All My Birdies have Flown the Coop

The largest sunflower head we had this year.

We moved Alex into his dorm yesterday with the help of his FiJi friends.... that is the Fraternity that he has pledged for....seems like a nice group of guys.  I had a few moments of panic and sadness throughout the day but he is only 15 mins. away and 2 hours after leaving him at the dorm, he and his friends pulled into our driveway to pick something up from Alex's room.  We will seem him often I am sure. 

Memphis house has had a couple more potential buyers tour it - one is still considering and not sure about the other one...they came yesterday and we have not received feed back from them yet. 

This past weekend we picked up more mulch and did some weed control on the blueberries and grapes.  We put down newspaper, then fabric weed block and then mulch....hopefully that will keep the grass from growing where we don't want it to grow.

The blackberries are ready to have another row added so as soon as we find the thing that we use to hammer down the fence posts, we will get started on that....it is hiding somewhere on the farm.  The 3 little blackberry plants we started with have really expanded nicely.

I finished mowing the back fields and even though you are only sitting on a tractor riding around, it still wears you out after a couple hours.  The tractor's power steering is not working and the bouncing around is a little hard on the back sometimes.   Every time we drive by the tractor store in Bolivar, Cris and I just sigh..... someday we will have a new tractor.

CANNING:  The pears were canned last week as well as peaches we bought at Jones Orchards.  We made a peach pepper jam that really tastes good.  Will go great over cream cheese.  We also canned about 10 jars of spaghetti sauce.  We use about one jar of spaghetti sauce a week so we figured it took 20 pounds of tomatoes to make 10 jars.... so we need about 80 more pounds of tomatoes to make a year's worth of spaghetti sauce.

SUNFLOWERS I harvested the sunflower heads last weekend.  We had ALOT of sunflowers from just a few heads we harvested last year.  They are drying out on the breezeway of our trailer on the farm.  Some of the seeds will be saves to plant next year and some will be used as 'organic' birdseed and chicken feed.  Chickens love birdseed.  No chickens on the farm yet but should have some in the Spring. 

Storage space is lacking in the trailer so we are making plans to install a pantry in the kitchen and some bookshelves in the dining area. 

FARM TO DO LIST:

• Clean up the hoop house to get ready for Fall planting
• Gutters for the trailer
• front/back deck built on trailer
• storage solutions for inside the trailer
• build garden shed near vegie fields
• addition to barn - 2 more stalls for farm equipment

This should keep us busy for a while.... 

This past weekend, the temp finally went below 95 degrees.... I actually saw an 88 during the middle of the day. Saturday evening was beautiful on the farm.... if actually felt cool.  There was a meteor shower over the weekend but it was also a full moon so Cris was only able to see a few fly through the sky. 

Cris bought some new parts for the Massey Ferguson tractor and it is now running much better.  My tractor (the Ford 8N) is still in parts in the barn from last year.  It is his rainy day project.  I bush-hogged as much of the lower fields as I could over the weekend, getting them cut so the grass will grow back in time to cut for hay in the Fall.

We have been working on controlling weeds in the asparagus, grapes, strawberries, blueberries and the fruit trees.  We are putting down weed block between the rows of asparagus and strawberries (and on the strawberry rows themselves) and then will lay mulch down over it.

The greenhouse is our project for the coming weekend - the peppers are done so we pulled those and will be canning and freezing this week.  The tomatoes were attached by hornworms and we also decided that we planted the tomatoes too close to each other so we are cleaning up that area and hopefully what the hornworms did not destroy will produce through the fall in the greenhouse.  We are harvesting tomatoes but not as many as we had hoped.  It's a learning experience

The pear trees did great for being their first year.  We have a large grocery bag full that will be canned this week as well.  There is a great pear/cranberry conserve recipe we are going to try and also a pear rosemary recipe that looks really good.

Cris and Alex installed the skirting around the modular home (ok.... pimped up trailer) and it looks more like a home now.  The front and back deck will be started in September.  We have a WELL!  They only had to drill down about 125 ft which is so wonderful!  We tested the water and it's free of all the bad stuff that we don't want in the water. 

Our remaining bee hive is gone. Not sure what happened.  Sometimes they just leave.... maybe it just got too hot for them.  We found moths in the hive and we are not sure if they caused the hive to leave or they came in after.  This type of moth eats the wax on the frames and they pretty much destroyed the frames and the honey is no good.  We have talked to other bee keepers and they have had the same problem the last few years.... It's something we hope to control a little better once we move to the farm full time.  We won't add any new hives until the Spring.

Our next meeting with our friends a Evergreen Dairy will include a speaker who will discuss saving seeds.  Should be interesting.  Our sunflowers are all in the drying out process now, still on the stalks.  When the sunflower heads turn brown, then it's time to cut them from the stalks.  I will have alot of sunflower seeds for next year.

Cris has been mushroom hunting every chance he gets.  He is finding Chanterelles at Shelby Farms in the hiking trail area and on our farm.  We can't wait for next Spring when the Morels are in season again.  

Alex heads to college next week.  His gets settled into his dorm Thursday the 25th and classes start the 29th.  He's way excited!

Our house has been on the market for a couple months.  Only 4 visitors but we know this is not the best time to sell.  Two have been looking for a house with the master bedroom on the first floor but all our bedrooms are on the 2nd.  We just have to be patient and the right buyer will come.