August 15, 2025

 So far, this has been quite the year. I've been doing more work at the office, looking after Oliver part time, going places and weeding and putting up garden stuff. That stopped after we got back just before August and corn needed to be done up. So we did, five batches of it, three by ourselves and one each with Lorene's family and Aaron. In total we put up 36 and a half dozen ears which produced 94 quarts of corn to freeze. 

I've put some onions in the freezer, we've dug a few potatoes, I've made some pickles, mostly dill and beet. I made one batch of Bread and Butter Pickles that are mostly onions and we've frozen about 3 gallons of beans, and the rest we are just letting go to pot. We are too tired and too busy to care much. The garden didn't do very well anyway and we were gone too much. I put my swiss chard stems in the freezer for smoothies and we are starting to get a few tomatoes, but they are overtaken by water hemp or whatever that hugely tall weed is with the sticky seed heads.

I like photos with my blogs, but I accidently deleted the one I wanted, which was a annual about the color of this darker sweet potato vine that is doing well. There is some yellow thing growing nicely. I guess I better take photos of the plants to remember that way. I want them again next year. 

July 4, 2024

 I've really fallen down on the job on keeping up this blog.  I've been spending too much time knitting to the detriment of everything else. 

Our garden is going well, so are the weeds.  We've had more than usual rain this spring, 4" in this last week, and plenty before then. Other parts of the state have had more rain, plus tornados, hail and high winds. We've been fortunate to miss all of that. 

I've been putting brown wood chips on the flower gardens. I'm having my usual trouble of getting things to grow. The soil is not the best and it's shady. On a side note, the two ash trees that produce seeds, in the flower garden and the front yard got shriveled up leaves that turned black when they fell off. My son said it was emerald ash beetle. I looked it up and a fungus does the same thing. Emerald ash borer infected trees usually die top down, and fungus damaged trees grow new normal leaves. Ours regrew leaves so my diagnosis is fungus. The tree in the backyard that doesn't produce seeds, was not affected.

I have picked all the lettuce and spinach and put it in the freezer for smoothies. We've had a couple messes of beets before this and I'm using onions.  A few of the yellow onion are already affected by the usual fungus. I intend to pick more at a time than I need and freeze what I don't use. 

Today, Jim braved the mud and picked 1 3/4 buckets of beets. I pickled 5 quarts and saved a few to take to my folks. I got a white beet, the second so far. 

Jim had butchered 4 chickens and plans to do more tomorrow. 

Beet photos:

Beet greens -- not bad

I washed these beets outside, they were so muddy.

 

June 29, 2023

It's a beautiful day out today, and I hope to get out and do some more weeding in the flower gardens. 

We were gone a week and with the rain we got just before we left meant the weeds had taken over, especially the last two rows of corn which were completely hidden. We are getting a few peas now and I pulled all the spinach and lettuce because it was going to bolt soon. What we couldn't eat I put in the freezer. Our lettuce didn't come up very well at all, and the first photo is about a third of the spinach. 

We haven't had very many hot days, and a decent amount of rain, a little over 2" this month, had made weeding easy and everything, including weeds, grow. Our grapes seem to be doing well, we are out of both juice and jam. 

 

September 5, 2022

The gardening season is coming to a close. Beans are done, cucumbers are done, summer and winter squash are done, (having never gotten started because of bugs) and the tomatoes are finally getting red.  I've put up a a dozen jars of juice already and today 10 more quarts.  We bought one of those thingys that spit out juice and pulp one way and skins and seeds another.  It makes the whole process a whole lot faster. 

Part of today's.

These have been our best producers. No bugs or cracks.

Aaron and the boys (enthusiastic helpers) cut 6, SIX, mind you!! Walmart bags stuffed with elderberry heads  After reading that the stems are toxic, I painstakingly stripped the berries off to get 12 cups of the tiny berries to make jelly. I got syrup because the recipe called for sure-jell (powdered pectin) not Certo (liquid pectin) which Jim has been eating enthusiastically on toast. So I did it all again, 3 hours of picking over (no help from Jim this time) and using sure-jell, I have beautiful jelly.  I wish I could taste it. Mom has been unenthusiastic from the start, saying she had elderberry jelly when she was a girl and it was awful. I wonder if it was really elderberry, or less sugar was used, or as om said, she was a girl, not grown up.

This is how I froze most of my apples.

Jim has half the potatoes dug.  I like the Yukon Golds the best of any we've ever planted. They keep well, too, as well as you can expect any to keep in our less than ideal conditions.  We have no cellar and our basement being walkout and our storm cellar damp, we are lucky to keep any.

