Summer has come and gone, and fall has begun fading into winter since my last post about life on the homestead. I got the yard cleaned up fairly well this year, and we spent many pleasant evenings enjoying the view.
Isn't it nice? Of course the picture is never the full picture, and there were plenty of things that we didn't get cleaned up, like the deck. If we just turn our heads a little to the left...
That's our beautiful disaster! But enough of my mess, on to the latest news...
The large garter snake spent most of the summer making several appearances in and around the compost pile.
I don't have any good pictures of the many hawks that also flew around this year, but there were a lot. As my reading had suggested, they quickly took care of the voles that had moved in, once I cleaned up the voles' cover. I'm pretty sure the big garter snake helped.
The brassicas continued to grow well all year...
...but the local woodchucks and rabbits just kept coming and eating them before I could harvest anything. I trapped and relocated a few woodchucks, but never even saw the rabbits.
The strawberries and blueberries grew well enough that we had some fresh ones daily through the season, but we didn't get enough of a harvest to preserve any for the winter. Fingers crossed for a bumper crop next year.
Our cucumbers did the best they've ever done, and I managed to get several jars of dill pickles prepared. They succumbed to an insect infestation later in the summer that I just didn't have time to deal with.
The other viney vegetables did okay, but nothing really thrived. Our loofah gourds made a big vine with some pretty flowers, but only set one fruit. The same was true of our acorn squash.
Our zucchini grew well, like the cucumbers, but once the pesky rodents found them, they kept beating me to the harvest. We grew several dozen zucchini squash, but I only got to harvest about 6 of them.
Parsnips grew a lot of greens for us, but the actual roots came out more like beets, as you can see in the picture below. We usually only cook parsnips with roasted meat anyway, so we don't mind if they aren't too pretty.
The parsnip's cousin, wild carrots, grew like crazy this year. They grow as a weed locally, and they're so prolific that they make it hard to tell where I've actually sown carrots, or if the ones I've sown are the ones that are growing. Although white, like the parsnips, they have the distinct odor and flavor of carrots. Now that they're starting to produce such large vegetables, I don't mind as much if they push the other carrots out.
My corn all germinated well this year, but deer came through and ate the tops off all the early corn before I got my fences up.
The last time I replanted, I over seeded heavily, so I had plenty of extra plants to fill in the gaps when it was time to thin them. They grew very well, but deer jumped the fences near harvest time and ate ALL of it. This year, they didn't even leave me any scraps that I could gather seeds from, for next year.
Tomatoes and basil grew quite well. The basil bolted early, but we kind of like the flavor it takes on once it has gone to seed, so we don't mind too much. I harvested several pounds of Amish paste tomatoes, but never got the time to get them canned, and they ended up rotting on my kitchen floor. We still have a lot of canned tomatoes, so it's not a pressing concern yet, but next year we will be paying special attention to getting more tomatoes into storage.
We had a good patch of Hopi red dye amaranth seed itself this year, and the deer were so full from eating all my corn that they didn't have any appetite left to eat the amaranth. The other grain looking grass in the picture is foxtail, a local weed grass that tried taking over this year.
The amaranth seeds are tasty and very nutritious, but they are also very small, and harvesting them is tedious.
My dusting took care of the red beetles that had gotten after our lilies, and they put on a spectacular show all through the summer.
Not all of the lily trees flowered out, but this one you see behind me ended up growing over 7' tall!
We had a good patch of bee balm come back in the garlic bed this year, and I let it grow. Not only did it attract many types of pollinating bees and butterflies, I managed to get a few pictures of a hummingbird moth, something I'd never seen on my property before.
Our marijuana plants struggled to survive this year, and of the four females that made it through the whole season, only one of them was a substantial size. I did manage to get a cross breeding of some strains I've been trying to mix for quite a while, so I have a few seeds that I'm very excited about. So excited, I'll probably start some indoors this winter.
I managed to get all the 'dainty' plants brought indoors before our early frosts came along. This was a grueling task... most of these plants are way too large now to still call them 'dainty'. All of these are just decorative houseplants, but we love our indoor winter jungle.
We did experiment with letting one of the new bunnies out in the house. We simply left her cage open, and she did an excellent job using the litter pan in her cage. It didn't take long, though, before she started getting a little too comfortable!
Oddly, after getting comfortable, she started acting more feral, and got to be too difficult to pick up, so she's since gone back inside the cage. She chewed on the couches a bit, and ate all the plants that she could reach, but she was undeniably cute the whole time.
Of course, I ran several more logs through the sawmill, and got it dialed in really well. I can now cut slices of board that are thin enough to bend without steaming, and I'm hoping to make at least one arched doorway and possibly some large arches for a greenhouse in the near future.
My lumber pile is growing, but I still need a LOT more to rebuild the deck.
Speaking of the deck, demolition on the old deck has been coming along. I was able to use a lot of the lumber from the old deck on the new chicken coop, which has helped me save some of my freshly cut lumber.
I did find another use for some of the boards I've been cutting... they make excellent helpers for moving the chicken tractor across some of the more difficult slopes.
I got enough of the new coop done to move the chickens in, but it is still a long way from finished. It's got a roof, a roost, and four walls, so the chickens don't complain as long as I keep them fed and watered.
While we didn't harvest a whole lot of food, Hedge Witch did a good job harvesting and drying herbs and spices this season. Many of our herbs are basically weeds now, so harvesting is simple, but drying and bagging everything is still a lot of work.
Speaking of work, it was a wild season this year. We had so many problems with the work trucks, and not enough time to fix them, that I ended up using my little Honda as a service truck. This is what the trunk looks like when I get sent on a job clearing brush and trees.
I did get to see some interesting sights this year. One of the older towns on the Susquehenna River had an old car show while I was in town striping a bank, and I got to snap this pic that looks like it could've been taken in the '70s.
After a while, the problems with trucks piled up so much that I had to take my Honda out to service the broken trucks. This is what a redneck auto repair shop looks like.
This is what my poor car looks like with 500lbs of mechanic's tools stuffed in the trunk.
Although I was a bit upset about having to haul so much stuff around with my little car this year, it was a mostly relaxing work season. Below is a pic of one of the interesting places I got to stripe this year. It's an old athletic complex for Elmira College that hasn't been used for nearly a decade. This year they decided to renovate and re-open.
I had plenty of work to do at home as well, besides tearing down old deck and building new chicken habitats. Some of the usable deck needed 'minor' repair, like this section that had broken free of its fasteners and needed to be jacked back up.
We did find a little time for leisure this year. Hedge Witch and I attended a Kathleen Madigan comedy show, went out to a few dinners, and had a nice relaxing day at her brother's wedding. The wedding normally would have required our help setting this beautiful scene, but they had enough volunteers this year that our help wasn't required. This photo is just one small section of the beautiful garden at Hedge Witch's father's home.
The last 5 months have felt like a whole year, but I just kept my head up and worked through it, much like this black locust tree, which decided to sprout up from the cracks in the concrete INSIDE the shop office at my work.
That's most of the news for the year, and it feels like it took me a year to put this post together. No big deal, we got our first snow last night, so I have the whole day to waste. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed living it.
Until next time... be safe and prosperous everyone!
It's been a while since I've posted here, and I thank all of you for that! With the wealth of content we've been receiving in the Homesteading Community, it sometimes feels like there is little I can add to the community feed! I'm a little sad that I didn't have more time to post this summer, but more than thrilled that I've been able to bring OCD curation to the Homesteading community.
Being able to bring other contributors the rewards they deserve is worth more to me than any amount of upvotes.
Stay tuned for another contest coming to the Homesteading Community soon!
