REALLY GOOD WEEKEND HARVEST

So what is this?  

A farmer's market cart?  

Grocery store produce section?  

Harvest cart

Believe it or not, this is our harvest from this weekend!  Yep.  Things are coming in fast and furiously, ha.

Purple top white globe turnips

Here are the turnips.  Still a few more in the ground but this is a big first batch.  We planted these to see how things would work for us.  Um, apparently very well!  Any good turnip recipes/uses?  

Best way to store them?

Garden harvest

And here are five eggplants, some cylindra beets, okra, a few carrots, and a bunch of jalapeños!

Huge cucumber harvest

Here are the cucumbers, more than two dozen!  They are going CRAZY.  I swear, I think they grow hour by hour.  I harvested some in the morning and before we left, 10 more grew in their place. OK, so maybe I just overlooked them the first time around, ha!  I have plans for pickle making but they are growing so fast I can't keep up.  They seem a bit too long for slicing into spears, what about "sliced pickles".  Anyone have advice on that?  I know I could Google but I wondered if any tried and true canners out there have some good tips for this.  I'm definitely trying the microwave bread and butter pickles that sweet Texas Rose left in the comments last week, but that will give us a few jars, what about the rest?   

Overripe cucumbers

Speaking of, apparently I REALLY overlooked three of them.  Yep, that orange one is a cucumber!  I had no idea they turned orange.  The orange one alone  weighed a bit over 2 lbs!

Looks like we're on our way to a great season this year.  Tomatoes are still a bit up in the air, one plant looks great and they are all green but the other plant looks weaker and two of the green tomatoes on it have been eaten (possibly birds).  But we know tomatoes are resilient.  We should have zucchini this coming weekend as well.  It looks like it might be a "hiding vegetable" too.  We'll see!

RAINY WEEKEND UPDATE

When we got to the farm, it wasn't too bad.  Hot and VERY humid but overcast and a bit of a breeze.  I got a lot done and the garden haul was awesome 

(post on the that tomorrow).  

Remember when I left last weekend I sprayed a second coat of the siding cleaner?  Well here it is week later.  White and bright and clear of mold/mildew.  It works great!

But alas, all good things must come to an end and by late in the day it was getting darker and darker.  We decided to head back into town.  

Storm front moving in

Here is a view from the apartment as one of the storm cells moved over.  It didn't drop a lot of rain here in downtown but 2nd Family said it was about 3/4" of at the farm (last night). 

Fruit infused water

I took the time to make a couple more infused waters.  One strawberry and lemon...and the other one lemon and cucumber (from our garden!).   

They are SO good.  

Bacon and eggs

For breakfast this rainy morning we had some farm fresh eggs, and for those that mentioned it last time, I told 2nd Man to make them scrambled, and of course a side of some thick sliced bacon.  

Simple but delicious! 

Cats watching bird 

And best of all, we sprinkled some birdseed on the balcony and the cats have been GLUED to the windows ALL morning.  Hobart lays as flat as he can possibly get, Brisbane sits there frozen in place and slaps the window occasionally.  The dove however is not fazed.  She's got food to eat.  

Hope you are having a good weekend!

BEAT THE RAIN GAME AGAIN

We're off to the farm and the original plan was to spend the night.  But, the weather is supposed to get  possibly severe tonight and then into all day Sunday.  

Since we both have to go to work Monday, we can't take a chance of getting stuck out there in a big rain.  So it's out there today to do what we can before the weather moves in later.  2nd Family says no mowing will be necessary because we haven't had any rain in a couple of weeks and I mowed last weekend.

So we'll find some projects to do, and I'll take lots of pictures as always and check in later!

GRANDMA'S VINTAGE QUILT

Here is something I spread out recently to check out as it's been in storage for years.  This is a quilt that my Grandmother made a LONG time ago.  

It's hard to describe though.  One side is made up of random fabric squares, probably from old clothing and fabric scraps.

Just a random collection of them sewed together. The filling between the front and back is also very heavy.  But when you flip it over, the other side is...

...made up of my Grandfather's old jeans and overalls!  You can even see where there were repairs made once upon a time. 

Old blue jeans and overalls quilt

So the entire other side is just squares of blue jeans, khaki colored overalls and even the traditional blue striped ones (those are the ones I most often remember him wearing).  Needless to say, this is HEAVY, but I remember when I was little and visited them, this was my favorite one to sleep under.  

