I've been gardening for most of my life and have been a devoted fan of organic gardening the whole time. It just makes so much more sense to work in harmony with Mother Nature than to fight her. Besides which it is better for the planet and better for our bodies. Here you can see what I'm planting and harvesting, with gardening hints and resources thrown in for good measure.
Welcome to Harvest Monday, a great blog hop hosted by Dave over at Happy Acres And why am I late to the party this week? LoL. Because I am a crazy, stubborn old lady with a one track mind sometimes.
A single yellow zuchinni, Japanese eggplant, Lemon Spice Jalapeno
Really I was getting my act together, had part of this post done, had my little video all uploaded and then forgot all about it while I dealt with all that milk.
the cucuzzi are still going strong
all the eggs are from the pullets now
All the older hens have quit laying for the winter but the new pullets are laying well.
goat milk
While milk production is slightly down due to heat cycles it is still a lot.
This weeks totals
cucuzzi 31# 6 oz
eggplant 1# 4.6 oz
eggs 43
milk
Bambi 4 gallons, 2 pints
Esmarelda 7 gallons, 4.5 pints
Thanks for stopping by, be sure to stop over at Happy Acres and see what everyone else is harvesting.
What happened to my usual Harvest Monday post? Well some crazy stuff happened last week!
It all started on Wednesday when Bambi came into heat and went on a date
This fence is trashed
And it ended with a demolished fence and two bloody bucks. So then I had to spend all my time on Friday securing a different spot for Bentley
So I wasn't able to pick any vegetables for Saturday's Farmers Market.
Things are a little bit calmer now, with more distance between the boys and so far no girls have come into heat this week. Kind of holding my breath on that.
Anyhoo Harvest Monday is a great blog hop hosted by Dave over at Happy Acres so hop on over there and see what everyone else was able to harvest!
eggs
goat milk
I did get a total of 50 eggs last week and a combined total of 13 gallons, 5.5 pints of goat milk. Whew, hopefully this week will be better!
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.
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.
Harvests this week were pretty thin. However the cucuzzi, an edible gourd from Italy is trying to make up for other things. This is the first year I have grown and eaten cucuzzi and it is a bit different from squashes. No one wanted to buy this giant at the farmers market so I cut into it when I got home. Most of the seeds in the top half were still pretty small and soft, getting bigger and harder towards the bottom. The flavor was stronger than the small one I tasted before (although I still can't describe the taste!). Since I was tired and not really in cooking mode I cut it up and took some to the goats. Only one wanted some, but it was my silly girl that eats anything. So I gave the rest to some chickens and they ate it up.
Green Knight eggplant
The eggplants are still coming in pretty good. I mostly ended up with Green Knight, but also have some other colors, having planted several different mixtures of Japanese eggplant.
eggplant harvest
harvest 8/30
Ready for the farmers market
the giant cucuzzi
It has been cooler and dryer this past week and I have had a hard time keeping up on watering, especially things in smaller pots.
One garden with a lot of tomato plants has some dead and dying plants in it. It's possibly from root knot nematodes or perhaps just not enough water. I really need to get out and do some maintenence but it's been really hard when it's hot and the UV is really high. I just can't work in the direct sun, even if it's under 100F.
This weeks harvest totals
cucuzzi 6# 11 oz
Eggplant 2# 4.5 oz
Tomatoes 2# 4 oz
Milk
Bambi 7.5 gallons
Esmarelda 4 gallons, 7 pints
AND she's still feeding triplets
eggs 5 dozen
Thanks for stopping by! I hope all your harvests are wonderful. Thanks to Dave at Happy Acres for hosting the blog hop. So much fun to see what other folks are doing and to 'visit' other gardens and gardeners, even if it isn't in person.
Welcome to Harvest Monday! This is a blog hop that I used to participate in regularly and I'm trying to get back in the swing of things here. You can see more participating blogs here; Harvest Monday
This past week I harvested about 24 pounds of prickly pear cactus fruit.
Cucuzzi gourd
Thanks to the Hollar Homestead over on YouTube for showing this new vegetable. So I knew what it was when I saw the seeds. It does however look like it might take over the world!
