Canning the Harvest and Enjoying the Evenings

We are in the middle of the summer harvest and its been hot but some unexpected rain has allowed us to enjoy the outdoors a bit more. We grow most of our own food so this is an important part ofthe year and here is what we have been up to so far:

We harvest this many banana peppers every day and eat them with almost every meal...and we will freeze a few but they taste best to me fresh, cold, and with a little salt.

The first batch of pickled beets...a personal favorite.

Chis, who is staying on the farm with us after being layed off, and I shucking peas. We blanched them and froze them and we have many more peas yet to harvest.

Boiled tomatoes cooling awaiting peeling and canning, We are canning halved tomatoes, tomato sauce, ketchup......I love the taste of fresh tomatos. We have them with almost every meal and if you havent had a tomato and candy onion sandwhich your really missing out.

My partner Holly canning stewed tomatoes.

They are accidic enough to use a water bath canner...and the whole house smells like fresh tomatoes

We have so many tomatoes each day its hard to keep up.

But we have also found time to enjoy the evenings

Yard darts...

Feeding Maybelle...

Playing with Rose the farm dog...

Maybelle is growing and almost weaned...and she likes her chin scratched...and we could never send her to slaughter...

And of course, we have many projects awaiting their turn for our attention....

Busy Time of the Year

The gardens are now being harvested, we have been blessed with a few rain showers lately, we are canning, drying and freezing the harvest, and we are enjoying the fruits of our labor so to speak....

We have 7 different varieties of tomatoes in the garden and they are now starting to ripen...so we are busy. And if you havent had a fresh tomato from your garden you are missing out.

Our first harvest of onions was very successful. We are now curing them for long term storage in the root cellar.

Part of the beet harvest, we have canned pickled beets (which we all love) and we have had BBQ beets on the grill. The beet juice we add to our pickled eggs (eggs we get from our neighbors chickens) and man are they good.

And this is farmer Holly in her reading glasses, my best friend and truly the most loving person I have ever met. I am a lucky man and I am smart enough to know it. 

I was chastized about the previous post about our flowers for failing to include the Gladiolas so here are some of them.

We have this herb garden and use these herbs daily in our cooking. The one herb leaning over towards the back left is cilantro that we let go to seed so we can collect and preserve the seed, also known as corriander.

Castor beans and peppers

One of our tomato and tomatillo patches

The bush beans are producing a ton of beans

And we are getting some big cabbage heads...I'm thinking cole slaw by the pound here!

Cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, collard greens....we wont starve.

Just one of our corn patches...we are already way more than knee high by the 4th of July.

Our banana trees have come back strong and are really getting tall.

Unfortunately, some birds built a nest in one of our grape arbors...

And they are slowly eating these grapes but we have enough for all and we just cant bring ourselves to oust the nest.

So far we are harvesting onions, potatoes, tomatoes, bush beans, banana peppers, 6 varieties of sweet peppers, sweet peas, snow peas, beets, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, squash, collard greens, raddishes and tomatillos. Soon to come will be black berries, swiss chard, cabbage, black eyed peas, corn, bell peppers, carrots, mellons, ...and probably a bunch of stuff I am forgetting.

Old Fashioned 4th

Well, I drew Fire Department standby duty over much of the weekend and since I got the priviledge (and it really is a priviledge) of lighting the fire works for the celebration in our small community as a member of the Lions Club last weekend I didnt mind. My Fire Department brothers and sisters took the duties of lighting the fire works in a nearby community while a couple of us stood by here and we all had a good time. But Holly, Judy, Chris and I went to a small community about 24 miles from here where they were having the 134th annual 4th of July parade and it was so what I think the 4th should be. It celebrated our troops, the great country we live in, and our history. Its hard to describe how friendly everyone is here and this parade was the same way. It was well attended and circled a traditional town square lucked right out of the 1940s and we had floats, horses, fire trucks (yea!), antique cars and tactors, clowns (boo) and patriotism was the theme of the day. I dont think New York's parade had anything on ours.

They had lots and lots of really old Model Ts and Model As in the parade...and you could tell the owners were having a blast.

And what parade would be complete without the Shriners...they do so much for the treatment of kids and its just a bunch of old guys having fun and doing great things for their communities...kind of hard to find fault with that.

We have all seen these guys in just about every parade in the country....they were great.

I am not much of a clown fan thanks to Stephen King but this guy was a hoot..

I dont know who these guys were but they had a lot of fun and used soaker water guns to spray everyone

No matter what your political leanings are, it was nice to see young people get engaged, and it was pretty low key as far as politics go.

This car caught my eye

But therfe were probably 30 antique cars in the parade

Sons of the Confederate Veterans....we are in Missouri but south of the Missouri river they sided with the Confederacy. I know nothing of this group but there was kind of an uncomfortable silence when they passed and it seemed out of place in a parade that celebrated this great country. But you know it is part of our history and we shouldnt forget this important part of our history.

There were a lot of FarmAlls but this FarmAll Cub is on my wish list for Christmas

And Minneapolis Moline tractors were well represented, cant you just see this tractor doing its thing 50 or 60 years ago?

