. At this point it is just wait and see how much damage the cold snap did to the trees that had already bloomed. Seems most of them were in the "process" of blooming and not in full bloom. I have noticed the pears are still making blooms so I might get a bit of fruit after all. God willing and we dont get any more serious freezes. We will take what we can get and be thankful.

We have been looking around for an "estate rake" to use in the big section of yard and orchard. An estate rake is used to rake up grass clippings to take off the yard. Usually pulled behind a 4 wheeler or mower. My intention is to use the clippings to compost for organic matter to add to the garden and orchard.  In reading and researching holistic orchard maintenance a lot of focus is on soil microbes and helping keep healthy soil. One way to do this is using the grass clippings to mulch trees and then encouraging the clippings to decompose to supply nutrients to the trees. Lactobacilli is one culture that aids in this process. I found online a method for making the lactobacilli serum to treat the soil and compost with to speed up the process.  A very simple process all in all. It is started rather simply. I will post this info in another post very soon. This serum can also be used to spray chicken and livestock buildings to eliminate odor from manure. It helps to decompose the same manure when put in compost as well. Anyway I have a science lab in my kitchen most days. One of these days I will have a mess when an experiment goes amiss. Till then I keep trying stuff.

In the house I learned to make a new bread that we are now addicted to. It is focaccia bread. Its an artisan Mediterranean bread. The authentic version has olives in it but none of us like olives so I dont use those. It was odd to me at first to make a yeast bread and not use bread flour but recipe uses plain all purpose flour. I will share the version I make for us. I use my Kitchenaid mixer to make this as I cant use my hands long enough to knead bread anymore.

Focaccia Bread

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons of hot water in Kitchenaid bowl
2 tablespoons sugar
3 1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons yeast
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup olive oil

In mixer bowl with hot water add in sugar, and 1 cup of bread flour, add yeast on top of this flour. Add remaining flour and then the salt. With dough hook attached mix ingredients a bit, maybe 1 minute. Pour in olive oil and mix well and continue kneading for about 5 minutes. When dough is smooth and elastic, turn off mixer and cover bowl and let dough rise till nearly double in size.
Prep 2 cookie sheets by oiling them with olive oil and sprinkle with cornmeal. When dough is ready turn on mixer and stir down dough. Divide in half. Press each half on the cookie sheets pressing with fingers till it is about 1/4 inch thick. Let sit for about 10 minutes. No need to try to be perfect, this is artisan style bread.
To prepare to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Using fingers make indentions all over dough and drizzle with a good olive oil. Sprinkle on about half teaspoon dried rosemary over each pan with dough. A good sprinkle of parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and chopped sun dried tomatoes that have been preserved in oil. You can also drizzle a bit of the oil from the dried tomatoes over bread as well. Top with a light layer of shredded cheddar or mozzarella cheese.  You can add on some chopped olives if you enjoy those as well. Put in oven and bake till light brown. Tear into pieces at serving or cut like bread sticks and serve with a marinara sauce. Enjoy!!
We can make a meal on this and a bowl of marinara sauce.  This is a bread that you can top any way you like really . If you love garlic cloves by all means slice some onto dough. A thin layer of pizza sauce would be yummy with your choice of pizza toppings. An easy bread that can be used many ways. Limited only by the imagination.

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

stella

Yep, back again for another round

I started my lil blog several years ago to more or less document our successes and failures here and to share a little bit of knowledge from things we learned along the way. Then somehow I started slacking on keeping my blog updated. Now seems like I am about 5 months behind. And a lot can happen in 5 months around here. After my last post we got to drive to Arizona and see our kids and the grandbabies out there. I tell ya, nothing like 2 little boys to make a feller drive for days no matter how much it hurts the body. They are worth every pain tho just to see those happy little faces. Then November was hunting season and spent most of the month in west Ky at the lodge helping out there. Back home and then flew to Arizona to spend 3 weeks or so with the kids and those precious lil boys again thru the Christmas holiday and the littlest one, Zach's 2nd birthday. Got back to my homestead shortly after new years and here it is March already. Dang where did the time go?

We have decided that we want to get all our garden planted by mid April this year like we use to do several years ago. It was just what my dad always insisted on doing. He said if you plant early things sprout and start to come up and you get them in ahead of the spring rains and just do so much better. Never knew of a year when dad failed to have a productive garden. Last fall Rodger did manage to get our garden plot turned so it can be worked a bit earlier this year. So this gives me hope we will be able to plant earlier this season than in the past few years. I did start my transplant seeds early also. I already have cabbage up, although they are lil ones yet. I did suck it up and invest in 2 seed tray heat mats to use for the peppers and tomatoes this year. Both of those need a bit of heat to sprout well and come up. I have herbs started as well as the tomatoes, peppers and cabbage. In my herb garden it is just easier to transplant small clumps of herb plants than to try to keep ahead of the tiny weeds that tend to come up with them. As far as my experience I have less lost of seedlings and plants this way. Not to mention I know where I planted things so less chance of them being trampled when I am in there doing weeding and harvesting.

I have done a lot of research on orchards and fruit tree care this winter when it was too cold to get out and do projects outside. Well at least for me. I want to be a snow bird and go south in winter as I get older. Just no place like home tho. Anyway, we strive to use very little to no spray on things here. I am well aware that it kills the soil and depletes it over time to use pesticides. We use No weed or grass killer, herbicides, on or near any of our crops. We decided to try to go organic as far as how we care for the orchard. I did a great deal of research on Neem as a tree spray. On researching it I found that most places, big box stores and even local farm stores just sell "chemical" sprays, not really organic. But they do sell neem oil spray. Only problem with this is the neem they sell is only 1 or 2 components of true whole neem oil. So I found an online source for whole neem oil. I thought with shipping it was kinda pricey but after checking the price of the partial stuff sold at farm stores it was actually cheaper over all. If interested in any of this info visit the site www.groworganicapples.com on growing organic and www.neemresource.com for the pure neem oil. Finally this past weekend I did get the first round of neem on my fruit trees and grape vines. I sprayed with the neen and fish emulsion to give the trees a nutrient boost for leaf production. We had put fertilizer on the trees and grape vines prior to the spraying. I did find a few small branches on my peach and cherry trees with bloom. Not totally bloomed out so that was a plus. I am sure we will have some frost and cold weather before we actually get to spring so hopefully they will bloom and produce some fruit this year. The apple and nut trees are not even in green tip stage yet so they should do ok. It is strange in east Ky to have 70 plus degree weather in February so this was the problem with some early blooms. I had read a news article saying that lots of commercial orchards are having an issue with trees blooming too early and will likely suffer frost and freeze kills this year. Cant imagine the price of fruit this fall if you can purchase it at all. If news is saying lots of killed fruit it might be wise for all of us that use a lot of canned fruit, homegrown or otherwise, to stock up on canned fruit early ahead of the price increases. 

                                                       Before pruning sweet cherry trees.

                                       
                                                   After pruning sweet cherry trees.

                                 Northern side of our orchard after pruning and before clean up

Last spring I ordered some baby chicks to raise a new laying flock. I being the dummy ordered 25 Buff Orphington pullets. Love this breed. Very docile sweet hens. I had hopes of getting at least one rooster albeit by mistake but that didnt happen. So I had 25 hens. Gosh they all started laying and I was over run with eggs. It is near impossible to sell country eggs here when people can go to the store and use their food stamps and get them cheaper. So I ended up giving a friend half my young laying pullets. I kept 12 and still get too many eggs. Not that that is a bad thing. I do appreciate the effort the girls put in, but just how many chicken fruit can a house of 2 or 3 eat? Well not as many as they provide. But I have a couple people who do get eggs from us so that helps a lot. We plan to build a new run this spring for them so they can be outside a bit but as for now they have to stay inside. Too many predators and our lil girl Sasha is not old enough to know to protect them. She thinks they are for her entertainment right now. She is just a puppy at 10 months old but will outgrow that stage soon we hope.

