We Sure Know How to Make Work for Ourselves!

This time of year there is so much to do!  Since we are really into growing our own food and homesteading, harvest time means a lot of work.   It seems like everything comes at once.  And there are plenty of other chores besides food related stuff to do too! But we sure do enjoy being self sufficient - it brings a level of satisfaction that is hard to describe.  It's the old-timey kind of lifestyle that we truly enjoy.  Today's world is getting just a little too crazy for our taste.
     For the last couple weeks, Harold has been working on tilling up the pasture.  When we had horses, the pasture was as smooth as a putting green, as they kept the weeds and grasses trimmed to the ground.  Since the horses have been gone for almost 2 years now, the pasture started to look like this:

The pasture was getting to be tall weeds, big clumps, young trees and a big mess.

Eventually it would be impossible to get into.   So Harold decided to cut and till it, so that if we wanted to plant something we could.   We don't need any more woodland.  The pastureland is too precious to waste on weeds!  Our goal is to plant a few more apple trees there, and also some chokecherry trees and Nanking cherry bushes.   Harold might even plant some corn here.   If I was 30 years younger, I would start an orchard and have a U-Pick apple business.   But we're too old for that......
     So here's what he did:

And Harold did it all with his tractor and this vintage 1940's 3 bottom plow, that we borrowed from a local farmer.

Here's Harold at work:

Plowing up sod.

So he is almost done.

The garden is really producing now.  This spring I carefully planted winter squash and pumpkins and cucumbers about 20-25 feet apart, thinking that would surely be enough room for them to expand!   Well, maybe not.  Check out this mish-mash of growth.

I guess 25 feet apart is not enough space to grow vining stuff!  Somewhere in all this mess is a bunch of cukes, pumpkins, and 3 kinds of winter squash!  What fun trying to find all of it!

The greenhouse is starting to give me plenty of tomatoes.

In another week I will have tomatoes coming out of my ears!

I've been so busy canning.  I already did peaches, pears and green beans and two kinds of pickles and potatoes.   I still need to can more potatoes, salsa, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, applesauce and make a couple more jelly varieties.   Pretty soon corn is going to be ready and that will go into the freezer.   I need to dig out carrots, and onions and leeks.

Gradually filling up the pantry. 

We had to pick all the apples from our tree, as they were starting to fall on the ground and the deer were eating them.  No way was I going to let the deer have our apples!  This year our tree gave us a huge harvest:

All of this from our tree!  I already dried plenty of them, and filled up 12 quart bags with dried apple slices.  This photo is what's left AFTER I filled up the 12 bags!

The other day I dug up onions from the greenhouse.   I still have sweet onions to dig up out there, as well as about 100 feet of garden row in the regular garden to dig up.  I planted yellow, white, red and sweet onions.

Two boxes of onions just from the greenhouse. 

Today a friend from church gave me two big boxes of apples, both large ones for pies, and smaller ones for applesauce.  Another fellow at our church gave me a bag full of big pie apples.  So I guess during my spare time this week I will be making and canning applesauce.
And of course, we are in the process of extracting honey.  We pulled about 12 supers on Friday, and we have about 15 more to pull.  All week long we will be processing honey.  We'll probably have our big honey party this weekend.  The other day Harold filled up the pick up with honey supers, which are now sitting in my kitchen.

After all the honey is done, I will be also picking dry beans and podding them out.  I planted 3 kinds of dry beans this year - pinto, red Mexican, and navy beans.  It's kind of relaxing to pod them out in the evenings.  Then there's garden clean up, more grass cutting, putting things in the freezer, market day preparation every Thursday, plus the usual house chores.   Also need to dry herbs.  Then Harold will be working with the sugar beet harvest.
     Like I say, we can sure think up plenty of work for ourselves to do!!  No boring times here!
Now, if I could just relax like my cats around here.   Here's a photo of a couple Mama cats and a couple kittens relaxing in the cool shade of tall weeds.   What a life!   Well......... they have been working hard lately getting mice! 

Taking it easy, living the good life.

And this gets you up to speed on what's going on here at Honey B Farm!

