Wednesday, August 6, 2014

New babies on the farm!!!




New babies have arrived!  Two 6 week old kittens, we call them Tom & Jerry. So tiny we have to be careful not to step on them, but man, do they have energy.  They run around like mad for an hour and next thing you know, they are sound asleep somewhere. Great entertainment to watch them for sure.

19 new chicks have arrived.  18 day old chicks came in the mail to keep Fuzzball company.  Fuzzball was hatched by our chickens, Mr. Gray is his Dad and the little White and Black chicken is the Mom.  Fuzzball is two weeks old and not too excited to share her food.

Steve came home with a new baby convertible two weeks ago.  This Crossfire has a Mercedes Engine and Steve has wanted one for quite a while.  He's been searching and finally found one in Columbia MO.  He and our neighbor, Bob, drove off in Bob's Crossfire to go pick it up. Boys night for sure.  I am a bit miffed to give up my spot in the garage.  He better clean the other half before winter.

And now the garden: wax beans and cucumbers are going crazy!  I pick about 30 cucumbers every 3 days.  Every weekend I have canned 8 quarts of pickles.  We take cucs to work for lunch everyday.  Too bad this doesn't last all year.
Tomatoes are doing well also.  I planted on 16 tomato plants this year, half as much as last year, because we had so much waste.  I couldn't keep up with them.  I also have fennel, Oriental long beans, still have beats and turnips, but I will pick them this weekend.  Its getting too hot for them now.  Tomatillo's were planted from seeds so they are a bit behind this year.  Hopefully I'll be able to make a batch of green salsa to freeze for the winter.  Eggplant is still doing fine.  I grew oriental eggplant, the long skinny ones for stir fries.  I also picked my first melons, cantaloupe and watermelon.  Fantastic.  So sweet and yummy.

Renovations continue on the house and out-buildings.  Steve has been replacing windows on the house and ordered new garage doors.  Our garage doors on our big shed have gone to the fire pit, so we will replace the ones on the house and move them existing ones to the shed.  Recycling is great.
We also have finished putting our plastic mulch down in between all of our rows of veggies.  It was free from Steve's company, giant tarps, that now cover all the grass and keep weeds at bay.  Again, recycling at its best.  The company was glad not to have to pay to have them trashed, instead just loaded them in Steve's truck.

We have been eating a lot of salads these days.
My favorite is just a bowl of cut Tomatoes, sliced Red Onion, sliced Cucumber, feta cheese and a lemon  vinaigrette with olive oil,  lemon juice, and Greek seasoning.
Yummy!