Last spring a friend in Virginia sent me some thornless blackberry starts. Most people say blackberry shoots, I call these things trees. This is gonna be a learning curve for me for sure. She had told me to tie them upright to a stake or fence. So this I did to the side of the garden fence. Oh geez, I was tying plants all summer. Once you have them growing upright then clip the top to a manageable height. Then they send out limbs off that stem, clip those limbs to about 1 to 2 feet in length. Those limbs will make more lil limbs, clip them to about 1 to 2 feet. All the growth I got from the plants last summer will bloom and produce berries this season. God willing. But am thinking now I sure dont need 25 of those "blackberry trees" I will be picking berries till the cows come home. But thas ok, I will be thankful and consider my self very blessed. Not to mention the fact I ordered some thornless raspberry starts this spring from Starks. Speaking of which, we decided if we are gonna plant trees, and perirrenial plants we are best served to just pay a bit more and get good quality healthy starts. So I will be probably taking our a few of the blackberry plants that are smaller and putting in some raspberry plants on the end of the row on the same fence as the blackberries are now. I am pretty excited to have berries that dont leave me bleeding when I pick them. I also had to purchase some new strawberry plants. I had a good idea once but it didnt work as I planned. I had planted strawberry plants in holes in landscape fabric then mulched them. It worked great for keeping weeds down. BUT the strawberry runners were not able to take root thru the layer of mulch thus they did not live once the plant reproduced. So my strawberry bed was not able to renew itself and now it has scarcely any plants. So last fall I took out the landscape fabric and mulch, tilled the soil, added organic fertilizer and am ready to plant new plants. I am gonna attempt to find some saw dust to use as mulch this year or maybe collect pine needles. It should be much easier for the new runners to take root and keep the strawberry bed renewed very year or so.  You live and learn I reckon.

These are the blackberry bushes tied back to the garden fence. Not to mention this is November.
These things were still growing into December. When we pruned the fruit trees in early February I went by the outside of the garden fence and clipped off some blackberry limbs that were hanging way over the outside. I am sure the deer will help themselves to any plant material or berry that is hanging out of the garden. Or the crows will help themselves. I do have netting to put over small trees and fruiting berries to prevent crow lose this year I hope. They ate all the grapes on the grapevines that are to the left of the blackberries outside the fence. They are going to be trellised this spring with a T-top trellis for ease of covering with netting when the grapes start to ripen.

So now you have a little bit of a catch up post. I am certain I am missing filling you in on something important so maybe I will remember it next time. Till then, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

stella

Fall is slowly sneaking up on us

Fall is actually sneaking up faster than I would like. But dang I guess it is past the middle of August already and not long till cooler nights and days. I guess I really didnt pay much attention to the calendar till I noticed the spent sweet corn stalks turning yellow last week. Geez, we just planted that stuff other day. At least it sure seems that way. The damn crows finally finished off the remainder of the sweet corn that was not even ready to harvest. Those things are the most aggressive feeders I think I have ever known. If you shoot to scare them off, in just a few minutes they are back in larger numbers. And it sure dont take long for them to destroy a patch of corn. Not to mention they have eat on some of the tomatoes, peppers and pecked at some of the unripe pumpkins. Mean lil devils they are.

Our peppers are in full productions right now, with lots that are getting red and ripe. We use a lot of bell peppers during the year in cooking. I only planted a few jalapenos this year as I am the only one that eats them and sure dont need that many taking up freezer space. My big freezer is mostly full now with the carrots, corn, okra, peppers among other things I cant think of right now. The tomatoes in the garden are starting to slack off producing now and some of the plants are spent. The Money Maker variety I planted have produced tons of small tomatoes that are mostly used for juice but are small enough to be a total pain in the arse to wash and get the seeds out of to juice. I take the seed pockets out to reduce the amount of water or clear liquid that comes to the top on the jars of juice. It actually makes better tasting thicker juice. Also when I peel tomatoes to make my salsa I peel and squeeze out the seed pockets and it makes the salsa nice and thick. Yummy!!

The mustard and turnips I sowed a couple weeks ago are up. Oh my, and did I forever get them thick enough on the ground. I didnt use the seeder I just sprinkled the seeds on by hand cause it was a small space. The poor little seeds just laid there on top of the soil for well over a week till we got some nice rain showers. And they ALL came up. So soon or later I will have enough mustard and turnip greens to can. And I do love a nice sweet raw turnip in late fall after they have grown in cooler fall weather.

Tomorrow will be a grape harvesting day here. About 90% of the grapes on each cluster are ripe so its time to cut them and make jelly, juice and wine. If allowed to all ripen they will start to fall off the vine. Then its on to the peaches. I have a few left that the crows didnt get after I put aluminum pans in the branches to keep them scared off. Lots to do here as fall fast approaches.

I got a comment and question from an older blog post on gumbo. The sweet reader ask if it was possible to half the recipe to can. I would think certainly you could half or double or what ever suits the needs of your family or canner size. If I make the mess to make a batch of gumbo I just go whole hog and make a lot. Takes no longer to clean up from a huge batch as it does a small one. Good luck and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

stella

Wasted effort sometimes

You work your azz off and them its all for nothing. Dang it all. I started out with a beautiful row of cabbage and this evening I took another good look at them. Well I guess if I intend to make kraut I will need to find someone else who has cabbage and buy a few. The cabbage worms have literally ate all of em up. And I had sprayed them several times. Next year, I swear I am only planting like 20 cabbage plants at most and cover them with sheer curtains or cheesecloth to keep the damn moths from laying their eggs on the plants.

We initially went to the garden to put some netting material over the top of the sweet corn to keep the crows off it. We had several large lengths of deer netting and just tossed that up over the tops of the corn. We have had to do this in the past to keep them at bay. Crows can destroy a field of corn in one day. Its a constant battle around here.

You can see the shimmer of the netting on top of the corn stalks. Dang the crap ya gotta do to save ya food supply. I know they will raise hell in the field corn as we dont have enough netting to cover it to protect the ears. I guess I could just sit on the front porch with the rifle and keep the devils scared off. Once the corn is past the soft stage and gets hard they dont mess with it.

We drove thru the orchard just looking at the trees. Our almond trees are sagging they have so many nuts on them. Yes, we can grow almonds in Ky. All be it rare they produce due to the fact it takes very little spring warming to trigger them to bloom and most times they get froze or frosted on. But we were blessed this year.

So many nuts such small tree. This tree is about 5 years old and this is the first crop of nuts we have been blessed with. Just hope they do well and the worms dont invade them. I have got to do some research and get a spray program for us and our little orchard. One of the peach trees had lots of worm damage in the fruit. Dont want a repeat of that next year. I guess the next challenge will be getting these nuts harvested before the squirrels figure out what they are. Dont know if Ky squirrels know what almonds are, but if they do, we are sunk.

