4 Wheelin' Chick...

I'll bet you didn't know that chicks like to go 4-wheelin'.  I brought a chick inside to cheer Tobers up, who has a fever today.  Whippersnapper set this little cutie chick on their toy 4-wheeler and it promptly fell asleep!  I woke it up when I was taking pictures.

 She is very pretty with her wings feathering out!  She sat there for the longest time.  It was pretty cute, and the boys got a giggle out of it too.:)  

Leave it!

Evan's dog, Dolly, is pretty special to us.  In her training as a puppy we taught her the "leave it" command.  Anything she wanted with high value like a dog treat, lunch meat, toy we'd practice telling her "Leave it." and taught her to leave it along until we gave her a command that it was OK to take it.  This has been incredibly valuable as we go about our daily lives, but never more so than now that we have all these chicks everywhere!  

When we first brought home the chicks in the boxes she was keenly interested and excited about them.  So occasionally we'd tell her to "Leave it" and she'd settle right down, still looking intently but obedient to our command.

I am so impressed that Evan has been consistent with her and that she has taken to the training so well.  She is a smart dog and I am so happy we took the time to teach her some of these basic commands because it is sure making our lives much easier during stressful times like getting 200 chicks settled into their coop.

Dolly loves the chicks and wants to play, but is using restraint and watching intently.

Hopefully she continues to be a good girl around the chickens and uses her instincts for good.

The New Brooder...

We needed a larger brooder set-up in order to house the larger number of chicks we have in each batch this year.  We needed a secure, warm area to get the chicks ready for their movable pens which takes about 3 weeks from time of hatch.  So we built this structure to house the chicks and then we built an inner box with legs that houses a heat lamp to warm the chicks.  We also have a creep feeder built into the wall of the brooder that features a gutter for the feeder trough at the bottom, angled 2x6s, and plywood to keep the feed contained. 

The new brooder is on the left, the older chicken coop (with a fresh coat of paint now) is on the right.

 Inside the hover box, there are 2 heat lamps to keep the chicks warm.  The bulbs can be changed out for less wattage for less heat and the legs can be set on top of blocks to reduce temps as well.  

So far so good with this design and arrangement.:)  Chicks seem happy and warm.

Layer Chicks...

We haven't had layer chicks in a couple year and I forgot how pretty they are!  Although these gals are more beautiful than most we've ever had even as chicks. 

This is an Ameracauna chick, isn't her coloring neat even as a 2 day old chick?  

She looks like she is even wearing eye make-up.

This is a Golden Comet (red sex-link) chick.

The white/light yellow chick in the picture below is a white leghorn.

We can't wait until we start getting those beautiful farm fresh eggs again!

Tree Fort...

The tree fort has really taken shape this week!  The boys have been working really hard on it and it is quite impressive.  They have to give a big shout out to their Uncle Ray for bringing them supplies the other day.  The really brought their progress into high gear after they got materials.

They are having a great time up there even though the temps have been pretty cold these past couple weeks.  To be honest I haven't been up there yet, but Mr Wonderful tells me it is already full of all kinds of stuff.  I wonder if it looks anything like their bedrooms.  Surely not.

Whippersnapper has a BB gun up there.  Notice the window boxes!  That will look really cute with flowers this spring.

They still have the railing to finish and a few finishing touches, but it is pretty functional already.  They are really excited that they got this far too.

So there is the latest from the tree fort.  Maybe next time I will get brave and go take pictures inside of it too.

Planning Stages...

I've been busy researching, figuring, re-figuring, and getting all the orders ready for the upcoming growing season for both the garden and the chickens.  I admit, it has been pretty enjoyable for me.  I've always been one to enjoy the planning process, making different scenarios to compare ideas and options.  I find it rewarding, it probably seems borderline obsessive to most people just HOW much thought I put into these decisions, but that is ok. I hope that the extra planning time will help us make less mistakes, I always figure the more thoroughly I can plan something out and figure for mishaps or hopefully avoid some then we will be that much better off.:)  Then maybe I will be able to share some of that with others as well.  It is a special time of year when I can spend time browsing through all the garden catalogs.  There is quite a pile of them!