My Little Bench Project

A number of years ago our church was giving away some very old church pews that were in the basement.   The church kept a few of the best ones, and the rest were freebies if anyone wanted them.  We took 3 of them, figuring we could at least re-purpose the wood for something else.  (We did - the long boards are supports across saw horses every spring for my seedling trays in the bay window)  For several years these pews sat in my basement, lined up like in church, in front of my piano.  Folks would always tease me about my "Backwoods Baptist Church", but they did provide some seating in the basement. 
     Then one year we got the bright idea to make a little deacon's bench by cutting down 2 of the best ones to use the end pieces that were not split up too bad, and cutting down the bench to a smaller size.    We had to re-glue and re-nail and this bench sat downstairs like this for another 2 or 3 years:

I finally got tired of looking at it that way and decided to finish the project that was just waiting for "spare time" (uh, what is that??)   Besides, I needed another seat for out on my screened in porch after I rearranged everything out there.  I took a trip to the paint department of Menards and spent an hour looking at a million paint sample cards, trying to decide what color to paint it.  Finally I decided on a color called Garden Glow Green, which I thought was very appropriate for a gardening nut like me.

Front of bench (it is actually darker than it looks in this photo)

Back of bench.

  I looked around for decals to put on it - flowers - but quickly learned such things aren't really made any more.   Everything is 'peel and stick' and big wall decals and high prices, too.   I was not going to pay almost 20 dollars for a few wall stickies!  I figured I had plenty of odds and ends of paint at home, and so I'd paint my own flowers on the finished bench.   This was a real rash decision on my part because I am NOT an artist by any means!  Oh sure, I can draw very rudimentary flowers and squiggly lines - but would it look good?  After all the trouble I went through to paint this bench, I sure didn't want to mess it up!  Well, here is the finished product.   I must say it turned out just like I hoped it would!   What do you think?

The transformed church bench!

Here's another view:

Now this bench has to dry for a couple more days before I clean up the porch and put it back out there. 
     These original church pews were very old indeed, perhaps originals from the start of our little country church.   They were hand made, and even had homemade square nails!  I like to think that whoever made these pews would be pleased that they are living on.......

Getting Older and Smarter!

Now that Harold has a good tractor, he can skid logs out of the woods to cut up closer to the outdoor furnace.  So, instead of cutting up the tree in the woods, loading up the truck, driving it out, unloading it, and re-stacking the wood - now he can just bring out the logs in their entirety (after cutting off the small branches), and cut up the wood and stack it right there.   Saves the extra step of having to load and unload the pickup truck!  He used to let our Belgian horses skid the logs out of the woods, but the horses are dead and gone now and we aren't young enough (or rich enough!) to get another team of Belgians.   Harold says he doesn't have the strength to harness and train another team, and Belgians can sure go through a lot of hay in a winter!  So the tractor is a great option. 
     Winter is quickly approaching and we need to get the wood put up NOW!

Harold pulls in a huge log from our woods to cut up.  He attaches a strong chain to the log and pulls it behind the tractor.

In about 45 minutes he has felled 3 trees and hauled them into the yard to cut up!

You go, Harold!

We Have Apples!

About 6 years ago, we planted a couple of apple trees.   One died out, and this one, called Prairie Spy, survived.  This year we have lots of apples on the tree!  Finally!   Last year we got about 6 apples and the year before that maybe 3 or 4 apples and the rest were eaten by tent caterpillars.  Thankfully there were no tent caterpillars this year.   The tree is just loaded with nice apples this year and no signs of worms.  I picked some of the lowest hanging ones because the deer were eating them!  So I had to pick the ones hanging down where they could reach them.  Also, the wind was knocking some of the apples down to the ground.   I sliced into one this morning, and the seeds were brown, not white, so that means the apples are ready to eat!  How exciting to finally have a tree full of apples right in our own yard!  I usually have to scrounge around and beg for apples from anyone who has a tree.

Harold says it looks like "pie time".  I told him I wouldn't bake anything until we both lost weight.  Well, since we went on a diet in March, we have both lost weight.   I lost 15 pounds and Harold lost about 17.   I would still like to lose another 25, but I think maybe that will be after we have a pie?  We DO have to celebrate, ya know!

Check out our tree full of apples.  We don't mow the grass much around the beehives because we want the bees to have some wildflowers!

Look how thick the apples really are on the tree!

Harold says this basket of apples sure looks like "pie"!

Me and My Buddy

Since I spoke yesterday about my garden buddy Pesto, I thought I would try to take a picture of him.   He was not very cooperative.  He hates getting his picture taken - kind of like his master.   I hate that too!  In these pictures we were both hot, after picking more tiny cukes for pickles.   Harold and I spent about an hour outside in this heat, and that's about all we can take.  He gathered peas, and ripped out some non-productive yellow beans.  Also watered the greenhouse.   I just checked everything to see what needed picking. 