It's a different kind of quilt than you might normally see, not even sure what you'd call it other than random patchwork.  We have a bunch of the more traditional quilts as well, flowers, kittens, dutch girls/boys, stars, etc. we'll share pictures of them on the blog as we pull them out.  

Love old quilts with so many memories.  

SMALL GREENHOUSE, INSPIRATION THURSDAY

Every Thursday we like to post a picture of something we've found online that inspires us to do something similar at the farm.  

Sort of our own blog bulletin board so that we can eventually look back and someday, hopefully anyway, recreate it...enjoy!

One thing that's on the dream list for the farm is a greenhouse.  However, I go back and forth between a large(ish) size and a smaller size.  

A larger one would be nice to have the space for small trees, setting up the seedlings for Spring, etc.   But realistically, our weather here is usually fairly mild in Winter and I'm not sure we'd have a need for the space and footprint that a big one would take up.  There is not that much we'd have to put in there and that's when the small size comes back into focus.

 When we see something like this, I fall in love with small all over again.  Seems like the perfect size for holding seedlings, a few bush type plants or small saplings for a few days of freezing weather...with the added benefit of looking kinda fabulous!

Be inspired!

MACERATED DEWBERRIES OVER ICE CREAM RECIPE

Here is something else we did with our dewberries we have growing at the farm.  Weekend before last, we managed to get one more small batch.  

Fresh Dewberries

I put them in a canning jar to bring them back into town.  It wasn't enough for a cobbler or to make some jam, so we did the next best thing.

All we did was add about half a cup of sugar to the berries in a bowl.  You could use any berry in this process, they will all break down with time.

Dewberries and Sugar

Stir it all around.  We mashed a few of the berries while stirring and let the natural process of breaking down kickstart the work.

Macerating Dewberries

Of course, this natural process is called maceration.  It usually involves adding a liquid but the sugar and semi mashed berries draw out natural liquid so it's pretty close to maceration.  No cooking, just let them sit for about 30 minutes or an hour, stirring occasionally.  As the sugar breaks down the berries, it all becomes a lovely sauce with a vibrant berry flavor.

Bluebell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

Be sure to take the ice cream out of the fridge so it gets soft.  We used "Bluebell Homemade Vanilla" 

(it's a beloved Southern brand).

Dewberries over Ice Cream

All that was left to do was pour it over the vanilla ice cream and enjoy our bounty from the farm!  One of these days, we'll try our own homemade vanilla ice cream.  Might be a nice Summer treat.  

WEEKEND HARVEST GARDEN UPDATE

The garden is going so great this season!

Herb bed

The herbs I cut and harvest and then come back the next week and there they are again ready and waiting.  They sit there, perfectly neat little plants saying "harvest me" week after week.  We have basil, flat leaf parsley, oregano, chives, and lemon thyme.

Zucchini in raised bed

This is the zucchini.  It's H-U-G-E!  That's a 4x4 bed and it's almost filled up.  And COVERED in small zucchinis and blossoms.  We're going to have a LOT of zucchini.  I told 2nd Man to get some recipes for zucchini bread and whatever else we can find. 

Tomatoes!!  

We have several nice, large tomatoes, about six on this plant and four on the other.  And so far they are perfect and round.  

The cucumbers...

Have...

Exploded...

I thought I saw all of them last week when I harvested a bunch.

But apparently, I missed a few!  Oops, these are really big ones!  Any suggestions?  I'm sure these won't be the first I miss.  They are like hunting Easter eggs in that vine!

In addition to the large cucumbers on the porch railing in the previous picture, here is the rest of this weekend's harvest basket.  More cukes (normal sized), jalapeños, eggplant and even a few okra.  

 I'm not sure what we did right this year, but I literally stand in the gate of the garden and stare in hopeful wonder.  I just don't have to do much.  The automatic watering is working.  There are no weeds in the straw covered beds (and what few there are are pulled up in just moments).  The weedblock fabric is keeping the ground weed free as well. 

And, this time around at least, no bugs.

After a couple of hit and miss seasons, problems and changes, we finally have something that is working.  If it keeps up like this, we'll open up the other side next year.  OK, maybe too early to think ahead.

I'll catch up comments tonight!

RANDOM FARM WEEKEND UPDATE

We've noticed that the farmhouse has an odd smell when we open it back up on the weekend.  It's always a week at least, sometimes two weeks if it's a monsoon raining weekend and so the house sits sealed up for days.  It has a musty kind of odor.  We always open the windows when it's nice weather and let the house air out but then it's sealed up again for another week or two when we leave and the window units turned up to a high temp so they don't come on often (lower electricity bill, ha).    

