Cabin Crafted

Category: gardens

  • Time flies

    A friend commented that she missed my blog, which tells me, I haven’t been posting as often as I used to.

    While we were away, it rained heavily and our dirt and gravel sloped driveway took a beating. We came home to deep gullies and evidence that someone other than VDOT had attempted to smooth the state road so getting to our mailbox was a real challenge. Our tractor has a blade attachment on the back and I am getting quite adept at smoothing out the mess. I no sooner got it improved than we had another two days of heavy storms and my work was destroyed again. Again, the tractor and I tackled the mess and got most of the driveway smooth enough to not drag bottom on the car coming in and out. When the fiber optic crew was here before out trip, laying the new line, one of the guys on a small backhoe dug out the ends of our culvert for us. The rain now has a better path, but the steepness of the driveway still allows serious run off. The state road is hazardous to drive right now and the ditch below our culvert is filled with gravel from the road.

    The weekend we got home, our eldest local grandson (not the eldest of all of them) was graduated as a distinguished scholar from high school. As his high school is in the process of being significantly enlarged, they held the graduation at the basketball stadium at Virginia Tech, so each student had unlimited guests. He had many, some from as far away as Florida come to cheer him on. Daughter and SIL threw a party that afternoon for everyone and many of his friends as well with lots of food and cupcakes. He will enter Virginia Tech in the Engineering School in the fall. We are very proud of him and his accomplishments as a student, with the robotics team Fabrication co-leader, and in Taekwondo as an instructor and as a 3rd degree senior black belt.

    Last weekend, our spinning group had it annual spring porch party always hosted by the same couple. About 20 of us gathered for an afternoon of socialization, spinning, and an awesome potluck. I brought out my spinning wheel for the first time in a while and started a very colorful braid of Organic Pohlwarth which I finished a couple of evenings ago.

    All of these weekends have thrown our usual routine out the door until this weekend. We resumed our Saturday morning breakfast out, followed by the Farmer’s Market and good local food to supply our freezer and refrigerator.

    Soon I will be able to harvest peas, some volunteer new potatoes, and garlic from our garden. The tomatoes and peppers are growing, green beans and corn getting taller. We are about at the end of asparagus season (hubby says Yay, though I don’t serve them to him.)

    I do need to week whack the paths again.

    The other craft I have dug out, is to set up my sewing machine and make a couple of simple summer tops as the weather has been in the 80’s and humid. As you see, I’m not a good selfie taker, but this is one of them.

    All is well on the farm. Holding out hope the rain doesn’t mess up the driveway again until I can figure out what is causing the tractor to stall out repeatedly. I may have to have the repair folks come and get it and give it a once over.

  • Busy Week/Changing Seasons

    There was a lot of living history this week. On Wednesday, we had about 80 fourth graders and 7 rotations with the museum history, slavery in Appalachia, a bit of William Tell fun with suction cup arrows and a plexiglass shield to protect the”victim,” women’s duties on the frontier, blacksmithing, fiber production at home on the frontier, and frontier Militia that includes the presenter firing a flintlock rifle for the students. After we were done, the curator showed them a covered wagon and how it would have been loaded to travel the Wilderness road to the western parts of Virginia (now Kentucky and Ohio).

    Thursday we had over 100 sixth graders with some changes in rotations to match the available volunteers. These groups are fun to do and also have some of the frustrations that teachers deal with daily. Some the the youth are very engaged and have great questions. Some would rather be anywhere else and poke and prod their neighbors, or engage in flirting with another student.

    The door to the loom house is low, about 5’5″ and most kiddos that age walk in without a thought, but there are a few as tall or taller than me at 5’7+” that have to duck to enter. The space inside is tight to put 15 sixth graders, but we make it work.

    Wednesday night threatened cold so the flowers planted in the deck pots were covered for the night, there are no more nights much below 50 f for the next 10 days.

    The first Hummingbird was spotted this morning. The single feeder that is currently out will empty quickly and soon additional feeders will be added.

    The vegetable, sunflower, and herb seed have sprouted under the grow lights. They will begin to get acclimated to the outdoors in a day or two.

    The Amaryllis bud opened with only 2 flowers but is 22″ tall.

    After the museum yesterday it was time to mow the lawn for the first time. The riding mower original battery was so dead there wasn’t even a hint of light from the headlights, much less turning over the engine. I edged around the house and pulled out the gas push mower and it wouldn’t start either. Our once a year pushing the heavy riding mower up on to the trailer and trip two towns over to drop it off wit the repair guy was done. Once it is repaired, the grass will be so tall it will be difficult to mow, but that is all I can do for now.

