Harvest Monday

Fresh Goat Milk

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a blog hop hosted by Dave over at Happy Acres Thanks Dave! Milk is still the most abundant harvest this week with a total of 13 gallons and 7.25 pints. 

Japanese eggplant, Lemon Spice jalapeno

eggplant, Lemon Spice and other peppers

There were some eggplants along with Lemon Spice jalapeno and a couple of other peppers. Totals are down because it's been hot and dry and I just haven't been able to get out and water like they need it.

Cucuzzi

Still lots of cucuzzi and the vines are still going crazy. Some folks at market are adventerous and giving them a try. Leftovers go to a friend with pigs, she says they love them. Just over 6 pounds. I'm wondering if I missed some.

colored eggs

Still just getting about 7-8 eggs a day mostly from the new pullets. Giving serious thought to hatching the bigger blue ones from a couple of Legbar hens. Chicks that hatch now will begin laying in spring and will lay well most of the summer and fall when the older birds quit to molt. I just don't know if I have the time and energy....

Thanks for visiting and be sure to check out what other folks, in other parts of the world are harvesting too.

Farmer Friday

Sunday about 430am

Welcome to Farmer Friday, a recap of the past week. Saturday I went to the Superior, AZ Farmers Market, it was a good day. The weather is still too hot but we were able to be inside in their Chamber of Commerce building. Then Sunday as I was filling the kettle the faucet came off and water was shooting everywhere. But I was able to shut the water off pretty quickly and fixed it later after I did chores.

Fresh Goat Milk

I made cheese a couple of times during the week with the overabundance of milk. Most of it ends up in the freezer which is getting pretty crowded.

I spent about 2 hours on Wednesday morning cleaning up stuff in the driveway. I would really like to be able to drive all the way up to the shed and goat pen to unload feed instead of carrying it all the way up. Not happening any time soon but I'm a little bit closer.

Filling a raised bed

I haulded a lot of mostly finished compost and topped up two raised beds. It's really still too hot to plant most fall crops but I needed to make space in the compost area and I want to be ready as soon as it cools off a bit. I could add shade cloth and sprinkle a lot to get seeds going but really don't have time to babysit things right now.

Then I spent a lot of  Friday morning turning about 2 cubic yards of compost. There is still about that much more to go and then I will have room to muck out the girls pen. I will be really happy when I can get some of the hillsides fenced off for the goats. A lot less pen mucking then!

Nice wrap

I had two .22 rifles, both of which had been having issues. A friend looked at them, used parts from one to fix the other and added a nice wrap to the stock. We went up the creek to check it out. We discovered that some of the ammunition I had was the cause of jamming. It really didn't like a couple of brands at all. So we sorted all of those kinds out of the stash. I should be good now for varmint hunting.

I hope everyone has a great week. Thanks for stopping by, see you next time.

Harvest Monday

More Japanese eggplant & a lone Lemon Spice Jalapeno

Harvest Monday is a lovely blog hop hosted by Dave over at Happy Acres Thanks Dave! Not a lot to harvest this week, some Japanese eggplant, one or two jalapenos, a few other things.

Honeynut squash

Honeynut squash

Most of the Honeynut squash were ready to pick. There are still a few solid green ones out there, I don't know if they will mature properly or not because the vine looks mostly dead. But I was very happy with the ones I got. A few still had green stripes but their skins are hard and their stems are hard and dry so I think they will be fine.

Cucuzzi

More cucuzzi. The vines have gone crazy. I was thinking of beginning to chop them back, thinking it would cool off soon but we are still at the 100+ mark. I have been selling a few of them at market. Of course no one here has ever heard of them so I have to educate them. Many of those that have tried them have been coming back for more, saying they liked them, so I will probably grow some next year, just maybe in a different spot.

Fresh raw goat milk

The goats are doing well. Bambi is still at her steady 6 pints a day. Esmarelda was hitting 12 but then she came into heat which dropped her to about 8 for a couple days. It's coming back up though since her cycle is over. 

chicken eggs

While egg production is no where near what it should be for the number of birds I have, the 7 new girls are now all laying regularly. As soon as the weather cools down I will be reducing the flock quite a bit. There are too many old nonproductive birds out there, they are not even breaking even on their feed bill.

I do have a couple of Legbars which lay blue/green eggs of good size. Those girls are only about 2 years old and they are laying right now. I have been keeping their eggs back because I would like to hatch some. Birds that hatch now will start laying in spring and fall hatched birds tend to be bigger than those raised when it's warmer. They will also lay most of the summer when the older birds quit to molt. I used to do a fall hatch regularly but haven't in a few years. I'm actually not positive I have the time and energy but going to give it a shot. Worst case scenario I get overwhelmed and either find someone to raise the chicks for me or sell them off. Time will tell.

