chickens and veggies getting bigger every day

This year's garden was planned much better than previously, I staked each row of crops and tied a string across to designate exactly where the seeds were planted, I put bird netting over the corn right after I planted it to keep the crows off, and put up sturdy fencing to contain the pea plants. The first two improvements worked like they were supposed to, but the pea plants grew much more than I expected and ended up pulling the poultry netting down to the ground by their weight. Likely too late, I tied them all up with taller stakes and string,but I doubt the pea crop is going to produce enough peas to keep my children happy all winter. Two of the beds are dedicated to raspberries, hopefully one day producing enough to make at least a raspberry pie or two after I eat my fill of fresh berries.

The chickens are growing like weeds, gobbling down their crumbles as well as all the cottage cheese I put out on a paper plate in their yard. They also like watermelon rinds, eating all the red fruit in just a few hours. Tim built them a proper gate and has now decided, after seeing a predator slinking around, to rebuild the fence with cedar posts instead of metal ones. 

My morning routine begins with "the girls" when I go out to let them outside, give them fresh water, and top off their food. I'm trying not to think about how, 6 months from now, I will be pulling on wool socks, boots, and a thick coat to do these same chores, but enjoying the idyllic experience of walking across the yard in my nightgown and Crocs each warm summer morning.     

preparing for winter

Everyone know the fable of the industrious ant and the feckless grasshopper. When cold snows come, the ant is snug and well stocked, while the grasshopper begs for assistance. Now that the leaves are beginning to turn color and the roof shingles show a touch of frost in the morning, our larder is well stocked. 

Starting in early summer and continuing through this week, I started blanching and freezing peas, beans, carrots, cauliflower, blueberries, tomatoes, and peppers. I dug up all the onions and potatoes and stored them in boxes down in the basement. Through the local homeschool group, I ordered 150 pounds of wheat flour to bake bread and cookies all winter, but now I must figure out how to to store it so it doesn't get eaten by rodents, bugs, or weevils. 

For dinner last night I made a green bean and sausage soup in which 4 major ingredients: carrots, potatoes, beans, and onions all were grown in our garden. I don't know if it was healthier than soup made from store-bought items, but it sure did taste better to me.   

harvest

Today after the children's auntie and uncle left for the rest of their vacation, the little kids and I cleaned up the garden, planted cover crops, and harvested carrots, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cauliflower. 

The carrots and cauliflower went into the freezer for winter muffins and soups, the onion was spread out on the picnic table to dry, and one of the heirloom tomatoes was sliced up, sprinkled with a bit of salt and eaten in about 4 bites by me. 

I dug up the now empty beds and after spreading a little lime and fertilizer we broadcast buckwheat seeds. The grain we planted a month ago after pulling the peas up is now blooming and perhaps we can even grind some flour to supplement our pancakes.   

a few stones strewn in my path

Since many of my vegetable seeds are in the ground, the fruit trees thriving, and the onions growing taller, I was at a loss of something to do outside. Apparently keeping the place from looking like we are hosting a yard sale with all the bikes, toys, and other assorted debris that appears each and every day isn't enough. I can't mow the grass because something broke on the riding mower and it is out of commission until our neighbor fixes it. So, with nothing better to do, I tackled my ongoing project to make the farm look like a home and no longer a construction site. Officially it still is since the porch has no classic pale blue ceiling or light fixtures yet, but we are closing in on the completion of the house. Last fall I dumped several truckloads of wood chips on the area in front of the front porch to kill the grass where I eventually wanted a flower bed. Since the porch is fairly low and doesn't have a railing, the plants there must be short so as to not impede the view. 

Last Saturday I hit a local nursery, buying some shade loving perennials, wildflowers such as white bleeding heart, columbine, and bloodroot, and a small Amur maple tree. Since then, between massive rainstorms, I have been digging out bucket after bucket of rocks and hauling them to the treeline. I have felt much in common this week with the early settlers of our town who cleared the woods and hauled so many rocks that they created stone walls at the edge of all our fields. 

Yesterday I finished digging and hopefully today after a trip to get some blue hydrangeas I will get the last plants put in the ground. I already have some future planting ideas, but this will do for now until I find myself again with "nothing to do." 

gardening is hard on the hands

Last year we didn't get up to Maine for the summer until Memorial Day weekend and I didn't start planting my garden until the first week of June, so already I'm ahead of the game. But I though I would be farther ahead in my planting by now. We stopped in Waterville at the end of April on tree pickup day and by the end of that afternoon, neglecting all the suitcases that needed to be unpacked, I had planted 8 apple, cherry, and peach trees, planted 20 raspberry canes, and was starting to dig the 18" deep trench for my asparagus crowns. Since then I have planted 3 pounds of onion sets (note for next year that 1 pound will certainly be enough), 20 pounds of potatoes, 25  octopus-looking asparagus roots, tomato and pepper seedlings, and replanted the broccoli and carrot seeds that apparently rotted before they could sprout. My poor hands, with which I already have dry skin issues, look like a 70 year old's due to all the digging, raking, and yanking out of rocks. I own a great pair of gardening gloves, but they constantly are missing or are up in the barn and I don't bother fetching them.  

