Full of Beans!

I have started harvesting my dry bean crop.   For several days now Harold and I have been picking and podding out dry bean pods.  Every year I grow several varieties of beans, and this year I grew Mexican red beans, Topaz pintos, navy beans, Jacob's Cattle beans, Hidalca (a type of heirloom bean), Yin Yang beans (a black and white bean), and Vermont Cranberry.   All these different bean types have different tastes and textures.   People always ask me how come I grow dry beans "when you can buy them at the store cheap".  Well, you can't buy all these beans at the store!  Sure, you can buy navy beans and pintos and red kidney beans, but you can't buy the other varieties.  And besides, homegrown dry beans have a much better flavor than beans that have been stored in a warehouse someplace for a couple years.   My dry beans cook quicker and have a fresher taste.
     We eat plenty of beans.   We like them just as is, cooked and maybe some pepper relish stirred in, along with cornbread made from scratch.   We also like beans and rice, beans with pasta, bean soups, baked beans, burritos and tacos and refried beans,  and beans with couscous.  When winter snows have us snowbound (we are the last in line for the snow plowing guy), I know that we will have plenty to eat from the pantry.
     It's very relaxing for us to sit and pod out the beans.  Harold and I put on some music and sit at the table talking and working with the dry pods.  Better than any TV show, I can tell you that.   I usually dry the beans in trays until sometime in October, then put the beans in jars.   They stay good that way for several years.   Every year I try to grow 3 or 4 different types of beans, so I always have plenty of variety to choose from.   Dry beans are easy to grow - basically put them in the ground, then let them grow and forget about them until fall.   When the pods are dry and crisp, they are ready to harvest!  Beans are a great source of protein, inexpensive, and good for you.

We picked several five gallon buckets of beans today.   I already picked a couple buckets last week, and there are still a few more buckets left to pick out in the garden. 

One must be diligent about harvesting the beans, though.  Once the pods become dry and start to open slightly, you must pick them as they are ready, and before the rain.  Once the dry pods crack open and moisture gets in, the beans are ruined because they will sprout.   I always grow non hybrid beans and especially heirloom varieties.   By saving the seeds from one year to the next, I can always have a supply of beans to grow.  The Hidalca and Yin Yang beans I received from a seed saver group at the local tribal college.   There are lots of seed saver organizations that welcome new types of seeds and exchanges.   Next year I hope to grow some of the heirloom Native American beans, Maine Yellow Eyes, and a couple varieties of Mexican beans.   There is a difference in the tastes of each one, and they have different textures when cooked.   Oh - I am also drying some of my lima beans this year, too.   Dried limas are a good addition to soups and hamburger/bean hot dishes.

I have started to dry some of the varieties already.   By the time all is harvested, I should end up with about 6 or 7 quart jars full of dry beans.  Perhaps more, as it is hard to tell.

The Greenhouse Keeps Producing!

 Here are a few views of things in the greenhouse.  I am up to my ears in tomatoes, and I'm on my third crop of spinach and lettuce and herbs.   The tomato plants are a good 11 ft tall.   I've never had to stand on a ladder to harvest tomatoes before!!

Beautiful tomatoes all the way up the 11 foot vine!

Third crop of lettuce growing nicely.

Tomatoes up to the ceiling, peppers waiting to be picked waist high.   No bending to harvest!

Cornhusking on Great Fall Day!

Today we harvested corn to put into the freezer.  It was great to be outside this morning in the cool air - nice and sunny and not too hot.  A good day for husking corn by the dozens!

Harold begins the job of husking all the ears.  The tailgate of one of the pick-ups works great for a table. 

We grow Golden Bantam corn.  It is an open pollinated, non-sugar enhanced, non-GMO, heirloom corn.   It freezes well, and has a good old fashioned corn taste.   We do not care for the ultra sugary sweet corn.   Golden Bantam is just good plain corn!  We save the seeds for next year, too.

Walking through the corn patch to harvest the ears is one of my favorite garden tasks.   It's really neat in there, I think!  A fun job!

About 100 ears to put in the freezer!   We had two rows left to harvest, but we will keep those for eating and for seed.

The trees are already beginning to turn colors up here.

Beautiful early fall days like this are precious up here in the north country.   We know that winter is not far away.   We have already had a morning with frost, but we had the sprinkler going on the tomatoes, and covered some of the tender crops.   Nothing got hit, so we lucked out there.

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.