Farmer Friday

baby cucuzzi, an edible gourd from Italy

The Cucuzzi is running rampant and putting out gourds like crazy. I've been taking them to the farmers market and have had a few adventerous folks buy. Some have come back for more. Too bad the goats didn't care for them!

Maximillian Sunflower

I don't have nearly the flowers this year that I've had in the past but there are a few. The Maximillian is a periennial sunflower.

egg production is still low

Still not a lot of eggs. I have one pen laying thin shells despite using all the usual remedies. I also suspect an egg eater in that pen.

Pinto Bean doesn't feel good!

Miss Pinto Bean was showing signs of summer or silent pneumonia so I have been having to give her antibiotic shots. I caught it pretty early so hopefully she will kick it quickly.

Esmarelda

Esmarelda's milk production has jumped off the charts. Usually she gives me 2-4 pints milking just in the evening with her triplets with her 24/7. On Monday night she was huge and milked half a pint short of a gallon. On Tuesday night she at just over 9 pints. So I made the decision to start milking twice a day to keep her more comfortable and to help prevent any issues like blown teats or mastitis.

Prickly Pear Icecream

In my ice cream recipe I replaced the 1 1/2 cups of milk with prickly pear juice. It is not as creamy smooth as my regular vanilla but still was very yummy. This video below includes the recipe in the description,  you may have to watch it in YouTube.

A tiny baby lizard

faucets need new washers

Both my kitchen faucets have been dripping but the hot water had begun leaking so bad I couldn't even tighten it up enough to get it down to a slow drip. So I had to take them apart and replace the washers. Not hard, really but I did have other things to do.

trial batch of goat milk shampoo bars

early morning visitor

Friday harvest

Most of this weeks harvest was cucuzzi gourds and Japanese eggplant. And a lone yellow zucchini

Nida's peach

The peaches I picked a bit early to save from the squirrel and birds have been sitting in a flat in the living room where they would be cooler than the kitchen. Some of the bird pecked ones started rotting so I rinsed off all the good ones with a little vinegar water and put them in the fridge. They were getting soft ripe.

Never ending dishes when you do your own dairy

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you have a wonderful week. Don't forget to stop by next week for Harvest Monday, where I total up all the things I harvested during the week.

Farmer Friday

Princepe Borghesi

The cherry tomatoes are beginning to trickle in. The plants are loaded with green fruit but they are taking their own sweet time getting ripe. I think perhaps the fact that our night temperatures cooled off a bit the past couple of weeks has something to do with that.

Elephant Garlic

Elephant garlic is botanically a leek. But it looks and tastes just like a giant garlic. I cleared out an empty bed where some volunteered from a previous crop. A couple of them truly were the biggest I have ever seen, weighing over a pound each. These big plants had a little more space than I normally plant them in, so this fall I will plant my starts as much as 12 inches apart to see if I can grow them all that big. Altogether I pulled 26 pounds of Elephant garlic.

Zinnias and Marigolds

I try to plant different kinds of flowers around the gardens to feed bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, ladybugs and other helpful creatures. I also sell small bouquets at our farmers market.

interesting lizard

 I have a lot of lizards. I don't know all the kinds but have been noticing some pretty colorful ones lately. This picture isn't so good but this guy had a lot of orange on him

Black Tail Mountain Watermelon

While I did trap and relocate one of the squirrels that has been stealing all the green tomatoes, now there is one stealing all the cantaloupes and even eating the vines, So far tho it's left the watermelons alone.

a variety of squash

Last weeks haul of squash was 125 pounds, this week more like 36. Keeping them picked at small sizes helps keep the plants producing.

Black from Tula, a heritage Russian tomato

FINALLY a big tomato! Black from Tula. Was totally delicious!