I don't know what it is about July, but if you look back in time on my blog, you can see that I really struggle every year about this time to post every other day like I want to.
Okay, I do know what it is, it's HOMESTEAD TO DO SEASON ON STERIODS!
Don't know why I hollered just now, but I am too tired to go back and edit it.
Anyway, between socializing, doing overtime in the bakery, and farmin', this Kat is a bit stretched thin. In fact, as soon as I finish this missive, I am going to go sneak in a Kat-nap because I have been up working since 4:30AM and it's about 100 Fahrenheit outside. Those two things definitely call for a bit of a snooze.
But, this post is about what I have been up too around the farm. Well, some of it. First off, the lavender harvest has begun! My lavender harvest is split into two parts. The first is bud harvest. I grow a type of true English lavender, Angustifolia Munstead, that is good for culinary use. You want to harvest your lavender in bud stage for cooking or crafts, and the other day when I walked out into the field, some of the plants were at optimum bud stage.
So, the following morning I got to cutting, banding, and hanging. The hubs even joined in.
I will be harvesting buds again tomorrow, and then will probably leave the rest of the crop to bloom out for essential oil and hydrosol production.
Lavender isn't the only flower I have been cutting, several of the cultivars that I let my friend plant here have been sending up stems that needed cutting, so Russian statice, gomphrena, and statice joined the hanging and fun.
Thankfully, my peas got ripe right before the heat wave, so yesterday I picked and processed some peas.
My face probably looked all content during that job too, because I just absolutely adore the vibrant green of blanched peas.
Before you could say pea and bacon salad, I had my peas done and in the freezer. YUM!
Tomorrow, I also have to fertilize with fish and kelp emulsion again. It is amazing how fast those two weeks in between applications go by! This time I will be putting my special rose and flowering type on the potatoes as they have all began to bloom, which means tuber development is imminent. The potatoes look so dandy this year, and I want to harvest some gargantuan tubers for my new root cellar that we are building this August!
And on that note, I am going to cut this homestead task lookie-loo short. I am just kaput and need a bit of a recharge. Helloooooo Hammock!
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