In the garden the beans have filled in the trellis' nicely. And they are starting to bloom a little bit. We have harvested some okra pods already and getting enough tomatoes to eat with meals. And a few cukes as well. Not long till we will be able to make pickles. Sadly we did not get our trellis put up for the cukes and they are running on the ground and growing into the sweet potato vines. Gonna make picking them kinda challenging at best.

Yes that is a pile of manure covered over outside the fence waiting to be put on the garden when the corn is done in a couple weeks. Where the corn is growing is where it needs some extra organic matter. Not to mention there will be more manure later. I am really glad Rodger got to weed eat around the fence before I took these photos. It is a full time task to keep all the mowing done here. You really cant do much as far as physical work after about 10 am here. Our temps today hit 97 with about 60% humidity. You really need gills to be outside much at mid-day.

Sunflowers are such happy flowers. Seem to always be smiling. We planted a bunch this year. About a half acre total. They are the black seed sunflower. Our plan is to harvest and use them for chicken feed. In the mean time they are just so pretty to look at.

I think it is so neat the way sunflowers turn their head also. They face the sunrise each day. Much like we should do. By the way, do ya reckon there is an easier way to harvest sunflower heads other than a blade to lop off the heads and toss em in a bag? I think Rodger and Jason have decided to try using our corn picker to see if it will snap the heads off without losing all the seeds. I guess we wait and see. I am sure it will be an interesting process.

We did get our carrots dug and taken care of this week also. And man were they big uns. I think I have found a new best place to raise my carrots every year. From now on they will be out back in the bed here in the back yard. It also grew nice beets this year. And the leeks are not doing too shabby either. How ya like these things?

A little over a half bushel from a small bed. Not a bad harvest. I cut most of them in chunks and vacuum sealed them for the freezer. That should last us for a year at least. About the only thing I use carrots for is pot roast or stew and that is with deer meat. I did shred and freeze some to use in stir fry and chicken noodle soup. It certainly takes a while to scrub and chunk up that many carrots. I am very glad Rodger came out to help cut them up while I did the scrubbing. I guess that is why my hands were swollen, stiff and very sore this morning.

Does this have rotten written all over it? This lil girl is growing like a bad weed. She is old enough now that I can let her be out of her pen while we are here. She likes to hide under the back deck when it gets hot out because it is always cool under there. It was one of Luna's favorite places to stay cool too. I hope Sasha is as good a girl as Luna was.

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

stella

If you plant, they will come

Bugs that is. They will come in droves to eat what ever you plant for you to eat. This week this fact is especially true of Japanese beetles. Oh my, they are having a field day eating my thornless blackberries and grape vines. So I had to get out the heavy artillery last evening and give them the old one, two punch. I sprayed with Liquid Sevin pesticide. I dont relish the idea of spraying anything but dang, we gotta eat too. I do always spray late evenings when bees are not active. So I solved the problem of Japanese beetles, hopefully for the remainder of the season.

I made myself a list of small task that I needed to get done yesterday and did manage to accomplish all of them. Amazing!! eh? But geez, little task can take all day when you let so many build up before you tackle one of em. I had lavendar that I had started from seed that needed to be put in the ground in the herb bed to live permanently. Got that done. Got the dill cut and in the freezer so it keeps fresh to make dill pickles later when the cukes come on. I have a shrub near the front porch sidewalk that was covering half the steps and sidewalk. Got it pruned back so you can walk by without getting your legs wet when it rains or in the early morning dew is hanging on.  I want to plant some fall cabbage also and finally got the soil in the peat pots and seeds in so now its cross my fingers and hope they come up and grow fast. Its hard to find fall cabbage and broccoli plants in our area. Most people just plant a garden in spring and once its gone they are done. I just happen to know the sweetest cabbage is grown in the cooler fall weather. After having Sasha to the vet for a minor skin infection she had to have a bath in medicated shampoo, so I got that done last evening as well. Jason had just mowed the yard and you know how fresh cut grass can cling and stain anything it comes in contact with. Well I didnt dry Sasha and just bathed her, rubbed her down and let her got. She too off running and would hit her belly and slide thru the grass clippings. Oh did she look awful when I put her back in her pen right before dark. Just glad she looks better today after she got dry and the loose grass fell off her coat.

Rodger got the field mowed yesterday around the garden and in the orchard, around the corn, pea and sunflower field. It looks so much better. Good thing the mowing got finished yesterday cause we got a pretty good little rain this afternoon. It didnt rain long but got things nice and wet. IF I can get my butt in gear in the morning and get the mulch put around the lavendar plants before the ground dries it will do them a lot of good. They do like water.

I didnt have too big a day planned today. Just catching up laundry, house cleaning, general every day stuff. Cook, clean, do laundry, dry, fold, repeat. Seems I have to drag out the vacuum every day now to clean up bird seed hulls out of the floor. I got 2 lil parakeets. My friend Jackie that I have known for many years has breeding pairs and had raised a few. I have had a few parakeets in my life so I do enjoy them. Jackie gave me a young one that she hatched (well her female bird hatched it) and another female that the others were being mean to. They hull their seeds out when they eat them and they when they flap their wings inside the cage all the hulls fly out in the floor. (self cleaning birds) So clean em up, repeat later in the day. But they are relaxing to watch. Me and my various birds.

A friend ask me the other day if I had any new pictures of the grandbabies. Well of course I do. So here you go Sissy. Enjoy the babies. Sissy dont get on facebook so she dont get to see the pics Amoy or Rob post of the kids. And yes I am a very proud grammy.

Love these 2 lil boys so very much. And their parents. Cant wait to see them this fall and steal hugs and kisses.

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

stella

As the garden grows...........

.....so does the weeds. Geez, and seems like the weeds out grow anything you plant and want to grow. Rodger has spent evenings this week doing all the hoe work getting the weeds out from between the plants then when all that is done he runs the tiller. But we can be very thankful this year that he has been able to mostly stay ahead of weeds and bugs. He did inform me that we have several bean bugs and good golly, I cant afford to lose these dang beans. They are the old heirloom variety Ky Wonder Pole Bean from a friend in central Ky. Not to mention I for sure need lots to can. We have had several good showers of rain the past week or so. That fact did delay me getting to spray the tomatoes with a fungicide (copper and wettable sulfur) to prevent blight. I need to can many tomatoes this year as well. Well lets just say the cellar is gettin kinda bare. We still eatin regular but ya know, I just feel better with a fully stocked cellar and pantry. We just pray for the blessing of a good garden this year. I did manage to get the fungicide spray on the fruit trees and all the grape vines last week and it had several days before the rain. I just hope that helped to head off some of the cedar apple rust on a few of the apple trees. The peach trees are just loaded with little peaches this year too. I am just drooling in wait for fresh peaches. And from our own trees. I might have to buy a few bushels of apples for the freezer this year because my apple trees are still a bit too young to produce enough for our needs.

I braved the 95 degree temps Monday and pulled my beets from the bed in the back yard. I had enough to make 10 pints of beet pickles so I was a happy little camper. That will be enough to last me another 2 or 3 years. No one here will eat pickled beets but me and if I eat them I want a whole pint jar and eat em all at once. The carrots that are in the same bed as the beets were look great. The tops are still nice and green on them so that says the carrots are still growing under ground. They have been planted since mid-March the same as the beets were. Some of the beets were the Cylindra beets, more long than big around and dang did they get big.

This is before I pulled the beets, you can see the tops of the carrots on the back side. In front of the beets are leeks and some little tiny celery plants. I am about to give up on raising celery. Just dont grow well here.

The Cylindra beets. This is 3 of em and one Detroit dark red on a standard width counter for size comparison. They did well.

