dirt and chickens

 We spent the weekend getting the vegetable garden prepped and ready for tilling (the thistles are so bad!!!) so when I looked out in the back yard yesterday, this is what I saw!

These little moments are so precious - dirt, children (and not even all that young anymore - one is almost 14!! - but still loving the dirt!) and half a dozen chickens wandering around. Not your typical suburban life!🤣 I'm regularly grateful for our neighbors who don't bat an eye at the unusual views out *their* back windows! It helps that one behind us is one of Owen's childhood best friends (and the boys used to dig in this dirt together on a regular basis!), one is a delightful older couple whose grandkids are second cousins to our children (their daughter married Matt's cousin) and the third house is populated by a family that's rarely out in their yard anyway, and just takes our unique landscaping in stride.

The grafted tree

 

A few years ago we experimented with grafting, partly as a botany lesson for the kids, but also desiring to preserve the old apple tree that Matt's grandparents planted behind the house that is slowly coming to the end of its life. We had success with eight of the ten that we attempted, but then lost all but one to deer over the winter. HOWEVER, the one survivor has continued to grow nicely, and this spring has its first blossoms! Still undecided if we're going to pull the blossoms to get one more season of good growth before putting energy into bearing fruit.

Harvest of the day

 It has not been a great year for the vegetable garden. Too wet and cool, I think. (And because it's been so wet, Matt hasn't been out there with his special fertilizer, either...that could also have something to do with it!)

But yesterday, for the first time, I was able to put together supper almost entirely from the garden.

Add a little salt and olive oil and roast it all up...yum!

We ALSO picked one of Eben's sunflowers today at his request. This spring when we were buying seeds, he was the one who voted that we don't just get giant sunflowers that grown 12 feet tall, but get "Pikes Peak" sunflowers which can get up to 14 or 15 feet tall! They have NOT disappointed, even with this less than great year. (This is just the very top of the plant - I cut it off as high above my head as I could reach, and then cut another 18" off so it would fit in the vase we have for it!)

New residents in the Motley Garden

 It's worth noting that two weeks ago we got six new residents in the Motley Garden: Henrietta, Attila the Hen, Mrs. (Lavender) Allen Milgrave, Princess Leia Negg, Bethlehen, and Charlotte have moved into a coop Dad helped the girls build in the back of the small side of the shed.

It will be into the fall before we get any eggs, but we're hoping to have them doing some free-ranging and some time in a mobile run and have them do some work on the grubs in the gardens!

Here are the babies!!

This is Ebenezer with Mrs. Allen Milgrave. The night before we got the chicks, we read about a character in our book who was described as looking like a "sleek gray hen" so they decided if we got a gray one, she would be Mrs. Allen Milgrave. But she needs her own given name, too, thus the "Lavender."

This is Rinnah with Henrietta (I think. I have a harder time telling Henrietta and Charlotte apart.)

The girls helped Dad build a mobile run with leftover bits of lumber that we have laying around. We purchased hardware cloth, but everything else is just leftovers! Flipped over, it gives the chickens an easy way to have a little more space to run outdoors without concern for then destroying the gardens or hawks (or cats!) destroying them.

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!

Potatoes 2021

 We got the potatoes in late this year, and they just weren't dying down until FINALLY we got a light frost over the weekend. With heavy rain supposedly coming tomorrow, that meant yesterday and today were our days to get them in. So we did! I did most of the digging, but Matt came out for bits of time as he was able, and Owen put in a good hour in the afternoon after school as well. And these two girls (and Rinnah, too) were tireless, not only with the fun task of pulling up the potatoes (we got some amazing potatoes after what did not appear to be a promising year) but also with the not so fun job of pulling up weeds ahead of my digging so I could see what I was doing.

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!

Tomatoes

 While we certainly haven't been as invested in the veggie garden this year as last, we're still doing a decent job of keeping up and getting a quite decent yield.

Here are Dad and Evania picking tomatoes from the annex on the west end of the veggie garden where we put all of the volunteer plants that we found in the spring! They filled the entire turkey roasting pan with cherry tomatoes!!

Gladiolus

 Matt diligently watered our gladiolus bulbs during the drought, and we've been rewarded over the last few weeks with a steady and copious stream of beautiful flowers.

Here Evania's showing off just a small sampling. We're bringing in this many almost every day!

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!

Blueberry wall progress

 

Also known as "killing two birds with one stone." Ebby and I are toilet training and building a limestone retaining wall at the same time. He's actually a decent help - bringing his little wheelbarrow along to load rocks, and the little blue wagon when we need dirt. In the meantime, if there's an accident, no problem! The ground could use a little moisture!!!

Gloria and the sedum

 My little helper's hands are getting strong enough to use the clippers to dead head the big sedum in the front garden! It's a great project to tackle a little bit at a time while waiting for the boys to come home on the school bus.

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.

Well, that's explains it!

In case we ever wonder why there don't seem to be as many tomatoes coming into the house as it seems there should be...

...it just might be a matter of the crew!

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.