The chickens are growing!

 

Henrietta and Rinnah.

Evania with Attila the Hen and Rinnah with Mrs. (Lavender) Allen Milgrave.

Eating the yard

 Rinnah took "eating the yard" to a whole new level as she attempted a week of eating ONLY things that came from our yard. She allowed herself both fresh and frozen (from last year), and at our pressing, salt, but otherwise NOTHING beyond what had come from here. (So, for example, jams were out because the pectin and sugar were purchased.)

She only made it three days before her stomach mildly protested, but she wants to give it another go in August when the list of available fresh options is greater!

Spinach, beet greens, purslane, topped with rhubarb, blueberries, and black raspberries and a few sunflower seeds!

Fall produce

 Pulling in the last bits before the first freeze!

(All photos, except the first one, courtesy of Leah.)

Zinnias

 Rinnah and I carefully planted the whole end of the fenced in area with lettuce, beets, carrots and planted a row of zinnias as a divider between each one. Well, with the lack of rain (and lack of watering on our part), none of it came up except for the zinnias, and they are gorgeous! They definitely grew big enough to cover the weeds and empty dirt where the other things were supposed to be!

Green Beans

 This year's garden may not be as spectacular as last year's, but we've still got some decent produce, including really cool asparagus beans! I had forgotten to tell the girls I'd planted them, so when they discovered them in the garden today, they were *really* impressed!

A ton of food

 Today marks the day that we surpassed 2000 pounds of food that we've pulled out of the yard! The girls and I processed just over 80 pounds of pears today, and that (plus a bit of kale and about a pound of green beans) was enough to push us over that magic line.

Now we can say quite literally that we've grown a ton of food this year. ;) That's pretty cool. 

Reuben made himself comfortable near the compost pile where we're throwing all of the not-so-good pears.

Rinnah's climbing the ladder to pick the beans off the 12 foot tall sunflowers! Thankfully they're bending down as the season progresses.

Three kiddos tossing pears into the pile.

One of the perks of having a big brother is his big muscles! He's got three little sisters in there!

Picking, picking, picking pears.

Corn!

Matt insisted that we try corn again, after trying years ago with really no luck.

It's working this year! We're rookies, so harvested the first ones a bit late and they were rather starchy, but went out the second day and did a more rigorous harvest so the others that were ready or past ready didn't go too far, and check it out! Thirty-some ears of corn!!!

That's a funny looking one! The girls think it looks like a kangaroo.

Growing, growing, growing

The giant sunflowers are living up to their name! They're twice as tall as the little girls!

The late tomatoes are starting to take off - not nearly as big as the ones we planted earlier in the season, but we'll get tomatoes from them, I'm guessing, before the summer's over! This is the little rock-pile wall that Owen built for us at the edge where the rhubarb grows. We had to co-opt the space to the west of it for the tomatoes because the regular garden is out of room!

The vertical pumpkin growing is a great idea, but would work better if we only had one plant on each trellis! Our winter squash are doing fine, but these pumpkins are taking over. I'm beginning to hope they reach far enough back to climb up the pine tree!

This is looking to the east from the other side of the co-opted tomato space. You can see the corn through the trellis, and on the far left of the photo, the south side of the vertical pumpkins.

One of our zucchini patches. Four clusters here and three in the other location. Curious to see how many pounds of food these babies put out this year!

And this is a view into one of our fenced-in areas. Beets in the front, and some bush beans that got planted late. Middle is lettuce, zinnias (just to be pretty!) and carrots, and in the back, just visible, a hydrangea, more beets, and a cabbage.

Zinnias are such boisterously exuberant flowers!

 

The largest cluster of Roma tomatoes. Lots of fruit; none ripe yet.

Japanese beetles and cabbage

We saw our first Japanese beetles today. On the raspberries and the small apple tree...where they always start. Next will be the pole beans. So out came the old yogurt containers with soapy water and plastic forks, and my vigilant troops began their patrol...

Ain't no beetles getting past these toughies!

And on a more encouraging note, look at how lovely the cabbages are, photos courtesy of Rinnah.

Plant sale at the neighbors'

The little girls helped me dig, split, and pot up a variety of plants from around the yard to add to our neighbors' plant sale, and over the course of two days, they made more than $400!!! And that's just our plants! Sylv and Sam did just as well, if not better.

They worked really hard with the digging and keeping everything watered and bringing it all over...and they were out there on the driveway for every hour the sale was on...and then they helped me load it all back into Owen's truck to bring back home this afternoon! We also got to keep the things that Sylv and Sam don't want to take up space keeping for next year, so here's looking at even bigger profits in 2021! My budding small business owners!

Even Ebenezer is tall enough to help load the littler pots into the back of the truck. We have ALL appreciated Owen's truck!

It really has been a long time!

We were thinking, as we've worked on putting in our tremendous veggie garden this spring that it's probably been at least five years since we've put in a "real" vegetable garden. Sure enough, this popped up in Shuttlerfly's "remember when" today:

Look how little they are!

Digging potato trenches

Keep the boys swinging and we can keep working!

Carrots

We found a swallowtail caterpillar, affectionately named "Carrots", on our dill earlier this summer, and after careful feeding had a successful chrysalis, followed by a butterfly!

Bridget is very much on her last legs (she's 19 this summer!) and it was a joy to have her follow us down to the dill where we released Carrots. She's old and frail, but still living her life.