I had a small dish pan full not including the long ones that are on the counter. Total 10 pints canned. I do have some more that will be ready later in the season.

This little girl is growing like a bad weed. Her first visit to the vet at 6 weeks old she weighed a big 6 lb 2 oz. At her 9 week visit she weighed 13 lb 7 oz. I sure hope she is getting enough to eat. She was a lil befuddled here when she wanted to smell of one of my young Buff Orphington pullet and it pecked her nose. I bet she is thinkin, "one day I will grow up and bite you on the nose". She is a good little girl. It amazes me at the natural instinct animals have at a young age. I was giving the chickens some left over bread that was stale and just gave her a roll to see if she might like it. She ate part of it and it broke in 2 pieces. She then proceeded to bury the remaining 2 pieces. In our back year we have a lot of small holes from moles and such. During all the rainy weather one of the holes caved in (not real deep) and she found it. Now every time she is out with me she will go to that hole and sniff and dig it a little deeper. One day she is gonna dig something very unhappy out of there I am sure. Depends on what critter she digs out, she might be on her own. Especially if its a snake of some sort hiding in there. Cause momma dont do snakes.

Always something to keep busy with around here. And time will get away from ya in a hurry. It is long past time to clean out the freezers and get ready to put new stuff in. Not to mention organizing the cellar, taking inventory and emptying out things that are far past their prime. I know I will be emptying out a lot of green beans if we have a good crop this year. I have green beans canned that we just dont care for the taste or texture of. I sure hate doing that due to the waste of lids, time and effort but dang it if they dont taste good they dont do us any good anyway. Maybe I can work on that tomorrow. On second thought, No I cant. I need to tie the tomatoes up again that we got staked a couple weeks ago. They have already out grown the first tie on them. Then maybe while I am at it I can spray the fungicide. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan for tomorrow.

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

stella

Spring and gardening season again

I think we have finally arrived at spring and left winter behind. We have had our fair share of rain along with the warmer temps too. Last week Rodger did manage to get the garden worked up and sowed our carrots, beets and some parsnips. The parsnips are new for us this year. I thought we might like a little change from carrots in soups and stews. Not to mention the parsnips are suppose to keep better than carrots. He planted the beets and parsnips in the same row so the beets can mark the row for the parsnips. They do take a good bit longer to sprout and grow. I think it is also possible to leave them in the ground till after frost to make them sweeter. I guess we shall see as we learn about this old fashioned staple.

We went to a nursery a couple weeks ago and got 6 more apple trees and planted them. The deer had killed several of my young trees. It really makes me mad that with all the trees and woods around the deer go to the middle of the field and scrape on the young trees. Once the bark is damaged it will kill the tree. So now we do have some bigger ones planted now. Also got the muscadine grape vine and mulberry tree planted that my friend Deb got for me. I had kept them in the cellar since we got them home in January so as to not kill the roots on them. They are getting leaves now and look promising.

The green house is up and going well. So far my seedlings are doing good. So now we just baby those till time to transplant to the garden when they are big enough. I have got the herb bed cleaned out and more mulch put down. It is ready for some new plants when they are big enough as well. I still need to work on the fence enclosure around the herb bed. It don't have to be super tough, just a barrier to keep the chickens and cat out. I put up a temporary fence several years ago and it is still there. The stakes need replaced with something a lil more sturdy. Its lil jobs that take the most time when all added together.

Rodger and Jason made a trip out of town last weekend to get a load of mulch so I can mulch around the apple trees in the orchard. That should cut down on the risk of them getting damaged with a weed eater. That has happened before. That is how I lost one of my apricot trees after it was a couple years old. So now we have the wagon sitting with about 30 bags of mulch waiting till it is dry enough in the field so we don't get bogged down with the wagon. And it is supposed to rain all week, roughly a 60% chance of rain every day till next week. Hope we don't get as much as we had late last week. It rained so much so fast that the water was over the road in 3 different place on our lil road. No danger of houses or anything getting flooded but the river was very big and came up really quick. Typical spring tho.

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

Stella

We made it thru....

thru the nasty weather of Ky winter. At least we hope that we are past really cold bad weather now. At least we are not covered over with over a foot of snow and below zero temps. Last few days, well most of the week, the weather has been warm-ish, around 50 degrees or so. Although it has rained more than we think we need. The river has been up now for the better part of 2 weeks. It will stop raining and dry some, the river level drops down, then rain again and back up it goes. But it will be spring in a few more days and maybe we can dry out some. several days last week I was able to at least open the doors and air out the house some. Geez, who knew fresh air could be so nice? I should have had my lil greenhouse up and some seeds started already but with the cold and rain that has not been at all possible. It is suppose to be nicer with no rain tomorrow so we might get that done. The early spring frogs have been calling for the past week or so now. Love to hear those in spring. It just reminds us warmer weather is around the corner. Lots of things planned for the spring and summer here too. We have fruit trees to plant. When we stopped in Mississippi in January to see our friends Deb and Danny, Deb had gotten me a mulberry tree and a muscadine grape vine. We will need to buy more apple trees to replace some we lost to deer in the orchard. I still need to move my raspberries and mulch the grape vines we have planted in the vineyard. This ole country gal cant wait to get her hands in the dirt. Got a few new things to try in the garden this year. We plan to plant parsnips this year and try celery again. I also ordered some new varieties of tomatoes to start. We are going to plant Marglobe this year for one of our red tomatoes. This is another old time variety that we use to raise here on the farm that did really well. Too bad I cant remember the name of the other new ones I ordered. I will be planting the blueberry tomatoes again this year in the herb bed for quick snaking out of hand. They do produce profusely for me. Then the usual sweet corn, white corn field beans, cukes, peppers of several colors, might even plant taters again. Ours sure did not do too well last year. But I do still have a few more quarts of them canned so it was not a total loss. It just gripes my azz to buy potatoes from the store. I know the store ones have been sprayed to hell and back and then you may cut one of em and it be black or worse on the inside.

We did get our cornmeal taken to the grist mill and ground today. I had not had a chance to put the corn in the freezer due to lack of freezer space to kill bug eggs in it, so I did put the ground cornmeal in the freezer at Jason's house to freeze for a couple weeks then will vacuum seal it for storage. It makes the bestest cornbread ever. I have tried to talk the fellow at the grist mill into getting a milk cow and selling fresh milk. He said he had thought about it. So I am crossing my fingers. Would so love to have homemade butter and milk. So much healthier for you than the so-called milk you get at the local grocer. Although we have found that some brands of store bought milk are labeled and certified to say they do not use hormones in their dairy practices. We buy the brands without hormones. I guess the lesser of two evils if you will.

After the loss of my sweet Luna last fall, we now have a problem with opossums and skunks here at the house. My whole yard front and back looks like a huge sponge with so many holes dug by skunks. I have had numerous opossums come on the back deck to steal cat food. We have managed to eradicate a couple of em, still we have at least 2 that still come around if we forget to bring the cats bowl in at night. I guess that is just one hazard of living so close to the woods in the country. I also heard a bunch of coyotes howling this evening somewhere close when I went out to close up the chickens for the night. Out here a good dog is almost a necessity to keep critters at bay.

Rob and Amoy are buying a house in Phoenix this summer. I am so happy for them. And Rodger said I am allowed to go help them move if they need me and watch the kids. Imagine that! Hard to believe Liam will be 2 next month and the day after he is 2 Zach will be 4 months old. They are both growing so fast. My beautiful lil boys. Love them to pieces.

