Cherries!

.

This is what a young man looks like when he catches a nap while taking a short schoolwork break.





Our cherry bushes are really doing well this year.





Once indoor stuff was done, we headed out for cherry picking last week.





We always look forward to this time of year. We have the most wonderful times, sitting under the cherry bushes in the shade, eating, talking, spitting.. all the great stuff. The weather always seems to be so nice.

Here are the bases. We have three of these kind.





Michael decided to use a ladder to nestle up higher in the foliage.













Hey! I'm unarmed!









Get busy!





Here's my share of a couple of gallons of cherries for the day.





These are perfect for fresh eating, making wines, and making jams and jellies. They are smaller than regular cherries, much softer flesh, so pitting them is a challenge, and somewhere between a sweet and sour cherry in tartness.

We are eating plenty of fresh cherries, I don't drink wine, and we don't eat much jam or jelly so, when friends came over the next day to pick, we gave the whole lot to them.

And we got this beautiful and VERY delicious jar of cherry jelly!





It was SO good, as a matter of fact, that I may make some anyhow. We'll have to learn to eat more of it.

~Faith

.

Yum! Steak!

.

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

.

Pool Is Nearly Ready!

.

Do you think we were ready for a new liner?





Our work on the pool lasted until about 12:30 yesterday. Some dear friends of ours came over to help. I miss having a big work crew. All the extra boys cut the work down to about 2 hours.

I have two regrets about yesterday.

We were so busy that I did not document how to do this project. That was one thing I wanted to do with this blog; make sure that each thing we did I photographed and shared so that others could learn from us. Whether it was what worked or what didn't work.

So I not only did not photograph it all, but I also am getting tired of how I take pictures of people.

It is my nature to not be demanding of people's attention. So I love to take pictures of people, but rarely do I call them to look up. I most often just take shots of what they are doing. But I miss seeing their smiles and their eyes, as well as showing the joyful sides after the events, of everyone taking a moment to stop and smile for one another at the camera.

I want to improve this in my photos.

Anyhow, we had started siphoning the pool Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning it was mostly empty. Michael was still working on that while I began taking the pool filter apart to change out the sand. It was then that our friends came by to help.

My dear friend brought her younger three boys over and they quickly began bailing out what was left.





Slicing the old liner up and tossing it out, the new liner was put in. The idea is to drape the liner, dangling above the ground along the top of the pool, holding the vinyl with clamps. You add a little water and the vinyl stretches down, wrinkle-free, and settles into the pool wall.

However, and I wish I had a picture of this, the pool wall is nearly completely rusted through. I can't afford to replace it, so we are just keeping our fingers crossed we can get a couple more years out of it. It actually has duct-taped holes.

So the pool wall was not going to be able to support any weight. The goal then was very simple. Get the liner in A) with as few wrinkles as possible B) without putting holes into it and C) without the wall collapsing.

Piece of cake!





I felt confident the boys could handle this and I worked on the filter the whole time, but for a short break to share my garden happenings with my friend. The filter was kind of a pain, as I was figuring it out as I went along. There are no instructions on how to change the sand. After a couple of phone calls which took about 1/2 and hour total, I found that you need to have water in the sand ---- water I'd taken out in January ---- so that you can move the innards around and dig the sand out with a little scoop. I used my one cup measure from the kitchen.

So, once that was done I began scooping. Jeremy, asked if we had a wet/dry vac, and since that was one of the recommended ways to remove the sand, he went and got the one we had attached to the studio as a filtration system for the eggshell carving I used to do. It was rather small, so it took a while. But the job was done!

Smoothing out wrinkles...





And while the pool was filling later, Michael went for a "swim".





The rest of the day we picked peas, cherries, and strawberries. A little fertilizing. Did a lot of watering, as it was getting a bit dry, and also in preparation of the weeding we are going to do today.

We left to go to our home group last night, and realized while we were in town that we'd left the water on to the pool and to the garden. So we had to come all the way back home and miss our friends.

I really thrashed my knee yesterday, hauling 5 gallon buckets of sand. I could hardly walk last night. I'm a little better this morning, but still limping a lot. I need to stay off it, but there is too much to be done.

DONE - Cut vinyl and install the filtering attachments back in
- Finish filling pool
- Replace deck board
- Weed and mulch garden beds
- Cut out fireblight I spotted on the gooseberries, cranberries, and cherries
- Bag up the vinyl liner for the landfill
- Spray back pasture fence line and garden fence line
- Move rain gauge to new location

Glad for a slight drop in temperatures today!

Faith

.

The Birds and the Bees

.