While I do all the planning for the season the boys are enjoying more free time than they normally have available and they've kept themselves busy with various projects.

Gopher hunting.  A lesson in patience and optimism. HaHa

Here they are working on a tree fort.

 It is really coming along and taking shape.  They are building it themselves and paying for all the materials as well.  I can't wait to show you the latest progress from today on the tree fort, but it is dark right now so you will have to wait until at least tomorrow to see them!

Anyway, back to the planning process.  Some of the things I considered where the batch sizes for the meat chickens to raise and whether or not to go with all cockerels for the broilers or straight run.  The cockerels (males) gain faster and we'd be able to shorten our production time frame by 2 to 3 weeks for the season and possibly save a little $ on feed because if they gain faster we'd be able to butcher a week earlier.  In the end we decided to go with straight run (equal male and female birds) it seems simpler to stick with what we know worked well last year at this point.  I might want to test it out next year but we figured we might as well gain some more accurate data this year doing it the way we did last year and then we will have more stats to compare it to if we change something in the future.

We also plan to order laying hens for this spring as well.  We will order some for ourselves as well as some for other locals who would like to add to the order.  We plan to order 6 white leghorns, 6 Ameraucanas, and 13 Golden Sex Link (or Golden Comets) for our own flock.  We really enjoy the Golden Comet hens, they are medium sized so they eat efficiently and lay extremely well.  The leghorns are egg laying machines but less enjoyable and more flighty but since they lay so well and eat so little they are a nice addition to the flock.  We added the Ameracaunas for some color to the egg carton, but if they end up being less prolific layers than we'd like we will sell them because we do try to keep the feed conversion to egg laying rates as economical as possible just to try to be good stewards of our resources.

We like to keep a flock of about 9-12 hens but we plan to expand just a little to offer eggs to our neighbors that have asked if we have eggs available.  At this time we decided to not have a delivery route or expand beyond just supplying close neighbors with eggs.  Our goal is usually to sell just enough to help pay for feed costs.  It will be fun to have some little layer chicks in the coop again, we don't have any layers right now as they were getting too old to lay efficiently over winter so we simplified the chores some, but I seriously regret that decision right now.  I forgot what store bought eggs were like and I miss the homegrown beauties.  I will be placing the chick orders in the next week or so for a mid March arrival.

We got the seed orders figured out and ended up ordering from 3 places and I have a list of items to purchase locally once the seeds go on a 50% discount as well.

I plan to plant about a dozen varieties of tomatoes and five varieties of peppers from seed this year.  I am going to be offering some of the extras for sale the same as last year.  It really helps to sell a few extra plants to reduce the costs of the seeds to get the garden started.   I am pretty excited about all the things we will be growing!

We also threw in a few types of flower seeds for some garden beauty and a splash of color.  I like to edge the different blocks of the garden areas with flowers to help define the main pathways and give us some fresh cut flowers all summer long.  We selected zinnias, marigolds, straw flowers, snapdragons, sunflowers, and cosmos.

We also have a fall decoration garden planned.  This is Sunshine's project, she likes to grow gourds to sell for decor in the fall.  It was a big hit last year!  So this year she has colorful Indian corn planned, as well as some fun gourds and we will also grow a large patch of pumpkins.  We can sell both the dried Indian corn as well as bundles of corn stalks for decor.  It will be a fun way to end the garden season and it will be nice to have a nice collection of fall items to decorate with here too.

That is about all for now.  Things are really coming along well and I feel really positive about the coming production season.  I hope you have some fun spring projects planned that you are excited about too!

Bee Update...

We have really enjoyed having the honeybees on our property this year.  Even more so when we came home one day to a box of honey sitting on our front porch!  We ended up with a gallon and a half of honey.  The kids have been enjoying honey, in moderation, on many things ever since.  It was funny, shortly after we got the honey, the kids all commented how they just don't think they could go back to store bought honey, we are spoiled now.  They said store honey tastes artificial somehow and that our honey tastes richer.  Interesting observation.