Harvest for the week of September 30th

Eggplant 1# 9 ounces

Cucuzzi 8# 12 ounces

Eggs 46

Milk

Bambi 5 gallons, .5 pint

Esmarelda 9 gallons .75 pint

Harvest Monday

Japanese Eggplant

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a blog hop hosted by Dave over at Happy Acres The summer garden is winding down and the fall garden is not yet started to any degree. It has been too blasted hot. We are back up to 100+ this past week, so I seriously doubt there will be any fall tomatoes other than a few cherry types. The heat is also slowing down bed prep and seeding of fall crops.

Eggplant & Jalapeno

Cucuzzi

There were a few eggplants and jalapenos and a lot of cucuzzi. A lot of my market customers have tried the cucuzzi and have come back for more so I'm happy for that.

The milk explosion continues

Egg production is still low

Esmarelda is still giving me 11-12 pints of milk a day and Bambi is still on her steady 6. The last new pullet has started laying so that makes 7 new steady layers. But most of the old girls quit when it got hot in the summer, then they started molting. Most of them are going to freezer camp as soon as it cools off enough to do that because I'm in the red every month for feed. 

 There are a couple of Legbars laying nice size light blue-green eggs and I'm seriously contemplating hatching chicks from them. Chicks that hatch in the fall tend to start laying in spring and lay well over the summer when the older hens quit and I have the biggest market for eggs. I'm still at war with myself over it though, will I have enough time and energy to raise them well. I don't know, I'm going to think about it some more before I actually do it. And I'm going to check with some 4H families if they'd like to hatch and raise chicks until they are big enough to sex, in exchange for some of them. I would pay for their feed in exchange for their doing the work.

Farmer Friday

Diamondback

Welcome to Farmer Friday, a little recap of my week around here. Last weekend the diamondback rattlesnake was still hanging out in the chicken house. My friend tried to catch it but it got away from her. I have not seen it in about 2-3 days now so not sure where it went.

Esmarelda before milking

The milk explosion continues with Esmarelda now up to 11-12 pints a day in two milkings. I'm just happy she is so good on the stand and is soft and easy to milk.

Pinto Bean

Bambi's daughter Pinto Bean gets a little snack after the milkers are done in the evening. The other night she did not want to get up on the stand and decided to eat her snack like this. She did eventually get all the way up but I was cracking up at her antics.

pumpkins I did not grow

I was gifted a large lot of pumpkins, some of which were a bit moldy and squishy. Those went to the chickens right away and the rest to the kitchen floor to stay coolish. I have been feeding them to the goats and chickens.

eggplant and jalapeno

There were still a fair number of eggplant and a few regular and yellow jalapeno peppers

loofah

There are several good size loofah's out on the trellis

Lemon Spice jalapeno

cuccuzi / cuccza

Not a huge amount of things going on around here this past week,just trying to keep everybody fed and watered. It was cooling off and now it's hot again. Trying to prep for fall plantings in the garden is hard when it's hitting 100+ all the time.

Don't forget to stop back by next week for Harvest Monday!

HARVEST MONDAY

1/2" didn't even wet the ground

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a great blog hop hosted by Dave over at Happy Acres I hope you stop by there and see all the wonderful gardens and harvests. Even though I got half an inch of rain, the ground was still powder dry under the surface. Which is why I tend to water even if it's trying to rain, because it almost never rains enough.

Esmarelda is still pumping out milk like crazy

Esmarelda, one of my Nubian dairy goats, has weaned her triplets and is making milk like crazy. 10 gallons in the past 7 days. While the kids were nursing I was only milking once a day and now I have to milk twice a day. The old girl Bambi gave me 6 gallons this week, milking her once a day.

Japanese eggplant

The eggplants are still going strong. I did notice as I picked this week that I must have missed some last week because there were a couple very large ones with dull skin. I decided to leave them for seed.

a handful of tomatoes

There was only a handful of tomatoes, most of which I ate with tacos.

cucuzzi

Cucuzzi is an edible gourd from Italy and it's been producing like crazy and trying to take over the whole yard. Too bad the goats didn't seem to care much for it, it'd be a great thing to grow for them.

Honey Nut squash

Last year my daughter brought me some HoneyNut squash she had been given. They are like single serving butternuts but much better and sweeter flavored. I thought maybe they were hybrids but when I looked them up online found they were supposed to be heirlooms. So I saved seeds and grew some. These three were on the ground so I picked them because I was afraid they might be get too wet and rot. The vines have quite a few more but I love these so much I'm pretty sure I did not grow nearly enough of them.

Cucuzzin obliterating the rest of the harvest

This weeks totals;

Eggplant 1# 14 ounces

Tomatoes 4 ounces

Cucuzzi 11# 11 ounces

Honey Nut 1# 1.5 ounces

Milk;

Esmarelda 10 gallons

Bambi 6 gallons

Eggs 54

Thanks for coming along and thanks Dave for hosting us. See you next time.

