All-Too-Real Reality of the 2017 Garden

     Today, I am going to be one hundred percent realistic when it comes to our 2017 garden.  For many of you who follow us on Facebook, you might have noticed strategically placed photographs throughout the season, but now it comes down to admitting the all-too-real reality of what happened in our garden this year.  

Spring 2017 Garden

      We had good intentions.  

    We ran our meat chickens and turkeys across the garden in the late-fall and early-winter to help turn up the soil, eat down some of the remaining plants and cover crops, and provide us with some free manure where we wanted it.  By spring we had cover cropped sections in buckwheat, put black plastic down to kill any early sprouting weeds, and laid out rows of fresh transplants with landscape fabric and feed bags to help suppress the weeds as the crops grew.  The Mr. would go out a few times a week with a hoe and tiller and make sure the paths were cleared of weeds, as well as in between the plants.  It looked like it was going to be a very successful year of keeping up with the garden, and keeping the weeds at bay.  

     Then life happened...

     Perhaps we should have heeded the advice of "don't take so much on when you're expecting a baby" and we continued to plant the already growing transplants in our garden, swearing that these easier methods will cut down the workload (and they have).  Perhaps if we had wholeheartedly taken that advice the garden would have looked different, the canning would have been more lax, and the preserving of the harvest would not be weighing as heavily as it is now that I am 37 weeks along, counting seeds for next year's garden, and finally getting around to the dried mint from the beginning of the summer.  

We were fortunate that relatives and friends also assisted with
some of the larger canning loads to get them all done, not to
mention my mother who gave up two days to harvest apples
and peaches with me at a local orchard as I fought through
"practice contractions" for eight bushels of fruit.

     Each year we push ourselves to do better than the previous year, and make the most of our yields.  After all we eat from our garden throughout the year to help offset our grocery bills, and can more food than most people would dream of in a lifetime.  Yet, we were not prepared for how pregnancy would effect my body, nor how quickly the morning sickness would set on and last, and how weak I would still feel.  We were not prepared mid-pregnancy for a second batch of meat birds that needed butchered when the smell of wet feathers would turn my stomach so quickly, even though I had been fine at the beginning of my pregnancy with the first batch of the year.  We were unrealistic when we thought that I could keep up with my regular daily animal chores, and quickly found that along with his own, the Mr. would have to pick up my daily chores, most of the housework, almost all the garden work, harvesting, and soon canning.  

     We had tried our best to "power through" as we did each and every year in the past, gradually adding a little more to our plate with each coming year, but this year it was different.  This year the final straw came the day I was getting ready to pressure can chicken stock, and the exhaustion compounded with the heat of everything going in the kitchen caused my vision to black and I caught myself on the counter before I fell and managed to lower myself to the floor, knocking over a few glass pint jars in the process.  I was okay (and so was the baby), but it was then the full realization set in that I just couldn't do a lot of it anymore, no matter how hard we had tried to scale me back in work.  

     Simply put, the compounding of life has caused us to fall behind as it became unrealistic for the Mr. to work 40-60 hours a week, come home and take care of feeding and changing water for the animals, weeding and harvesting the garden, and tend to the baby chickens and turkeys that needed nursing... all before dinner, which he generally had to also make for us as I was quickly becoming too exhausted to safely prepare the meal.  

     All of this boils down to the picture that shows the all-too-real reality of the present state of the garden...

... underneath all of those weeds lies the garden.  The toppled tomato cages we fight to get the fruits off of the tangled vines once or twice a week.  The potatoes that were overcrowded by the weeds, and now lie somewhere underneath a thick blanket of unwanted growth waiting to be unearthed.  The beans that skipped over their rows and overtook the pathways in between, but at least overran most of the weeds along with the pathways.  A random volunteer gourd plant that clings to the Scarlet Runner Beans.  Sweet corn that is only now starting to tassel alongside the tall blades of grass.  Vines hung heavy with pumpkins and squash, creeping ever quicker into the surrounding yard.  It's all there... waiting for us... taunting us.  

     We've yielded over $800 worth of produce so far off that overrun dream, but still there is more.  There is always more to be done, but there are changes on the way too.  There are new dreams.  There's a little one on the way to keep up with amidst this craziness we call life.  There's a new job that takes us away from this place we've called home for over four years now.  There's a new home being searched for with dreams of animals and gardens, and the stinging reality of whether we can actually get everything we desire on a deadline and a budget as we continue our search.  In the end though, we know there'll be a new garden to lay out in 2018, and perhaps... just perhaps... another chance to right reality again and see what beauty lies in a once-again weeded garden.   

Know Thy Enemy in the Garden

Cabbage White Butterflies dancing
on the blooming lavender in the garden.

     Chomp, chomp.  Some summer days it seems to echo throughout the land.  The chorus of quiet munching and nibbling on every leaf, stem, and fruit in the garden.  Somehow these pests know exactly where to go.  They avoid the weeds like the plague, and plop down on the squash, cabbage, beans, tomatoes, potatoes and corn, settling in for a good filling meal for them over the growing season, but a meal for them means less of one for us.  

     In September of 2016, the Mr. and I went to the Mother Earth News Fair in Somerset, PA, and listened to two different individuals discuss how they organically repelled, destroyed and co-habited with their garden pests.  They both had wonderful ideas that worked for their situation, but I've come to find that not all situations are the same, and as every single presenter seemed to say in answer to question after question that weekend... "it depends."  

     Those words leave me a little frustrated.  Can't there be a full proof way to get rid of these buggers, both big and small?  One that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?  One that doesn't involve laying down floating row covers, fencing the perimeter, or turning over every leaf, every day, as sunlight is waning as quickly as your sanity?  So I repeat, "it depends."  It depends on what pest you are dealing with, where you live, what your weather is, if you garden organic or pesticide friendly, and how much time and money you are willing to invest.  

     After four seasons of in-ground gardening (and in the midst of our fifth), I'm offering some of the pest prevention tips and tricks that we've used in our garden for five common pests.  Every garden is different, and maybe they won't work for you, but why not give them a try as most of these won't cost you much?

