OUR FIRST APPLE

We got this off our apple tree at the farm...

It's an Ein Shemer yellow blush apple...

But as you can see, it was tiny and of course, not edible, ha.  We know the first year you should sacrifice blossoms for root growth but this tree is still in it's container from the garden center.  I haven't been able to get it in the ground yet and this apple was hiding on the back side of the tree.  It's good to know though that it produced an apple while still in a container. This is one of the only varieties that will grow in our area/zone.

I don't know if it's too late to get it in the ground this season, or if I should wait until Fall.  We can certainly keep it protected and well watered through the Summer by leaving it in the container.  We actually have four trees still to put into the ground.

It's Friday, the weekend is here, busy for us (another graduation) and it's been wet, really wet here.

T. G. I. F. !!

GALVANIZED TUB PLANTERS, 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, hopefully anyway, recreate it...enjoy!

As we start to clean off the porch, we begin to turn to thinking of ways to have greenery and things growing.  Sure we could used clay pots (which we have a lot of) but we always feel like it should be something different.  And when I saw this idea at HOUZZ.com, we loved it.  It's a shop (somewhere) that the owners change out the plantings seasonally.  We love the use of galvanized tubs as they see much more "farm-y" (yeah, I just made that word up, ha!).  

Looks like the owner of these put some wooden feet on the bottom.  Seems pretty easy to do.  And leaving them 'natural', i.e. no painting, they would work great and look good.

We like the idea of seasonally changing plants too.  I can find these tubs all over the place here in town (several farm supply and garden / feed stores have them) so once the porch is cleaned off, this would be easy to implement.  

Now we just have to get on that...hmm, maybe in a few more weekends. 

Be inspired!

HOMEMADE VANILLA EXTRACT

2nd Man reminded me the other day that he's running low on vanilla extract and it was time to start a new batch so he'd have enough for Fall baking.  It was a rainy day so the timing was perfect!  

We've been doing this for years and it's much more economical than buying the tiny and expensive bottles at the store.  We've posted about this in prior years but for those new to the blog, here is a new post about it.

All you need is a bottle of Vodka...and 10 to 20 vanilla beans.

Get the vanilla beans onto a cutting board and open your vodka...

Pour off about half a cup of the vodka and set aside.  This is to allow space for the addition of the beans...

Slice beans lengthwise to expose the interior (be careful, they are small)...

After you slice them in half, drop the beans into the bottle...

 Pour the remaining vodka into the bottle, if it doesn't all fit, well, do whatever you wish with the extra... :-)

Homemade Vanilla Extract

That's it!  

Shake well and put in a cool, dark place.  Take it out and shake it once a week or so and just otherwise leave it alone.  It will be ready in about three months but we like to give it five to six months.  This will be ready in October/November...just in time for Fall baking!

UPDATE:  Several of you asked where I bought the beans.  Yes they are expensive at the store so we order online.  

We get ours from HERE AT TOPVANILLA.COM 

We don't get anything in return for mentioning them, this is just where we have always bought them. Prices fluctuate from year to year, depending on costs (and vanilla has gone up recently).  But they always sell fresh, shrink sealed, Madagascar beans (the best). 

Homemade Vanilla

Since I did it, after semi-daily shaking, here is what it looks like...already turning a darker color.  If you have any questions, ask away!  

STRAW MULCH FOR RAISED BEDS

EZ-Straw bale

Many thanks to one of the friends of the farm, Colleen, for giving us a heads up for this straw.  She commented about putting down straw and she gets the bags at Tractor Supply store.  We have a Tractor Supply here in town so I stopped by and found the same bag she used.  This package was $9.99.

It may not look like a lot in the bag but it's sort of compressed into it.  Now as Colleen reminded us, you always want to use straw, not hay, because hay can have seeds in it and you sure don't want to be spreading that all around your garden.  So I put the straw down, spreading it around the herbs...

And here in the larger tomato and pepper bed.  Speaking of, the tomatoes are growing well!  I am not sure if it's too late, but before I put the straw down, I planted assorted beet seeds along the sides of this bed and in the eggplant bed, I put a couple rows of assorted carrots.  I figured I'd throw caution to the wind (and seeds to the soil) and see what comes up.

Raised beds with straw mulch

I also put it in the eggplant bed and another bed that I'll be planting some plants in.  Oh, and I put some in the front bed with the persistent chives.  More herbs coming there too.  There is one bed left to weed (you can see above) but I was trying to beat the rain.

I was able to clear out these four on the other side as well.  We'll need to get a couple more bales of straw but I think we'll try that as a weed preventive.  I added several bags of GOOD soil (a raised bed blend) to them.

Side note, the black weed fabric was still down and hadn't come up.  I did put down 150 more staples all around to make SURE it would stay down. In a couple of spots, I pulled it back to check and the grass underneath was dying!

Baby steps!