We got most everything done on our list last week, but for spraying, again. That will be this morning. Coming back up from picking cherries I chanced upon a VERY busy bumblebee and spent several minutes trying desperately to get him in focus before he zipped off. However, he barely stayed in one spot longer than 2 or 3 seconds, so I was sorely disappointed.





And we found a nest in the kiwi arbor of robins' eggs. I looked at a chart one time of how long it takes bird eggs to hatch and leave the nest. I was amazed. Some are out of the nest in only 3 days! I just tried to find the link but was unable to.





Cherry picking was fun. These are only bush cherries. They are like a mild sour cherry. They did not ripen all at once, so we are going to go pick more today. We also got rained out and had to hide under the bushes for a while, picking the inside.





















Here is the fungus that gets the cherries; Brown Rot. I had to rip out all the sand cherries I had put in years ago. They were so susceptible to brown rot that the entire bushes were a pile of mold. These are not so bad. We just lose a small percentage.





The grapes we will not be able to eat this year, due to spraying. But they sure LOOK great! LOL





The van before:





And getting clean. The car was almost unrecognizable afterwards. LOL





And the exterior windows sure look a lot better! They were pretty gross.





The potatoes are out of control! I've not been getting boards up, and the straw is barely hanging on. One of them has started to flower. I think the rest of the potatoes will go in the ground. I just need a bigger garden plot.





I like to keep my salad fixings all made up. We came up and put together salads worthy of the finest restaurants!









The asparagus forest. You can't see the forest for the spears?









If you've never smelled fig leaves, they are so uniquely scented. I visited my folks and their fig tree yesterday. It too had not fared well this winter. Just one of those years...





Laying out the string to mark where the new locations for the posts on the greenhouse will be.





I am really not looking forward to digging those out and moving them. One of those chores that I'll have to force myself to do.

Oh, yes. Our list for today:

DONE - Finish mowing goat pen
DONE - Mow around compost bins
DONE - One hour work on rocks
DONE - Pick more cherries
DONE - Pick more peas
DONE - Pick more strawberries
DONE - Pinch runners
DONE - Clean off patio
DONE - Put away sprouting stuff
DONE - Water lettuce
DONE - Plant more lettuce
DONE - Cover lettuce box with wire
- Re-pot houseplants
DONE - Prune/Tie grapes
DONE - Spray grapes
DONE - Tie up blackberries
DONE - Spray fence lines


~Faith

.

A Day in the Spring-Rush Life

.

Every spring is a bit of a rush, everything begins happening at once. This spring has been especially busy. In addition to starting the garden, we've had so many things in need of repair due to years of neglect, we also do not know what the future is going to bring for us, so we are trying to get some bigger projects done, such as building a greenhouse, to help us with our food production.

You might think this is normal for us, but we usually have more time. The key to not slaving your life away on a farm is to plan well, and do your projects in such a way as to eliminate maintenance as much as possible. I happened to marry someone who believed in just getting a job done as quickly as you can, and hang what happens later. So a lot of careful planning went kaput!

So we are scrambling trying to get things done. But as soon as the garden is completely in, the work will slow to a manageable level and we can relax a bit more, have quiet evenings and grill our dinner as we watch the sunset, and relax a lot more, especially in the heat of the day.

Until that time, we are grateful for the cooler weather we've been having. Very mild. Yesterday was mostly cloudy and in the 70's. Perfect for outdoor work. Here are some scenes...

How old is this stuff anyway? I'm trying to frugally use what we have from years ago when I was really working the land here.






Here are the T-posts we finally had time to remove for re-use in the garden. The horses are now officially OUT of the crop area. Since I was not allowed to spend money on the crops, I had moved the fence up there so at least the grass could be eaten. The place was essentially one big horse pasture. LOL






This is the one garden box we put in last year. It was intended to be short term, so we just bought some very inexpensive wood and filled it with half sawdust and half cow manure from the neighbor's barn and sawmill. It was too rich for planting last year, but has broken down nicely. We still need to plant lettuce there.






We used some leftover mix from the pile near that box, added some red clay from right next to the house. (It will not grow anything, but I figure must have GREAT mineral content.)...





I dug up a few shovels full of forest topsoil, while Michael gathered a few forks of grass cuttings and we mixed this unique concoction up for our potato boxes.









We are way behind on this project. The plants are growing very quickly and we still need to gather more wood for the sides. Finding soil is a challenge to me. It needs good soil, but good topsoil is hard to come by on this property and if I take it from somewhere, I am just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Before:




And After. With the mix being nice and light, we were able to just sprinkle shovels full over the tops, working it around the stems with our fingers. I forgot, I need to water them. They need to be good and wet.