Five Common Garden Insect Pests

Caterpillar of a Swallowtail Butterfly 

Caterpillars.  I get it.  They're stunning.  They'll turn into an abundance of beautiful butterflies or moths, some of which eagerly help to pollinate the garden.  However, like it is for us, they are probably decimating your parsley, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc., depending on the species' desired buffet.  So do you kill them, or let them live?  Are they friend or foe?  We've come to the conclusion you must either hand pick them off the plants and send them to the afterlife, or to someone else.  Perhaps friends or family have butterfly gardens nearby and would be willing to take them off of your hands so they can watch the caterpillars mature, munch, and reproduce... in their garden.

Differential Grasshopper

Grasshoppers.  Anyone else grow up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books?  Among the most memorable parts of the series for me was in On The Banks of Plum Creek when the glittering cloud of grasshoppers shaded out the sky and literally ate the fields out of house and home.  Although, they were technically the Rocky Mountain Locusts of 1874 that were commonly referred to as grasshoppers, I feel that in the summer garden, the story sure fits.  Aside from the floating row covers that many gardeners swear by, I've noticed that another animal has quite the appetite for these... farm cats!  Although they don't completely eliminate the pests entirely, they certainly keep the population, and therefore problem, down as the cats "assist" us during our morning and evening chores.  In all, our less than half a dozen farm cats do pretty well over the 8,400 square feet of garden space we maintain.

Mature Colorado Potato Beetle

Colorado Potato Beetles.  The first of the pests for us to wage full-on warfare on was the dreaded Colorado Potato Beetle who systematically devoured the leaves of the carefully mounded Red Pontiac and Yukon Gold potatoes the first year until nearly none were left in the June heat.  Once feeding on the buffalo bur of another lonesome prairie in 1859, the pioneers’ potatoes looked better to these bugs that multiplied by the millions and traveled in droves 85 miles further eastward each year, looking for new potato fields to systematically devour.  The first year, we lost the crop as the plants were defoliated.  The second year we burned all the plants with a flaming torch.  The plants and beetles both returned.  In the third year, we hand picked every blasted one off, but this past year, we finally found our solution.  The potatoes were set in late this past year at the beginning of summer, instead of being the second crop in the garden at spring.  It broke the cycle, and we didn't pick a single beetle off the plants that I can recollect!  This year we once again planted the potatoes late (two rows in May, and we're hoping to put our third row in during early July) to see if we can eliminate or greatly reduce the beetles two years in a row.  We did have one or two appear thus far this year that were quickly picked off, and have been constantly surveying the crop for any other additional damage.  

Japanese Beetle

Japanese Beetles.  Arriving in America around the time of the First World War, the Japanese Beetle plagues our berry patch each summer (fortunately it's usually towards the end of the season).  This past year their sweet tooth sent them migrating to our sweet corn crop as soon as the berry patch was picked out.  Japanese Beetles are happy to dine on over 200 plants so there's no telling where they would have ended up next in our garden in the summer heat.  Although we cannot eliminate them all together, we can minimize the amount of damage they do by planting our crops earlier in the year before they make their largest attacks on our gardens near the end of summer.  Earlier in the season, we do hand-pick the beetles from the crops in the evening hours and drop them into containers of either soapy water or old motor oil.  

Tomato Hornworms.  Notice what looks like a moving tomato stem?  Uh oh.  You might have a Tomato Hornworm that blends in amazingly well with the tomato plant itself as it's often found clinging to branches and leaves near the tomato's main stem.  Tomato Hornworms, which can go up to 4" in length, are actually caterpillars of the Five-Spotted Hawk Moth that has a 3.5-5" wingspan itself.  We generally allow Mother Nature to take its course (with some help) with the Tomato Hornworms in our own garden, although you can pick them off by hand earlier on when they are just green caterpillars.  

     If you see a green caterpillar covered in what looks like white eggs, STOP!  Braconid Wasps lay their eggs under the skin of Tomato Hornworms (and their close relative the Tobacco Hornworm).  Once the larva chews its way through the hormworm, they spin little white cocoons on its back, which many mistake for the wasp's eggs.  The larva will feed off the hornworm, and once they emerge from their cocoons, the hornworm usually has but a few days left to live.  If you want to make sure the Tomato Hornworm is not continuing to decimate your crops during this process, you can pick them off the plants and put them in a quart-size yogurt container with a branch of tomato leaf.  Make sure to cover the container with screen or punch a few holes in the top for air.  Set it outside in a covered place so rain water doesn't flood the container.  Braconid Wasps (which pose no threat to humans) are less than 1/8" long when they emerge from their cocoons so they can easily fit through the small holes punched in the top.  By doing this instead of immediately killing the hornworm, you are producing the next generation of Tomato Hornworm killers for your garden.  

     (Note: It astounds me to no end that I cannot find a picture of these annual garden pests, especially with the wasp cocoons all over their backs.  If I do find or get a picture of them this year, I will certainly update this post with one!  For now search "tomato hornworm wasp" on the internet and you'll surely pop up a lot of pictures.)

Other Ways To Help Prevent Pests

Striped Cucumber Beetle

     Sure insect pests still show up in our garden.  Sure they are just what they are called: PESTS!  However, there are other ways we've found to deal with some of the pests too that can help in the garden overall.  

     Our most important piece of pest prevention is CROP ROTATION.  Crop rotation is where you don't plant a crop in the same place in the garden for successive years.  It can be done on a small, medium, or large scale, but honestly, the bigger your garden the better this will work.  We personally use a three-year rotation so the same crop is not planted in the same place for at least three years in a row.  This makes it more difficult for pests who overwinter to find their desired food crop.  Keep in mind when you are planning crop rotation that crops in the same family may share the same pests (i.e. Colorado Potato Beetles like both potatoes and tomatoes, which are both members of the nightshade family, so for crop rotation to truly work, you shouldn't plant potatoes where tomatoes were the previous year, and vice versa.)  