The honey we got likely wasn't from only our bees on the property, it was probably a combination of many hives from the local area but still it has to be better at least being this local than what you can get in the stores.

We had very few negative interactions with the bees the entire time they were here May-October.  We respected their space and they left us alone for the most part.   I really enjoyed seeing them on all kinds of blossoms in the garden, in fact that is probably why we had such great yields of a lot of the crops.

Someday I'd like to learn to keep bees, but this arrangement worked out perfectly for us!  Free honey, and the education in watching them tend to the bees.   I'd like to learn more, for instance, where do they store them over winter?  How often do they collect honey and how do they know how much to leave the bees to get through winter?

I haven't heard if they plan to bring more back next spring.  I sure hope they do, we look forward to more tasty honey!

Nature's Beauty...

The longer we live here the more blessed I feel.  I love that God blesses us with His creation on a daily basis, sometimes I overlook it or take it for granted, some days I sit in awe of it.

This photo was taken by Sunshine, it's just over our back fence in the CRP field bordering our property.  Every afternoon we have a resident herd of mule deer that cross our fence and head to nearby pine trees to hang out.  I grumble and complain about these guys tearing up my fruits trees, but then they show me their awesome display of competition.  I can't hold a grudge too long...but I can build better fences and tree protection to make sure they don't ruin the trees again!

When trying to photograph any sunset I am always reminded of how with many things in life I tend to take for granted or put off...now is the time to cherish the moments in our lives that deserve our focus.  As with a sunset the moments come and go so quickly and if I don't stop and intentionally capture it either with a camera like trying to capture the sunset or with our hearts like with in a family memory the moment is lost.  So many times I end up of putting it off for in a minute or taking for granted there will be a next time.  As I try to capture a sunset picture and realize the small window of time there is to grab the camera, find the right vantage point, and capture the moment it has already faded from it's original glorious state that caught my attention in the first place.

Slowly I am learning to stop quicker, and pay attention to the moment when it comes along.  Gradually, life seems much richer and more fulfilling somehow.

Oceans and sunsets make me feel closer to the Lord on challenging days.

Fall Happenings...

Time for a little fall season catch up session!  

Buck season went well, as you can see.  Sunshine and Mr Wonderful tagged out, Spud Man enjoyed his first year buck hunting, but wasn't able to bag a buck this year.

Sunshine grew lots of gourds this summer and she managed to sell close to $100 worth!  They made great fall decor and were a big seller on our local classifieds page.

Beautiful shapes and colors!

We've been enjoying some of our pastured meat chickens.  We rub them down with olive oil and add rosemary, sage and other seasonings...then we smoke them for a couple hours and roast them in the roaster.  Oh my goodness they smell and taste amazing.  Really need to keep more for ourselves next year.  Mmmm mmm.

I enjoyed all the fall colors before the winds picked up and blew every leaf away.  No raking leaves here!

The kids and I spotted this buck during elk season and managed to snap a quick picture of him before he took off.

Spud Man wrapped up a successful year of growing hogs.  He raised 7 in all, 2 of his own that he paid for.  We pay for the feed for his hog in exchange for him caring for the rest of the hogs we bought for our own supply and to sell.  It was a good arrangement and he is pretty excited about having money to give, save, and spend!

That is a small sampling of everything going on these past couple months.  Life is very good at Summerfield Acres!  We are finally getting some much needed family time, rest, and even a few projects worked on.  

Winter Projects...

We are excited to have Mr Wonderful home more these days.  Which in turn means more family quality time and more project time!  We have a few projects we hope to complete this winter.

First of all we are working on a bathroom remodel.  I so wisely decided that a few weeks before hunting season was a good time to demo the kids bathroom.  Someone should have reminded me of this little sign before I went and let the kids rip out the bathroom.


I've been thinking seriously about buying this sign off Etsy for our fall decor!  Check it out here .