My goal has always been to grow organically. But it can take a lot of work. Once a pest finds you, you have to use all your wiles and all kinds of tricks to combat them. Starting from scratch in this spot, having it be such a large garden and being unprepared for them as I would have liked, I may use sprays if I can't keep them from devouring my produce. I was, at one time, going to go for organic certification of my land. But now, it's all about feeding us, not knowing what could happen.

So, I am still trying to foil the flea beetles. They have found and are beginning to eat the large eggplant after eating all 10 of my seedlings. The jar kept most of them off, one or two had gotten in there from the soil, but you can't keep your plants under glass, it was mostly just a learning experience for me on how the beetles find your plants. They are supposed to be attracted to white. These are cut up milk cartons smeared with petroleum jelly.





And the only ones you see on here are the ones I purposefully flicked there when finding the plant covered with them.





The vanishing brussel sprouts. A vole, I think. It's gotten quite a few of my plants. I was hoping the fishy smell from my fertilizer might make it go away. This is the kind of stuff that keeps you busy when you think you are going to be doing something else...





On the right, the carefully planted row of carrot seeds Michael worked on. See them? Yeah, there's a couple. LOL On the left, the packet that got knocked over.





Radish babies!





Getting shoes on for more work. We are doing a block schedule of horticulture for this semester. And math. LOL You can never stop doing math.





Michael, collecting rocks we've picked out of the garden soil to go line the chicken yard fence.





We also spent most of the morning mowing. All the area around the house, the crops, and then any areas those horses don't eat down. If we don't, the scrub trees come up and later we have to go down and chop them. It's just easier to mow everything down when it's small.

We went to plant more of our herb seedlings, but the ground was getting too hard again, so we watered and are going to plant in the morning.





We did a lot of weeding as we mowed. The blackberry row is looking OK. It still needs more manure. They are really heavy feeders. These blackberries were expensive and have not had much care over the last 5 years. One of these, properly cared for can give you 20 gallons of the biggest, sweetest blackberries you ever ate. I'm going to beat those Japanese beetles this year if it kills me.





Here are some coming up in the row. I should probably take them out.





And this one is a little spindly because it's also sharing with another heavy feeder, an asparagus plant. The birds love the bright red asparagus seeds from our bed and we find new plants at many fence posts and tree branches.





We planted over 100 grape vines, about 35 different varieties. The whole thing is a long story that I won't drag out. But they were going to be intensively pruned as I'd read about in one type of grape culturing book. So they are planted quite closely. Because of neglect, quite a few have died. That's OK because at this point I don't have the luxury of spending all that time intensively pruning. Here is one end of the vineyard...





And the other end...





Looking uphill, the vineyard sits low. We did a lot of weeding, mowing and tying up here as well. Much left to do.





Our hardy kiwi arbor. The fruits are remarkable. I hope to get some one day. LOL





It's looking a bit saggy though. I built it out of red cedar trunks harvested from this land, and purchased vinyl lath with a 2x4 top.





Blooms! But is it male or female? Only one produces fruit and needs another. I suspect another fruitless year. I need to replace the ones that died on the other side of the arbor before I get fruit, I'm guessing.





Uh-oh. Need to root out some poison ivy that has found a spot under the arbor.





Our bush cherries are filled out.





Evidence! We will get some cherries this year! As the bushes were planted in a frost pocket, we don't often get them.





Now we are just enjoying the perfect evening. It feels so great to have accomplished things that needed doing, and then enjoy the beauty we live in.

Hunting rabbits at the sinkholes...





Playing in the water...









Some of the gooseberries. Will be time to make gooseberry pie soon.





These strawberry plants only went in a couple of months ago, so they are a little small, but they are still trying to contribute to the season. Mostly everbearers, and a few June bearers.





OK - this one is going to kill itself trying!





This will be the first strawberry to eat. :)





Time for well-deserved play. It was deliciously windy all day and, as everyone knows, jumping is way more fun in the wind.





Fat and sleek horses.





I missed the gorgeous light this morning on those wildflowers. Drat!





Why is it that the volunteers spring up quickly, deep green, healthy and strong...





And the squash I labored intensely over for two months and spent money on seeds and pots for, look like they have malaria?





But don't the sugar snap peas looks amazing? They are covered with blooms. Can't wait to stand in the field and eat my veggies.





I'm going in. It's almost chore time.





Our list is getting shorter. At least until we add to it. ;) Michael came up with some ideas yesterday he wants to do as well.

Faith

.