The layout of the 2014 Garden (our second year of in-ground gardening here).  

     

     You can also go back to our 2015 garden plan and 2016 garden plan posts to see how we rearranged the garden those two years to do our best to rotate crops.  Please keep in mind we may not have been 100% successful with crop rotation year to year as our gardens grew in size, but we certainly did try!  (On all layouts, one square = one square foot.)

Radish planted as a trap crop

     Another way to help avoid pest problems on particular crops is through the use of TRAP CROPS.  A trap crop is simply a crop that is sacrificed so that another crop might live.  For example, flea beetles that commonly defoliate eggplant leaves are drawn to radishes as well.  So therefore if you plant radishes nearby the eggplants, the flea beetles may find their way to them instead and leave your eggplants alone.  

     When all prevention fails (which does occur from time to time), it's time to CHECK EARLY AND OFTEN.  By taking morning, nightly, or even bi-weekly strolls through your garden you are more likely to catch the pests early on before they cause too much damage.  Once you find a pest (or really, even if you don't find any), continue to check up on your plants to make sure you are not seeing signs of them being attacked.

Spotted Cucumber Beetle

     The most common sign of a plant being attacked is holes in the plant's leaves.  Holes (or chew marks) along the outside edges might be rabbits nibbling at a tasty treat; whereas, holes straight through a leaf is a sign of insect damage.  Once you have identified damage on a plant, the next step is to identify pests that prefer that particular plant.  In this case a simple internet search of "pests of [insert variety of crop]" will tell you a lot, along with a variety of ways people found to get rid of that particular pest.  Keep in mind not all ways work for every garden because as the presenters stated again and again at the Mother Earth News Fair, "it depends" on a number of factors.

     Always make sure to write down in a notebook or scribble on the edge of a calendar when you noticed a certain pest showing up in the garden, and next year be extra vigilant a week or two prior to the same time to see if you can catch that pest earlier on if you haven't been able to eradicate it completely.

     What pests have been eating your gardening efforts?  

How Much Should I Plant?

     As we work towards the ongoing chore of planning and planting the 2017 garden, that semi-crazy idea of growing enough food to sustain ourselves comes to mind once again.  In reality, we don't have the space, nor the time, it would take to be truly 100% sustainable, so we (more or less) plant enough food to supplement our trips to the grocery store, and certainly lower the grocery bills.  

So much zucchini!  2013 was the year of
more zucchini than I ever cared to see,
some of them almost reaching the
width of baseball bats!  

     Determining exactly how much we need to plant to do this comes with a lot of trial and error, and for certain crops, we've never made it past the error stage.  There are; however, some crops that we are essentially sustainable with unless there is a bad harvest year.  There was the one year that we planted a whopping 200 pea seeds, and yielded over 20 pounds of the tiny green things that blistered our fingers as we shelled them by hand.  The following year we upped it to 400 seeds and a different variety for the spring, and got a measly few ounces of peas that didn't even amount to half a pound for our efforts.  There was the year that our zucchini was decimated by squash bugs, followed by a year where we prayed the squash bugs would decimate the single plant that was producing over 30 pounds of zucchini and causing us to toss more than just the occasional scrap to the chickens.  It's essentially a toss up with what Mother Nature might throw at you.

     It all boils down to how much should I plant?  I've been asked this question multiple times, and in reality, it all comes down to trial and error.  We started off using advice from the internet by simply Googling "how much to plant" paired with some common sense to figure out how much to plant the first year.  From there, we started to expand upon what we needed more of based upon how quickly certain crops were used up.  Here's three tips to get you started that go beyond Googling "how much to plant":

Sit down and calculate what you actually use over the course of a year.

We try not to overburden ourselves with canning and do 1-year,
2-year and 3-year cycles.  Pictured above is a 3-year canning
cycle of Mixed Berry and Strawberry jams.  This year
(2017) our cycles collide so we will be canning all three
cycles at once.  YIKES!

     I know this sounds time consuming (it is) and bothersome, but when your up to your ears in spaghetti squash that only one of your family members will touch, you'll wish you would have listened.  We have three categories that we take into consideration: canned goods, frozen food, and dry goods (and root crops).  I generally don't calculate what we'll eat fresh because that greatly fluctuates with what is in abundance when harvesting.

     Below is an example of what we preserve for consumption later.  (Items that are crossed out means we are using up our current stock and do not plan to can or otherwise preserve them again in the coming year.  Items that are in parenthesis means that we plan on adding them in the coming year if our harvest permits.)

Canned Goods Apple Barbecue Sauce Apple Butter Apple Juice Apple Pie Filling Apple Pie Jam Applesauce (Baked Beans) (Beef Stock) Blueberry Pie Filling Bread and Butter Pickles Carrot Cake Jam (Chicken Stock) Corn Relish Corn Salsa Cranberry Relish Cranberry Sauce Dill Pickles Duck Sauce Grape Jelly Grape Juice Ham Stock Hot Pepper Jam Ketchup Marmalade Mixed Berry Jam Peaches Peach Honey Butter Peach Jam Peach Pie Filling Peach Salsa Pineapples Pizza Sauce Raspberry Jam Raspberry Jelly Raspberry Lemonade Concentrate Rhubarb Jam Rhubarb Relish Rhubarb Sunshine Concentrate Roasted Red Pepper Spread Salsa Sauerkraut Spaghetti Sauce Strawberries Strawberry Jam Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate Strawberry Rhubarb Jam Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Filling Strawberry Syrup Sweet 'N' Sour Sauce Sweet Pickles Sweet Pickle Relish Tomatoes, Diced Tomatoes, Whole Tomato Juice Tomato Paste Tomato Sauce Tomato Soup Turkey Stock Vegetable Stock Wineberry Jam