Nothing like grand babies. You don't know love till you have grands.

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

Stella

I found apples, finally

A friend and I were on the search for apples for freezing and canning for the past couple weeks. I knew there were several orchards within a couple hours of us here. I did a search online and got numbers, called em up. And got the socks shocked off me. Orchards are asking $40 a bushel for apples. Oh my, no way in hell I will pay that. They are cheaper in the store. Something is wrong with that picture. Needless to say we did not make the trek to the orchard. Not to mention one of the ones I called charged more if you pick them yourself. What the hell? So I happen to think of the road side stand here in our town and decided to check and see if they had apples. They did, Jonagolds, good for what I was needing, and $24 a bushel. Not cheap but I can handle that price. So I picked up 2 bushels, 1 for myself and one for my friend. Will likely go back next week and get another bushel or 2. I peeled and froze the first bushel today. Didn't count the bags but there are many many bags of apples in the freezer for frying. Next ones will for sure be turned into canned apple pie filling. I will be so glad when our trees are big enough to produce fruit so I wont need to get sticker shock every year and be able to have fruit for our own use.

Our weather has been just wonderful today. Not too hot, just cool enough to be perfect to work outside. After peeling all the apples and getting those put away I peeled and sliced about 20 lb of onions and put those in the freezer in gallon bags to use maybe next week to make gumbo to can. I just need to pick what will likely be the last of our bell peppers and get those sliced up to use in the gumbo too. They are predicting frost for us in our area tonight. Surely not!! The low is supposed to be around 35 with wind. What happened to fall? Better yet, where did summer go? I missed it I think. Seems like just other day we were planting gardens, now they are all done and mowed down. Only thing left is the peppers and a few beans we are waiting to dry for seed. I think Rodger has plans to do more mowing tomorrow provided its not too wet in the fields. The only big harvest left really is the corn and that will be a while yet. It needs several good heavy frost to knock the moisture out of it so it will store well. Then it will be time to shell and get cornmeal ground.

Last evening we were in the garden I dug up my tame thornless black berries that my friend Anna had sent me. We are probably gonna move some of the grapevines in the vineyard and plant a row of black berries and raspberries between the 2 rows of grapevines. I am not sure what I had planned to do with that many grapevines to begin with but they are there and growing well. Once they start producing I am sure I will start to hate grapes. Or start making lots of wine. We may have gotten ourselves in over our heads with all these fruit trees and berries. That is a lot of work to properly care for an orchard and vineyard. Not to mention tryin to keep it all mowed and pruned. But we gonna give it a try.

My Cornish chicks are growing great and healthy as can be. It still amazes me at how fast those lil things can grow. They will be ready for butcher in about another 4 weeks. They surely eat a lot of feed for such small creatures. But they are healthy and happy and nice and warm under their heat light. I am sure they will enjoy that tonight if it gets down to 35 degrees.

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

Stella

A few nice days outside

I tell you what, these past few days, 3 or 4 I think, of nice weather to be outside has sure been good for my soul. Not to mention the body an the yard. I have about had my fill of snow and winter this year. I had high hopes of getting to hibernate this winter an get some things done inside that needed to be done. but dang life happened. Time escaped me and here it is near spring. The weather has been beautiful this weekend and we managed to get a few things done around the place. The old greenhouse/hoop house that we built for near nothing that I no longer use, we finally got it taken down. Most all the materials can be reused somewhere else in time. When we get an evening free with no wind we do have a burn pile to burn. Other than that it is mostly done. It has dried well with the sunshine an breeze in the field so we got in there in the orchard and pruned fruit trees today. A perfect day for doing that too. Ya know you read stuff on how to plant trees, how to take care of em. Well even if you do it all just right you still hit snag. In our orchard the wind blows from west to east, the soil was softer than up here at the house. The breezes down there over the past few years have made most of the trees lean toward the east. IF we had staked them that would not have happened. But it did so ya make the best of it. The deer have done a good bit of damage to some of the trees as well. That meant some of them had to be pruned rather severely to say the least. But I have to say they all do look much nicer and healthier. In a few weeks when the temps stay above freezing we will spray with dormant oil spray to kill any bug eggs that may be hiding in the bark. It has to be warm so the oil disperses well and covers all the tree surfaces. This is done likely 3 times before the trees bud out this spring. The trees also need a good top dressing with compost or organic fertilizer at the same time. I know they get plenty of nutrients from the field but need a boost. At least I think they do. Pruning trees is not hard to do, just knowing how to prune different types of fruit and nut trees is the part to know. Trees that bear soft fruit like peaches, apricots and such need to be pruned so the middle of the tree is open to allow sunlight and air to circulate well and freely. This prevents disease and increases yield. Apple and nut trees, pears, cherries benefit from single or multiple leader system pruning. This is where you leave one main limb straight up or multiple limbs upward. Either way is suitable. I am so glad someone else took the time to figure all this stuff out so all I had to do was search online to find the info. It was interesting that they all said essentially the same thing too. Thas a first. No matter what you always take out damaged, diseased or crossing branches as you go. I think it best to take these out first in case these branches happen to be what you would like to leave as leaders.

Back at the house it was mostly piddling in the ornamental stuff to get it trimmed up and so the yard don't look so shaggy and out of sorts. My body didn't last long enough to get a lot done but at least some things. I got my monkey grass trimmed back, all the dead dried stuff cut off so it can come back nice, new and green in a few weeks. The herb bed will be my next project. I am hoping to get to that in the next 2 days. Dang they are giving a chance of snow for us on Wednesday this coming week. What the.......well its still March and it happens in Kentucky. I guess if it snows again I will be house bound again for a few days. Dang the snow and ice just melted off our deck Friday from the last snow and ice storm we had. I know Rodger is sure wanting it to warm up so we can shut the heat down and get it out of his pocket so to speak. We are thinking of trying to have a different and hopefully less expensive way to heat next winter. These electric bills will have a fellow going hungry in a short time.  But very thankful to be able to pay the bills and stay warm, dry and well fed.

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

Stella

Trying to get a jump on spring

And trust me that is a tough thing to do around here right now. Seems as tho winter is wanting to linger longer than we would like, but we don't control the weather. Rodger got my greenhouse set back up a couple weeks ago and I still have not been able to get my cabbage seeds started. Its not like I need a ton of things in the cabbage family but I need what I need. I was hoping our really cold weather would ease up a lil bit before I got the seeds started an they sprout. The cabbage family can do fine in cold weather the biggest problem is damping off in the greenhouse. And that is something you really have to stay on top of or chance losing all your seedlings. I have in the past just used a peroxide water spray to control the disease. I hope to get those seeds in this weekend. But with no more than I will be starting, maybe 3 flats, less than 100 plants of all things cabbage, I am thinkin I will just use my counter in the summer kitchen for those till the super cold weather spell is past. Then hopefully it will be safe to put them in the greenhouse for the remainder of the growing period. Fingers crossed. We are forecast to get snow, ice, rain, sleet and shit and stuff and things this weekend. We will see.