RAINY DAY AGAIN

 

Well, I got out to the farm, and it was dark and overcast (not like the picture above, LOL).  When I got there, "R" from 2nd Family was burning our burn pile.  He had asked the other day if if he could (he loves doing it and theirs is burned so he needed something to do).  We were so very grateful, we haven't had a chance and it was getting out of control.

Burn Pile

This is all that's left and "R" said he'd haul off what doesn't burn. Woo hoo!  I've been avoiding the pile for a while now, and he has it all burned up except this one big long (from a tree that was downed a year ago!).  We are so grateful to have them living next to us.  For those new to the blog, we call them 2nd Family because even though they aren't family by blood or anything else for that matter, they are like a 2nd Family to each of us.  

I stayed until it was sprinkling (as evidenced by the pale green on the radar image above.  After I left, it start pouring.  Yesterday we had 2 inches of rain.  Not sure about today yet.

So I did a few things, in the garden, more on that tomorrow and I came back into town., dodging heavy rain along the way.  But it was worth it...

Steak with Oven Roasted Potatoes

...we haven't had steaks in a couple of weeks so 2nd Man went downstairs and picked up a couple!  He also got some potatoes to roast in the oven and dinner was ready when I got home.  Yum!  

We're looking at rain for the next few days...sigh...

Hope you had a great weekend!

SUNDAY MORNING

Since yesterday was family fun, today is farm fun...but, also yesterday, heavy rains came through.  See radar image below which was from Saturday at 5:42pm, the red dot being the farm.  Sigh.

  Our weather forecast for this week includes more heavy rain for several days in a row and that means next weekend will mostly likely be a washout, pun intended.  Plus we have another graduation next weekend, 'tis the season.  

I'm hoping to mow today so that if I do have to wait a couple weekends more, it won't be too bad.Mowing will be first on the list today and then I'll look into getting some more smaller details done, again, weather permitting.  

Enjoy this picture I took a couple of weeks ago, it just makes me smile. 

Happy Flowers!

GRADUATION DAY

Today is 2nd Man's niece's college graduation...

The ceremony was this morning and the party starts at 3pm. Today will be filled with the "Three F's"...Family, Food and Fun!

We're so proud of her!

So no farm today but fingers crossed that the weather holds out for tomorrow so I can spend all day there.  

Hope your weekend is off to a great start!

MYSTERY CAT

So last weekend, as I walked around the farm, just to take a break and check things out, I was taking photos of various parts of the property as I often do.

This was just one of the many photos I took that day.  I was back on the computer later, loading them and quite often, I zoom around in the pics to see more details.  When I zoomed in on this one, I saw a surprise:

This mystery cat!  

I did not recognize it as one of 2nd Family's cats but just in case, I sent them the photo.  Nope, not one of theirs and not one they have ever seen!

How weird is that?  I suppose with 11 acres, there could be some random feral cats roaming around at any given moment, but in the few years we've owned the property, we never seen one. It's not in any other photo either.

Ghost cat?  It sure was giving me the eye, LOL! 

Very strange but, being cat lovers, we're OK with a feral cat or two or three, especially if they start to take care of the mouse population.

TGIF!

ANTIQUE LAMP ID

This is a lamp that's been in the family for a long time.  It belonged to my Great Great Aunt.  We don't really know anything about it as there are no identifying markings on it that we can find.

Vintage Table Lamp

Several of you emailed me or commented after I posted the GUEST BEDROOM PHOTO TOUR and asked about this lamp.  It's unique in that there is a three way switch.  The first turn lights up the large globe on top which takes a regular bulb.  The second turn lights up the base which has a candelabra type bulb in it so that it can be used as a nightlight.  The third turn lights up both at the same time.  We're curious as to what time period it came from originally.  She had it in the 1950's from what everyone can remember but she apparently had it long before then.

Anyone ever seen anything like this?  

TWO CHAIRS AND A WATER FEATURE, 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, hopefully anyway, recreate it...enjoy!

Two Chairs and a Fountain, image via landscapingla.com

These Adirondack chairs come back time and time again in our inspiration photos.  That must be a sign of something!   We were looking at images for small water features and found this.  We can only imagine how peaceful this must be to sit and enjoy the sound of bubbling water.  

We'd love to have a small area with a water feature (has to be close enough to the house for electricity to be run to it)  and this gives us an idea of something for the future.  And of course we can get the Adirondack chairs ANYTIME!

Be inspired!

UPDATE:  I used the wrong dates when setting this up to automatically post.  Ooops! So today's post will show up tomorrow!  Thanks for pointing that out Tonya, I didn't even realize.  D'oh!

PLANTED SOME VEGETABLES

I did get some stuff planted!

I don't have the irrigation set up yet, I got it (see the picture from Saturday's post) but I didn't get to that on Sunday because of the rain so we're going to go with nature's irrigation this week and then next weekend, I can get that set up.

Raised Bed Vegetables and Herbs

I planted a few plants I got at a local nursery.  