Frozen Foods Blackberries Blueberries Broccoli, florets Cabbage, quartered Cauliflower, florets Chili Peppers, diced Celery Celery Leaves Corn on the Cob Corn Green Beans Green/Spring Onions Jalapeno Peppers, diced Lima Beans Patty Pan Squash, sliced Peaches Peas Pumpkin, cooked Raspberries Spaghetti Squash, cooked Strawberries Sweet Peppers, sliced Tomatoes, whole cherry Wax Peppers, diced Wineberries Yellow Squash, coined Zucchini, coined Zucchini, shredded Prepared Frozen Foods From Garden/Produce Apple Dumpling Roll-ups Cream of Celery Soup Egg Rolls Enchilada Sauce Pesto Chicken Scraps  *We keep chicken scraps  frozen to feed them over  the winter to supplement  their diets when there is  limited pasture Cabbage, shredded Garden Scraps Mulberries Radishes Frozen Produce Surplus left from previous years

Dry Goods Basil, multiple varieties Black Beans Catnip Chili Peppers Corn Dill Garlic Hulless Oats Hutterite Soup Beans Kidney Beans Lima Beans Mangals - chicken feed Meadowmint Onions, multiple varieties Oregano Parsley Pinto Beans Popcorn Potatoes, multiple varieties Pumpkins Scarlet Runner Beans Speariment Squash Sugar Beets - chicken feed Thyme Tomatoes, sun-dried

     Now after reading that list you are probably feeling a little overwhelmed, or perhaps proclaiming "ain't nobody got time for that!"  (Which I wholeheartedly agree with.)  Again, this is an example of how calculating what we use over a course of a year works for us.  It is certainly not meant to be what your family will do because every family has different tastes.

You plant it, you preserve it!  Processing tomatoes is always
the biggest chore around here because there are so many of
them!  This is an evening's worth of cutting tomatoes in 2014
to go through the processor and start canning in the morning.

     In this example, I'm going to use tomatoes as it's a fairly common item for people to plant in their gardens.  Out of the above items, the following have tomatoes in: Corn Salsa, Ketchup, Pizza Sauce, Salsa, Spaghetti Sauce, Sweet 'N' Sour Sauce, Diced Tomatoes, Whole Tomatoes, Tomato Paste, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Soup, Vegetable Stock, frozen Cherry Tomatoes, Enchilada Sauce, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes.  That's a lot of tomato products!  Now say your family eats two large pizzas every month.  A large pizza equals one jar of pizza sauce, meaning you would need to can 24 jars of pizza sauce to get you through the year.  To make 24 (jelly) jars of pizza sauce using Ball's recipe, you will need 39 cups of plum tomato puree (or about 13 pounds worth of plum/paste tomatoes).  IF you are having a good season with a good plant, a single tomato plant can produce 20-30 pounds worth of tomatoes, so you would have to plant half a plant to make pizza sauce, and then the additional harvest for the remaining plant could go to another tomato product.  You would then use the same method for the remaining recipes you want to can to get an estimate of how many tomato plants you'll need to plant.  We usually plant one or two extra in the garden to help if we might have a bad year.  (Note: We plant anywhere from 18 to 40 tomato plants in any given year depending on how many tomato products need canned as we stagger our canning in 1-year, 2-year and 3-year intervals.  A 40 tomato plant year will yield around 600 pounds of tomatoes for us, or an average of just fifteen pounds per plant.  This leads me to my second tip...)

Write It Down!

     Every year you plant you should keep records to help you determine how much you need to plant in subsequent years.  Although you swear you'll remember, in the midst of a crazy harvest season, it's a lot easier to just write it down and look it up than wrack through your already nerve-wracked brain.  We use a cheap produce scale (it's not even digital) and white board that's attached to the side of the fridge to record weight totals as the produce comes in.  Once the white board gets filled, I input the totals and dates the items were harvested into an Excel spreadsheet that will calculate our total produce amount over the season. 

     Having records that tell you how much you planted, and how much you yielded are helpful in averaging how much you will get from each plant in your particular growing location.  Keep in mind, just because you planted ten tomato plants one year and got x-amount of pounds of tomatoes, it does not mean you will get the same amount of tomatoes the following year.  

     After looking back through your records you'll get an idea with how much you should plant.  Here's three examples from our garden, which we are only feeding two from: 

Lima Beans - 38" double row (about 150 seeds).  

This gives us enough to eat fresh, freeze some for use throughout the year, and also enough to dry as seeds for planting next year.  (What happens if we get too much?  If we end up with too many Lima beans, succotash will be added to the menu more often.)

Peas (Hull or Shell) - 38" double row (about 400 seeds) - single planting 

This gives us enough to eat fresh and freeze some for use throughout the year; however, we do not have (at this point) enough to save seeds as well.  We hope with a double planting in the spring and fall this coming year, there will be enough to save dried peas for seeds the following year.  (What happens if we get too much?  Looks like Sheppard's pie will have extra peas in!)

Potatoes - three 38" rows (about 10lbs of seed potatoes).

This gives us enough to eat fresh, store for use throughout the year, and about 10lbs worth to use as seed potatoes for the following year; however, we do need to supplement potatoes from planting until harvesting (about four months) from the grocery store.  Our on-going struggles with the Colorado Potato Beetle and blight also limits the crop that comes out of the ground during harvest.  (What happens if we get too much?  We'll let you know when it happens... ;)  We eat a lot of potatoes!)  

Don't be afraid to re-evaluate each year.

     Once you have a few years worth of experience built up you will quickly find that you may be pawning off zucchini or eggplant on your neighbor every year, stuck without lettuce for three months at a time, or having to buy onions at the grocery store as soon as you put your onion sets into the ground.  It's okay!  It's part of the learning experience of trial and error.  At the end of every (major) growing season we sit down and do a quick evaluation of what we need and what we have too much of, then we adjust our planting totals to try and do better next year.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes, as is in the case of 400 pea plants, it fails miserably. Just remember...

There is ALWAYS next year!

A Snowy Morning For Chores

     The seasons seem to change quickly around here.  Looking back at my farm notebook, it was a sunny 56 degrees just two days ago, and today we awoke to snow falling from the gray clouds above.  December has been a hectic month being in the midst of another holiday season, and had some fairly abnormal weather, but today all was calm when I stepped outside to do the morning chores in my new insulated bibs that I got for Christmas, with farm cats tangled at my feet.  