Harvest Monday

Japanese Eggplant & a lone tomato

Welcome to Harvest Monday, kindly hosted by Dave over at Happy Acres I was just checking out his lovely pepper harvests and hot sauce making! Around here vegetable harvests have been a bit thin. We've had a lot of days with high UV radiation this summer and once the sun comes over the hill in the morning I just can't stay outside and work. So a lot of things that should have been done didn't happen. So looking forward to cooler weather, although I'm not looking forward to actual winter.

Some peppers but I forgot to weigh them

There are a few peppers here, some cayenne, shishito and the yellow jalapeno Lemon Spice. I did forget to weigh them before stuffing them in a jar.

Fermenting peppers

I am experimenting with a lot of things this year. These fermented peppers I'm doing with Himalayan pink salt, that's why it's pinkish.

About 8 ounces of small tomatoes

Some became lunch

I had a bigger tomato ripening on the counter so it and others became lunch; sour dough toast from a local baker, tomatoes with basil and basalmic vinegar, both with a dry crumbly homemade goat cheese.

Cucuzzi

The cucuzzi were again the biggest harvest this week, 18 pounds and 4 ounces. Eggs continue to be down, with mostly just 6 new pullets laying. This weeks count was 37, not nearly enough to pay their feed bill.

Milk production is way up because Esmarelda's kids are weaning. Esmarelda gave me 8.6 gallons and Bambi gave 5.4 gallons. I've made several batches of cheese, with most of it going into the freezer for the time when I dry Bambi up. I'm planning to breed her this fall and will dry her up about 2 months into her pregnancy. I'm planning to milk Esmarelda until next fall when I'll breed her again. A lot of goat owners don't do extended lactations. I'm not sure if they don't realize it's possible, if they have a good market for selling kids or what. I don't really need to have a bunch of kids, most people near me want cheap or free or do not care about the fact that these girls are purebred, registered Nubians from good, productive bloodlines. So breeding every other year or even two suits me fine.

Thanks again to Dave over at Happy Acres for hosting the Harvest Monday blog hop. I encourage you to stop by and go see all the other harvests from different places in the world.

Farmer Friday

Can you see the Diamondback? Look for the little black & white striped tail in the circle of light

Yowza; Saturday morning I'm just bopping along, a little earlier than usual because I need to get a bunch of stuff done and get to the Globe-Miami Farmers Market. My headlamp was dimming and I was thinking that I had just replaced the batteries, but it's OK, it's almost full light now. Except in the big chicken house. That doesn't have window space to the rising sun in summer and the other side is covered in 70% shade cloth to cut the heat.  So it's still pretty dark in there. I step into a smaller compartment to drop feed in a feed and turn around to go out and it feels like I'm stepping on a chicken. Not an uncommon thing to happen, they are always getting under my feet. So I'm trying to shuffle my feet to get off the "chicken" and get my head tipped down far enough to shine my headlamp on my feet when I see the writhing of the snake.... Snake zoomed one way and I jumped the other.  I hoped it was one of the King snakes I saw earlier in the summer but nope, a Diamondback. Fortunately it slipped under the wall and stayed there until I could get away. And after the market I went and bought a new headlamp; 1000 lumens. It's almost as bright as daylight.

Gotcha!

On Sunday I went out a bit later than normal and was extra cautious. The new headlamp helped me spot it's hiding place, which was probably exactly where it had been on Saturday. My new friend Teresa came over and it had moved to another part of the hen house but Teresa was able to spot it and catch it. She relocated it far away.

drowning in milk

I made a batch of cheese on Sunday morning.

The never ending pen mucking. 

Monday was pen mucking. Never ending pen mucking.

Dried onions and fermented pickles

I dried some onions and fermented some onion and cucumber pickles

first blue egg

applesauce in the making

Tuesday and Wednesday I salvaged apples that I had bought at the store from the mark down bin as well as some brought to me by a friend. Made apple chips, applesauce, apple cider vinegar.

Stayed up late Thursday getting another batch of cheese into the press

I've been experimenting with cheese making using 'clabber' and sometimes commercial cultured buttermilk. Most have turned out well. A couple have gone to the chickens.

Mocha ice cream on it's way

When I pulled out the milk to make cheese I was able to skim off a little cream from each jar. Plus I had some in the freezer. So I thawed out the frozen cream and this morning experimented with making mocha ice cream. It was very yummy. 

Again this week the cucuzzi were the biggest harvest

mixed peppers

There were a few peppers, cayenne,  Lemon Spice jalapeno, shishito

I set up to ferment most of them into pickled peppers

I'm working on a video / blog post about making all the apple stuff, hopefully it will be out by next week. Thanks for stopping by. Don't forget to come along for Harvest Monday where I will document this week's harvests.