August is usually dry and it seems to be heading that way into September, at least for us.  Others around us have had some rain. 

 

August 9, 2022

Update on the harvest for the last couple of weeks:

I had a list of exact numbers and that was also the list of things I needed to do.  It's gone.

I made more bread and butter and dill pickles.

Our corn was done over three days and we got 87 three cup bags and two gallon ones.

Now we are doing apples which were damaged by hail earlier this summer. So far we have 8 ice cream buckets of sliced peeled apples in the freezer.  

Earlier we put three gallons of sliced and peeled apples from our yellow summer apple tree. Earlier this year in the first windstorm we had that tree fell over. Some of the roots were still connected enough to ripen the apples. 

The cows and chickens got the rest of the apples.

 

July 28, 2022

 Yesterday, corn day, pickle day, boys to camp and back again day.

We had rain on Monday and cool days since, so when I went out to pick the tiny cucumbers for dills, I got muddy, mostly from the knees down. I can still stick my foot into the sink and clean up. I could sit on the rim of the bathtub, but there is a door rail there.  When I can't get my feet up that high, I hope to be done with getting muddy. 

I got 5 jars of tiny dills, and one didn't seal. I gave some cukes to the neighbor, made cucumber salad for supper and still have plenty left.  I got 8 quarts of dill pickles and 4 of bread and butter earlier this week. I couldn't find any dill in the garden, so I bought dill weed from the store. In a spice bottle.  

Last night, Jim and Aaron shucked corn, had supper, and then cut and bagged while I cooked corn and cleaned up. Out of 13 dozen plus 5 ears, we got 37 3-cup bags to freeze. 

I was tired, my feet hurt, my back hurt, my head hurt and I was glad to shower and go to bed. 

July 25, 2022

99 This year is rolling right along with time rushing by.  The gardening bit really had a slow start with no rain, but we have had some good rains right along and the garden is doing well.  Our peas took forever to get going, but we had plenty to eat.  I don't like to freeze them; they just don't cook up very well. Our zucchini and yellow squash are dying and it looks like we aren't going to get any to do anything with.  We've had a few to eat and Jim planted some more.  The 1.05" of rain we had today will help that get started.  What chance we have to make a crop, I don't know.  We had a major infestation of bugs last fall and lost all our vine crops.  We have been using Sevin, and at the Farmer's Market last week, I got the advice to work in some insecticide in the fall, so I need to look up some options there. 

We got our first picking of beans this weekend.  We've been eating sweet corn for several days and Jim and I put up the first batch today.  It rained all morning to the point of no work getting done outside so Jim braved the wet and picked about 9 dozen and we got 18 - 3 cup bags with more to come. Jim saved the caterpillars in a separate bucket for the chickens and the cows (belong to a friend) got the cobs.  Jim had them trained and they come running when he goes down. We had a really hot spell the last couple of weeks and the cows and the pasture are suffering. This rain and extra corn leavings will be welcome. 

Peaches were at a couple year low, 99 cents a pound. I got four 25 pound boxes and froze some whole, some sliced for mom, saved a lot to eat, put a few away as smoothie fruit and canned the rest. I have written down 23 quarts and 5 pints (for mom). It seems like I made more than that. I also made three pies. One of my quarts of peaches broke just as the canner was getting up to steam.  I sure hate to waste the fruit, but that's the way it is.  As I was putting away the jars, I noticed a cracked one. I'm glad I found it early. 

Our cucumbers are going strong.  I don't really need anymore pickles. The last two years have produced an overabundance.  So far, I've made 7 quarts and 1 pint of dill pickles and 3 quarts and 1 pints of Bread and Butter pickles and we are eating as many as we can.  I like them best with a mayo, garlic, sugar sauce and save some from supper to have the next day in a sandwich for lunch.  

We are having cooler days this week and it is nice.  We opened the side vents of our French door and the new ones in our picture window and enjoyed the cool coming in from the rain as we did corn this morning. 

I enjoy the "putting up" of the produce once I get started. This has been a busy summer and the work isn't as appealing. 

August 6, 2021

We put up our last batch of corn last night.  I'm glad to be done.  During corn season we eat and eat it, and put up bags and bags, and in three weeks we are tired of it.  Jim always plants two rows at a time 2 weeks apart, and it is usually all ready with in a week.  

The tally: 1st run, 17 1/2 dozen ears of corn = 50 quart bags.

                2nd, 11 dozen ears = 33 quart bags

                3rd, 10 dozen ears = 32 1/2 quart bags, this batch was almost too mature, thus more bags.   