Anyway, on with the story.  So the bathroom was demolished, down to the studs, wires and plumbing.  To ease the eye sore we put the shower curtain up along the bathroom wall to hide the mess.  I have to give myself some credit here, we did leave the toilet functional until this last week when we needed to get some demo done behind it.   There it sat a disaster.....the tub was still partially full of yet to be hauled away sheetrock pieces for a couple months.  Hmmm, well my patience got a work out as we progressed through 4 hunting seasons, weddings, hog butchering process, more hunting (you get the idea)!  Then finally, slowly but surely, progress has started in the right direction on the bathroom remodel.

So that is the #1 goal for this immediate time, get back to 2 fully functioning bathrooms...because Sunday mornings are interesting with 6 people sharing 1 bathroom!

#2 Goal~ Finish all the trim work in the kitchen.  We still have a custom range hood to design and install, lots of crown molding on the tops of cabinets, window trim, base cabinet end caps and snack bar trim work to complete.  It won't take long once we get all the wood stained and ready and a free weekend to get it completed.

#3 Start work on the shop project, even if it is just getting the plans figured out and footings dug!  We NEED a more enclosed shop.  I am afraid our investment in tools is going down the drain as they get weathered each month that passes.  Having them under a roof is good, but walls around them would be much better, especially on those wind/rain/snow days!  We need a secure place to keep our tools and supplies and it is beyond time to have a place to keep the extra freezers and frig.  Having 2 large freezers and an extra frig in the house is proving to be a little noisy at night and not very aesthetically pleasing to look at.  What is supposed to be the dining or breakfast nook in our house is full of appliances instead!  This project might have to be something we do in stages to be able to afford getting it done.  Slab first, walls/windows/doors second, wiring third etc.

#4 Fencing projects.  We need to get a few fences more fortified around here.  The back property line fence needs some serious work, the deer have really torn it up and broken every hot wire we've try to put up.  So we need something stronger, taller, and more imposing to discourage the pesky deer from using the orchard trees to remove the velvet from their horns next fall!  grrrr  We'd like to work on some more defined corrals and possibly shelters for the horses, add a couple more pens to be able to board more horses for additional income or for our own horse one day.

#5 Find my go get'em energy and motivation to do a lot of it with the kids so Mr. Wonderful won't have all the burden of trying to work on projects.

That should bring us into spring projects and I can't even think about those yet, so we will focus on getting these few things done first, heck even getting started on some of these winter projects would be good!

Power to the Chicken Coop...

The chicken coop needed power to it.  Coiling up an extension cord every time we needed to mow was a real pain.  So we decided to dig a ditch to run electricity to the coop.  We offered the boys a per linear foot price to dig the ditch for us and Tobers took us up on the offer.  He diligently dug that ditch and got it done for us.  

It will be so nice to be able to plug in the heat lamps for the chicks and keep the water defrosted with the poultry water heater.  Spud Man also dug a ditch to the main pasture gate where we have the electric fence charger.  Having those power outlets available outside will be so nice for years to come!

Canning Season...

Last Friday we went on our almost annual trip to pick fruit and prepare for the busiest canning week of our entire year.  We were able to pick 2 varieties of peaches, nectarines, pears, and a few gala apples for fresh eating over the next few weeks.

We had a nice time on the outing, it amazes us every year how little time it takes to pick over 600 lbs of fruit.  We saved our fruit boxes from years past so they all stacked uniformly in the car and had a nice gentle ride home without bruising too badly.

We canned 63 quarts of peaches the next day.  We got all the ones that were ripe done, now we are waiting for the other half to ripen enough to can, hopefully that will be tomorrow.  The canning process goes efficiently and quickly with our skilled helpers and 2 canners going at once.  We had one set up outside on the propane camp stove and one inside.

We keep work time fun and entertaining!

Before we started the peaches we got one batch of green beans canned so we could reclaim the refrigerator space they had been taking up.  After we canned peaches, we did one canner load of corn and also a batch of dill pickles.  Oh and Mr. Wonderful didn't want the peach juice to go to waste so he canned that into a jam/jelly of sorts.:)   It tastes pretty good!

I really enjoy this time of year, few things top that feeling of being prepared for winter and tighter finances that no doubt will be coming.  Knowing we've put in the hard work and that we have healthy foods for our family is comforting.  We like that we got to make some silly memories and that the kids are learning some great skills at the same time.