     Dashing through the falling flurries, the farm cats, as always, were quick to help this morning, and grab a snack in the warm dry shed of some of the turkey feed.

     Since I've checked in with everyone last, a bit has happened around here with our turkeys.  A week ago, we moved the turkey trailer to its new location by the chicken coop inadvertently creating a sort of barnyard for our animals past the old Pennsylvania Barn up on the hill.  

     It's a rather haphazard barnyard created with bits and pieces of whatever we could scavenge up: an old shed door propped up with tomato stakes to act as a windbreak for the chickens, chicken wire and garden fencing zip-tied to the runs to give the chickens some extra space and new areas to scratch, and an overabundance of white string used to tie newspapers together, now tightly strung in a 6-8" grid to create an aerial barrier between the turkeys and freedom.

     Unfortunately, this aerial barrier has failed us.  Again.  You may recall the turkey hen on the greenhouse roof from the last post.  Well, after just hours outside the second day (at their new location), she was promptly seen checking in with the chickens from our window.  I gathered her up, and stuck her back in the enclosure, and then spent the next thirty minutes securing the place she escaped through around the tree (witnessed by the turkey down stuck in the string nearby).  

    An hour after the repairs, she had escaped yet again.  Again, I stuck her inside their enclosure.  As dusk was now approaching, I decided to grab the hunting seat, and sit outside in the barnyard to watch vigil over the turkey hen to make sure she did not escape again.  If, somehow, she did, at least I would know how she did it, and in theory, be able to get her back inside quickly.  

     Without missing a beat, at dusk, she glanced upward through the strings, and tried to catapult herself through to freedom.  She hit the strings and flapped back down, defeated.  Yes!  It worked!  She had been using the tree for leverage after all!  After a few more failed attempts, I was satisfied that she would have to sleep in the trailer tonight.  Just as I thought she had given up, she mustered up enough wing power for one last ditch effort, and through she went!  

     I spent the next ten minutes chasing her around, while the gobbler now tried to desperately hurl himself through the aerial barrier.  I finally managed to wrestle her back in, but before I could turn around to secure her escape route, out she went again.  This time she found herself on the trailer's roof (where I could not reach), and was eagerly eyeing up the mulberry tree above her head.  

     The Mr. had fortunately pulled in at the landlord's (past the white barn behind her in the above picture) around that time, and I was able to frantically call him and get him home.  He climbed up to the trailer roof and grabbed her off, then promptly put both her and the gobbler to bed for the night.  Presently, they are stuck inside for a few days until repairs are made to the enclosure that will hopefully keep them inside!  

     With the turkeys out of the garden, the Delaware cockerels are now down there alone in their chicken tractor, working up the ground and eating up the tall and small weeds.  Our aim is for them to make it to the end of the garden before it gets too cold, and then they'll head off to the freezer so we can have some more chicken throughout the year.  

     As they work up the garden, we are finally starting to plan for next year's garden, but a little differently than before.  In years past this was a quiet winter break where all the planning could take place for two months before seed starting began.  This year, the greenhouse and cold frame are both still producing so there's only a limited break from the gardening.  Who would have thought that I would have to weed in winter?!  In December, we've harvested and eaten radishes, carrots, parsley, celery, and even tomatoes, though the plants of the latter are now pulled up.  Although the plants inside were bit by the cold, both the greenhouse and cold frame are certainly extending our season!  

     So on this cold and snowy day, it looks like I'll be finishing up some of the year-end totals, and perhaps get to work on a new garden layout plan for the coming season as I've already managed to inventory all of our seeds earlier this month.  After all, we can't harvest a seed that was never sown.  

Our Self-Powered Manure Wielding Lawnmowers

     Last month, the Mr. and I went to the Mother Earth News Fair in Somerset, Pennsylvania as an early anniversary trip.  Camping at a nearby state park in the brisk mountain air of Western Pennsylvania, we spent three days soaking in the sights, sounds and even smells of the farming and homesteading lifestyles.  While there we got to hear a lecture from the "most famous farmer in America" Joel Salatin on Salad Bar Beef.  His rousing Southern Baptist style lecture was a fabulous way to kick off Sunday morning as we learned how he raises beef cattle using rotational grazing in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.  (More about his farm can be found on its website.)

    While my husband was dreaming about getting beef cattle, I was hurriedly taking notes while attempting to figure out how to scale his practices down for chickens.  Yup, you heard me right... chickens.  If you can use rotational grazing for cattle, why not implement the practice with some amendments for chickens?  After all, we were already halfway there.

As our Delawares grew we wanted to give them
more space, although even in their present pasture
they were more than content.

     Before leaving on our three-day getaway, we started construction on a chicken tractor that we planned to use in our garden to help rough it up a bit (and weed it!) for spring planting.  Our plan was to allow half of the flock of sixteen Delawares - all cockerels - to escape the confines of the coop and pasture runs before butcher.  Once we got back, we finished off the construction, and this Saturday set our plan to work.  

     Using these self-powered manure wielding lawnmowers (i.e. chickens), we intend to make the painful process of putting 8,400 square feet of garden to bed for the winter a little easier on us.  Fortunately, the Mr. moved the eight not so happy cockerels down to the garden  on Saturday morning while I got to man the doors to the run, coop and "animal transportation system."  (Okay, so the Mr. tied a large dog crate to my old red wooden wagon I had when I was a kid.  Unfortunately, we were so busy I neglected to get a picture of this spectacle, but it worked out wonderfully.)   

     Then, off into the chicken tractor they went, and were happy as could be until about mid-afternoon when they noisily demanded more ground to peck on.  Thus, the Mr. moved them down the row simple as could be.  Sunday morning, they were moved again, further down the row.  Then came this morning, when it was now my turn to move them.  

     The Mr. made it look and sound so easy, taking less than five minutes to move the chicken tractor.  Simply lift the axle for the tire, hold it up with your foot, and then slide the tire on.  Spin the nut onto the end.  Then repeat on the other side.  Grab the rope, and pull forward.  Do the reverse, and remove both tires.  Sounds like a breeze right?  

