Harvest Monday

Eggplant, yellow zucchini and a lone tomato

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a lovely blog hop hosted by Dave over at Happy Acres Thanks Dave! This week's harvest is mighty thin in most areas.

Loads of Cucuzzi

There were some eggplants, a yellow zucchini and a lone tomato.The bulk of this weeks vegetables were the cucuzzi gourds. This is an edible gourd from Italy that I'm growing for the first time. So far I find it tastier than zucchini.

Esmarelda's milk production has exploded

I am not totally sure why Esmarelda's milk production has increased, perhaps slightly cooler weather combined with her kids being 5 months old and not nursing as much. 

Monday she was just half a pint short of a gallon

Tuesday night a gallon plus just over a pint

So I made the decision to start milking twice a day, to help keep her more comfortable and ward off possibilities of mastitis. She leaks slightly if she's too full and that increases the risk of mastitis.

fresh eggs

Egg production is still down, mostly the newest layers are giving me 5 a day. However I'm wondering if finding a diamondback in the big hen house has anything to do with no eggs from those girls for a couple weeks now.

 Nida's Peach

The peaches I harvested last week were getting soft ripe and delicious. Some of the bird pecked ones were beginning to rot so they went to the chickens. Most of the remainder went to my farmers market customers.

This weeks' totals (not including rots and gardener snacks)

Eggplant 1# 3 oz

Zucchini 1#

Cucuzzi 12# 4 oz

Peaches 5# 10 oz

Eggs 49

Milk

Bambi 42.5 pints or 5.75 gallons

Esmarelda 49 pints or 6 gallons + 1 pint

Farmer Friday

Picking tunas; aka prickly pear fruit

This week I realized that the prickly pear near my house were ripe so I picked about 10-12 pounds one day and about that much another day. The second batch is in the freezer waiting to be processed and there are more getting ripe.

processing prickly pear fruit

Since I'm not saving the skins or pulp (just don't have time to deal with extra projects!) I freeze them whole, then let them thaw and mash with a potatoe masher. I strain the juice through layers of cheese cloth at least three times, to get all the little glochids, the tiny hair like thorns, out of the juice.

New Goat Milk Products, lotion and sugar scrub with prickly pear

My research says that prickly pear has healing properties similar to aloe vera

different kinds of eggplant

This week's tomato harvest was negligible but the eggplants are coming on strong.

That is the 4th diamondback this summer

Watch this video and see what Freya Cat does to that snake!

Double rainbow Friday evening

Haven't gotten a lot of rain lately but the sunsets and rainbows have been beautiful

There's more from the week in this video.

Have a great weekend and stay tuned for a Harvest Monday post!!

Catching a Diamondback Rattlesnake

Well that was an adrenaline rush at oh gods thirty in the morning. I will tolerate chill rattlers out at the edges of the yard, but not close to the house or where I’m walking all day. 

Miss Teresa kindly came over and caught the snake easily. She will release it elsewhere. Hopefully I don't have any more around. This one is smaller than the one that I saw in my garden recently. That one was quite large. I blasted it with the hose and have not seen it since. I blasted this one this morning and it just seemed to make it mad, it would not leave the area.