We went to our friend’s farm today to pick out some more cows. When we do live on the farm full time and have the fencing up, we will have four beautiful Scottish Highlands; Hyacinth, Henrietta (Hyacinth’s cousin, their moms are sisters), Mindy and another one that is a blonde beauty; forgot her name.
Today we harvested the wheat. Cris used the scythe to cut the wheat, then we gathered it onto the trailer and used the wood chipper with the medium size blade and shredded the wheat. This took the wheat kernels off the stalk. We then set up a fan next to a large container. We picked up the pile of kernels and shredded wheat by the handfuls and let it drop next to the fan. The kernels were heavy enough to drop into the container, yet the shredded wheat stalks flew away. It worked great but we will have to run through this procedure a couple more times to get all the shredded stalks removed. The wheat berries will keep forever in a tightly sealed container; you just grind the wheat as needed and the use that wheat flour within 2 weeks. The wheat was grown on 1/20 of an acre. I am not sure how many pounds of wheat berries we will end up with but we think it should be enough for a year. Kitchen Aid makes an attachment to grind wheat so that is handy.
The well has yet to be installed, which is very aggravating. We have been told the last three weeks that it will be "next week”. We are having people over to the farm to make mushroom logs on the 25th and I was sure hoping to have running water. We shall see.
The English Peas are finished for the season, they turned out great and we plan to grow a lot more next year so we can freeze them. They are not something I want to sell at the farmer’s market though unless we get a pea sheller. I don’t mind shelling peas while watching tv for our own enjoyment but it would be a lot of shelling by hand to have enough to sell at the market.
The shade cloth we put on the hoop house works great….. Too great I am afraid… we may have to remove it so the tomatoes can get more sun. It does cut down on the temperature in the hoop house though. Some of the tomato plants are taller than me and green tomatoes are starting to grow. The peppers are plentiful as well.
Weeding is a big issue with the farm. We did not put any weed block (liner) down this year and that was a mistake. Who wants to spend time weeding in 95 degree weather….not me! Nothing gets planted without weed block ever again.
TEDDY VS THE SNAKES - last week (June 11th) Teddy came up to us acting funny….. Cris went to look at his face and Teddy cried in pain. He apparently went after another snake and this time he got bit. We gave him some Benedryl and off to the vet we went. The vet gave him a steroid shot to help with the swelling. He got bit but a rather large snake from the size of the bite. We were never able to locate the snake that bit him so I guess it got away.
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