     If only... 

     With two farm cats in tow I grabbed a container of feed and headed towards the garden.  I tossed out the feed to the new area they would be moved to.  That was mistake number one as it sent the Delawares into a frenzy trying desperately to get the feed that was on the other side of the chicken tractor.  

     I lifted the axle, barely getting it two inches off the ground before I had to drop it.  There was no way this was going to work, and now the two farm cats that I had in tow were sitting where the tractor was going to be moved eating the feed!  I tried pulling the rope without tires on.  Surprisingly I made it eight inches while the cockerels continued to demand their new ground and scrambled for their eight inches of feed.  Finally I gave in and called my husband.  "Use a shovel to pry the side up and stick the wheel on.  You got this."

     Kicking myself for not thinking of this easy solution the whole way to the shed for the shovel and back to the garden, I jammed the shovel underneath and pried.  Seriously?  It came two inches off the ground... the same height I could have lifted it myself.  I pulled the shovel out and moved further down the bottom board.  Still not high enough.  Then I moved even further down.  FINALLY!  Four inches off the ground now, with me holding the shovel, would be enough for the tire.  If only I could reasonably reach that two feet away to put on the tire with those two hands that were holding the shovel... (Mistake two.)  

     Doing half a split in the garden, holding down the shovel with one foot in a shoe that bore no traction (mistake three), I begun to slide on the tire with my hands, just as my foot slipped and down four inches the chicken tractor came crashing.  Whack!  The shovel handle went flying straight against my shin, while the disgruntled Delawares flew and squawked about.  I jammed the shovel back in and tried again.  Success!  Now onto the next side.  

     The second side went a little better.  Finally, the chicken tractor was just shy of four inches off the ground in the back, so I went around front, grabbed the rope and yanked.  It slowly inched forward.  I GOT THIS!  That's when I became a little too ambitious (mistake four), and started to walk backwards as I yanked, slipping in the wet grass on the edge of the garden pathway which caused me to go sprawling, landing squarely on my butt.  

     For once in the morning luck was on my side as there were no cars passing at that moment, and the only living things to witness this was the eight Delawares who now were busily pecking at their new ground, the two farm cats who had made themselves comfortable on the lawn, and all the plants who fortunately didn't have eyes, and came out unscathed.  Well unscathed aside from those that I had landed on, and now sat on bewildered and frustrated.  

     At that point, I gave up and got up. I grabbed the rope, yanked it one more time to its final destination, situating the chicken tractor in a straight line.  I pulled the wheels off, and said firmly, "I hope you're happy," to the Delawares, before grabbing the feed bucket and heading up to the coop to do the rest of the morning chores with the two farm cats once again in tow.  

     All-in-all, everyone is only slightly worse for the wear.  I have a bruised shin and backside, along with slight rope burn on my hands and a sore wrist.  Additionally, the escapade only took an extra twenty minutes.  The eight Delaware cockerels are now once again happy, starting their morning thanks with adolescent crows that sound more like bleating goats than roosters.  Yet, the only thing I can fully consider is, "Darn.  I have to do this again tomorrow morning."

Our Self-Powered Manure Wielding Lawnmowers at work Saturday morning

A Hectic Harvest To Kick Off Autumn

Among the various projects that needed done before winter
was the addition of a new greenhouse roof due to ours
shredding in a wind storm in the summer heat.

     As the leaves begin to turn on our maple trees and the farm cats are dashing here and there underneath the black walnut trees so not to be beaned on the head by the plummeting walnuts, autumn is officially upon us.  With autumn comes the last of the usual harvest seasons around here, and more than a little work to put the garden to bed for winter.  

     By the beginning of September we had reached $1,000 worth of produce harvested from our gardens, and as we pull out row after row of dried beans, green and red tomatoes, and even a second patch of late-season sweet corn, we're sure to only increase that number.

Fall comes to the garden in a beautiful array of colors.

The flowers of Scarlet Runner
Beans add a splash of color.

     Throughout September we've been busy getting in the harvests, especially those of the dried beans, which are now decorating the house in baskets of color as they continue to dry.  We may have gone slightly overboard in beans, but last year we just simply did not have enough to last us the year.  In all, this year, we planted a double half row of Kidney Beans, two full rows of Scarlet Runner Beans, two rows of Black Turtle Beans, a double half row of Hutterite Soup, a double half row of Jacob's Cattle, and also two full rows of Pinto Beans.  Not to mention, the two full rows of Lima Beans, some of which are being dried, while most will be frozen.  It's a lot of beans, which means a lot of shelling by the light of the television set at night, just the way our pioneer mothers did it.  (Seriously, we all need a little humor to get through harvest season.)

Mountains of basil, parsley and thyme (not pictured)
came out of the garden yesterday.

     The most frantic of the harvests of the last of our peppers, tomatoes, warm-season herbs, and broom corn occurred yesterday as a frost warning popped across our phones, sending a chilly reminder that autumn is upon us.   By this morning, the temperatures were barely tipping freezing at 8 a.m., and the Plymouth Barred Rocks and Delawares were getting impatient for their "chicken porridge" for breakfast.  With geese honking overhead, I hurried to the greenhouse to check on the crops.  With the frost only laying in the dips of the garden, the temperature read 53 degrees, and the three tomato plants seemed cozy in their warm home.

     This year; however, our harvest is not planned to stop with the last leaf dancing in the wind.  With the addition of the greenhouse, (see Preparing For A Frosty Fall) one can hope, we can continue to harvest into winter.  For some reason, we thought that not having a break in gardening was a good idea.  Ask me again in January if I'm still feeling that this was a wonderful plan.

     Although not all of the crops are harvested from the garden as the celery, carrots, dried beans, and oats could withstand the frost, it will certainly be a hectic day today as I put up the last of our warm season crops and try my hand at propagating some of the herbs.  As it looks like another few frosts will be upon us by the end of the week, I better get to work.  Happy harvesting everyone.

