Weeding

Now that my side no longer has something jiggling inside of it when I walk, I'm tackling many garden areas that look like this:

And making them look like this!

After dozens of buckets of weeds fed to the chickens in the past few days, the back of my legs hurt so bad! This is the second time this year I've had to endure the "getting used to gardening" muscle pains. So glad to be able to do this again though! For a while there, I thought maybe I had permanently injured myself. Thank You God!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue 

Giant Turnip in Lomax, IL Tonight!

Is it real? Who knew turnips could get this big? Grampa Tom will be across from the Pink in Lomax tonight from 4 -7:30 for anyone who might want to get a peek at this baby.

He'll have lots of other goodies on his truck too! Tomatoes, (even yummy yellow ones), kale, carrots, beets, rosemary, dill, sage, parsley, oregano, eggs, green beans, kohlrabi, onions aloe plants and a peppermint plant  ... I've probably forgotten a few. Also available from other vendors will be pulled pork sandwiches, cakes, cookies, pies and Tupperware ... and again, I'm probably missing a few. 

What am I doing? Staying home to work on assessing and pulling weeds. Fun, fun!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue 

Saving Seed

I've saved seed for years -easy stuff like, cilantro, sunflowers and marigolds - but this year I am branching out. I hope to save kale, chard, tomato, pea, spinach and lettuce seed this year. 

This is my kale patch. Kale is a bi-annual plant. It takes 2 years for it to bear seed. Usually our winters do a number on kale and it never comes back, but this year it overwintered and I've got an abundance of seed pods :)

I clipped them off and put them in a bucket. Then I just stirred them around a bit.

Can you see all the black kale seed at the bottom of this bucket? It's way more than I will be able to use next year! It came off a blue curled variety, but I've got another variety that isn't quite so curled that has gone to seed this year too so the offspring will probably be a mix. We will see! I've already replanted some of it. Should know what I've got by this fall.

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue 

One Coon Less

There has been a coon stripping the peach trees. 


Last night, I went to Bible Study. On the way home, I prayed the little prayer that I usually pray when traveling at night ... LORD, please protect my car from the critters and protect the critters from my car ... I just hate killing anything and since I started praying this prayer, I think I've killed maybe 2 things in the past 15 -20 years, and then only when I've neglected to pray it for a while. 


Well, when I got near the farm last night, a coon ran out under my car and I GOT IT!  Didn't try to, but hopefully it was that rotten thing that's been stealing all the peaches. HA!

Desperation

Susie, Susie, who doos to moochie, how does your garden grow? Here it is today, but last week it was being taken over by weeds.

On May 30th, I told you all that I was back in the saddle. I then proceeded to way overdo it trying to get a handle on the weeds and wound up worse off in a few days than I had been to start off with. Grrrr... Anyway, it took me a couple of weeks of just sitting around, not doing much at all to get back to square one. By then, the paths in my garden were well on their way to looking like this:

And I was still unable to do much! So I got desperate and bought some chemical weed killer. The garden looks much better. But most of my beautiful cockscomb got bit. I lost most of it. Just have a few plants left and it seems that every day I have another one that looks like this:

Did I tell you I don't like to use store bought chemicals? Vinegar, lots of mulch and lots more good old fashioned weed pulling are so much better. But ... sometimes you just have to do what you have to do :(

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue 

Lost Pleasures

Yes, I understand that car seats and seat belts are so much safer, but one of my favorite memories from my youth was riding around in the back of a pick-up truck. It's not quite the same as going down the highway at 65mph with the wind blowing in your hair, but farm kids still get a taste of this forbidden pleasure at walking speed going from place to place on the farm.

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue 

Oregano

Many medicinal uses for oregano. I usually have this at the markets!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNDck2PDRqo&feature=share

Carrot Patch

Thinned out my carrot patch Friday morning. 

Lots of little carrots, but quite a few decent sized ones too!

Thinning always feels like such a waste of good plants, but if you don't do it, you won't have anything.

Thank God for my chickens! They take so much of the trauma out of it. I just don't know how people live without chickens!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue