Harvest Monday

Prickly Pear

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.

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!!