Fall Work

Last weekend, we cleared all of the garden except for the sweet potatoes.  James did some welding, which is pretty impressive, so he could mow, mow again, and till.  The wind picked up in the afternoon, so despite my original plan to plan a cover crop immediately, I had to wait a few days.

Our hope is to help eliminate some of the weed growth we have in the fall and spring, as well as to enrich our soil with nitrogen fixing legumes.

 I planted a fall manure mix that included hair vetch, winter rye, ryegrass, peas, and clover, and then overplanted with mustard.  I read (which means I have a good chance of being wrong) that mustard roots grow deep, even in clay, so they may help break up our hard soil.  The recommended tool was a seed drill, but I had to stick to the seed spreader, which is what I have.  I can live with uneven seed distribution.

In the end, the challenge was keeping the pesky guineas out of the seed.  I finally set up a hose to spray/mist all over the area, and that worked.  Now we've had a few days of rain, and I can already see sprouting!

In the coming week, I'll try to lay out the drip hose again in an unplanted area for the garlic crop!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Spring

We are ever threatened with tornadoes and high winds, but this has been a spring mainly devoid of such excitement.  Despite 2"+ of rain, the ground is still thirsty.

The parade of the chicken tractors has begun, with the layers being moved once a day.  They are so thrilled to see new grass that they will avoid their feed until the grass is cropped.  This is, of course, what we want, and we look forward to the deep gold/orange yolks of our well-pastured eggs.

Meat chicks (114) arrived Monday and are safely installed in their tractor.  Once the weather warms up and the chicks get bigger, we'll divide them into two coops.  For now, they are easier to warm in one coop.  We've lost several to "pre-existing" conditions, but if last year was a good teacher, we should be done with those losses soon.  With our order arrived one exotic breed chick, almost certainly a male.  I think he was a crevecoeur, a created breed.  The deck was stacked against his survival, being half the size of meat chicks and with curled toes that made his balance terrible.  We tried to create a boot for his toes and sequestered him inside, but he wouldn't eat and I think he was too frightened too survive.  That, my friends, is the difficult part of raising animals.

Our asparagus is fat and delicious.  We've been enjoying an okay harvest, eating it every few days, and clearly need to fertilize and stay on top of the weeds better this year.  Roasted with salt is the way to go!

Our new business cards arrived, and I'm excited to quit saying, "We haven't ordered any yet!"

Planting and weeding are, for once, not tasks sorely neglected.  Having the watering system in place has greatly facilitiated by planting in a timely manner.  I'm also trying to plant some of the many flower seed packets we've accumulated but never used!

Enough for tonight, as we are anticipating bad weather and I should sleep while I can!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Time moves so fast when it is full!  Planting, children, school, the house, life...

James had a team of volunteers over to catch up on our perennial weeding.  In exchanged for their labor, we'll be donating $5 to the Lord's Diner for every man hour they contributed.  They tackled our garlic, strawberries, and asparagus beds before breaking for a home cooked meal (including asparagus, chicken, and goat raised by us).  They also laid out our entire watering system for the main garden and moved some serious mulch.

Rain and lightning called a definitive end to the evening, but not before food, fun, fellowship, and prayer filled us all.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Life in Pictures

Blueberries for pots

Ripe blueberries

Zucchini

First zucchini

Okra (and weeds)

YJ Acres Updates

Fowl pox is clearing up nicely.  There have been no deaths.  Some chickens have thus far been unaffected, so I understand we have a reoccurrence/continuance of the unpleasantness.  Appetites seem good, as does general health.

This poor hen has had two neck injuries from fights.  They heal up, but it does leave her with a strange neck.

 Andromeda and the chickens aren't sure what to do with one another.

The guinea flock has remained stable since the fox attacks.  The babies have grown so much that, at first glance, they are indistinguishable from the adults.  Their faces don't yet have the "painted" look, but I can see it developing.

Behind them, the orchard is doing well.

 I am slowly redeeming the strawberry patch.  There is a distinct emphasis on the word "slowly."

 We're having the obligatory fall "odd" weather.  The wind, clouds, and animals all indicate that mischief may be afoot!