Socially speaking, it can be a little hard because we feel isolated while we focus on all this food preservation (partly because we are so busy, and partly because it feels like most people don't understand our desire for doing this sort of thing), but at the same time it is enjoyable enough work, it isn't so bad. I look forward to getting back to doing a little more with friends and family soon though.  I am already brainstorming an idea for a possible fall party of some kind.  Maybe, we shall see.

No More Messy Boil Overs...

I received a really cool gift for my recent birthday from a dear friend of mine.  I had to share about it because it works too well to keep to myself.

It is a silicone lid that prevents things from boiling over.  As you can imagine, on any given day I have a few things going on simultaneously and I get distracted from things on the stove on occasion.  Just the week before I received this gift I had accidentally let a pot of sweet pickle syrup boil over (really really sugary syrup I might add)!!!!  It was a huge sticky mess!  I had to lift the top of the stove and wipe it all up from under the burners, then I unplugged the burner and took out the drip bowl and washed and dried it as well.  With that time consuming mess freshly on my mind, it is safe to say, I was pretty excited to receive this gift!

Doesn't this look daring having a pot so full?  This is a tall pot of corn I am boiling to hot pack into jars for canning.  It is almost ready to boil over now!

I placed the fancy lid over it and waited, wondering if it could possibly work with the pot this full!

Here is a close up of the name of it.  Kuhn Rikon made in Switzerland.  I really like the colors too!

Here it is starting to boil hard and the foam is coming up through the center softer silicone "petals".  The "petals" almost flap the bubble down a little like it is giving it a talking to about settling down and not making a mess.:)

Here it is several minutes still on high heat when by now without the lid we'd have had a HUGE mess to clean up without this handy lid on there.  The foam never amounted to more than this even when I left it longer.  This is going to be a very handy item to have in my kitchen for sure!

A heartfelt THANK YOU to my dear friend who thought of me and got this great gift for me.  I feel loved!

If you'd like one of these handy lids, they are available HERE and they have several sizes and colors to choose from.(I receive no incentive, I am just pleased with this item!)  I am sure they are available in other places as well. 

The Busy Season...

We are entering into one of our busiest seasons yet!  Homeschool has started up in full swing and currently takes up most of my available hours in the day at least 4 days per week.  The food preservation processes are in full swing with the garden produce and with the local harvests of fruits and things.  Pretty soon activities are going to be starting back up more in church/community and we want to try to take part in some of them.  Then of course Mr. Wonderful's work schedule is fuller than ever as he tries to meet deadlines on his latest construction/excavation project.   Finally, hunting seasons will be gearing up before we know it!  Like I said, busy!

Things are very productive on the home-front lately!  This week, on top of everything else, I am crunching numbers to determine what all we need to preserve for the year's worth of food (the stuff we can reasonably preserve). We try to do the math and stick to the most productive and financially reasonably items to focus our time on for the most part.  If there is something we use a lot of that someone else can produce better or much cheaper, we save ourselves the work, and we buy in bulk instead or directly from the producer when possible.

One evening's harvest for dinner...

Pickles and sweet relish that Sunshine made!

Fresh picked corn...

Keeping the mess outside!  

Whippersnapper took pictures for me and got corn juice all over the lens....hence the soft focus effect!

Shucking corn...

Have you ever pondered about how much your family consumes per year in basic food items?  For instance we have about 8 or 9 main veggies we enjoy to have cooked or fresh most of the year.  Those would normally be zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, potatoes, onions, carrots, and lettuce/greens etc. Then there is of course corn, which always confuses me....we eat it like a vegetable, but it really isn't is it?   Do you think about how much you'd likely eat of each particular item?  I never used to!

