Farmer's Market Challenge

It's time again for the Farmer's Market Challenge hosted by Squirrel Queen at The Road to Here.  The purpose of this challenge is to raise awareness for purchasing locally produced foods. Be it fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meat, or any related items we want to know what's available where you live.

I have too many posts on our garden crops to link here.  Please visit my earlier posts to see all the goodies we grow for ourselves.  This year we didn't sell any vegetables, since we planted a lot more variety of vegetables.  We only planted for ourselves and to give away.

This is the harvest edition.  All our crops have been picked and stored for the winter.   We have enough green beans and corn in the freezer to last until next fall's harvest.  There are also many bags of shredded zucchini in the freezer.  Mr J uses it to make his special bread.  We gave away most of our Tabasco chili peppers.  It was our first year for growing them and sweet potatoes.  Mr J built a rack in the basement to store the potatoes.

 Danger:  Intense Heat!  We don't use a lot of these...

 

 

 Our fruit harvest is small, but tasty.  The trees are still young.

 

Even though the leaves are mostly gone and the garden is tilled under, we still have home grown food.  Our hens are laying between two and three dozen eggs a day!  These we do sell.  We hope to make enough to pay for the feed.  The green eggs are popular with the kids.  They are super yummy!

We are blessed to be able to grow so much of our own food.  We know our hens are not shot up with all kinds of hormones and antibiotics.  We know our vegetables aren't tainted with pesticides.  Our fruit may have spots from bugs, but I know it won't make our grandchildren sick.

Today, farmer's markets are gaining in popularity.  Almost everyone lives close enough to one to enjoy fresh organic fruits and vegetables.  I encourage you to take advantage of these markets.  And don't just buy enough for dinner, but enough to freeze or can.  It's not only a healthier choice... it's a tastier choice!  Fresh without chemicals is always better.

Please visit Squirrel Queen's blog to find other posts on the fall harvest.

A bit of this, a bit of that...

Hmm... Is it bigger than a toaster?

Almost...
These potatoes grew so large they burst open!

OK, this is the last you'll hear about the sweet potatoes... (that is, until my Farmer's Market Challenge post.) I wanted to show you the storage rack Hubby built for them, using wood from skids. You know we love to re-purpose. This room in the basement is behind the stairway. It is dark and cool. We will have to expand the rack next year, as Hubby is already talking about 3 rows instead of 1.

Speaking of re-purposing... notice the Christmas candy bag? Makes a nice way to keep garlic.
Being confined to the AC put me way behind on the stairway garden project. Hubby finally took over for me and stained the new steps the other day. Don't they look great? Since the red crushed brick flows down from above to the stone steps below, the wood color adds to the continuity. (Note the chives I planted next to the wall.)

I wasn't out there to harvest the chives when they were small. Better late than never!

This bad boy is huge!
It reaches all the way across the sink!

They still taste great. I'll be chopping and freezing some for use over the winter. They don't keep their flavor when dried. These are onion chives. I will add garlic chives next spring to the other side of the steps. I'm thinking about putting some in a flower pot to see how they do inside over winter.

My dining room table is really wide.

This shows better how huge this thing is...

Of course, I couldn't resist posting a picture of Sadie.

Here is her happy face...

a short update...

Remember that little rock steps project that Ali and I did? After we laid the rock, we landscaped beside it, underneath the steps to our balcony. One of the plants we put in that bed finally bloomed. My 3rd refurbished camera sucks, (do you hear the dissatisfaction in my voice?) so the color is off. The blooms are a very deep pink. I'm waiting to see if the whole spear ends up turning pink. I don't know if the pink part started out that way. We've had so much rain that I've not spent much time out there, and these little ones surprised me!
I don't remember what these are... I just liked them when I saw them at the nursery. The shot below makes me want to call them starfish flowers...


We've had Sadie for well over a year. I've tried and tried to capture this pose with my camera, but she always wakes and looks straight up at me! I was determined... So last night, while she was making those little 'I'm in such a deep sleep' noises, I grabbed my camera and voila!

She always covers her nose with her paw when she sleeps. Could this be why she makes those noises?

The baby chicks can no longer be called babies. It won't be much longer before we start getting eggs from them. Hubby has a portion of fence between the babies and the older hens' areas that he uses as a gate. Well, last night he not only forgot to shut it, he also forgot to shut the little back door on the big house! When he got up this morning there were dozens of young hens over in the the old hens' grass. They're used to him bringing food and calling them, so he just hollered to them. Sure enough, they came running through the gate back to their own neighborhood... except for one... All of a sudden one of the young hens took to the air, flew over the fence and landed in front of him like, "Here I am." He wants to know why he's got the fence.

320 Pounds of Concrete!

The local weatherman has been having fun with me. I'm starting to get annoyed! He keeps telling me that storms are coming. I've been wanting to get the stones finished and move on to the next step of my project.


Ali and I went to Lowe's today and bought four eighty-pound bags of concrete mix, hoping to be able to use it someday soon. After dinner it still hadn't rained. I got online and checked the forecast... A slight chance for spotty light showers. I'll take the gamble!


