The garden has reached the stage that it's going to be difficult to keep up with production. Garlic has been harvested and hung in the potting shed to cure. Was a bumper crop this time. Enough to give half of it away and still last us until next summer.
I dug up a couple of the yukon gold potato plants a couple days ago. The spuds almost filled a two gallon bucket. If the rest of the row produces like that I'm going to have to figure out a place to store them. Mrs. Augie has been asking for a root cellar for awhile now. It might be a good time to build one.
We ate the first slicer tomato a few days ago. It was a nice fat black krim, and oh my did it ever taste good. All of the tomato plants that were in a funk from the wet weather in late May have recovered and look good. Two weeks from now we'll start harvesting some weight and with the hot peppers also coming on it will be time to fire up the salsa kitchen.
Mrs. Augie continues to produce her fermented pickles. She's well past two cases now and shows no sign of slowing down. The pole beans have started to produce. I've picked a few spaghetti squash and have more on the way. Butternut plants are loaded but the fruits need some more time to mature. Cabbages can come out any time. Beets came out yesterday, and I gave them a good boiling to slip the skins. They're getting made into beet pickles, which I'll finish up after I'm released from the salt mine later today.
After a summer of relative peace last year, the raccoon wars have started to heat back up. In the past three weeks we've lost six hens and two of Mrs. Augie's bird feeders have been destroyed, so I set the box trap Friday night and captured the gang leader. She had quite a nasty disposition, but we invited her to stay for supper anyway.