    We are looking forward to warm days and mild nights. Tomorrow, grandson will come help me get the rest of the garden ready to plant soon.

  • News from the Blog

    If you are a subscriber that gets the blog in your email, it will direct to here. If you have gotten it from Facebook or Ravelry, you now should use Fstafford165.wordpress.com and it is secure. Subscribing will sent it to your email each time I post.

    The blog looks a bit different as I have updated to a newer format, but it is still the same blog.

    It is that time of the year when I dress up and present to local elementary and middle schoolers what it was like to have to make everything you needed to live on the frontier and to trade and barter with neighbors, provide your extras to the community store for the wagons moving farther west into what is now Kentucky and Ohio. The cabin was originally built in 1769 on Peak Creek and moved to the Wilderness Road in Newbern in 1830. When it was moved, a loft was added, you can see the stairs in the background. The footprint of the cabins in the “planned” community were 10′ X 10′ some with a loft. A fireplace for heat and cooking. The barn loom behind me, similar to the one that was in this cabin for an enslaved woman who was the village weaver. The walking wheel also behind me is one I made functional at the museum and demonstrate it and the drop spindle for making yarn to be used for the fabric needs. Last Wednesday when this photo was taken, it was dreary and chilly, about 47f and the 100 kiddos moving between the 8 stations every 15 minutes had to hustle and pack in tight for some of the stations. They huddled in every porch and building that had space to eat their lunch. I thought I was going to freeze and it took several hours once home to thaw out.

    That sent me on a quest to make or find a historically accurate cape because this week’s groups begin on another chilly but dry day. My quest turned up a navy blue wool reenactment cape with hood used, on ebay, for a very good price and quick shipping. It arrived today and I won’t be cold again when the weather does not cooperate.

    The cold night last week was hard on the new flower starts I put out, I guess a day too early. Today we bought marigolds and petunias as well as some flower seed that mostly will go in a ground bed once I get it cleaned up from winter and the hardier starts were put in the spots in the pots on the deck that were hit the hardest by the 25f night. Also some zinnia and nasturtium seed were interspersed with the small plants, so hopefully the pots will fill in with color as the spring moves on. There are no near freezing nights for the next 10 days and I will cover the pots with row cover if we get threatened.

    The vegetable, herb, and flower seed under the grow lights haven’t sprouted yet, but they aren’t due to go in the ground for at least a month, maybe 6 weeks.

    I hope you enjoy the new format.

  • The Seasons Change

    Each day the trees are greener, the grass taller. When I first moved here, the last expected average frost day was around Mother’s Day, in the 19 years, it has drifted earlier and earlier and is now around April 25. About 3 weeks ago, I started some Nasturtiums, Zinnias, and Marigolds in the house to put in the deck pots. Though it is only hovering around 40 right now, I transplanted them into the pots and sowed some “Bee Nectary” mix seed in a few other pots. We had a 28f night last week, but it didn’t frost and the fruit trees did ok. There are no very cold nights expected in the next 10 days which almost puts us to the “magic” date. The Columbine is beginning to flower and the strawberries are growing.

    Yesterday, 80 herb, flower, and vegetable seed were planted in the grow lite starter trays. They will go out into the garden by the end of the first week of May.

    The asparagus didn’t like the 28f night, but more new shoots are coming up and there will be some to pick in a couple days. The peas, onions, and garlic did fine.

    Two years ago at Christmas, a friend gave me a wax covered Amaryllis bulb already about to bloom. When the bloom stalk was done, I removed the wax and planted the bulb in a pot and put it out on the deck for the summer. That fall, it was brought in to overwinter and around last March, it again produced a flower stalk, then leaves and again it went out to the deck for the summer. Last fall I brought it in and the leaves didn’t die back until late February, but soon after, the new flower stalks emerged. They are amazing as they grow about an inch a day constantly seeking the bright light of the French doors, so it gets rotated a couple times a day. The stalk is taller than it has gotten before and the bud just started opening last night.

    Soon there will be 3 or 4 trumpet shaped red flowers, this year for Easter instead of Christmas.

    If we have a night that threatens the newly transplanted flower starts on the deck, I will line the pots up against the French doors and cover them with a sheet or shower curtain to protect them.