I'll leave you with our happy Hope!  She loves to bark at school buses, coyotes, foxes, and neighborhood dogs.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Harvest!

 After the depressing, stomach-churning news of last night (a story for another time regarding a farmer's herbicide), I needed a good morning's work at Purgatory Ranch.

Myle, James and I tackled the most neglected potatoes and realized the grasshoppers had decimated the foliage of these plants.  If we weeded and waited to harvest, the plants would disappear by the next week, and we wouldn't know where to dig.

Unexpected harvest time?  Game on!

The Red Norlands produced fabulously, yielding 97 pounds of gloriously red-skinned potatoes.  We observed the differences in harvest from years past: the ground was not bone dry, making the digging more complicated (we'll take the problems if the rain comes!), potatoes had spread more, so the field is pockmarked with our large holes.  Technically, the yields are lower than last year's, but given the blatant neglect they received this year (one woman, mostly alone since everyone else was frantically busy elsewhere, can only do so much!), these are more than satisfactory results.  I think Red Norland will return to the planting schedule next year!

We also discovered our Red Candy onions had not fared well against the onslaught of weeds.  Most tops were missing, and in pulling weeds, we began to pull onions.  With a shrug of shoulders, we harvested instead of weeding.  12 pound of onions for one row is not bad!  We also harvest some sweet yellow onions (marketed as transplants as Vidalia, but who knew it's not legal to sell "Vidalia" onions grown outside a specific region of Georgia!?).

If you're in the area, we're selling produce this year.  Email me for info!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

a Gasp for Breath in the Rush of Summer

I have used my vacuum sealer to put up to pints of dried fruit.  While I would love to put up more, the mulberries have not been so popular, and I haven't enough strawberries.  Next year, I will start drying strawberries sooner!

The {almost} daily compost bucket. We have just enough spoiled food (and eggshells) that I don't want to give to the chickens, so into the bin they go!

Onions are bulbing out fabulously.  This year, I'm striving to use onions as soon as I pull them, including chopping extra for the freezer.  Last year, too many onions spoiled through my failure to chop and use.  I know few things that smell quite as horrendous as a mouldering onion.

We are slowly... slowly... slowly beating down the weeds.  While they are still ahead, I think we are making great strides.  I'm not sure the same can be said in the battle against the whiteflies, although a judicious application of neem may help me.

The first garlic has been harvested.  The bulbs are disappointingly small overall, but they were planted too closely, in haste, by a nauseous pregnant woman.  I blame it mostly on me.  I'll save the biggest for this fall's planting (by Columbus Day).

Fava beans, why do you hate me?  Like in a past attempt, many are beginning to shrivel and burn up.  Is it the unexpected heat?

Tomatoes!  I am anticipating the first ripe ones with great delight!

A gift... an unexpected mulberry tree.  It is a weeping mulberry and quite attractive.

We also have apple trees suffering from cedar rust and peaches from oriental fruit moths.  I think our neighbor has not cared for his trees in the past, so we have work to do next spring to handle these issues!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

War on Weeds

Oh, that I could find more early morning hours, after dawn but before the heat causes me to wilt, as I have so much weeding to do!  I spend one day at Secondhand Ranch and on at Purgatory, but I can't spare more from YJ Acres.  I'm perpetually behind, and the heat is making me more behind.

We've begun a slow thinning-harvest of the onions.  I have some that are already baseball sized or larger.  The onions look beautiful and make the car smell fantastic (maybe not after an hour or two in the heat.  Then the smell becomes a bit of an overpowering stench).

In more peculiar news, many of the potatoes in the north bed have set fruit.  Why this year did so many set fruit?  Past years, I've had a plant or two, but I'd feel it safe to claim at least 50 plants have set fruit!  I may save the fruits for the seed and trial-plant a few next year.  It may be foolish and a waste of precious time, but I'm intrigued by the possibilities.  Yes, I may be obsessed.

