Good Morning Everybody!
:-)
Garden cleanup has started ... 3 of 9 beds are totally done. I'm clearing them out & putting in compost from my last year's leaf pile which means lots of digging & hauling. The compost is not as broken down as I had hoped - I'm guessing about 3/4 of the way, but it will break down the rest of the way in the soil. Remind me next year NOT to plant climbing vine plants anywhere near my fencing - a good portion of my time this past week has bee spent picking/cutting vines out of my fencing!
And now, since I am on chicken and dog-sitting duty this weekend and I had to deal with the chickens/dog BEFORE my coffee this morning ..... this is about where I'm at ... first cup of the morning - sooo good!
Greetings from southern New Hampshire, where the Autumn colors are moving towards peak.
We are busy harvesting from our garden. An incredible production of peppers (Anaheim, Jalipenio, Poblano and Bell) from the first raised bed I built out of pallet wood, last spring. I have already strung two aristas using the Anaheim and probably can string another, short one from the harvest a couple of days ago. Quite remarkable.
The tomatoes are about finished. I hauled a cartload of loofas to the back deck and Household Six has both ovens on “Proof”, doing the final drying. The first one she did, she removed the seeds and husk and cleaned it and I looks impressive.
Our pole beans, planted late in the summer, are pumping out massive amounts of delicious beans! Our ground cherry plants are producing heavily and we have discovered several tomatio volunteers around the back yard.
We have selected a site for our cattle panel hoop house and I will be starting on that, this weekend.
Today, I have to take the chainsaw and finish cutting up a fallen tree. I was able to move the #44 Loader from our original John Deere 318 to the second one. The original one is back from the shop and purring like a kitten. I have the trailer tow bar on the weight bracket of the new JD and will be towing our small, utility trailer down to the site to load up the vines and wood to bring back up to the back yard. I will stack the wood and then take the vines and the used bedding from the duck coop to the transfer station for them to convert into compost for next spring.
Yeah, I have three raised beds to build this Autumn, one in the hoop house and two where the garlic was grown this past year. Oh, yeah, we have to get our garlic in the ground this weekend. Way behind on this!
We are looking at adding a Walipini to our garden development next year.
Garlic was planted last weekend, all the other gardens were cleared for the year.
Put up the temp. greenhouse over the lettuce garden - we get fresh lettuce right through December under the plastic.
And that's about it for growing things.
Cleaned the woodstove flue and prepped the stove area for winter burning.
Stacked the last of the firewood (two cords - we burn oil, too.)
Next weekend we prep the chicken run and coop for the winter - then we just wait for spring....
- https://whdh.com/weather-blog/cooler-weekend-ahead-wet-weather-next-week/
Me too - developing those skill sets. Just experimented with making GHEE using the crockpot. Worked pretty good.
LOL
Speaking of a post-apocalyptic skill set, I was thinking of reviving the part of my SHTF database that dealt with gardening and homesteading but nothing else. But then i thought about how we advertised for months in this weekly thread and not one person was interested. Now I don’t know what I’ll do. Even though it isn’t much work it’s still a waste of time if it’s all for naught.