Yum! Steak!

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Boy do I wish these were ours!





But they are not. They are the neighbor's cattle who keep breaking through the fence.

Go get 'em!





Yeah. They KNOW they are not where they are supposed to be. The mares say, "Good riddance. Better you than us!"





Doyle Thornless getting ready to bury us in berries again.





Last year we had a lot of trouble with grass being stuck all over the berries every time we picked. It really added a lot of time to harvest and processing. This year we've been practicing mowing and making sure everything gets tossed in the opposite direction. I haven't figured it out on the grape side, but Michael has.





The black rot has got me trembling again. I'm about ready to take them out and replace them with Mars vines. Those are a type of blue seedless that are resistant to black rot. I'm looking into it now.





What ARE these?





And these are either Nanking or Hansen's bush cherries. I'm not sure which, but they are ripe and they are good to eat!





Just haven't decided what to do with them yet.

~Faith

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Black Rot and the Swimming Pool

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After days of fall in mud puddles and traipsing through poison ivy, all of my shoes needed a good run through the washer and dryer.





Funny how kids today have never heard of doing that. I guess when we were kids it was something we always had to do, but these days either kids don't get their shoes that dirty, or they they just toss them out. I'm not sure. But YES! You CAN wash tennis shoes.

You need sustenance for all that relacing though.





Oh, and just because...

This is a great book. Don't let the cartoonish cover throw you. This book is just as good for adults as it is for the younger set.





I am always astonished at the lack of common sense I see in this world, and this book will help you learn to spot it, name it, and answer to it when you are faced with it.

The fig trees were pruned again. We began by cutting out all the bare wood on the first tree.





But we saw that some of that bare wood still had some life in it. It was hard to judge how high up that life went.

So we ended up leaving the rest at shoulder height.





Black rot has indeed made an appearance in our grapes. Michael went out and plucked off all the leaves with spots on them.









I know I should thin the clusters, but it's astonishing just how many there are.





Blackberries just about to bloom.





Maybe these are baby kiwi fruit? I hope so!





Time to take the pool deck apart.









Need to clear the earth away from the posts. None of that was there originally, just a bank. It had all eroded down and piled against the original pool.





Our stash at the back of the place comes in handy. We had torn down a barn a few years ago, and it still yields good stuff.





Part of it up!





Office cleaning awaited us, so we called it quits before we got much further.

A good day's work!

~Faith

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The Promise of Clear Skies...

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...was kept only briefly. We did our usual morning stuff of study and a sugary breakfast, using up some blackberries that were picked a little early..





While I did some clean up, Michael picked as much as he could get to again. A little squash.





Overdue okra. It's OK. We don't want to eat it anyway. And YES! You see grapes! They escaped the evil black rot. I'm not sure which of the 30 varieties these are, but they are french wine grapes. Yummy!





More peppers and cucumbers.





Then, he marked out the melons in our patch... 65 markers, but they only mark groupings, not individual melons. You KNOW what is going to happen, don't you... They will all ripen at the same time.





I put off doing the pickle relish, because it was time to get out and try to catch up on yard work before rain arrived yet again. We have counted 3.5 inches this week.

This is what we needed to tackle first. The tall, seedy grass nearest the herb and flower beds.





We mowed low and raked, then dumped the grass into the sink holes down by the cherry bushes.





Then Michael picked some of the blackberries.





This is looking pretty bad. I could not mow here nor in the vineyard until the berries were all picked and the canes tied up again. This took many hours that we did not expect to spend here.





Meanwhile, the marigolds that I never did transplant into the veggie garden are looking spunky.





And the sunflowers and cosmos look great as well. Too bad I've been too busy to actually go get bouquets.





I think this is poke weed. Natives to this area say you make "poke salad" with it, which is not really a salad at all, but cooked greens. It is also poisonous in a certain form, so I've not pursued this yet. It grows ALL over and gets quite large if you don't pull them up. I mean like small TREE large, and fast!





But moving on to the rest, I had to raise the mower up all the way. We will have to mow again tomorrow, lower, if it doesn't rain again. The mower kept cutting out from all the wet grass.





So here are the blackberries we got today; about 4 gallons.





I used up about 1 gallon making hot blackberry jam with our jalapenos.