Frost in  a dip on the edge of the garden pathway this morning.

Preparing For A Frosty Fall

Repairing the shredded roof before planting the fall seeds.

     Winter is going to be a bit unusual around here this year.  This year, we're not planning to stop the growing season with the first frost, and our garden isn't entirely "put to bed" like it has been in years past.  It just may be the first winter season that I can say I harvested fresh lettuce in January, or maybe, just maybe, it will all go down in a withered frost bitten heap by Old Man Winter's cruel icy hand.  Fate is funny like that.  You never know how she's going to act.  

     This year, with a new roof (due to the old one shredding during a wind storm in the hot summer heat), the greenhouse is ready for some late-fall and winter crops.  We, like usual, packed the greenhouse.  The three tomato plants, left over from summer, are blooming as they climb their strings towards the greenhouse roof, while the four cauliflower and four broccoli transplants came from a local greenhouse.  Everything else was set in as seed in mid-September with the hopes that since the greenhouse is touching anywhere from 70s to 90s throughout the day they will germinate just fine.

Tomatoes within inches of the roof in mid-September.

     A fair number of the seeds for our greenhouse came from relatives this year who were retiring from gardening and mailed their leftover seeds to us from halfway across the country.  It was quite the blessing, and the Mr. and I would both check the mail religiously, wanting to be the one to open the packages!  (We were truly like kids on Christmas morning.)  Among the crops we planted:

     Beet, Early Blood Turnip - SEED SAVERS EXCHANGE
     Broccoli, Arcadia - LOCAL GREENHOUSE
     Carrot, Royal Chatenay - LAKE VALLEY SEEDS
     Cauliflower, Snow Dream - LOCAL GREENHOUSE
     Lettuce, Four Seasons - BURPEE (FROM RELATIVES)
     Lettuce, Iceberg - WEEKS SEED CO. (FROM RELATIVES)
     Onion, White Lisbon - LAKE VALLEY SEEDS
       Radish, Champion - ROHRER SEEDS
     Spinach - (FROM RELATIVES) 

    Yes, the green was certainly packed to say the least, but at this point, would you expect anything less from one of our gardens?

Keeping It Warm

     After some research, we decided on a plan to hopefully keep the greenhouse warm:

• The main way revolves around two 55 gallon plastic drums filled with water.  Over the drums will be black plastic leaf bags (hopefully by early next week)  to help them attract the heat during the daily hours and slowly release the heat as the temperature cools after dark.  Currently the blue barrels are keeping it warm enough.  
• Most of the windows in the greenhouse are insulated double-pane glass.  Anything that is not, will have a piece of plastic tacked over it to help keep the drafts out by the end of September.  
• Put plastic over the screen door by the end of September.  
• Two basement vents that are activated by the outside temperatures will help to vent the greenhouse should it get too warm, and close to help keep the heat in as the temperature drops.
• The pathway is concrete pavers, which should hopefully soak up some of the heat during the daylight hours.
• All the plants will be mulched within the next week.  As the mulch decomposes, heat should also be released.
• All the cracks around the base of the greenhouse (especially in the back corner, which happens to sit over a filled-in groundhog hole) will also be filled by the end of September.

Adding the water barrels.  If there's time
before the temperatures drop too much, we
hope to get some insulation in the walls too.

     If there's time, we might add some insulation before the temperatures drop too much as well, and plywood the inside walls.  All of this will then be coated in a water-seal so when we spray the hose during the warm weather, we don't rot out the greenhouse.  The outside will be coated in water-seal as well, just as soon as the last boards go onto the bottom by our basil plants.

     At a little over 85 square feet, our fingers are crossed that all of this should be enough to keep our plants alive and thriving.  As this is our experimental year with the greenhouse, we have yet to see if our plans will work; however, I hope to keep everyone posted on how this progresses throughout the season, and maybe, just maybe, my dream of harvesting lettuce in January will come true.  

Keeping History "Currant"

     To me, today seems like a perfect autumn day, with the geese honking as they fly overhead, the clippety-clop of hooves on the pavement as horses pull a harvest wagon up the road, and the young cockerels getting their rooster crow on, welcoming the dawn.  The falling leaves and gentle breezes of autumn are so welcoming that the windows are opened wide, and the first of our autumn decor found its way out before Labor Day.  Yet with all this beautiful weather, there also comes the dreaded word... work.

     The garden has been long overdue for some tlc since August crept up on us, and the harvest kept us hopping.  Yesterday evening we ignored much of the weedy patches and harvests, only pulling weeds and picking produce here and there, and instead started our garden winterization as the temperatures began to dip, and my nervousness began to skyrocket.  Although the temperatures may return to summer and the 90s next week, it's always good to get a head start on winterizing as we never seem to finish it before winter!  ("Last year" we actually put the garden to bed at the beginning of this year.)

     Our project last night was planting some of our fall transplants.  No, not the broccoli and cauliflower.  They'll be tucked into the greenhouse a little bit later.  Instead, we transplanted our blueberry bushes, soapwort and currant bushes that were taking up much of the greenhouse.  Of these plants, the ones I am most excited and nervous about are the currant bushes as they are literally living "family" heirlooms that I am now charged with trying to keep living!  Yikes!

     As history-people it's no wonder that we like heirloom plants, but when my mother asked if I wanted the currant bushes, I almost jumped for joy!  The currant bushes had originally come from my great great grandparents' farm.  

     Curtis Custer Carbaugh once lived a few miles outside of Tionesta, Forest County, Pennsylvania in the community of Nebraska.  A blacksmith by trade, Curtis and his wife Eva May Whitman raised their nine children - Grace, Viola, Floyd, Emma, Everett, Orion, Harry, Dorothy, and George - on the farm that was once considered one of the best producing farms in the area.  Although the farm is no longer in our family, it is still a working farm (unlike so many other ancestral farms in my line) and now called Pleasant Valley Farm.  