Well we did decide to go ahead and build a smaller addition onto the big chicken house up here on the hill to raise the meat birds. It should be big enough to accommodate the 25 birds I am starting the season with. Rodger and Jason got that task done last weekend. They went from this:

The floor on Saturday morning was the start, and time wise, 3 days later this is what we have:

This is a 6ft addition onto the west end of the hen house. It would be so nice if chickens were not such creatures of habit and the hens would just move in the new residence. But I am sure if I tried that it would mean going out at dark and carrying each bird to the new house. They would sit down at the door of their old house. So I will leave them be and put the new babies in the new building. Then once they are butchered off and the building is empty I can put new young pullets in this section. Hopefully as I hatch chicks this spring and save out the lil pullets I intend to raise them in this new section so it will be home to them. After the young bird get close to laying age we will be butchering off our old flock and that will leave the bigger building empty to raise the fall round of Cornish for our winter meat supply. I will let ya know how my plan works out. OK stop laughing, its not done yet. I got my heat lights, bedding, feed at the ready, vitamins and all set to get my babies first of the week. They will only live here about 6 , no more than 7 weeks till they are in the freezer. When we have several days of warm dry weather forecast I will paint the outside of this building to help protect it even tho it is built with exterior grade plywood. Yep, another paint project.

Speaking of painting, I am still not done on the inside of the house as of right now. I did finally get the closet section painted in the bedroom/walk-in closet off my bedroom. I has nice heavy shelves in there to hold all kinds of stuff that was sitting all over my closet/craft room. Much neater and at least I can safely walk in there and come out with all 10 toes intact. I have had to take it easy the past few days as I have had another round of mild bronchitis I guess. Have not felt good for a few days. I did feel some better today and managed to get another coat of paint on the walls in the master bath. The paint was not old enough to really need to be totally painted but needed touch up where the paint for some reason looked thin. So another project off my list. I actually think there is enough paint left in that can if it remains good to totally repaint the whole bathroom in a few years when it needs it again. I still need to buy the paint to paint the inside of the pantry in the kitchen. Sounds like a good lil project for a crappy weather weekend we are supposed to have this weekend. IF and thas a big IF I feel better. Have to wait till tomorrow to see how that goes. That will leave the living room and master bedroom to paint and I might be done. At least till I get another harebrained idea.

I have at last got my garden seeds out and all sorted to see what all we have and want to plant. Not sure how I did it, but I have managed to let us run out of cucumber seed. Panic time!! Well not really. I did find that Lowe's sells organic and heirloom seeds. So I guess my next trip out of town will include a trip to Lowe's to pick up some cucumber seeds so we have them on hand at planting time. It is still really wet in the garden right now but Rodger thinks he might be able to get in there tomorrow and at least plant our peas. No we did not get them planted on Valentines day like we wanted to. But I think it is still early enough that they will do fine before really hot weather hits. Peas do not do well in heat. The earlier you can plant them the better they will produce and the pods of the Sugar Snap peas will be super tender and crisp. It has been to wet and cold here for us to get in the orchard an prune the fruit trees. That needs to be done really soon before they start to bud. But you do what you can and the rest has to wait.

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

Stella

Pruning, painting puttering

Just not all these in one day tho. This weather we are having this winter is enough to make the best of us go nuts. It was nice enough last weekend that we got out and pruned the grape vines, finally. I really wanted to get our fruit trees pruned too but Rodger said we would just make big ruts getting in the field with the truck so we passed on those for now. It will have to either be frozen or dry before we can tend to the orchard. The yard was wet but nothing we cant handle. So on Saturday we got the grape vines pruned in the back yard. They sure looked scraggly before we got into them.

 Much better after most of the growth was cut away. I did manage to take a lot of the limbs and cut lots of starts for new vines for this fall planting.

The hardest part of getting the cutting started was finding some potting soil that was not froze solid to put the cuttings in. Finally got them in some sandy loose potting soil, put the whole pot, cuttings and all in a large trash bag after I watered them well and took them into the kitchen. With the warmth and moisture I am sure they will make leaves soon, within a couple weeks and then they start making roots. So by time I get my greenhouse up in early April they will go in there till summer and be re potted into bigger individual pots to grow till early fall and get transplanted to their permanent location in the vineyard in the field and some to by friend Anna. That is about the extent of what we got done outside.

As you know from previous post, I like to paint. No am not an artist. Just like to paint the inside of the house. Rodger keeps telling me I am making the house smaller with layers of paint. Doubt we miss the square footage. I decided instead of getting in on painting the rest of the house first I needed to get the utility room painted as well as the storage closet in there and finish up the dining room. These need to be done before we start putting down flooring before long, I hope. So today I got myself in the notion to start painting. Then it dawned on me, "I need a lighter color paint for closets". Well hell !!! Off to town I go and get another gallon of paint in a lighter tone than the golden yellow that goes on the other walls. I got back and fixed supper and started painting. I thought may as well get the closet in the utility room first and get that over with. Toted all the "junk" out of there and scattered it about and set in to painting. Oh my goodness!! It took a half gallon of paint to just do the damn closet. But that did include painting the shelves in there too and adding some more shelving. Done!! I was killed. I just cant work as long or as hard as I used to. I had a fan positioned to speed the paint drying time and got the "junk" all put back. SO that is done. Tomorrow, the utility room. And that means moving the washer and dryer, clean them, clean under them, scared to see what might be living behind them, then wash the walls and finally paint. It should be a lil bit brighter in there once I am done. If I live to see it. I can sure hope.

For the ones of you who read and know me, you know it is rare for me to leave the house more than once every few weeks. Well I been out 2 times this week. First part of the week I got paint. And stopped by the grocery store just to plunder around and see what the rest of the world eats. The prices are out of sight, can we say sticker shock, again. Happens to me real often. Not to mention I have never in my life seen so many packaged single serving foods in my entire life. Single serving sausage biscuits, microwave ready. Sandwiches, micro ready. veggies, micro ready. Do people eat this stuff? I guess they do cause it sure seems a lot of people were buying it. Now we are in the country, not a big city, most people live in a rural setting. How the hell they gonna eat if the power is off from one of these crazy winter storms we are having? The food is already cooked I guess so maybe eat a cold sandwich. This type foodstuffs is pricey too. For a while I had almost decided to just buy chicken breast at the store locally because you can buy 10 lb boxes of chicken breast frozen for about $1.79 a lb. Not a bad price. Well that idea was short lived when my friend Lori came down to visit on Sunday. She works at the local grocery store and informed me chicken was getting ready to go up really high. Short supply due to drought shortening food supply for the birds I think is the reason. IF it stayed at the above price I would consider just buying chicken breast but if it is going higher than that, I am gonna raise my own chickens. Initially I had planned on just buying chicken breast and hatching and raising some standard breeds to butcher for stock and such. Well now I think I best order meat chickens and hatch and raise some too. There is no easy way out. But at least I am blessed with a way out of the high prices. She also told me vegetables will be going up in price also due to the short fall in production in California with farmers having no water to water their crops with. Not sure about the politics of that whole situation but it sure seems to me food production would trump having a pretty lawn any day. But I reckon not to the powers that be out there. I say let them eat their lawns, we can raise ours here. We have options here, we can raise our food, supplement with game meat and meat we raise. But what about folks on fixed income, folks who have no space to raise any food. They are at the mercy of the grocery store. If a family budget allows $100 a week for groceries and you pay 20% more for groceries, either you add another $20 to the budget or buy and eat less. Scary as hell these times we live in.

I am ready for spring myself and ready to start seeds and dig in dirt, somewhere. Whether it be in the greenhouse, a flower pot or in the big garden. Not likely be doing any playing in dirt this weekend or coming week as we have snow forecast for almost every day, in some amount. But dad was right, it thaws a lil bit every day in February. It might snow tonight and melt off tomorrow. I can live with it, for now. Cause I know spring is not too far off.