I pulled up most of the onions this morning.  They are larger than usual and no so very many that have that rottenness at the bottom.  That seems more prevalent with the yellow ones.  I put another gallon of beans in the freezer this week, and made more pickles, 5 1/2 quarts of Bread and Butter pickles, 4 quarts of "Caddie" pickles, which are like a "sweet and sour" pickles, and 4 quarts of dills.  

 

July 26, 2021

 I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for blogging.  This is the most useful blog, or could be if I would use it properly.  We are well into the growing season, and with the 2" of rain this month and hot, but not too hot weather, everything is growing well.

We got our second picking of beans today.  We've been eating and putting up squash for three weeks.  We've been eating our potatoes and onions.  The yellow onions are the ones that get soft and rot, but we aren't having too much trouble this year.  Jim's little yellow tomatoes are producing more than he can eat and the garden ones are just turning.  We got round-up drift onto our garden this spring.  It was terribly windy and even with the farmer stopping far into his field, we still got hit.  We lost the peas and some of our tomatoes.  

I have about 20 qts. of beet pickles.  We got two white beets out of the deal and we ate them separately to see the difference.  Not enough to write home about.  I have 10 qts. of grated zucchini and yellow squash in the freezer, three batches of zucchini bread, 2 qts. of squash slices (there will be more) and 10 pints of zucchini relish.  We got two paper grocery bags of summer apples from a friend, and we got 11 gallons of peeled and sliced apples in the freezer and I made an apple crisp.  

Jim decided to buy meat chickens this year and we put 20 in the freezer.  We have eaten or given away the other three. It's a lot more work than Jim remembered.

  

September 4, 2020

The summer is winding down with cooler nights and a few cooler days mixed in with some very hot and windy ones.  I finally have enough tomatoes to can.  I've been putting some small amounts in the freezer right along.  I made a batch of tomato soup last week, some more pickles, and 6 qts of tomato juice.  This has been a strange year for some plants. Our tomatoes were late getting started and had black spots on them, they are better now, more fruit and fewer spots.  The okra is taller than it has ever been, over 6 ft. tall.  The cucumbers have been as prolific as ever, but I haven't been too enthused, I still have pickles leftover from last year.  

I pulled up the bean plants a week ago.  They've done well enough, though, thankfully not as well as usual.  We don't eat tons of green beans around here. 

The weeds have gotten away from us, to the point of letting most of them just go.  Jim has been cutting them off and feeding them to the cows in our pasture that belong to a friend.  The pasture is pretty dry, so they relish the tender parts of the leaves.  We could use some rain. 

Jim has started to harvest potatoes.  They seem to have something wrong with them, some are rotten where they met the stem.  

Water Hyacinth--August 8th.

Bumble Bee at the Farm 

Very Tall Okra 

Front door zinnas 

August 16, 2020

As much as I love to have home grown, home canned produce put away, it is starting to get the best of me.  This week I've made another 9 qts of pickles of the usual varieties; froze another gallon of beans, grated several qts of summer squash, zuke and yellow; put some tomatoes in the freezer for making soup this winter and forgotten about the okra still in the fridge that I will slice, cover with cornmeal and either eat or freeze.  If I wait another day, we can eat it tomorrow for supper. Over two days we've picked six 3-gallon buckets and two 5-gallon buckets of lovely red apples off our tree and frozen about 17 gallons of peeled and sliced apples, canned about 10 qts of applesauce, plus one small apple crisp. 

I also have a total of 36 qts of peaches in jars, 32 frozen peaches and some chunks from some rather beat up ones for smoothies in the future.  We picked two peaches off our own tree which has a total of 13 this year, because one was pecked and the other so closely attached it was both or none.  I think they are ripe, Jim doesn't. We'll see after a taste test.

August 11, 2020

We put 118 quarts of corn in the freezer in three evenings work.  When I was a kid and helping Mom with corn, I don't remember making and eating any supper.  We just ate corn.  I should see if Mom remembers, I'm not sure Dad would have been enthused about that.

Friday evening Jim and I picked garden and Saturday spent some time going around town to see if anyone sells a steam canner.  Mine has holes in the bottom and dripping all over, so it is out.  He went to Menards and the Farms stores and I went to Walmart and Ace.  No luck, so I ordered one online, I hope it comes since they aren't out to send until the month is almost over.  I still have my enamel water bath canner and after a refresher course, am using it.  I bought a jar lifter since I don't have all tall enough rack to pull all jars out at once.  Besides, that way is too heavy.  I also bought a 25# lug of California peaches. 