We're only going to plant in these four, for now anyway, to see how things go this first season back to planting and gardening.  We put in two eggplants, two varieties of Asian eggplant.  Then in the longer middle bed, we have Roma tomato, Homestead Heirloom tomato, and a Jalapeño.  The further bed at the end will be herbs.  For now, I put in regular basil, a purple basil and oregano.  Will add a few more next weekend, planting the herbs that we use most.

Chives in raised bed

This is funny...I was pulling weeds in this bed to just clean it up.  Mostly grass and other types of weeds but when I pulled a bit of this, I noticed the smell immediately.  These are chives from TWO seasons ago when we had some in this bed.  I thought they were gone but they just popped up again.  So I guess we have chives now too.  Nature finds a way!  

There is another raised bed (directly behind me in the top photo) that I may put some okra in.  And if I get a wild hair, might go for some yellow squash.

Fingers crossed!

RAISED BED GARDEN CLEANED UP

 So here is what happens after 4 weeks of rain and leaving nature to take it's course...

This is the garden area.  

Out of control is an understatement...so I had to jump in and tackle it.  I'll admit, it's a bit daunting to stand there in the morning and think "I have to clean this up by the end of today".  Almost makes you want to run back into bed and sleep.  But I persevered...

 First thing I did was edge.  

I edged around all four sides of each raised bed...then around the inside of the fence...then went outside the fence and edged around it again (twice).

Then I borrowed 2nd Family's push mower and mowed everything inside.  Pushing through that tall grass with a non self-propelled mower was hard but I got it done.

Then I started putting down the weed block fabric.  We bought two 4'x300' rolls.  Since the beds are all about three feet apart from each other and the fence along the side...

...it let me run it up the side of each bed.  Then I put down a whole box (150) of lawn staples. That was a lot of bending down and then getting back up and doing it again, and again, and again.  

But behold...

The end result!  

This fabric is AMAZING stuff.  Instead of the flimsy fabric we got at the big box store that doesn't last, I researched online and this is what commercial greenhouses use as their flooring, and garden centers as well.  It is even made to use as is, you don't have to cover it.  UV resistant for years.  Basically it's the best you can buy.  It cut like a dream, it laid down easily, and even on a windy day, they stayed down without much assistance.

UPDATE:  Here is what we bought on Amazon (they had the best price): 

 DeWitt SunBelt 4x300 Landscape Fabric

Ours was the one that is about $75/roll.  Keep in mind, this particular roll is 4' wide by 300' long...so that makes it 1200 square feet.  I used a whole roll and about 40' off the other roll.

Here are a few more before and after photos...

Above is the left side before...

...and after.

Right side before...

And after...

More updates tomorrow!

AND THE RAIN CAME BACK

 What a difference a day makes...

Yesterday it was clear blue skies...

Today it was gray and gloomy with sprinkles...

I got a LOT done, not quite as much as I had hoped for because of today's weather but still a major thing accomplished, photos tomorrow.  

I did however get stung by a bee.  One of our ladies got me on the forehead, my own fault, I thought it would be a good idea to just quickly edge around the hive area with the weedeater.

They did NOT agree with THAT idea!

It was all worth it in the end though.  When I came home, this meal was waiting for me...

Steak and a side of pasta with broccolini...and a glass or two of wine.

Hope your weekend was great!

MOTHERS DAY 2016

On this Mother's Day, 2nd Man and I fondly remember our own mothers, who, while no longer with us physically, are always with us in spirit.

We know they'd love to see what we are doing at the farm (and my Mom would be constantly finding new things for us to put there, ha).  So today we say Happy Mother's Day to them and we also say it to all of you out there who visit the blog and have kids of your own, Happy Mother's Day, from us to you!  

Off to the farm again today, a lot is getting done, so excited to get major projects accomplished.  It's never-ending of course, but it will be a relief to at least have these things done.  Yesterday was all day working in and around the garden (it was a jungle).  Today I hope to get working on the flower beds around the house.  Updates later!!

Have a great day!

THE SUN CAME OUT AND DRIED UP ALL THE RAIN

Mow.

Edge.

Flower beds.

Planting.

Raised bed weeding.

Put all this down.

Install this.

It's going to be a productive weekend!

HAPPY WORKING BEES

I snapped this picture last weekend.  Now of course there is no way to know if these are ours but odds are pretty good they are from "Ariadne Hive"...

This is a weed, can't remember the name, that I saw movement around (it was on the fence line) and so I walked over there to see what was going on.  I couldn't believe it...the bees were going crazy collecting pollen.  They were digging around and at times almost "disappearing" inside it.

Very cool to see!

SUMMER FLOWER COMBINATION, 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, hopefully anyway, recreate it...enjoy!

We like looking online for color combinations that look nice.  There is something really pretty about a purple, yellow and white combination like above.  They really compliment each other. Not sure what these flowers are but we can imaging this is wonderful in person.

Anyone have any other wonderful color combinations in landscaping?

Be inspired!