This year, I just started thinking in general terms.  I asked myself simple questions like...."How often do we tend to buy and eat frozen or fresh broccoli from the store?" and  "If we could get it really cheap, would we eat even more than we do now?"  Then I started to break it down from there to figure out how much we need  to get put up for "winter" (really all year until we can harvest again from the garden next summer)!  I set a goal of 40 quart bags of frozen broccoli because it wasn't likely we'd have it once per week normally if I was buying it from the store.  Then as the season rolled on we realized we were able to surpass the goal of those 40 quart bags.  Yet, the broccoli was still going strong.  So we upped it to 60 quarts.  This worked out really well because the green beans are not producing like we'd hoped and we will have to make up for that with something extra in the veggies category, like broccoli!  Plus with extra broccoli we can enjoy a little more broccoli cheese soup than we might have normally, mmmm mmm. Once we hit that goal, we will be happy to give lots away (we've already given quite a bit away), and maybe sell some as well to help re-coop the costs of the seed starting supplies in the spring.  Money is always tight that time of year, yet getting those starts going is important for the later crops to flourish and produce the next year's food supply.

Then we have the fruits we enjoy, we LOVE fruit and consume quite a lot as a family~

Peaches~ Mostly we enjoy canned and eaten fresh when in season of course.

Pears~  Canned pear slices, as well as pearsauce which is like applesauce, and dried pears too.

Apples~ Canned applesauce (LOTS!) and apple butter and maybe a few jars of apple pie filling.

Cherries~  We enjoy them mostly fresh, but 2nd best is frozen like mini lollipops, and 3rd best canned.

Grapes~  Again the best is frozen and eaten while still frozen, that is even better than fresh for us!  We are known to buy 15++ lbs of grapes when they are in season and rock bottom priced and freeze them in a big container and snack on them during schooling or movies for weeks!

Berries of many kinds~  Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, black berries for jams, jellies, cobblers, smoothies, etc.  We like to flash freeze some on a cookie sheet and package them in bags loosely so we can take out a few here and there for muffins or smoothies without defrosting an entire quart bag of frozen berries at a time.  We eat blueberries frozen like popcorn for a snack!

Of course we enjoy other fruits fresh and canned weekly from the store that we don't have to preserve, thank goodness!  These would be bananas, mangos, grapefruits (LOTS), oranges, fresh apples, mandarin oranges in light syrup, fruit cocktail in fruit juice, applesauce (when we run out of homemade) and pineapple tidbits in fruit juice.

Those are just the fruits.  I will probably talk about veggies in a later post towards the end of the growing season once I know more what the average yield is.  Whenever we can, we also try to gather things that are essentially free like huckleberries, blackberries, morel and oyster mushrooms, and we also try to harvest animals such as elk, deer, bear, and birds such as grouse and maybe a wild turkey when we have the tags to do so.  The wild meat helps our annual grocery budget immensely.  I have a very skilled husband that doesn't need much gear each year to get the job done, which I am super thankful for.  I hunt too but not to the degree he does, now we have 2 young hunters coming up in the ranks!  Two kids are taking Hunter's Safety Classes right now in fact.  We've always cut and wrapped our own meat, (even the whole beef we bought, whew what a job!)  Processing our own meat really saves a bundle!  As I've written about previously, we raised meat chickens this year which added a sizable amount of quality protein for the year.  The pigs round out the meat selection nicely and they compliment the other game meats because we can use the fattier cuts of the pork to mix with the leaner ground game meats for excellent flavor.

All in all, I feel so incredibly blessed that we both had people in our lives growing up that taught these skills to us, that we've continued to hone the skills over the years together as a couple with our own family, and that we have the helpers that we need to make it happen efficiently!  That is a huge factor, having well trained help that isn't afraid to pitch in wherever they can!  Granted, if we didn't have so many "helpers" we wouldn't be needing to put up near as much each year either.    Funny how that works.

To some I am sure we seem crazy!  Spending all this time and effort just to put food in the pantry and freezer when we could just go to town and buy it (maybe).  There are several reasons why we don't just do that, the two main ones are money and health!  To be really honest, there isn't much REAL savings in doing it ourselves (especially when we figure in the time, which we don't) because by the time we buy the fruit, the fuel to get it home, the sugar (even in very low sugar syrups it adds up), the lids for the jars, etc.  It comes in at maybe at most 10% cheaper than conventional types probably the same or a possibly costs us a little more than it would on a really good sale at the store (how often would it be on sale when I needed it though?) and 35%++ cheaper than organic versions.  The fruit we buy is not officially organic, but it is grown on a small scale and more naturally than most commercial producers and we control what all goes into those jars and how it is handled while being processed as well.  That gives us a little more peace of mind for our health.