To add the the peculiarity of my recent trip to Purgatory Ranch, chew on this bit of fat: where plants never grew from my seed potatoes, I have begun to uncover small potatoes growing directly on the seed potato!  There are no discernible roots, although I could have missed them, but I have found handfuls of small potatoes.  I'd love to know how a potato can reproduce without an above-ground foliage.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Purgatory Ranch, End of May

Tree onions are setting bulblets in a wild frenzy of growth.

I haven't hacked out too many onions in my weeding, and neither downpour nor animals have consumed entire rows.

The north bed looks to be a 60% loss.  What there is, is so choked by weeds that I am freeing row by row.  It will take time.

 The south bed is looking wonderful.  After this picture, I managed to hill up and weed four rows of potatoes.  Growth is amazing!

Much to my surprise (not, I think, to James), our pond holds water for the first time in almost three years.  Clearing out the cedars and junk helped!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Purgatory Ranch Clean-Up

Despite my disappointment in the fertility of my potato bits, the time has come to weed.  I've been waiting for the ground to dry out or more potatoes to sprout, but with rain forecasted the rest of the week and weeds growing apace, it was now or never.

After all, if I'm going to plant, it's my job to weed too.

Please excuse the sideways pictures.  I'm snagging non-fussy-baby time, and it is precious and limited!  I forgot to rotate before uploading.

 The tree onions are amazing!

I discovered a bunch of onions thrown on the ground.  Did we drop them in our planting frenzy?  Did the kids take them, get bored, and abandon them?  Either way, I planted them today to see if the last remaining stems of green mean life remains.

 The entire stretch of onions, running west in this picture, are now nicely weeded.  Perfect?  No, but I'd say at least 80-90%.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Nap Time's Labors

Today, our mail lady dropped a "Johnny's" box on my door step.  "What was inside?  Surely not the sweet potatoes," I argued with myself.  "It's too early!"

Nope.  No sweet potatoes.  Purple asparagus.

Myself, I'm just okay about asparagus.  However, I love eating from the garden, and I have a mom who will eat all the asparagus I can grow, so I ordered asparagus crowns.  And here they were, in all their sandy, damp glory, just waiting to be planted.

Ah, tis the rub.

I am notorious for not planting starts, crowns, etc., in a timely fashion.  Once, an entire box of strawberry plants went MOLDY because I didn't plant them.

But not today.

Today, the baby was sleeping by himself in the swing.  (This kid puts himself to sleep while laying down, which no other of my children have ever done.  Who knew how un-needed it would make me feel?  But anyway, back to business!)

Planting.  Here.  Now.  In the sun and the breeze.  The day the box arrived.

So I found my rain boots (remember yesterday?), gloves, a shovel, and the box.  Soon I added a rake, bucket, and wheelbarrow to my tool pile.  There is an existing asparagus patch (*the upper left of the photo), but the rest of the "patch" was full of lilies or irises.  I love a good iris, but there were more than enough that I could sacrifice a few for the sake of edibles.  Besides, my mom was willing to take the bulbs.  Hence, the bucket.

There was plenty of dead grass to rake aside, so the wheelbarrow was duly loaded.  I'm not particularly adept at the shovel (I'll blame it on having a baby less than three months ago), so it was slow going.  I think I reached the appropriate depth, and I'm that much farther along in cleaning out this bed.  I have a 4-gal. bucket of irises for my mom.

The garlic was unburied in my raking enthusiasm, so here it is.

And, as a crowning glory for my efforts, I discovered these beautiful blooms on the peach tree.  Now for a few glasses of water and a hungry baby.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise. It's Purgatory Ranch.

End of the Potato Harvest and Weedmageddon

First, Weedmageddon...

I should have taken a before picture, but it was a race against time to dig the potatoes before the heat caught us. We started at seven a.m., and I pulled the last taters around nine.  Whew!

Weeds were chest high and more.  James and the weed whacker went to work!

We have some interesting volunteers growing in our mulch pile.  They look like unripe cherry tomatoes, but the leaves are something else.  There are also a few plants that look like tomatillos or... something.  Any guesses or suggestions?  (No, we didn't taste any.)

Onions in the basket on the right, garlic, remaining all blue potatoes, and tree onions in the basket on the right.  Three overflowing boxes of potatoes that will be weighed later today.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.