    Later this spring, the front of the house is going to get my attention. Since we lost all but two of our Nandinas two winters ago, there are no shrubs or flowers across the North facing front. That bed will be weeded, planted, and mulched and two large pots placed on the stoop with flowers that can tolerate mostly shade

  • The Ranger Tree

    In the fall of 2023, our 12 year old English Mastiff named Ranger crossed the Rainbow Bridge. He was the best boy and his loss was very difficult for both hubby and me. We decided to memorialize him with an oak tree. The tree was a large one for a nursery tree, about 8′ tall in a 5 gallon pot. It was a challenge to get home, but accomplished by the aid of a friend and her pickup truck. The hole was dug, the tree planted and stabilizing ties added to three points. The tree turned fall colors and lost it leaves. Come spring, the tree put out new growth and we were grateful it seemed to be in good shape. Again, it lost it leaves and last winter, it began to look bent. I checked on it and about 15″ of it’s lower trunk about 3/4 of the way around, the bark had been rubbed off, I expect it was deer rubbing the velvet off of new antlers last spring and summer. I tried protecting the stem and straightening it late winter. The Ranger Tree couldn’t withstand that abuse and it died. A check yesterday, I realized it did not have any buds, and the young branches all the way up were brittle. We had selected an oak because it is a native tree. The nursery from which we had purchased it participates in “Throwing Shade Virginia,” a collaboration between the Virginia Department of Forestry and certain nurseries. If you purchased a native tree or shrub during March through May, you get a $25 discount. Today we went to see what was available and came home with a Northern Red Oak in a 2 gallon pot. It is only about 5.5′ tall, but full of new buds. Once home, the dead tree was dug out, the hole refreshed with new bagged soil and garden soil and The Ranger Tree II was planted. Not to have a repeat, the trunk was wrapped in an expanding spiral trunk wrap and a fence was erected about 3.5+ feet out from the newly planted tree.

    To the right of where this tree was planted are the trees showing their spring flowers and new foliage.

    And on the other side of the yard across the driveway, the beautiful yellow of the Forsythia. And the green of the lilacs.

    We have had some delightful warm spring days, the garden is nearly ready for the summer vegetable plantings. The fall garlic is about a foot high, the spring onions about half a foot, and the peas are up enough to see where some needed to be filled in. Yesterday, a handful of pea seed was soaked in warm water for several hours and the empty spaces filled with them. We have another near summer like day, then a flipflop in the weather going to drop us back to normal daytime temperatures in the upper 40’s to mid 50’s, but Tuesday night it going down to the mid 20’s. The plum tree has bloomed and the blossoms are done. The peach trees are just coming into their own and the Asian Pears might be near the end of bloom. The apple trees haven’t bloomed yet. I hope it doesn’t kill the chance of getting fruit this summer and fall. The fig hasn’t come out yet.

    An afternoon home alone yesterday allowed me to prune back the dead flower stalks from plants that leave a semi woody stem at the end of the season. They are always left in place for the insects to overwinter.

    Two garden beds still need a bit more soil, but there is a bed that the wooden box had mostly rotted away and the soil from it will be moved to the other two beds. The upper third of the garden without raised bed boxes is going to be planted with sweet corn, pie pumpkins, and sunflowers.

    The asparagus began showing up late last weekend and have been enjoyed for one meal so far. The garden won’t be quite as large this year and since I still have 1.5 gallons of pickled jalapenos, only two of them will be planted this year, the peppers to be pickled and canned. There is still a half gallon jar of dried ghost peppers, so they will be omitted this year. Maybe a couple of seranos for Sriracha sauce, and a couple of bell peppers will replace the extra jalapenos and ghost peppers.

    I’m not wasting garden space on potatoes this year as the yield has been too low for the space they take up. I might try a potato tower and see how that yield is compared to in the ground.

    It is wonderful to see the grass greening up, even though that means mowing weekly, and to see the garden taking shape for fresh vegetables.

    Until then, we will be satisfied with what is available from Saturday’s Farmer’s Market.

  • Another Week Passes Us By

    The week has been a teaser of autumn to come. The week plus in the sturdier shoes and insoles has allowed me to walk a couple miles about half the days this past week. Two of the days wearing long pants and a light sweater. I’m sure we will have more hot weather before it settles into autumn, but I’ll take last week and the upcoming week for now.

    We managed to get to the Farmer’s Market yesterday in spite of it being a home football game day. Every parking lot near campus is closed to public parking and reserved for paid football day parking and tailgating. That makes the market a challenge.