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

Stella

This weather is like winter time

Our weather has been somewhat of a roller coaster ride as of late. First we have temps below zero, then like tomorrow it is suppose to be near 60. No wonder we all are sick. A body just cant adjust to temperature swings like that as we get older. Not that I am old. Ahem! We all complain but in reality it is just winter time as usual. We are suppose to have nice weather tomorrow with some sunshine so I hope to talk Rodger into going with me to the orchard an trying to get our trees pruned. They are big enough now to need to start being shaped like we want them to be when they get mature. I just hope the deer have not damaged any more of them. It has been so wet it has been impossible to get in the field an hang the bags of soap scraps to deter the deer. It seemed to have worked last time we used it. I have a stash of Irish Spring soap that no one here likes so I cut the bars in quarters and put a piece in a piece of empty onion bag, tie the top, and suspend it from a nearby tree. The smell seems to keep deer at bay. At least as long as the soap last. I also have a lot of grapevines to get pruned as well. The ones in the big vineyard near our orchard will be big enough to require pruning this year. I also will take more cuttings to root for my friend Anna. I tried a few last year and they made roots and I got them re potted but overlooked them in watering during the hot dry part of summer and they died on me. Shame on me. I hope to get a bunch started this year so I can ship them off to her this fall to transplant in her garden. We try to get vines and trees pruned in February on a nice day when its not so cold we freeze to death but not so warm that the plants bleed. Although I did prune grape vines last year after they had leaves on them and it didn't even slow them down. Still had a huge grape harvest. I am going to be making another raspberry patch this spring too with shoot from the older plants I already have near the orchard. I just need to get the place plowed up and manure on it to set them in after they break dormancy this spring. They are very easy to propagate. All you need to do is dig up the small off shoots near the mother plant and simply replant it in a new location. Big plans I have. Now to see if the body can keep up.

I have sat here at the computer this evening pondering ordering chickens to get here around march 1st. Not sure what kind I will order just yet. I like all the hens I have now, just not sure how to go about ordering more like them. I surely don't want to buy 50 standard heavy breeds to raise and cull to keep a laying flock. Thas a lot of lil birds to feed an deal with. And did I mention how expensive they have gotten? Dang I got sticker shock. But that happens to me real often. Guess I lead a sheltered life or something. I have a young rooster with my hens now. I am thinking I might need to butcher off my old rooster and let the young guy take over the hens and see if I get more fertile eggs and just hatch some of my own. It for sure would be more economical AND I would get to pick the ones I wanted to keep for layers. AND I would still have what ever roosters I raise to butcher for making good stock to can. I am really low on canned chicken stock in the cellar. I guess because it has been a while since I raised standard breeds to use for stock. I have hens that I know will set this summer and I also have an incubator I can use to hatch some eggs. Surely from hens and incubator I can manage to get enough pullets to replace my laying flock by mid summer. So I can have new hens laying come early fall. It just don't seem right to not have laying hens on the farm for eggs and meat. Not to mention bug control in the yard. They will also keep snakes at bay too. Maybe between the chickens, Luna and the cats I wont have snakes come in the yard this year. I hate a damn snake. They always manage to scare the whiz out of me.

Not long now till time for the greenhouse to be put up. Time flys when ya try to take a break and hibernate in winter. I am just glad I can be home to keep things half azz going here. We surely are praying we have a good garden this coming summer. I still have a good bit of stuff canned from years past but I am not sure we can go another year without canning a lot. Last summer was a total bust on the garden. Its time for a good one this year. I am actually looking forward to being able to  work in the garden some this summer. Gosh the past few years my health was so bad I could not get out in the sun and heat to do much of anything. Thank God I could eliminate some meds and end up feeling much better. Still cant do the lifting like I once did but at least maybe I can adjust to the heat a lil better and be able to help Rodger some in the gardens. IF the weather is as good as they say it will be then maybe we can get a few things done here this weekend to keep us ahead of the game. Some crazy weather man is calling for some crazy amount of snow next week so I will be house bound again I reckon. Maybe that's a good time to plan the garden, where to plant what, what to plant, how much of each to plant. Just silly things like that so I don't end up with tons of one things I don't really need a lot of. For sure need to start and plant more herbs this spring too. I somehow let my tarragon get chocked out by weeds or other herbs. Need more parsley, more chives, marjoram and savory for sure. Love the smell of marjoram. But if it snow I can make snow cream and contemplate gardens.

Jennifer ask in comments for a recipe for snow cream. Jennifer like more of my recipes its more a method than really a recipe. It all depends on how much you need to make or how many hungry people who like snow cream you are feeding.  I usually just take maybe 2 cups of whole milk, add a lil sugar to taste, not too sweet, a lil vanilla to taste. Just mix it in and taste it till it is slightly sweet an you can taste the vanilla. Then stir in clean "white" snow" till it is the consistency of soft ice cream. And dish it up and enjoy. Just a nice treat for the kids or the kid in all of us. Like the saying, "we are all adults till someone brings out the bubble wrap". Or in this case snow cream.

If you are home, nice and warm and dry, thank God for your blessings. Till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

We are heading into an early fall

No not a fall "down", but fall the season after summer. I am pretty sure grapes don't get ripe till sometime in September around here but mine were all ripe. Rodger went to the garden last evening to check on the tomatoes and see if we had ripe ones. He did pick a few so we have enough to use fresh with meals. When he came back in I ask him to help me pick the grapes. We cut the clusters off the vines with pruning shears. We had 3 of these half bushel baskets full of nice big sweet grapes.

This is the pic of 2 of the baskets, the other is already in the sink for washing. Yeah we still need to get the green beans put in the cellar. Rodger helped me make juice after we got the grapes picked.

We got 10 quarts of nice thick juice from those and still had a half bushel left to do. We finished off the last basket full this evening and made juice with those too. Ended up with 10 more quarts of juice. As concentrated as the juice is I do think it will need water added when we drink it. Not much work to produce grapes and not much to make juice. We only have 6 mature grape vines producing right now with 30 plus young vines that are not producing yet. I guess all in all these grapes were grown by organic methods as they had no fertilizer or chemicals on them. If I need to I can make grape jelly later but for now we still have plenty of grape jelly in the cellar. I chose not to make wine this year. The juice is more versatile anyway. I rather wait and make some raspberry wine. I need to check on the raspberries to see if they are ripening yet. I think they should be. The plants had lots of raspberries on them a couple weeks ago when we checked them. I should have a bumper crop of those this year too with all the nice rain we have had. As matter of fact it was raining lightly when I came in the house a lil bit ago, shortly after dark. If has been so nice and cool at night I think I will start opening windows at night an shutting off the central air. Might try that for a few nights to see how bad our allergies act up. Its nice to sleep with open windows and listen to the night critters at night. So nice to live in the country where you can do that.

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

Stella

The garden is finally in.......

Finally , dang it seems we have been all summer getting things finished up around here. We do have out tomatoes, peppers, cabbage and broccoli all transplanted to the big garden. the beans and sweet corn are up and look great. Rodger is going to the garden after work tomorrow to get the grass and weeds out of the corn an beans an get the tiller ran in those. Our potatoes looks really good but we do have several bugs now. I will spray those soon as weather permits. I used the black plastic weed kill method in some of the beds here at the house and have since got those planted as well. When I ordered my few seeds from Baker Creek this year they sent me a free packet of Gypsy tomatoes that originated in Russia. I planted those here near the house in one of the beds so IF they turn out to be good tomatoes I can keep the seeds and if not, no worries. But at least they wont be crossed with anything else. I also had a handful of Lima beans that a gentleman from Rodgers work gave us that his family has raised for many years here in Ky. I planted those along one side of the beds out back. Got some broccoli out there and a strip of lettuce sown.