Me and Pesto, who won't look at the camera!

Well, Pesto is sorta looking at the camera.......

I found out that Pesto actually LIVES in the garden!  I have a stand of yarrow that never got transplanted, right in the middle of the corn patch.   He lives in there where it's shady and cool, and probably lots of mice and chipmunks.   Hopefully he is also keeping the raccoons away.

Garden Mysteries

So I was out there in the garden this morning in the "cool" of the day (not really as it is already 80 and supposed to go to 95 today) and I began to ponder several things.  Perhaps it was the heat affecting my brain, but a person does think about things all alone out there in the sunny garden.   Well, I wasn't really alone, as I had my garden buddy out there - my tom cat Pesto - but that's another story for later in this blog article.
     I was trying to pick tiny cucumbers for dill pickles.  My cucumber hills have grown into huge masses of plants, spread out in an area the size of Texas.  I would go through the plants and pick what I thought was 'everything'.   Then I get the idea that maybe I should go through the plants 'one more time' - and sure enough - there are more cucumbers!   Big ones, too!  I think:  how could I have missed those?   So I pick some more.  Of course by now my heat addled brain has decided that maybe I should go through the hills one more time again.   And would you believe there are MORE cucumbers??  Did I actually miss them the first two times around?  Am I that blind?  sigh.......I miss my grandson Jameson who was the champion "pickle-picker".   When he was about 8 years old he came to visit one summer and found baskets full of pickles that I had missed.    A person has to wonder how cucumbers can hide so well!
     Here's another mystery:  How can zucchini be only 2 inches long in the evening and grow to 10 inches long the next morning???  Can they really grow that fast?  If so, we need to extract whatever growth hormone is in zucchini and use that to cure baldness or something!
    And finally there is the mystery of how a cat's brain works.   Here  I am down on my knees pulling weeds, hands are filthy, I am sweaty, and irritable and my garden kitty decides it is time to rub against me, sit down right in my path, climb on my back, use my jeans as a "scratching post" and sit on top of tender plants and roll over on them yet!  (Pesto wiped out a whole stand of nice dill the other day doing that!) Garden kitty also plays with produce in the basket and knocks things out.   When I am walking back to the house with arms loaded with heavy baskets of veggies all carefully balanced so as not to fall out, garden kitty Pesto decides it's time to sit down right in my path and roll on his back, causing me to trip, and spill the baskets of veggies all over the place.  So I pick everything up, chase him away and yell, and he does the same thing about 100 feet later.   I tell you - there is no accounting for a cat's brain processes!  Some days Pesto is very well behaved.  But he is ALWAYS with me in the garden and greenhouse.  When I walk out of the house with baskets in hand, it's like he knows what the plan is.
     Well, time to can up those little dill pickles.....................I wonder.............should I go out and check the cucumber patch again??????

Yum! Tonight's supper

Since we made chokecherry syrup this afternoon, we had homemade waffles with chokecherry syrup for tonight's supper!  Delicious!!

Making Chokecherry Syrup

Today I made several batches of chokecherry syrup.   The Good Lord gives us beautiful chokecherries to use, and this was a pretty good year for them.   We picked some ourselves, and a dear friend also gave us a couple of buckets of chokecherries, so we had plenty to work with.  We like this syrup over pancakes or waffles or French toast or ice cream.   The native Ojibwe here on the reservation like the syrup as a dip for Indian Fry Bread, which is really good.
     There are lots of methods and recipes out there, but this is the way I make it.   For every 4 1/2 cups of extracted juice, add 6 1/2 cups of sugar and 3 T. of lemon juice.  Yes, I know, it seems like a lot of sugar, but this IS syrup you know, and the chokecherries are really tart!   Everything is brought to a boil, then boiled for 2 minutes at a full rolling boil, then de-foamed, then put into jars and processed in a water bath for 10 minutes.  To extract the juice, simply cover washed chokecherries with water to barely cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.  From time to time mash then gently with a potato masher, but be gentle.  The seeds contain an arsenic compound if cracked and you don't want that!  It's pretty hard to actually crack the pits, though, so I wouldn't worry too much.  Then strain through either several layers of cheesecloth or a jelly bag.  I use a 600 micron mesh filter first, then a jelly bag.

Beautiful dark chokecherries.   The best syrup and jelly is made with really ripe, dark fruit. 

The juice and sugar is boiled and brought to a full rolling boil for 2 minutes while stirring constantly.

Take the pan off the heat, allow to cool for a few minutes for the foam to come to the top, and skim off this foam, which is basically minerals in the solution.  If you want really nice clear syrup, you must do this.

The hot syrup is ladled into hot jars. 

A jar of beautiful finished syrup!

At this time of year, my kitchen is usually a disaster with canning jars and pots and equipment all over the place.   I truly enjoy canning and preserving and putting up the bounty of our garden and what God provides in nature.  It is a lot of work to grow and process your own food, but at least I know what's in it!  Everything we eat is organic because we cannot use sprays of any kind because of our bees.  Our bees are part of our livelihood, and we certainly don't want to kill them by using chemical sprays around here.   During August and September I am so busy in the kitchen processing veggies and fruits and also making jams and jellies and syrups.   Next on the agenda of canning this week, is to do potatoes, and make chokecherry jelly and wild plum jelly, and some tiny dill pickles.    I also need to put lots of peas in the freezer.

Good thing I have a huge kitchen to hold all the jars and equipment!

Of course, after all the mess in my kitchen from canning, then we begin honey extraction - and that's a real mess!  In about a month, we will be extracting honey for the year and will have our annual "honey party".  We invite friends and neighbors and any interested folks to come and watch and help and visit and help themselves to a buffet which I always provide.   We sometimes have about 20 people in the kitchen, plus all the bee boxes, and there is still plenty of room.   This year I plan to have a crock pot full of a hamburger/baked bean hot dish, several salads, a crock pot of cheesy potatoes, some fruit, and a couple cakes.  We expect some students and a teacher from the tribal college to come out this year, too, as they have expressed an interest in learning about bees.  Next month my kitchen will take a beating, but isn't that what a working country kitchen is for, anyway??

Look At the Greenhouse Now!

It continually amazes me how much things grow in the greenhouse!  The difference between what's inside the greenhouse and what's outside in the regular garden is like night and day.   It's a jungle in there now!  Even my regular tomato plants are about 9 feet tall.  and even though I have given them massive trimmings, they are still wide and bushy.   Here is a photo I took just about an hour ago:

The ceiling in the greenhouse is about 10 1/2 feet high, and as you can see, the tomato plants are just about that height.   We have to stand on a ladder to tie them up to the ceiling!

Here's another view of how thick they are.

And not only tomatoes are growing like crazy - check out this row of lima beans.   They are growing out of the box and spilling into the walkway.   Every one of the blossoms is growing a lima bean.  

This is half of the limas, the other half is on the other side, even bigger.

It seems like just about everything grows in the greenhouse, even stuff I didn't plant!  I had some leftover soil in a tray of petunia flowers.  I threw the soil in the corner and forgot about it.  The other day I saw that what I thought was a weed growing around the tools stored in the corner, was actually a little petunia plant! 

Cute little flower that grew from tossed out soil.

Here's a view from the back of the greenhouse.   You can hardly see the door anymore!  If you look closely by the front corner near the doorway, you can see the little petunia growing among the garden tools.

Not only are the tomatoes tall, but the pepper plants are about 4 feet high, and full of salsa peppers.

Out in the regular garden, things don't grow quite as large.  In the natural garden, the tomatoes are only 3 feet high.   What a difference a protected environment makes!

The garden is doing well, but nothing is growing as tall as in the greenhouse!  These tomatoes are about 1/3 the height of the ones in the greenhouse.

Well, so much for the greenhouse.   The bees are doing well, too.   But we have a problem with the bees drinking up all of the cat's water.   Even though we give the bees their own water, they prefer to drink out of the cat dish.   And even if we MOVE the cat's water elsewhere, the bees come back to it.   At first this scared the cats, having to work around the bees all the time, and I was hesitant to pour more water in the cat's dish because the bees would fly up in my face.    But they didn't bite, and they don't bite the cats, so I guess everyone has to "share" the water!  I think the bees really like the shallow dish.

Of course, when I walked up to take a photo of the bees on the water dish, there were about 50 bees all lined up at the edges of the pan.   But they didn't want to be photographed, I guess!  Only 6  die-hard bees stayed for the picture!  At any given time they are lined up all around the dish and the cats have to drink right beside them.