DampRid

So when I was at Home Depot yesterday, I picked up a few of these.  Has anyone ever used them?  They pull moisture (humidity) and supposedly odors from the air.  They come in several different scented ones.  I didn't know if we wanted the house smelling of lavender or something like that just yet so I chose fragrance free for now.  We'll see if they make a difference next weekend.

Hose under house

Here was a quick project that made all the difference.  We don't have a faucet on the back of the house.  We'll have one at some point (later this year) but until then we needed a way to get water to the back of the house for the fruit trees mostly, but also for cleaning the house. 

So we got a long hose, I attached it to the faucet on the front of the house and then I crawled under the house from the back side to grab it and then crawled back out pulling it with me.  

Now we have backyard water!

Before Wet and Forget

The siding on the North and shady East side of the house was getting a lot of mildew on it.  I've been putting that off until we had water back there.

Now that I made that happen, we bought a product called "Wet and Forget" (thanks Mike!) and sprayed it on the house.  I let it sit for a bit and then rinsed it off with the hose sprayer.

After Wet and Forget

It worked great!  No scrubbing, just used the hose to spray it all off.  Definitely getting clearer.  Since it was particularly heavy in some spots, I sprayed a second coat to let it sit and do what the name says, wet AND protect.  

Rust-oleum Golden Sunset

While I was at the store, I picked up two cans of spray paint.  Red and yellow.  For what?  Do you remember last year when I found a couple of metal chairs?  CLICK HERE for that post.

Here is what they looked like before...

Yellow chair

And here is one of them after.  I sprayed the first one in the Golden Sunset color and after it dried, we loved it so much, we decided to make both of them yellow (instead of one red and one yellow). Since I used almost a whole can on one chair, I'll have to get another can to do the other one.  Then we'll just have to put them wherever we decide.  Currently I've been using one in the garden when I take a break.  

There was more that got done, so updates on that coming soon.  Hope you had a great weekend!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY 2017

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there...

2nd Man and I lost our Moms far too soon.  We just wish they could both be here now, enjoying time on the farm with us. We know they would have loved it.

Guest Room

 That's one reason we gave our guest room a more feminine feel to it.  We used pieces and favorite things (flowers and colors for example) from both our Moms to decorate it so we always feel them there.  

So to 2nd Man's Mom Edna and my Mom Linda, we wish them, and all of you reading this, a 

Happy Mother's Day!

ANOTHER UPDATE LATER WITH FARM STUFF!

SATURDAY OFF TO THE FARM

Last weekend, 2nd Family gave us some fresh eggs...

Farm eggs

Oh they are always so good.  Someday, we'll have our own but we have the next best thing now...fresh eggs without all the hard work, LOL!

Pancakes, eggs and bacon

So this morning we had homemade pancakes topped with wonderful maple syrup (from a very sweet friend), fresh eggs, and some wonderful all natural fresh bacon we got last weekend at a Farmer's Market.  It was a WONDERFUL way to start the day!

Beautiful weekend ahead.  Can't go to the farm tomorrow though, we have plans, so it's make the most of today.  I'm hoping no mowing today so I can focus on some other things.  Not a lot of rain this past week so the grass probably hasn't grown much.  

Hoping to finish up a couple of outside projects we'll share details of soon and cleaning the back of the house where there is mildew growing.

The breakfast of hardworking champions, LOL!

GALVANIZED TUB TRASH TO TREASURE FIND

Regular readers know that I have a new favorite place to look for bargains...our downstairs trash area!  Our building has trash chutes on every floor and they feed into a separate room, but for boxes and other things that people can't put in the chute, there is an area (indoor) near the loading dock, where people can put the things they don't want.  I've found several cool items so far.

Galvanized tub

And last week, I found this when I checked the area right before heading to the farm.  A great, large, galvanized tub!  It's nice and "worn" giving it that old look but it's still solid and intact.  Now we just have to figure out how we'll end up using it.  

Old galvanized tub

Sure there is the obvious, a planter, but we have raised beds everywhere, flowerbeds around the house and random clay pots in every shape and size. Plus we don't really want to drill holes in it in case we want to use it for something else later that needs to 'hold' the water in.  

We were kind of thinking of saving it for using outside to hold ice with drinks in it, like a cooler.  We also want an outdoor cooking area and this might make a really fun "sink" at some point.  Or a place to rinse veggies in the garden?  

Whatever we end up using it for, it was free and will serve a new purpose in its second life...