    The week has been used making 9 batches of cold process soap. If you have never made soap, cold process soap is still hot, the lye solution is hot, the oils and plant butters have to be melted, so it seems a misnomer, but the processes are different. Nine batches makes more than 80 bars of soap, and no we don’t personally use that many a year. A big boxful goes to Son 1 for gift giving and their use. He gets me large containers of some of the oils in exchange. A batch goes to a friend in town, a batch for SIL, and some for our annual use.

    The 4 boards cover 4 molds just prior to being covered with the towels to saponify overnight. Beyond them are 5 batches already cut and curing from yesterday and earlier in the week. They have to cure for about a month before they are hard enough to not just dissolve with use. The longer they cure, the harder they become. The next couple of weeks will be used making the labels for most of them.

    Last night when the kitchen scraps were taken out to the chickens, I realized that the day lilies leaves have all been eaten to the ground by the deer. The day lily bed is right up against the east wall of the garage. This morning, I saw these two and another doe just a few feet behind the house devouring the Tithonia that used to be where they are.

    Periodically, the doe would pounce toward the fawn who would then do zoomies around the back yard before returning to the doe.

    Also out there was a large groundhog. It was a frequent visitor during the spring, but has been absent since the hay was mowed in July. The hay is tall again and it was back.

    The tomatoes are reaching the last few. This basket has been bagged and put in the freezer, the Ghost peppers are infusing in olive oil with garlic and sage. And the cayennes and remaining Ghost peppers strung to dry. Some day soon, all the bags will be hauled out of the freezer, the tomatoes peeled, and a big pot of sauce made. Probably left plain so that it can become chili with peppers added, pasta sauce with onion, garlic, and herbs, or cooked down for pizza sauce.

    This week, the tomato vines will be pulled down and chopped for compost, that bed weeded and covered with hay for winter. That leaves the sweet potatoes that went in so late there may be none to harvest before the first frost. It is about time to chop the corn and sunflower stalks down and call it a year unless I can get some winter greens in a bed that can be covered for the early frosts.

    And this week, I can get back to some crafting. Some knitting and some spinning have been done. A lot of reading, trying to finish The Rose Code before it is due back to the library. It is an interesting historical fiction, I recommend it.

    Have a good week.

  • All Good Things Must End

    Yesterday was the beginning of meteorological autumn, not the autumn marked on your wall calendar if you still have one. And right on cue, we started seeing the trees beginning to show their color, or at least we noticed it. The first to turn are the Tulip Poplars and the Locust trees. This Poplar acts like a Ginkgo and turns yellow all at once in a matter of a couple of days.

    And loses it’s leaves first.

    After being away for two weekends and hobbling around for 7 weeks, I finally got out into the garden this week. The heat and time of year ended the cucumbers and bush beans, but the tomatoes and peppers are producing wildly.

    Every day a basket like this is brought in and frozen. Once they are all ripe, I will make a pot of sauce. Two pounds of peppers were cut and put in the fermenting crock to make into hot sauce in about 5 or 6 weeks.

    Yesterday afternoon, the popcorn was harvested, shucked in place and brought in. It is now in two crisscrossed layers in two large baskets to finish drying for about 2 or 3 weeks, then we will have more than a year’s worth of popcorn. It is fun to put a cob in a brown paper lunch bag and pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Then you have a bag full of air popped corn.

    Fall is also the time to make soap. Soap for gift giving, soap for a friend who loves my soap, soap for us for a year. There will be 8 or 9 batches made over the next week and cut to cure in a guest room. The first two batches were made yesterday, cut today, and set to cure. I am awaiting an order of essential oils and shea butter to continue the process, but the first two batches are unscented.

    Today it much milder outdoors and as my foot still isn’t allowing exercise walks and since I did have my physical training session this morning, I tackled some garden chores. The cucumber and bean plants were pulled, given to the chickens, the bed that grew the peas in the spring and has been idle was weeded and the weeds put in a large tub to die off before being added back to that bed as compost. That bed also got a wheel barrow of chicken coop cleanings a month or so ago and it was spread out over the surface. There are now two and a half idle beds. One will likely have some fall veggies, the others covered in straw unless I can get a cover crop in quickly. The corn stalks won’t be cut until the Tithonia and sunflowers planted in a row up the middle of them finish blooming. There are so many hot peppers already canned that the rest will be allowed to turn red. The Ghost peppers will be infused in olive oil with sage and garlic, the jalapenos and cayennes will be crushed once dried for crushed red pepper. There are two tiny ornamental Thai pepper that are full of red peppers but they are very hard to harvest, though hot if you can get some.