Another reason we go to all this work, is to teach our children something useful and memorable.  You never know when these old fashioned skills will help them make it through a tough season in their lives one day or how the work ethic they are learning will come in handy in their future career or marriage even.  Or maybe they will appreciate learn the value of food and not to waste it by seeing how much work it takes to preserve just 1 quart of food!

Having a connection to the food you are eating is a wonderful thing.  When we are harvesting things I can't help, but start thinking of how we carefully placed those small seeds in the trays of soil to start indoors all those months ago.  Then how we tended the little seedlings each and every day.  Then how we transplanted them all into larger pots and watched them take off in growth.  Oh and we can't forget the process of taking them all in and out every morning and evening to properly harden them off to fluctuating weather! Finally a warm spring day where we planted that same group of plants in the garden with high hopes of good weather to grow well.  The late night panicked trips out in the garden with piles of sheets and blankets to guard those tender plants from a late spring frost that threatens to kill all our efforts thus far.  We can't forget the diligent watering and weeding to help it flourish and the patience to wait for it to eventually produce food!   That is just to get you to the point of actually harvesting that food....

Now a different kind of work begins when we preserve or cook these foods!  All of these things are a powerful process to reflect on, especially as you enjoy that tasty meal featuring some of your homegrown items.  It connects me with thoughts of our Creator so much more than if I simply selected a can off the shelf of a store or a bag of frozen veggies from the freezer section.

Granted, there is a LOT of work that goes into this way of life, and we've had to limit what we get involved with outside of homeschool, homemaking, and farm care.  I am sure there will be many years we end up not being able to do near this much as life has a way of throwing curve balls, but for the years we can, we will celebrate all year long with thankfulness in or hearts.

Garden Bounty...

Wow!  This is really fun.  Getting to harvest all the bounty has to be my favorite thing about gardening, well it is a close 2nd to seeing the little seedlings come up anyway!

Here are a few pics from this morning's harvest session.  

I love all the colors!

This picture shows the colors of the Bright Lights Swiss Chard a little better.

To the left is a 1 Ball Squash to the right is an 8 Ball Zucchini Squash, in the middle is a couple straight neck summer squash.

Here are the side shoots we've been getting from the once harvested broccoli plants.  These plants were first harvested about 2-3 weeks ago.  These side shoots add up surprisingly fast.  Some of the side shoots are more like secondary heads and were about 3" across!  These smaller shoots, if they keep producing like this, will really help us reach our goal of 40 quart bags in the freezer for winter.:)   By the way, this red tub is a 7 1/2 gallon size and it is very handy in the garden for transporting to and from the house.  I am really glad I got it!

Here are a few peppers we harvested this morning.  We will likely donate a few of these to the local pantry because we'd only use one or two a week.  Once we get some tomatoes ripe to make salsa we will really use up the peppers I am sure.  The jalapeno peppers are about 2 weeks away from being the right size so hopefully the tomatoes will cooperate with that schedule so we can put up some tasty salsa!

This morning's green bean harvest.  Honestly we are a little disappointed in the green bean crop this year, what we are getting is nice quality and very tasty but we've had a mole eating plants left and right and there are barely enough to supply our fresh eating needs let along enough to put up for winter.  Thankfully we still have about 25 quart jars from last year so it won't take much to get us up to what we need.  

Here is our first attempt at growing celery, I am pleased with the turn out. Tobers LOVES this celery and eats it all the time dipped in peanut butter.:)

Sunshine just finished cutting the cauliflower into smaller pieces for the blanching process to get it into the freezer.  Looks like we got about 3-4 quart bags worth!

A pile of Sweet Banana Peppers too!

Thanks for following along on our harvest adventure this morning.