Eggs and bird pecked peaches
I don't think I counted the peaches, just tasted the better parts of them. They are firm ripe but not yet super sweet and juicy. However I am battling the squirrels and birds for them! The peaches are from a seedling tree I call Nida's Peach after the lady I bought it from. See more of that tree here.
Not sure what the round egg plant is, the others are Japanese in different colors
Ready to go to the Farmers Market
Not a huge haul this week, the tomatoes are petering out because it was so hot in June and July they couldn't set fruit. There are some more cherry tomatoes out there because they always come through.
So this weeks totals are;
Prickly Pear 22 pounds
Eggplant 2 pounds 8.5 ounces
Tomatoes 2 pounds 8 ounces
Zucchini 3 pounds
Cucuzzi 8 ounces
Eggs 51
Milk almost 9.5 gallons
Hopefully I'll manage to keep up this week. Enjoy the blog hop and I'll see you next time.
I skipped market last Saturday because of the weather. I really didn’t want to drive over the mountains in this mess.
It’s been a fun and exciting week with the twins.
Poor Giotto wants to go in with the babies so bad. He lies by the pen a lot, but I’ll afraid Posie might hurt him so we are taking things very slowly.
Egg production is better than ever.
It’s hard to focus on work with this much cuteness around.
I discovered some Romanesco broccoli was ready in the garden so we had broccoli cheddar soup for dinner.
What a face. This baby girl needs a name.
Goat kids aren’t the only babies around tho.
I do think they are the cutest things on the planet.
Today has been a super busy day. Salad mix.
Abundance
Arugula
Flowers
More broccoli
I also picked some spinach and baby kale. I started working on the milk stand
I delivered eggs and veg to Globe then stopped by AutoZone. The check engine light was on and they have a gadget you can use to read the codes. They’ll even give you a print out, all for free. Love these guys, they are always really nice and helpful. The codes seem to have to do with some minor stuff. I’ll run it by my mechanical guy and see what he thinks.
Got home just in time to water some seedlings, collect eggs, milk Posie, (the kids have been mostly nursing one side so the other side is too full), take out trash, wash dishes....
Give the twins their first vaccines, cook dinner, medicate the sick cat (I think he’s has a gut blockage), feed the dog, bag the broccoli....
What the second fridge looks like on Friday night.
Egg production is way up cuz, you know, it’s spring. Loving the colors this year.
Spent a lot of time watching Posie have what seemed like early labor, even making me think more than once that pushing would start any minute. Then she’d get up and eat hay. My friend and I joked she was holding out for the snowstorm predicted for Friday night.
Her due date March 9th came and went.
I thought she would literally pop. She seemed pretty serious on Thursday night. And then it quit again. They were forecasting rain Friday morning with rain and snow showers Friday night and Saturday morning. And the wind was blowing like crazy.
So I bought a new, bigger tarp and buttoned up the pen the best I could, leaving a little window for her to see out.
A lot of Friday looked like the rest of the week but more intense. Paw up a nest, lay down about a minute then get up, pee, eat hay and do it all over again. Finally about mid afternoon some strings of mucus appeared.
The sun came out in the afternoon and I hoped she’d speed things up. But nope. Didn’t get really busy until about 930 when the pushing finally started. Or corse it’s a little difficult to push a kid through a chain link panel. The little white lumps in the sac are the kids front feet.
But she moved just enough and this cute little girl was born. Posie was a great mom and cleaned her up good. I helped with a towel just because it was so cold And it was snowing!
And then she had this big boy.
It took a few minutes to get them dried off.
In about 30 minutes they were up and ready to eat. I put sweaters on them to help keep them warm because the wind was so cold.
The little boy had wobbly legs so this morning he got a vitamin shot to help. I gave Posie one too just to help her recover and so some of the vitamins would go into her milk too.
Today everyone is doing good, all their plumbing is working correctly and they seem to be eating well. I weighed them today. The buck weighs 11 pounds and the doe weighs 8.5. Me, I’m exhausted.
#appreciation
Today I’m appreciating that everything went pretty smoothly, I didn’t have to do any real intervention and everyone seems to be doing good. And nothing on the planet is as cute as a baby goat.