Out of my four 80 foot long garden beds, I have planted one with 2 rapidly being overtaken by weeds,despite vast quantities of soiled bedding that a local hobby farmer delivered all winter. The old timers say you should plant your corn when the oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear, but in the past week the tree's leaves have gone from microscopic to huge and I'm not even close to being ready to plant. I should have taken Tim up on his offer to till those beds with the huge tiller, but now I'm stuck since I can't put on the huge attachment on the back of the tractor by myself and he isn't going to be up here for another two weeks. 

Somehow I'll get my seeds in the ground as well as start all the flower seeds in egg cartons, but our lives are chaotic right now with going back and forth to the other house for Confirmation/First Holy Communion and dropping off/picking up Will for various Boy Scout camping activities. But before I know it the traveling will cease, we will be able to purchase farm animals, and my fruit trees will bear. It is such a relief to know that our transient life of being on the farm for half the year and somewhere else for the other half, never settling in either is coming to an end and I can plan accordingly.   

IRL update

I've been on a self-imposed hiatus to spend more time doing school, quilting, and reading. This post is a short attempt to "catch up" since winter break when I not only lost a library book (which was found at the farm under the sofa), but my pink Ipod I bought myself after my first (and so far only) 1/2 marathon.  

Since then I have joined a local quilt group and finished a bed quilt, a quilt challenge, and several blocks for charity. I'm signed up for a machine quilting class in an attempt to get the hang of quilting on a shortarm frame, but part of me thinks it is a lost cause and the purchase was a total waste of money. I quilted about 3/4 of this Union quilt on the frame, but finished it on the machine sitting down. The throat space of only 5-8 inches to work with as well as my lack of dexterity quilting using handles instead of having hands on the quilt is proving frustrating.  

Will was in the play Beauty and the Beast at school as a townsperson, a wolf, and a fork. He also made honor roll his first quarter in Catholic school, proving that homeschooling is academically equivalent to a college prep curriculum. 

After several cancellations, Julia Ellen, Timmy, and I finally visited Amy Dacyczyn, of Tightwad Gazette fame for several playdates (her grandson is 2). 

An article on beachcoming I wrote over 3 years ago for a children's literature course is to be published in Spider magazine in the May/June edition. Perhaps finally getting paid for my writing will inspire me to attempt another article, but I don't envision making much money on the "publish something every 4 years" plan. 

Finally, 3 of the kids and I drove up to the farm this past weekend to take part in another Sub5 race. Speeding toward the finish with Danger Zone from the movie Top Gun blasting from my Ipod (I bought a blue one only to find the original pink hidden in a tote bag at the farm), I thought I did very well (22:18), but apparently this year I might have some stiff competition in the middle-age lady category as I came in 3rd in my bracket. The kids did well, Charlie came in 5th overall in the mile only being beat by 11 and 12 year olds, Maggie won the 9-10 age bracket, and Mary came in right behind her sister claiming a hurt foot.           

Spring is almost here and despite the snowfall this morning, the daffodils are blooming, the sap flow from the sugar maples has ceased, and the peepers are making lots of noise in wet spots all over Maine. I've planted my peas and spinach and hopefully will see some sprouts when we go back up to the farm for Easter break. As far as I know I will be hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling in a few weeks so I'll be asking for submissions and thinking up a carnival theme. 


I do hope you have a very blessed Holy Week and a very happy Easter.

farmer Kat

Tim took a few days off so we could come up to the farm this week and I have been very busy. First I worked on clearing the brush alongside the driveway (and it is a long driveway) so we can see the stone "wall" separating our land from the hay field on the other side of a narrow strip of woods. After wrestling with the crummy loppers for several hours and getting a huge blister on my palm, I'm almost finished with that task. Then, with Julia Ellen's help, I staked out where some fruit trees will be planted in April and fertilized, limed, and covered each spot with a big pile of wood chips. 

Thursday and Friday were spend making umpteen trips to the dump to collect more wood chips to cover another of my four long garden beds. I was able to cover most of one in October with horse bedding/manure before the dump got rid of all their piles available to residents (they now just have shredded wood chips from brush). It took 2 days because I had to pitch into the truck bed and then remove at the garden one scoop at a time. I did become more efficient at removing the chips when I lined the truck bed with cardboard boxes (yes, I scavenged these from the recycle container at the dump) and pulled them out onto the garden, but it was still slow going for most of the day. I think I shoveled and spread 7 pickup truck loads in the cold and my arms really can feel it. I know that my plants will appreciate all my hard work next year by the addition of all this organic matter. And since I'm not hauling another 14 loads to cover the two remaining beds, I will be able to scientifically compare the effect in next year's vegetable production.