After that, I went to work on what we got out of the garden.  I got 3 qts of dill pickles, 6 qts of Caddie pickles, 5 qts of bread and butter pickles and put 1 qt of grated and 3 qts of sliced zucchini and yellow squash in the freezer.

Monday I put 2/3 of the peaches into 11 qts and bought 2 more lugs. 

Tuesday, I put up 6 more qts of peaches, 6 of Caddie pickles, 3 dills, 8 pints of zucchini relish and froze 2 qts grated yellow squash.  The zucchini looks better in the relish and we don't mind the yellow in bread.  For squash patties, it doesn't matter which kind.

July 31, 2020

Our sprinkler system controller got frizzled last week by lightening.  Our printer was taken out a couple weeks before.  This was just before we left for Indiana so our lawn and flower garden dried out while we were gone.  Parts of our state are in a drought and parts are getting more than enough rain.  I've been going out a little every day and weeding the flower gardens.  Jim is behind on the vegetable garden, and no wonder, we've been gone.

So far, I've put 4 qts of yellow squash/zucchini slices and 6 qts of grated in the freezer.  Jim picked all he's going to off the yellow summer apple tree and we put six very big gallon bags of slices in the freezer.  I've been picking up the windfalls for the chickens and to keep the bugs away for future years.  We have no rain, but wind and the rest of the apple are so ripe, they are falling.  

Yesterday I made beet pickles out of half the small row of beets, and got 4 1/2 qts.  We also did our first batch of corn.  Jim picked 15 dozen, after eating 8 ears for supper, the rest made 31 qts.  Fifteen of which went to Lorene's family.  Lorene was here for a steak supper, and I made green bean casserole and funeral potatoes, and cucumber salad, and deviled eggs.  Zane cut the watermelon and filled the eggs and sprinkled paprika with a heavy hand.  They had planned to eat steak a couple of days ago, and other supper plans happened.  

July, 10, 2020

Water Hyacinth -- July 3

Ready to divide into two.

Now it's two, and spreading.

T

We are eating squash now, These are volunteer hybrids.

And, our pullets are laying eggs.  

Second time for Summer Scramble

I enjoy picking small, perfect, pretty squash, until we have too many.  With some extra I made a batch of zucchini bread and put some slices in the freezer.  The sliced work well when making scramble in the winter.

September 19, 2019

Here's an update on some canning.  I got 4 lugs of peaches and canned about 30 quarts and put a couple dozen whole ones in the freezer.  We also got 14 peaches off the peach tree we planted last fall and the pie I made from them was sure good. I made three other pies as well. This must have been a good year for peaches, because our neighbor was overwhelmed with peaches and brought me about as much as I had before.  These were windfalls, so I put most of those in the freezer for toppings and smoothies.

Our grape vines also did very well, and I put 6 fat gallon bags of grapes to make into juice at other time.

Today I finished my second batch of tomato soup and I now have 40 pints of the soup.  I give it to both my daughters.  I still have a counter full of tomatoes.  I like to put them cleaned in the freezer to make into juice later, but my freezer is full so I probably just make these into juice in a couple of days.

Jim has been digging potatoes and carrots, we have winter squash yet in the garden and have let the rest go.

August 22, 2019

In spite of the rainy, hot, humid, late, cloudy and rabbity summer, what is left in our garden is growing great guns.  I'm tired of beans.  We picked about 13 gallons of beans in two pickings and I put those in the freezer.  I'm getting enough okra that I have a gallon of it sliced and cornmealed in the freezer.  The pickles are doing far too well, and I have so many left from last year that I'm tired of them, too.  I've put up at least 6 qts and 4 pints of Bread and Butter pickles, 12 qts of dills, 8 pints of cinnamon pickles, and over 25 pints of zucchini relish.

In the corn department, over four days we put up 42 1/2 dozen ears of corn resulting in 98 large quarts in the freezer.  Lorene's family helps and I'm glad to be done with it.  We have plenty to share.

Our tomatoes which were off to a bad start due to the rabbits and a new idea of putting the plants in wood chips, are putting on fruit.  We have a yellow tomato changing and the volunteer ones in the corn plants have some red ones starting to turn. I want lots this year to make plenty of soup, but I don't know.  It will depend on how soon we get frost.

I heard a cricket this morning.  The first one I've heard in about 6 years.  I don't think the cicadas are singing like they usually do, but they are around, we've seen their shells.

Our carrots are doing well, too.

July 24, 2019

This gardening season has been slow.  Starting out with a very cold and wet spring, not only were we late getting things planted, things took a long time to get started growing.  

