Spin In Public Day

September 15, 2012  is Spin In Public Day. Old Economy Village in Pittsburgh will be featuring a free spinning day. I won't be able to make it because we have a day planned to go to the Yankee Peddler in Canal Fulton. If their are some spinners there, maybe I can talk them into letting me spin a little in public. Happy Spinning.

Organic Peaches

Peaches are one of those fruits that just need to ripen on the tree to get the most delicious and juicy flavor imaginable. Peach trees require a sweet soil so lime should be added in the fall and top dressed with good composted manure at the drip line. I use the tiller to work the soil a little on top all around the trees' drip line and then add the amendments.  When peaches are the size of golf balls I spray with Surround, a kaolin clay that protects the fruit  from bugs. This freestone peach is Early Elberta and is the size of a baseball. Very easy to pit and freeze or can for pies. I think some more jam is in order too!

Pasture Poutry

Here are the Fry Pan special chickens 8 weeks old and out on pasture. The traveling chicken house can be moved to another location daily or as needed. We shut up the chickens at night so no critters can get them. You can see by the photo at the right how healthy they are. We are feeding them a non-GMO grower we get in the heart of Amish country.  We are hoping to butcher them at 12-15 weeks. The biggest just might go earlier for some fried chicken. Next week I am taking some of my Delaware chicken eggs to an Amish friend to be incubated for fall chicks. I'll keep the hens and we'll butcher the roosters along with our older hens for stewing and soups.

Humungous Blackberries

In the first place, does anyone know how to spell humungous? Just when I thought all was lost, concerning my small fruit, blueberries(none), red raspberries(few), more to come later this fall, the rain came and look what the blackberries did. I'll be able to make blackberry jam after all. These are the thorn less variety and they are so easy to grow and pick. My neighbor gave me the canes last year. We mulched with compost and old straw and they grew 6 ft. tall. In the spring you top last years canes which produce this years berries. The new canes you let grow until next year and the process starts all over again. Super easy berries to grow. They multiply fast so a neighbor just might be willing to share. Mummmmmm!

Got tomatoes, Gazpacho!

When the weather is hot we get tomatoes and peppers. This was a CSA share that went to our subscribers today. Since it is 95% in the shade I made Gazpacho soup for supper. This is a cold tomato soup with many ingredients chopped fine. You could serve croutons with it or some chopped  hard boiled eggs or some good goat cheese. The bulb of garlic next to the bowl is this years fresh garlic pulled about 3 weeks ago and dried. Very pungent. Yum!

Sun Lovers

This sunflower seems to ignore the fact that it hasn't rained in about 4 weeks. But just when I thought all was lost it rained. Well not really lost just withered a lot. The sweet corn tasseling right next to it is almost lying flat from the previous storm which blew sideways and left everyone without electric for days, some for over a week. I think it will be pig and goat food. We planted a second crop of bi-colored corn that should make it if we get rain now and then. At least watering the garden can be put on hold for awhile. ON an upbeat note, the tomatoes are starting to ripen.

It wasn't a tornado

"Wasn't it a mighty storm, wasn't it a mighty storm in the morning, wasn't it a mighty storm, that blew all the people away". The chorus of a blue grass song kept going through my head after the summer storm of June 2012.  At top is what our front yard looked like after, to the right is what it looks like normally. In our woods, tree tops were blown out and lots of tops were on the fences. In the little town of Somerton(just 15 minutes away) the roof of a historic church was blown off, which made national news. Three of our little chicks were crushed by the chicken tractor which should have blown away were it not for a tree right next to it that held it in place. The news said it wasn't a tornado but called it something else I've never heard of. It was the biggest storm we've had since we've lived here.  The Lord protected His children once more.