The one bed outback that has the strawberries in it has out done them selves again this year. You know how scatter brained I am most days. I had forgot to check on them and had lots of berries rot before I remembered to pick them. But they are still producing and doing great. As well as the bed out by the driveway. I will need to pick those again tomorrow evening. Between the 2 beds here at the house we all picked right about 4 gallon of berries last Sunday. Those went home with Tammy (SIL) and Barbara (MIL). Yippee I didn't have to clean those. I still have a good supply of berries in the freezer from last summer. I took my friend Rosie's advice and had Rodger mow the raspberries down last fall so they can come back and produce one big crop this fall instead of working us to death all summer picking them every other day. They have come up and look just beautiful. They look even better since Rodger got the mowing done and you can actually see them now. I do need to get the big weeds out of the row and spread the rotted chicken manure down the sides of the row really soon so it can feed the plants.

You remember last post when I said I was going to give it a shot tryin to start grape vines in mid summer? Well right now they ain't lookin too good. The leaves fell off but that don't mean they are dead. I will leave them be and keep them watered and see what happens later in the season. And so help me I think the grape vines did double time puttin on more grape clusters after I fruit pruned them. May actually have to fruit prune them again to get bigger grapes. I might wait till the yard is mowed to be out there trampling around. The grass is gettin kinda high, not outlandish, but still thick and tall. Our mower needs new blades and we wont get those till we go out of town on Thursday. And needless to say our yard has bloomed again. We have lots of white clover in our yard. More clover and weeds than actual grass. We don't have a lawn, we got a yard. We thankfully don't have an HOA out here in the country or we might be in some trouble. I guess thas why we out here in the country.

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

Stella

I know, I know, leave it to me

I know, I have been MIA for a while, again. No I been right here, not gone, just at home tryin to keep my oars in the water. You already know that I don't play by the rules. I am in the process of trying to get my meds adjusted as far as times that I take them so they can work better for me and not make me a zombie during the day. Its OK to be sleepy at night but dang being in a brain fog all day. Makes for some real unproductive days. But I am making progress. So on to the next project.

We got the garden planted and all the stuff is up and looks good. We still need to plant tomatoes and peppers, cabbage and broccoli, melons and squash. We have been having some rather cold nights with temps in the 40's which is not normal for us and I didn't want to plant tender crops in the garden just yet and let them get frost bit. I do think now the danger of frost is past so we will try to get those in the ground in the next few days. We had to make a trip out of town today to the bigger city to pick up some supplies and we got a roll of 6 ft wide landscape fabric which we will put in the garden, bury the edges of it to keep it in place, make crosses in the fabric and set the cantaloupes and watermelons in the holes so they can grow without competing with the weeds later in the summer. Hopefully we can take the fabric up and use it again next year. If this new roll last as long as the stuff we used up here in the yard when we first moved it will probably last us a lifetime. Good sturdy stuff. The plants in the greenhouse look good. Now to get them in the garden.

My new lil greenhouse sure has been handy this year. I finally got enough energy get in the yard and do a few more chores this past week. Our grape vines were in bad need of fruit pruning. As you can tell from this picture.

You can click on the picture to enlarge it and better see the many lil grape clusters on the plants. I did fruit prune them and take about 50% of the lil clusters off to give the ones left a chance to get bigger. Then I got another idea. I know, I know, you should not prune plants in the middle of summer when the sap is up. But prune I did. The grapevines were pretty scraggly with limbs goin ever direction. Makes it really hard to mow when you are getting stabbed and scrapped by grape limbs. So I clipped them back.
Before:

After:  

 Mission accomplished:

 I got all the wild limbs clipped and you can actually mow under the vines and this should greatly improve air circulation and prevent fungus on the grapes. There are lots of nice young growth on the ground after I finished. So I have a friend who is wanting some grapevines. I know, I know, THEY say you cant take cutting and start plants in summer time. But dang it, you know I had to try. So I took the cutting to the picnic table, trimmed em up, fixed a pot of potting soil, got out the rooting hormone, a pan of water, dipped the cutting in the water and then the hormone and stuck em in the dirt. We shall see IF they makes roots or not. I will let you know on this one.

 So once they were in the pot I put them in the greenhouse so I could take care of them till (hopefully) they make roots.

OK I was all done playing in the dirt so I moved on to the strawberry bed out back. OH my!!!!!

 I did not know there were that many berries ripe out there. So this required a trip back to the summer kitchen to get a container to pick berries.

I know, I know, the bowl will not be big enough but it is what was handy. Ended up I picked about a gallon of berries off this lil 8ft by 8ft bed. Yeah I know, I know, there are berries in the field ripe and the bed beside the driveway has a lot of ripe berries in it too. Yeah I picked the ones here at the house. Still have not got to the field to pick those. Maybe tomorrow.

After I finished picking berries Rodger came out and I suggested we go to the field and drive the post to support the new grapevines we planted the past couple years. So off we went. We got the supports put up and Rodger is way far behind on the mowing with all the rain we have had. Can ya tell?

There are about 30 grapevines in this lil vineyard once they get big enough to make grapes. There is a grapevine at every metal rod that you see. This clover we planted creeps and mats on the ground and gets rather tall It is pretty tough stuff but we had hoped it would be shorter to cut down on mowing and help keeps weeds from growing. The orchard has grass that is almost as tall as some of the young trees we have planted this year. It will look pretty tho if Rodger ever gets it mowed.

A pretty heavy thunderstorm blew in just as we got finished driving stakes and it was getting dark so I did not get to pick the strawberries that are in the field near this vineyard. Just not enough hours in the day.

We went out of town to get a pressure switch for our water pump today and to pick up a few supplies and as I already told you we got landscape fabric to keep weeds out of the melons. We went to Lowe's and I picked up 3 - 8oz containers of Valspar paint for free. I had coupons that I had saved for a free 8oz sample of paint so I took advantage of that lil deal. Got a couple colors and 1 white. I wanted the white to re-paint the base of our dining table. We made a stop at Walmart for a few other things we needed and Rodger had some gift cards that he had gotten from cashing in his reward points from one of our credit cards. Needless to say it is not safe to allow him in Walmart "lil boys" clothing section. He picked out several lil outfits for Liam. Who am I kidding? I picked out a few myself for that lil man. I cant believe how much this lil fellow has grown in just the few weeks since we have been back home. Although his daddy did tell me he is a lil colicky. Bless his lil heart, I hate this so bad. Sure is hard to see those lil ones hurting and not be able to fix em. They tole me today they are gonna change his formula to a soy based one to see if that will help some. I know Rob was on soy formula when he was a baby. I just pray this don't last long for him. I know it is hard for Rob and Amoy being so far from family and not having anyone close to help out so they can rest a lil bit. But this sweet lil boy will be worth all this and I am sure they would tell you the same things. Just precious.

                                           He looks like he is just itchin to get hold of something.

                                               Lookin all gangsta!! and cute.

 And just look at that sweet lil smile. Not long till he will be able to interact with his mommy and daddy more. I know they cant wait for those days. This Grammy sure misses that lil fellow.

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

Hope you have a safe and happy memorial day weekend. Thanks to all our service men and women, past and present for your service to our country. God bless you all and keep you.

Stella