Another Buitiful Day in are wild paridice

Augest 1 2011 ,it started off as a nice day , went to work at brookshine brothers in the produce depratment . About 2 hours later i stated filling bad and gitting worse . So i went to sabine hospital , where thay only did a bunch of test on me , for a bigger billing , then thay dident even treat me , or give me eny pain medicen , thay just call a abulences ,' more money . And sent me 2 hours to a bigger hospitle . I was there almost 2 week . Thank You Frank , For Frank was there to take care of everythang and to help me when i got home . Thank You Frank ,,,,,
Im feeling a lot better and getting ready for a biger better year . I have been ordering seed and a few more trees , clearing more of the farming area and burning the slash . All 9 girl goats are pregnent and well heve there babys in a few months . Also working on a fence around the farming area , or the wild hog well till it up after we plant it . After i got to feeling better Frank headed south to be with his ralitives for the hollidays and to help his Dad . We fineily got some rain , but to late for all the lone leaf pine trees we planted , thay all died and untell are drought is over im going to hold up on replant . The lake is starting to come up , but steel 11 feet down , i think the next nice day i may go fishing . This year im going to learn how to make cheese and may raise up another set of calf to tain as oxen ,with all the milk , it has been very hard to keep up with the cost of Feed . I was getting grass hay for $3.50 abale now its $10.00 . Im also working on setting up a farm stand that we can sell out of this year . So that we would have more eggs for salling i got another 25 pullits that will start laying this spring . Thay arived in the US mail and have grown out most of there feathers , so ill move them out of the brooder soon . A few people have wreton , but so far its just me here .

Garden and Seed Saving Updateand a Thank You

Hello I wanted to give an update on the state of the garden. Currently the garden is in a transitional phase. The items currently growing are bell and jalapeno peppers, watermelon, sorghum, asparagus and tomatoes. Garlic and potatoes have been harvested and are making excellent meal contributions, onions are done growing and are good to eat. The squash and zucchini had a tough time fighting the squash bugs and got pulled up but had provided some good food for the time they were going. We harvested the corn, carrots and beets and got them put up in the freezer. Some of the corn had been eaten by corn earworms but most of it was salvageable, next corn planting we will be more prepared to combat the worms. The heat and lack of rain has been taking it's toll, but at the same time showing which plants are more resilient to lack of water and forcing us to contemplate more efficient watering methods.

So now the garden work is focused on weeding and preparing plots for planting of pumpkins which Mike plans to have ready to sell for Halloween. We want to thank the visitors we had, Eli and her friend, for coming out and helping weed the garden, it was a big help! We also got a chance to pick peaches which Eli used to make a great pie. They were also nice enough to leave a generous donation, THANK YOU

I have the results of the seed germination test. So far about 5 of the romaine seeds sprouted, 13 of the mustard seeds and 2 of the kale. So this was out of 14 of each of the seeds showing 35.7% of the romaine sprouted, 92.8% of the mustard and 14.2% for the kale. I'll try the kale and romaine again to see if I can get a better germination rate.Allrighty I also harvested about half of the okra seed pods so far and got some sorghum seeds. Here's a few pictures of that, left to right, okra seeds and pod, okra seed up close, sorghum seeds. Thanks for reading, have a good day!

Saving Seeds

Here's a quick post about saving seeds from the garden. So far we have mustard (right), kale (far right) and romaine seeds (below) and later we'll get some tomato, watermelon and okra seeds. One thing to watch out for when saving seeds is cross pollination of plants from the same families. So since we have bell peppers and jalapeno peppers (of the Solanaceae family) planted in the same plot, the seeds produced may be hybrids which will produce fruit different from non-hybrid pepper or jalapeno. This could make an interesting plant with perfectly edible fruit, but is generally undesirable for serious seed saving.


And to test the germination of these seeds I took 14 of each seed (plus 2 romaine pods) and put them on a wet paper towl and tossed them in a zip bag. Within a few days at least some of them should have spouted, I'll post and update when that happens.All in all saving seeds is a handy skill to practice, if you're interested in reading more about it visit http://www.seedsave.org/ for some useful information. Thanks for reading!

Homestead happenings and projects

Wooah it's been a while since the last update, that's because there's been lots to do. Twice every day the dogs, goats, chickens and cows need fed. The garden and nursery plants need watered and weeded. The kitchen and dishes need kept clean and the chicken eggs need collected and cleaned. The goats need grazed, lest they start plotting against you.

But in addition to chores several projects have also been getting done. I've been spending time each day gathering Dewberries. And with these gathered dewberries is made dewberry jam (or preserves) and after the preserves get made, you put it on toast!

Dewberry jam tastes awesome, way better than that regular....grape jam. Plus it's pretty cool to pick the berries and have a way to preserve them for future eating (properly canned preserves are good for at least 365 days) The first batch produced about 8 jars and the bag is almost full again to make another 8 jars.

Another project that's been getting some attention is the milking parlor. We've been installing insulation, adding interior sheathing, caulking and painting. Cabinets have been moved in and need some restoration and the sink is awaiting some plumbing work (water line in, a drain for the sink and another drain on the floor) Once the milking parlor gets a few more touches we can start using it for goat milking. This will be much easier and cleaner than milking outside. Currently most of the milk goes to the kid goats but to keep the mom goats healthy extra is milked (which goes to the chickens)


In other news the goat herd has added 4 new goats to their ranks. This makes the goat population at the homestead now 21. The kid goats are healthy, doing fine and are becoming very adept at flopping and flailing about in the pasture.



The garden has been doing good and growing new stuff. Some of the new produce-ready-to-eat is zucchini, summer squash, jalapeno pepper and bell pepper.



Other items soon-to-be-ready-to-eat are corn (lots of corn) and tomatoes (more then I can count) And even some watermelon (what you don't believe me?) Fine here's the picture and in fact this watermelon is 2 - 3 times bigger today, six days since this picture was taken. With a little bit of rain I think this watermelon could be a contender for Guinness World Records world's largest watermelon.
Well I'll wrap this up with a "thank you" to a garden visitor, Green Tree Frog, found him hanging out on the onions. Check back soon for more posts about some food drying experiments, goat updates and garden news.