Hubby is still on restrictions, but he offered to mix and shovel. Ali helped me get the heavy bags out of my car and into the wheel barrow. (Did I mention the project area is at the opposite end of the house as the driveway? And since it's rained a lot we can't drive around to it!)


We each had our job. Papaw shoveled the concrete a little at a time. I was on my knees with a small garden shovel, filling in the gaps, cracks, holes, etc. Ali used a bucket to carry the crushed brick down and smashed a layer of it into the wet concrete. It took all four bags to finish this part of the job. I still have some stones edging the other side of the patio that need mortared, but it will have to wait.


We've made it this far! Yea! Next comes the plants for the other side and staining the rest of the wood... But that will be a few days. I've promised Ali that, come hell or high water, the cover comes off the pool tomorrow! How does it look so far? The big dark spot is just some very wet mulch that was left in the other wheel barrow.

And remember the new wood steps? Makes a great spot to sit and sample the chives...

Step 1 completed!

Girl power! Never underestimate it. Papaw has been 'out of commission' for a while, so Ali and I have had to do the hard labor by ourselves. The heat has slowed us down a little, but today we finished placing the stones for the steps from the lower patio up to the landing. They are all leveled, interlocked, and packed in with clay.

How do they look?

The next step is concrete. We'll pack the edges and gaps and smash the crushed brick into the top of it to match the way we did the slabs. Then we'll smooth out the slope, and put in some plants and mulch.

There's still lots to do at the top of the steps. We've got to level and secure the deck that is presently just laid on the ground, add a couple of steps from the top slab to the pool deck, rebuild the wood walkway on the other side of the deck (spaces are too big between boards - it's a scavenged piece), and finally, redo the landscape and stepping stones where they dug through to install the pipes for our outdoor boiler last fall. Wow, that sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

Anyway, the pool cover is coming off tonight or tomorrow! A dip after our work today sure would have been nice!

Baby steps...

We got over two inches of rain yesterday, so the ground is still far too muddy to be working on the steps; but I had to make a little progress. Ali and I spent about two hours trying to edge the patio while walking around with ten pounds of mud stuck to our shoes! A lot of mud washed down onto the patio and had to be shoveled off. I should have taken a 'before' shot the way it looked when we started today.


The first shot below is from last week, and shows how the ground is up to (actually a little above) the patio level. Ali dug a trench on the right side to hold landscaping timbers as a border to the new shade garden we put in last week. To the left side, the mud had washed down about three inches deep next to the post. That's the area we concentrated our effort on today.

Ali shoveled the mud off the patio (again), while I dug out along the edge with a hoe. We filled the wheel barrow to the brim with mud! Yuck! It probably took three times longer than it would have if it was dry. The gooey stuff kept sticking to the tools. And us!

I found some pretty fossil rocks to place along the edge. Then Ali helped me pick out the perfect stepping stones to lead off the patio toward our fire pit. I think the rocks will stop any future mud slides from reaching the patio. I'll add a couple more later to cut through the garden that will trail down and across to the front garden. I haven't decided what color to stain the concrete. I'm thinking of doing something different. Our front porch is mustard yellow and the sidewalk and steps are kind of reddish brick colored. Of course, this probably won't be until the leaves are changing! I figure it will take me all summer to finish my plan. I don't work very fast in July or August. But anyway, this is how it looks now...Since it's on the west end of the house and is covered by the upstairs balcony, it stays shady until very late in the afternoon. This will be a perfect spot for Ali to sit and read. She'll have company too, because Sadie loves lying on the cool concrete. It's going to be such a pretty little sitting area. And if I lean over the balcony railing far enough, this is what it looks like from above...
It was a good day, topped off with a trip to Wilmington's Banana Split Festival! Ali is going home tomorrow to spend the night. She'll probably be blogging about the festival when she gets back Sunday. We had a great time!

progress report

Even with shade and a breeze, the humidity was unbearable this morning. A storm was rolling in and I wanted to get the new dirt covered before it was washed away. Ali and I put down landscaping fabric to help with weeds, and then mulched the slope under the steps. Ali also used the hoe to make a little trench to anchor some landscaping timber pieces as edging. Papaw overworked on the stones so we gave him the day off. Maybe tomorrow we can get some more into place before the heat returns.

Ohio Gardening Kit

A few weeks ago, Hubby picked up this gardening kit for me at the nearby Tractor Supply Co. I already have all the hand tools I need for the job, but he was thinking of me... sweet.

My old recycled steak knife was my most often used tool until the last couple of weeks...

This time of year in south-western Ohio requires some special items that you won't find in your run-of-the-mill garden shop. One would have to spend hours driving around town to locate all the needed supplies. We're all trying to save time and gasoline, right? So, I have decided to market a gardening kit made specifically for the Ohio Valley area. It contains all the essentials needed for the hobby gardener in this area... All shipped directly to your doorstep, so you don't need to be out in the flying cotton balls any longer than necessary. Please indicate your choice of Wild Cherry or Honey Lemon.

WARNING: Please check with your Respiratory Therapist before beginning any gardening activity. Some users may require a higher dosage of medication than contained in this kit.