We have had a couple good pickings of peas, and are on our second picking of beans.  I put the second picking in the freezer since we are eating yellow and zucchini squash and peas.  I don't like to freeze peas, they don't turn out very nice.  So, we try to just plant enough to eat.  

We have enough cucumbers to eat, too.  I gave a few to Lorene the other day, because Barry was disappointed I didn't have any for him the last time he was here. Jim has a cherry tomato growing in a big feed bucket on the deck.  It's doing very well, partly because it has good soil and partly because it is protected.  

The squash is doing very well.  I've made three batches of relish, three double batches of zucchini bread, and we've eaten it scrambled, sauteed, sliced and breaded, and grated in patties.  That's how we're eating it tonight.  We usually eat it every day until the plants die, and then we're tired of it and ready to wait until next year.  I am putting some sliced away in the freezer for scramble in the winter. 

If you want to know what scramble is, click here.

Jim has been experimenting with wood chip gardening, but he may have jumped the gun this year as the plants in the wood chip area, have not grown as well as the rest. Between the wood chips and the rabbits, some of our garden isn't doing as well as we'd like.  

I planted red petunias under the flag pole a couple of weeks ago and the rabbits promptly ate all the blossoms off.

I think they are the suspects here as well. 

Spiderwort

Lilies

More lilies. 

We've had plenty of rain as well.  July 8 will be a day remembered in infamy because of the flooding.  We had 5 inches of rain here.  Over the weekend we had another 2 inches.  This rain seems to all come in a hurry and there are ruts at the edges of the road, in which the rain goes merrily down making them deeper and wider each time. 

August 23, 2018

I sure haven't done a very good job of keeping close track of the garden and it's produce this summer.  I'm running out of canning jars and I'm done with pickles for the year, because I have loads left over that last year. We've put gallons of apples in the freezer from both trees, some for applesauce, some sliced and ready for pies and crisps.  The red apples we've done over the last three weeks, (the yellow ones last month,) but they are too ripe now, and are falling and will have to be picked up, unfit for any to use except for the chickens to eat.  I have about 30 quarts of sauce on the shelves and two pies in the freezer.

I've put four gallons of beans in the freezer and more may be coming. The okra is going great guns, and we're eating them and freezing them and pickling them.  I've put up more peaches.  I got a box of 25 pounds for $22 dollars.  They were beautiful peaches and I wish I could have had more, but surgery intervened. 

Our final count on the corn was 112 quarts.  It's too many just for us, but we will share with the family. 

The tomatoes are just starting up. We've had so much rain this summer.  I think we've had a decent amount every week, enough so we've done no watering since we planted the garden.  Every plant has grown over-sized and over-amounts.  We can hardly get through the tomato plants to pick them.  We are eating the yellow ones and freezing the red ones for soup or juice later.

We are eating our potatoes, carrots and onions. 
Our cantaloupe failed, we can't seem to get that right and we are waiting on winter squash.  The summer squash died early on and I didn't get enough to use or freeze as much as I wanted.

First batch of red apples, we did another batch this size. 

We wouldn't have been able without a very nice peeler/slicer.  

 First results from the apples

Our pullets are laying. So are the older hens, too, of course.  

July 21, 2018

We did our first batch of corn to freeze.  We did 11 1/2 dozen ears and got 23 qts. 

Jim got our first big picking of beans, 2 gallons.

July 14, 2018

My reminder about getting my gardening, especially my flower gardens, didn't help me get on the ball in the blogging area. 

Our spring was late and cold, and then it rained and rained and rained.  We had snow, enough to mess up a lot more of life than gardening on April 14th.  We got all the usual things planted, onions, pea (which came up poorly), potatoes, beets, okra, corn, lettuce, summer squash, tomaotes and winter squash.  There is a pumpkin plant growing from a free pumpkin we got at the National Arbor Day Foundation place last fall.  I'm putting away squash, I made 7 pints of relish today, we've eaten lots, and last night I made enough flour, egg, cracker covered baked yellow slices to eat for supper and some for the freezer.  We are eating cucumbers and I made 2 quarts of Caddie pickles and 1 quart of dills.  Our beets are in 11 quarts of pickles, and we put a couple gallons of apples in the freezer to make into sauce later, a couple of quarts ready for pies.  I made a pie to eat for Sunday. 

We are starting to get beans.

I planted a gorgeous type of lettuce that made lovely big heads like the green leaf stuff you buy at the store.  However, we don't eat much lettuce so those beautiful heads turned into enormous, leggy, bolting plants.  I save a little to eat this week and the rest went to the chickens.

I paid 89 cents a pound for some peaches, that weren't terribly good, but I hope they make good canned peaches since I got 12 quarts out of them.