Squash Identification Please!

Help! What is this? Grampa Tom planted 2 rows of pie pumpkins and this is what is growing. Needless to say, Grampa Tom is not a happy camper.

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Molting

The heat threw our chickens into a molt. When under a lot of stress a chicken will shed a lot of it's feathers and slow way down on egg production. So, if you can't find our eggs in the store, it's because we ran out! They are starting to recover. Before the heat, we were getting around 230-250 eggs a day. Last week we were down to 150 a day. This week we are back up in the 175-200 range. 

Because of molts, the big boys stock pile their eggs. An egg will last up to 6 months in "A" quality condition if properly refrigerated. The sell by date you see on the package isn't 30 days from the day the egg was laid. It is 30 days since the egg was candled (checked for freshness) and packaged. As long as the egg is still in "A" quality condition, it can be packaged and sold in the store no matter how old it is. So, with most companies, the eggs you see on the store shelf can be anywhere from 1 day to 6 months old before they hit the shelves. 

We don't have the space to stock pile, and we really aren't interested in doing that. One of the draws to our eggs is that they are actually fresh eggs. When we take them to the markets or to the stores, they are rarely over a week old, and often we are reaching under the hens that day to fill an order. The longest we've ever had an egg on the property is 3 weeks, and that was when we were first starting. We don't have room for more than  2 weeks of production right now. If we get to many, the local food pantries and soup kitchens usually wind up with the extras.

Please be patient and keep looking for our eggs on the store shelves! It will be worth the wait!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Water!

No more carrying water from inside the house to my parched garden at my farmer's house! Hallelujah!

Now what am I going to do for a work out?

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

They Are Going to Live!

Getting lots of new green leaves growing on the apple trees! I'm so happy. I wasn't sure they would live!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Winter Tomatoes and Cucumbers

I'm so excited! I don't miss the moldy basement, the crumbling plaster or the impossibility of heating or cooling the old monstrosity of a farm house that was the family home, but there are a lot of things I do miss. The big south window is one of those things. When the kids were growing up, I used to plant tomatoes and cucumbers in five gallon buckets in August and bring them in just before the first frost. From there on, the kids and I played "bee" with q-tips to pollinate the flowers and we would have tomatoes and cucumbers all winter long. If you've been reading this blog for very long, you know that my farmer has a big south window. Today I made myself a trash can planter that I can move inside this winter. Here's the pictures:

A few years back, a fellow farmer's market vendor had some trash cans that she wanted to sell for $1 each. Not being able to resist such a bargain, I brought them home. Grampa Tom said "WHAT are you going to do with those?" He has no imagination! They hold trash, and flour and all sorts of stuff you don't want mice in! And now this one is becoming a window level planter for the winter. It has wheels so it will be fairly easy to get it into the house come winter.

I didn't want to spend big time bucks for enough potting soil to fill it so I took some ideas from straw bale gardening, ( http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/straw-bale-gardening.html ) my mailman's method of creating compost, and my own experience to create a growing medium that I think will work. (I cook like that too. Grampa Tom complains that you never know what I'll come up with!) 

Ingredients:

straw

manure from our pile.

some old plastic potato sacks.

and enough rocks, bricks and broken pottery to cover the bottom of the trash can.

First I created a place for water to drain to by covering the rocks and broken pottery with the old potato sacks. This will help keep the dirt from filling in the cracks between the material in my drainage area.

Then I layered it with manure

and straw

and manure

and straw

and manure

more straw

Then just for good measure, I topped it with a thick layer of Miracle Grow potting soil.

Then I filled my 2 gallon watering can

and poured it in the trash can.

I put the top on the trash can so nature can do it's magic. I hope it is done composting in the next month to 6 weeks.

Really should have prepared my planter at least a month ago, but since I just now got all this figured out, I decided to plant my seed in some growing pots for right now. I really should find some sort of tomato plant that is bred for container gardening, but I really like those Cherokee Purple tomatoes so I'm going for it. I did have some bush cucumbers. I planted these outside this summer and they do have a bit of a vine on them, but it ought to work.  I plan to put a tomato plant on one side and a cucumber plant on the other side. I will have to figure out some sort of trellising system., but I've got a while before I have to worry about that.

Will keep you posted as things develop!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Today's Haul

This is what I harvested today from the gardens that I planted and take care of all by myself. Grampa Tom has 4 times the garden space that I do. Just wanted to boast a bit!  Value: $30 tomatoes, $10 potatoes, $8 greens, $4 herbs ... Time to pick - 1 1/2 hours ... Time spent digging, planting and weeding - scary ... Satisfaction ... immeasurable!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Mammoth Sunflowers

My mammoth sunflowers are finally blooming. I will probably feed them to the chickens this year. I'm way to busy to roast them. In the past I have lightly coated them with oil, dusted them with salt and laid them out on a cookie sheet in the oven at 200 degrees for a couple of years. It's a nice treat, but like I said, I'm just super busy. 

I just don't know what in this picture makes me smile more, the beautiful sunflowers, or the sweet little boy pointing them out!

God Bless You All!

Grama Sue