    The chicken tunnel has been mostly a success. There are a few plants that grow into the tunnel they won’t eat, but do keep mostly scratched down, and the creeping charlie and smartweed that are reachable through the wire, they ignore so another day will have to be spent clearing the blueberry bed. The raspberry and blackberry half barrels were mostly a failure, though I see some volunteers outside the barrels. With all the wineberries and wild blackberries that are on the property, I should just not bother with the barrels. There are also several you pick berry farms around here.

    Not much spinning was done last month. Reading, a little travel to visit Son 1 and then to a retreat where I did spin both on my wheel and spindles, knit, and took both a wet felting class to make a small bowl and a project bag sewing class occupied my time with visiting friends I see only rarely. If I ever finish the knitting project, I will finish spinning the fiber I have worked on for two months slowly. I got a lovely braid to spin as a door prize at the retreat and a bag of felting wool from the gift exchange game.

    So you see from this, I am alive and well, not posting much here, on Facebook, or Instagram, but still here. Take care, enjoy the fall colors if you live where they occur, and get ready for another winter.

  • Sunday ramblings of the mind

    There isn’t much physical rambling going on with me right now. The boot is off, though the tendonitis isn’t totally gone, and wearing the boot, threw off my gait, and caused plantar fasciitis in the other foot. I hobble around like Tim Conway’s character after I sit for a little while or right after I get up in the morning. I am still going to work out with my trainer once a week and we are working on core and upper body on machines, balance and stretching with squats and other stretching exercises. On a good day, I can walk about a mile, not the 4 I was doing 6 weeks ago. It is so very frustrating.

    The July Jenkins spindle challenge is our scavenger hunt for Tour de Fleece. A social media friend proxy shopped for me at Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon in late June and purchased a lovely Salmonberry Chickadee spindle, Ed Jenkins’ newest model. Slightly smaller than my other favorites, the Finches, and with a thicker body. It has been my spindle of choice for the past 10 days or so.

    That fiber is finished and the 8 golf ball sized cops have been wound into a ply ball and will be plyed on my spinning wheel as soon as the bobbin of Shetland now on the wheel is full. I find that I can spin for hours on the spindles, but only about an hour on the wheel.

    The pullets are almost all laying now. It is interesting trying to figure out who lays what these days. The 4 older hens lay an olive colored egg, a chocolate brown egg, and two that I called blue, until the newest Americana began laying and hers is robin’s egg blue, making the other two appear greenish. The Calicos all lay a light pinkish brown egg.

    Suddenly, I have more eggs than daughter’s family and we can eat and with no pups in the house to share eggs with, I have a couple dozen being shared with the spinning group or visiting family members. I did get their coop cleaned out this week in spite of the heat. A good addition to one of the idle garden beds that was weeded before adding the cleaning to the bed.

    The garden is producing copious quantities of cucumbers and jalapenos, though they aren’t very spicy. A gallon of pickled peppers is in the refrigerator as well as 4 quarts of dill pickles. The first crop of green beans are not producing many now and the second crop hasn’t begun to produce. Every now and then, a cucumber evades my daily search and gets too large and yellow for us, but the chickens love them when I break them in half and toss into their run. Yesterday, I found 3 tomato horn worms on the plants, the chickens gobbled one up and ignored the other two, each as large as my thumb around and about 4 inches long. Maybe they went back to them later, at least they are off the tomato plants.

    The milkweed that creates a fairly large patch on the edge of one of the areas that get’s hayed was mowed down with the hay, but has come back up again and is beginning to bloom.

    The daily thunderstorms we were having have stopped and again we are reaching drought level dryness. The last two or three thunderstorms came right after VDOT graded our state road and the run off caused serious gullies in our driveway. Using the blade on the tractor, I was able to improve the drive surface to a safer level. It has been a year since I asked VDOT to clear our culvert and it hasn’t been done. To replace the culvert with another or a cattle grate requires a permit and to hire someone to do it.

    We have several more days of brutally hot, humid weather before we get a reprieve for a few days. We need rain.

    Take care and stay cool. Be safe from the newest round of Covid. I guess we are going to live with it and hope it doesn’t get worse.

  • “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food”

    This phrase is used in our local Farmer’s Market advertising. It is amazing to me to go to our market and know that Thomas, Pete, Mike, Cedric, Kat, and others call me by name. They see hundreds of shoppers each week. They know what I am looking for and will “save” the item for my shopping. Each week, I spend $75-100 at the Farmer’s Market on locally grown vegetables, grass fed and finished meats, locally made sourdough breads, and locally made cheese from locally milked cows. This is added to the produce coming from our vegetable garden and orchard.

    I know that my food did not travel across the country or worse across country borders to feed us. The menu varies with the seasons to take advantage of what is being grown. The market allows us to enjoy items I don’t want to be bothered with growing as they produce too much too fast and don’t freeze well, or not having growing tunnels at home, grow foods earlier or later than I can get them from the garden.

    Currently, I am pickling cucumbers and jalapenos from our garden. Blanching and freezing green beans to add to the peas done earlier. Other peppers that will become dried peppers for winter cooking, or hot sauces are still growing in the garden. The tomatoes are still green, but mature ones can be purchased at the market. The market providing summer squash, broccoli and cauliflower, sweet corn (I only grow popcorn), scallions, lettuces to go with our harvests. Soon there will be peaches, then Asian pears, and finally apples from the orchard. The plums are nearly gone, the early blueberries mostly harvested.

    Later this summer, some fall vegetables will be planted, and there is a lull in salad mid winter, but the rotation variety makes salads less missed in the mid winter months.

  • Summer before the Solstice

    The weather is hot. And dry. We did benefit from some rain a few days ago that was spotty around the area, but did give us a little respite from the heat and the dryness.

    Yesterday, I was sitting on the front porch with Randy. Randy was our postal carrier for most of the years since we built and moved here, but he retired a few years ago. He also runs cattle with two younger men, men about our sons’ ages. He had come over to let us know that they were going to mow our hay today so I wouldn’t let critters out that might be harmed by huge mowers and we were just sitting and visiting when he looked beyond me and asked if that was a snake on the porch rail. Sure enough, a black rat snake about 6- 6.5 feet long, just chillin’ on the rail behind me. Black rat snakes are our friends as long as they stay out of the house and out of the coop. He probably had been feasting on the chipmunks that have taken over since the dogs and barn cats have all passed away. The snake had been hanging out up near the barn, but had moseyed on down to the house. I went through the house, grabbed leather garden gloves, a 5 gallon bucket, and lid and came back out to relocate it. Randy looked at me like I was nuts and said, “Don’t ask me to help.” He did take the photo though.

    This is the 5th one that we have relocated from the house or coop. The bucket was taken a couple miles away and the snake turned loose in the woods by a field.

    Last night I did finish the June spinning challenge and finished plying the rainbow yarn.

    It ended up 558 yards almost 4 ounces done totally on the spindles in the photo in 18 days. A project has already been begun.

    The mowers did arrive this afternoon, two mowers and a tractor with a tedder to fluff up what was mowed. They will return Friday and bale it. I don’t think they are going to have a very good harvest as it didn’t get mowed in the fall and it didn’t get fertilized this spring. Randy said they are already about 60 bales short of what they usually get before reaching us, so he may not have much to sell this year, hopefully enough for their cattle.

    The dry heat had caused the pea vines to yellow, so while they mowed, I harvested peas, the potatoes that were in one of the pea beds, a handful of Jalapenos, and a basket of plums. There are about that many more plums still ripening. They sure are good, not very large, but very sweet. And I also pulled the pea vines to be chopped up and put in the compost. My clippers are old and dull and wouldn’t do the job, so I may ask to borrow my daughter’s.

    It took 3 hours to shell all of those peas, filling a bucket with empty pods, and yielding several quarts of peas. We enjoyed some for dinner and the rest frozen for meals when fresh veggies aren’t available except trucked across the country. In a couple of days, the tiny green beans will be large enough to start enjoying them and freezing more for later meals. The tomatoes have flowers, but no fruit yet and flowers on the cucumbers, but again, no fruit yet. One of the pea beds will be planted with more green beans, the other covered with old hay until cooler weather allows fall greens to be started.

    We saw the doe with the singleton fawn, still a tiny one after the mowers left. Probably wondering where their tall grass covering had gone.

    While I was talking to one of the younger mowers, we realized that a large branch in the top of one of my Asian pears is totally dead with pears on it, so recently dead. It doesn’t look like a lightening strike, but at some point it is going to have to be cut out. I don’t know what caused it. It is concerning as that is the tree that produces the most pears.

    More heat and no rain for the next 10 days. At least the grass doesn’t grow fast when it is hot and dry.

    Take care, stay cool, be safe.