Just used a simple sugar recipe. I discovered that the spoon test is to be done with a cool spoon, away from the pot... That would have been nice to know on my first go around.





Kind of a seedy place, here.





I finished the pickle relish and it turned out very well.









And then, while the last of the stew was reheating, I quickly tossed a few peppers into the dehydrator.

Jalapenos and sweet banana.





Habanero and um.... I've forgotten. Not very professional, is it. EDIT - Czech Black.





So we missed our home group tonight, getting caught in the blackberry patch, and I'm ready for bed.

Tomorrow I'd like to catch up before the rain, but I'm not counting on it!

~Faith

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Tomato Cage Details and Stuff.

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( EDIT - Have pics now. Redating this a day later so it's at the top. )

My browser is being a pain, so I'm not able to get photos in right now. I'll have to try again later on.

When we were finishing the cage yesterday I took pictures so anyone who was interested could see how we took on the problem of an out-of-control tomato patch.

Of course, it would have been better to have built this before the tomatoes WERE out of control, but that would mean I was on top of things all the time and, well, that's just not going to happen!

First some drawings I made up that should be helpful.



Sorry, this one arrived sideways and I'm not going to redo it. LOL



The June beetles are OUT!!!!!!!!!!



We took a slight detour to spray for bugs.



Here are the furring strips. A pack of 6 for under 6 dollars.



Drive in T-posts, or something similar, along the perimeter of your tomatoes. Make sure they are only about 6 or 7 feet apart so your boards can reach and overlap.

You can see the posts and the first two courses we put in. You can also see how we threaded the boards THROUGH the branches in some places. Tomatos are so fragile. They ones on the outside can be tied gently back to the strips.



I know for many of you, a lot of these details will be a bit much, but I want those who have never even handled a pair of wire cutters to know what to do as well. Cutting a 4 or 5 foot section of wire off to go do several joints.



Michael, adding another board to the third course. Each one is approximately a foot or so higher.



After affixing the strip to the post, he adds the next strip on to the previous strip.



And tightens it up, then trims the long piece off to take to the next spot and use.



View down one of the T-posts, showing all three courses joined together.



One side is done!



And now both sides are done. It's a bit wavy because we came in after the growth. Next year we are looking forward to putting this in when the plants are first growing. It will be nice and straight then.



From a distance.


Wiring in cross pieces to keep the tomatoes from going sideways. We ran out of furring strips, so we plan on just collecting branches to finish. No sense in spending money we can creatively avoid spending.



Enclosing the ends.... and Michael, wondering what bit him now.



Don't forget to gently and loosely tie up those branches that are sticking outside. We can now walk around the tomatoes and the peppers have some breathing room again. There really was NO room any more and my precious leeks, on the lower side, were trampled. So sad. :(




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Leah came by to help and visit again. We were so busy, I forgot to take pictures except for another sad turn of events. Only sad because of my quirky personality, though. LOL

I knew we were not going to be able to eat the grapes from the vineyard this year, due to the very strong antifungal we are using to try and save the grape vines. But as the vines were surviving, better than they'd ever done before, it was a joy to actually see clusters of grapes developing and prospering. I was even thinking of tasting, just a couple here and there, when they were ripe.

But, alas and alack, when we took a walk down to see what massive changes took place over the weekend - because it is ASTOUNDING how quickly things can change in the garden - we found that the black rot had overcome many of the grape clusters, despite all the spraying.



The leaves still looked very good, so I thought we were going to be fine. But it was in the grapes. I do hope I will not have to rip out nearly 100 vines next year and start over, but the fungus may be even down into the root systems. Only time will tell.

We made an executive decision, to just cut off all the grapes, even thought most of them looked fine. It was about two weeks ago we had that VERY rainy week. Black rot spores have about a 2 week incubation period from the time they spore, to the time the damage shows up.

This was one of two garden bags. Hey, we can pretend we are in France and Italy, stomping grapes!



Back in the house, Leah and I perused over wonderful herb and canning books she'd brought along, speaking in glowing terms of our gardening dreams. Then we got to some serious kitchen work, shredding summer squash for drying, pureeing veggies for rollups, and trying out a pickle recipe.

I'll post more about those later. I've got to get to work!

~Faith

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