Curtis Custer Carbaugh and Eva May Whitman, lovingly known as
"Grandma and Grandpa on the farm"

     My mother received the currant bushes this summer from her uncle, whose father was a son of Curtis Custer Carbaugh.  Unfortunately, once she got them home, after somehow managing to cram them into the backseat of the car along with all their camping gear, she realized that she didn't have a suitable place to plant them.  It took me a whole month to then decide where exactly I was going to plant them as well!  Now they are happily in the ground at the edge of our garden.  I certainly hope they make it through the winter, and next year, we may be lucky enough to get a few currants from them.  For now, the winterization of our garden will continue as I nervously nurse our new plants.  

Do you have any "family" heirlooms in your garden? 

Canning Season

An evening's harvest

     Things are a little crazy around here as the summer harvest begins to come in, and the deep freezes and canning shelves overflow. We've just entered Week 3 of canning season, and as I was putting away some of the newly canned goods (Sweet Pickles from Week 1, and Bread & Butter Pickles and Sweet Pickle Relish from Week 2), I realized something... 

     No, it has nothing to do with the amount of cucumbers we're swimming in. Well, actually, I take that back, it just might. It also has to do with all the cabbage, tomatoes and peppers, and all the not-so-blank spaces on our canning shelves as we expand to can even more of our own foods each year. You see, we're not going to have enough room for all of our canned goods this year.

     I was concerned last week about running out of freezer space after having to dedicate another compartment to chicken scraps.  (Two whole compartments of one of our 15 cubic foot deep freezes are now almost full with vegetables/fruits for the chickens this winter, and before it's all said and done, a third compartment might be added as well to make sure we have enough for them.)  

     Now, with the lack of space for canned goods, some serious rearranging is going to need to take place, because figuring out where to store canned goods is not quite as easy as everyone thinks as this is our year's supply worth of food essentially being "purchased" at one time.  (Take a look at "You Plan To Eat All That?" if you don't believe me.)  

     Some days a weekend "shopping trip" to purchase this year's worth of food seems more reasonable.  I often wonder why it should take an entire "season" to can everything you need.  Why can't we just all jam it into a couple of days and be done with it all?  

Canning weekend of 2015

     Spoiler: Don't do this.  Once a year I get this brilliant idea and jam peaches, apples and tomato products into one weekend in August just to get them all over with.  Every year I come up for air exhausted and swear I'll never do it again.  This year, I've bypassed most of that stage and am making plans for a "relaxing" canning weekend containing all these products again from the fiery depths of my kitchen in August...

     This early summer has been the year of pickles for me.  The cucumber plants are (for once) doing what they are supposed to do, even though we have an outbreak of striped cucumber beetles to deal with.

Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage
fermenting to make Sauerkraut

     So far we have a batch of Sweet Pickles done, with another batch fermenting.  There's Sweet Pickle Relish canned (recipe here), and also a batch of the simplest pickle I can find: Bread & Butter Pickles.  To top it all off, Sauerkraut is also fermenting alongside the Sweet Pickles right now, and I'm about to have to thoroughly rearrange the kitchen for canning season soon as from here on out, it is expected that I will be canning (at bare minimum) one recipe each week until October.  That's at least twelve weeks of canning (and a lot more than twelve recipes worth of things that will need canned)!

     I'm not quite sure how many more cucumbers we'll need this year, so our chickens might get lucky and have some extra cucumbers to pick at instead of just cabbage heads, broccoli, cauliflower, beet tops and radishes.  I'm sure they won't mind.

The Plymouth Barred Rock also pecking at some Watermelon rinds.

In Other News

Did you say food?  Our Delawares are the least picky
chickens I have ever seen when it comes to food.  

     To complete the cycle of chaos around here, the Delawares are begging for their own pasture (and three escaped their run in search of grass when I went to change out their water the other day, so we really need to get their pasture done).  Chicken chasing is not all that it is cracked up to be.  

    With temperatures climbing into the 90s for almost a whole week now, they and the Plymouth Barred Rocks have been getting mud puddle filled runs to help keep them cool, and they are loving it!  They have also been keeping us on our toes as we change out their water multiple times throughout the day and keep an eye on whether or not they are getting heat stressed.  In all the twenty-two chickens seem to be doing fairly well considering the temperatures.

Baling Straw on July 4th before the rains came.  The Mr. is
sitting out there in the tractor, waiting to get a wagon.

     The Mr. has been helping out our landlord occasionally with the hay and straw harvests this year, and my cousin who was visiting from North Carolina and I got to watch everyone try to get the straw bales in before the rains came on the Fourth of July.  The rains, which were supposed to only arrive in the evening, came early (around 2 p.m.), and sent everyone, along with their wagons, running for cover.   Fortunately, we live in the country, and the July Fourth weekend also gave us 18 different fireworks displays, which we watched from the sand mound.

We will also be working on replacing the greenhouse roof
before winter as a windstorm late last week ripped it to shreds.

     As we started to harvest our summertime produce, we planted a late season crop of Incredible Sweet Corn, and are now planning for our fall crops in the garden.  Just this past week our seed starter trays were filled with Winter Dream Cauliflower, Sun King Broccoli, Red Acre Cabbage, Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage and Blue Curled Scotch Kale seeds.   The seeds are currently waiting out the weather on the porch, where I can keep them easily watered, and will hopefully be moved to the greenhouse once needed adjustments are made to it.  Soon we'll harvest the rest of the cabbage and begin planting some of our fall season seeds.

Crops Being Harvested

July: Black Raspberries, Blackberries, Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Cucumbers, Herbs (various), Hull Peas, Lettuce, Mint, Mulberries, Peppers, Radishes, Sugar Beets, Tomatoes, Yellow Squash and Zucchini

Upcoming in August: Blackberries, Broccoli, Cabbage, Cucumbers, Herbs (various) Lettuce, Lima Beans, Mint, Oats, Patty Pan Squash, Peppers, Radishes, Sugar Beets, Sweet Corn, Tomatoes, Wineberries, Yellow Squash and Zucchini

Until next time, Happy Harvesting!