This is john Deere country and though they arent my favorite, if you have ever heard a John Deere B with the distinctive sound you know how heaven must sound.

We have two small NASCAR dirt tracks close-by and just about every Friday night we have tucks going by with a beat up race car on the back of a trailer whizzing by our farm. We all admit it...we love the races and they were well represented in the parade. Redneck? Yup...and proud of it.

I dont really know what these guys were doing but they were having a blast...look at their faces.

W had lots of animals in the parade as it should be. Around here, little girls have horses, kids participate in 4H and FFA is just as prestigious as HS sports except Football...cuz nothing is greater than football..seriously.

If you dont think that kid is cute your either already dead or you are a psychopathic killer

Everyone had a good time, everyone was friendly, and this may be fly over country according to the dimwits in Wash DC but this is the real America and we like it just fine.

Flowers in the Garden

We all like flowers here on the farm and have carefully nurtured the flowers that were already planted when we bought the place and we have planted many more. We admire the English garden style that mixes flowering shrubs, flowers and different foliages in a meandering billowy non-linear fashion rather than a formal look and we plan to add to our garden every year (we are only in our second year here). We are also aiming for dual use when possible so we have lots of day lillies which can be eaten, they have an attractive and easily maintained foliage, the flowers are beautiful and attract butterflys and bees which helps pollinate our vegetable garden and the fragrance on most varieties is rich and sweet and wafts through the air as we walk around the yard. Similarly, the marigolds we plant throughout the veghetable garden repels unwanted pests and brightens an otherwise green landscape and the sunflowers we plant provides a flowers and seed for the birds.

There is just something so peacefull and calming about flowers which is why we have them at funerals and send them to the sick or to someone you love. As we walk through our gardens and smell the sweetness and listen to the bees buzzing around and watch the butterflys flit from stamen to stamen its hard to be depressed or angry. We plant for succession and have something in bloom all year long starting with the Forsythia, Lilacs and Crocus progressing to the Iris and Rose bloom and on into fall with the Autumn Crocus but this period of early summer has given us a rich variety of color and fragrance.

We have many Mimosa trees we are nursing back to life after the previous owner cut most of them down (grrr) and they have an interesting wispy flower and the peculiar habit of the leaves on the tree folding up at night.

We have three Hollyhock gardens and though they are just about played out for this year they are spectacular. Ours have grown to about 7 feet tall and they are just loaded with blooms though the wind we have had has taken a toll on them this year.

And we have lots and lots of Day Lillies including this garden. Our friends Jack and Rene gave us all of these day lillies out of their own garden last year and they have just thrived.

Day Lillies come in a seemingly endless variety and gardening with them is an addictive hobby.

They have thick petals and very pronounced stamens and attract butterflys and bees in swarms.

Some are low to the ground, some mound and some are very upright and can get 4 foot tall or more

And they are very fragrant....you can smell these flowers all over in our back yard.

We just enjoy the variety

And we have Geraniums, Poppies, and Honeysuckle in back of the well house

Honeysuckle is also very fragrant and we have several patches of it but this particular one gives you a dose of fragrant Honeysuckle as you go through the grape arbor and right before you get to the big Day Lillie garden.

And we have Oriental Lillies interspersed with more Day Lillies and some small Mimosas

Lots of colorfull Petunias

Old fashioned Day Lillies in back of the wood shed

Hydrangeas, Day Lillies, Holly Hocks and Clematis along side of the house with Hybiscus getting ready to bloom.

We have planted a Day Lillie grden with Butterfly bushes next to a water source for the butterflys. We will eventually replace the ungly blue tub we use for water with a natural stone pond and a solar powered small fountain for the butterflys and birds.

The Camas Lillies are about played out but added some nice color out front.

And of course the unique and ubiquitous (to the Midwest anyway) Coneflowers...loved by butterflys.

More Petunias greet visitors at the front door

Along with Crysanthemums starting their colorful bloom

And we have planted Trumpet Vine for our Hummingbirds

Judy's Salmon Poppies didwell this year and I suspect we will have a great many more next year as they are colorful and hardy here.

And another addictive hobby is the cultivation of Knock Out Roses

They provide a steady bloom unlike traditional roses and come in a wide variety of flowers...some very fragrant and some not

Pansys greet visitors to Judy's house.

We have several varieties of Marigolds throughout the vegetable garden and we enjoy their color while we are tending to that garden.

We never could grow Sun Flowers in Alaska and we like the color, the height, and the seed they provide for our winter bird feeding.

We plant them at the end of all of our vegetable garden rows.

We have 6 or 7 Clematis vines all in a flowering state right now

We have purple, lavender, blue and a blue and white variety and there will be more next year to be trained along some of our field fencing.

I think these are Impatiens but ???

And finally...Persian Zinnias

These pictures wer all taken today, not all our flowers are shown and we have a pasture full of natural flowers, wild roses now in bloom, Mullin, etc. I guess..we do really like flowers!