Homegrown Goodness

Things are growing like mad for us this year, and what a relief that is! We're running like crazy as always, but that's the way we like it, most of the time.

So, here's what's doing on our three little acres.

The garden is almost entirely planted. Parsnips and eggplant will get transplanted this weekend, and we're aiming to get the corn in, too. Sweet corn, popcorn and dent corn, hopefully. After we get a couple more beds in, we have cabbage, broccoli and brussels sprouts to transplant as well.

As we've mentioned in previous blog posts, we've gone with raised beds to help combat the long cold spring. It's working wonders, and we've blossoms on peppers and tomatoes already, which is much better than last year. Of course, last year was a very cold, soggy one!


Here's our first pepper blossom. This is on one of our Jimmy Nardello pepper plants. Nardello's are a frying pepper and delicious!



This is the first of our okra sprouts. We've actually never tried growing okra before(or eating it, for that matter), but decided to after watching a show on it. We hope to at least pickle these, but we've a few recipes to try to see if we can conquer the infamous okra slime!



We don't have it fenced in yet, but this is the majority of the garden(we've one more bed to go for this year, at least). In the far left bed we have planted some cutting lettuces, spinach, chard, some head lettuces(you can't really see those), and Kentucky Wonder Pole beans. We ended up having to replant the beans, but now all of them are up and doing wonderfully. The first bed in the middle is our tomato bed. We have speckled roman, blue beech, and rutgers tomatoes in there, all three of which are paste tomatoes. Behind that is the root bed. Turnips, beets, and radishes, as well as some snap peas and a new bean for us, a purple pole bean. Those are all doing phenomenally well.
The first bed on the right has our peppers(two different bells and some nardellos), and will also have our eggplants(Diamonds and Rose Biancos) and possibly some edamame. Behind that is another root bed. Already there are celeriac(Root celery) and the rest of it will be planted with parsnips. You can't really see, but along the fence behind all the beds is an asparagus bed.

The strawberry tower is working fantastically. We've berries all over this puppy, some all filled out and working their way from green to white, soon to turn pink then red. We can't wait for those first berries :)



Can you spot the gooseberry in this picture? We transplanted our poor little bush this year, and it's coming on strong now. There are two berries on our little thorny gooseberry - one for me, one for Mike ;)


We have 25 red raspberry plants in this year that are coming on strong, but were we surprised to find some volunteer berry canes popping up around the property! We don't know what they are yet, but we're looking forward to finding out!


We did discover yet another benefit to having more than one bathroom in the house. 26 day old baby chicks arrived Tuesday, and after a long trek via truck, bike and air Mike settled them in the downstairs bathtub! The difference in their temperment is distinct, and they're doing well.



As for the rabbits, we've three litters in the growout cages totaling 22 fryers. I think we'll be butchering the oldest six in a couple of weeks, then the balance a couple of weeks after that. We will be culling a couple of our does when we do the first butcher, however, after hemming and hawing for weeks about it. We just don't need to have five breeding does.



And don't you know we work everyone around here hard? Willow just had to stretch out and take a nap the other day. You know, watching her dad work so hard is just exhausting!