Harvest Monday

January 19, 2015

We are only getting a few eggs/day. That and wild onions are our only harvests.

I told my kids I would pay them 1c/onion. They went right to work 🙂(8, 5, & 4yo holding up their harvests)

I did ‘harvest’ chicken manure by cleaning out the coop this week. I either need to clean it out 10 more times before spring (not going to happen) or go get some horse manure to finish prepping the garden for planting.

Speaking of chickens, a friend of ours had an extra rooster she offered to us this week. It is about 7mo and is beautiful. It is getting picked on quite a bit, being the new guy and all. Such is life.Our other rooster, Whitey, we hatched out ourselves, this past March. 

Another new critter on the homestead is Chip. She (yes, she. they thought she was a he when they named him/her. poor cat.) was brought to us when a relative had to move and could not take her with them. We have her in a dog crate this week and are giving her lots of yummy food so hopefully she will know this is her new home.

This week finally warmed up enough to start planting in greenhouses. I planted some onions and some celery. The soil I use is stored outside in covered buckets. I was only able to plant two greenhouses because most of it was frozen solid 🙂 I put it out in the sun to warm and I will hopefully be able to plant more later in the month.

What are you up to this week? Are you harvesting? Check out what other gardeners across the globe are doing at Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Harvest Monday

September 9, 2013

Last week we harvested the last cantaloupe 😦 No more fresh garden fruit until next year…but I am hoping to have strawberries in the Spring so I am looking forward to that already!

We harvested plenty of veggies this week, however!

Do you see the tomato? The bugs are enjoying them. A lot. So I have started picking them earlier and letting them ripen on the counter instead of on the vine. And do you see my peas?!?! They are long! and filled out 🙂

Here are some more 🙂 I was starting to get excited about upcoming harvests!

And then…

Of course it wasn’t this bad right away but when I saw it was munched down quite a bit, we assumed it was a deer, gave haircuts, and hoped for the best. Well, the hair did nothing and the next day we saw rabbit  poop in the garden and all the peas were chewed down to the nub. Sigh. Very sad.

So, once all the peas were gone, I started noticing a shortage of carrot tops. I have a few beds covered but I only have so much bird netting – it is on the list to buy soon!

One bed was eaten up so much, I decided to go ahead and pull the baby carrots…better little carrots than no carrots at all 🙂 They were pretty sweet.

I also harvested a sweet red pepper and some less-than-ripe tomatoes. By the way, you can see in the photo how many of the tops were being nibbled down.

We are continuing to harvest pole and bush beans. I can’t believe the kids haven’t gotten sick of them yet! I’m not complaining though. 🙂

(some lettuce thinnings, spinach, and pole beans)(bottom of bowl filled with beans, top with lettuce)

I am SO enjoying eating greens from the garden! I love that it is organic! I love that it is free! 😀

What are you harvesting? Are you still harvesting summer veggies? Harvesting any fall veggies yet? Are you about to go crazy with the critters?

By the way, we got a cat this week (my mother-in-law’s). We are training it to stay at our house and trying to cover the crops temporarily. This cat is huge and apparently has been known to ‘take care’ of bunnies so…we’ll see. I like the fact that I am able to collect rabbit poo in the chicken run but not too excited about having rabbits in my garden, eating my favorite veggies!!!

I am linking up with Daphne’s Dandelions this week – go see what everyone else is up to!

PS. Chickens are 27 weeks old today. Anyone ever heard of healthy chickens NEVER laying? 😉