our town had a fabulous dump

or, I should call it by its proper title: transfer station. Instead of curb-side pickup of trash and recyclables that is common in suburbia, most small towns, at least the ones in Maine, have a unobtrusive location to bring all the household trash, plastic milk jugs, cardboard, paper, and yard waste. Some small cities, such as uber-liberal Belfast, charge $5-10 for a sticker and then $2.50 per bag, but our conservative town only charges $1 for a sticker for your car and no fee for dropping off garbage. The best part of our dump was the piles of shredded leaves and tree branches, horse manure and bedding, and other organic matter free for the taking. It was all neatly organized and I could fill up the back of my truck with my handy-dandy scoop I bought specifically for this purpose, but apparently now I can't. Early on Saturday morning I left the children all snug in their beds and headed over to the dump and found nothing- all the piles were wiped clean. When I went back later with my garbage in the back I asked the attendant and he said the town decided to not offer this service any longer. With only 1/4 of my garden prepped for winter with a coat of horse bedding/manure, I will have to find another free source of "fertilizer" this week. 

harvest time

Some days my children are real blessings and some days I would like to send them far, far away. Right before we left for Virginia to pack out I stopped by the local wild blueberry grower and bought a 15 pound box of berries to freeze for winter. I also have been shredding carrots for carrot cake, putting up green beans and broccoli in the freezer, and cooking up paste tomatoes to freeze as well. A trip to Sears to buy a chest freezer has been in the works, but in the meantime I put all this produce in the freezers in the house and apartment. Well, you likely can figure out what happened this past week.

Will was attempting to be frugal by seeing that there was nothing in the apartment fridge and turned down the dial inside, ruining all the food inside the freezer: 3 huge ziplock bags of blueberries, 3 bags of shredded carrots, and a couple of bags of green veggies. He was very apologetic, but I made him bag it all up and bring it down so I could take it to the dump. All that time I spent planting, weeding, mulching, harvesting, washing, and blanching were wasted. You can't buy blueberries now, the season only lasts a few short weeks in August. Luckily we still have plenty of green beans and broccoli left in the garden, some carrots still in the ground and some of each in the house freezer. We still have lots of pumpkin to eventually roast and freeze so a big free-standing freezer is not a waste, but I'm very disappointed that we won't be eating homemade blueberry muffins all winter like I planned. There is always next year and I think Will learned his lesson, but I'm sure this won't be the last time one of the children acts like a thoughtless child.     

death and destruction

Well, the little baby mice didn't make it, but that was expected. Mice need mouse mommy milk, not cow milk and they need the warm nest of mommy mouse fur to stay warm and thrive. The children were sad, but the excitement of Hurricane Irene gave them something else to focus on. The winds were pretty strong and the bands of rain explained how this type of storm moves better than any book could. Of course we pulled out a book about hurricanes as well as of course reading Time of Wonder aloud, since the story features a hurricane hitting Maine.

This morning I went out at dawn to haul downed branches out of the road and fields, but mostly the damage was confined to my garden. The once tall corn stalks are now bent over to a 45 degree angle. I don't know if we will be able to harvest much past the two dinners of wonderful white sweet corn we had this past week. The sunflowers took a beating as well as the squash (no big loss since none of us like it much), and the tomatoes got knocked down. 

The girls and I are heading out this morning for the 2 hour trip down south to clean and organize the other house. Tim starts work Thursday and needs ice cream in the fridge, a coffee pot on the counter, and towels in the bathrooms. My job is to provide all those things, receive the delivery of the washer and dryer from Sears, and clean the place of all the crumbs and slime that the previous owners so rudely left for me to deal with. It amazes me that if you rent a house it has to be pristine at move-out, but when you pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a place, the house looks grungy and gross. Since the western part of the state got hit harder by rain and wind than we did, I'm not sure what we shall encounter on the drive down, but I'm sure we will be able to handle whatever comes our way.

eating out of the garden

Well, the tomatoes haven't ripened yet, except for the cherry ones and the corn is just approaching the height of my shoulders, but we are starting to be inundated with produce. Julia Ellen and I sit on the front porch every afternoon shelling peas and throwing the empty pods onto the front lawn. Tim and I are eating salad every day because I planted whole packets of Buttercrunch and Romaine. I'm contemplating taking some heads to the pool and Mass this week just so I don't feel pressured to eat it all ourselves. Today I wanted to see how the carrots were doing, so I pulled up a few and marveled at how big they were. I planted 2 rows so we could treat the horses after riding lessons, but they looked so juicy I declared that we would have some ourselves.

After perusing Joy of Cooking and Fannie Farmer, I decided to make carrot cake, but the recipe I found was too difficult with no mixer so I improvised with one of my favorite recipes Applesauce Cake and substituted grated carrot for the applesauce. Even though the kids knew it contained a vegetable they scarfed down the entire pan, asked for thirds, and begged me to make it again soon. Since the labor in this recipe is the prep, Timmy and I went out after the supper dishes were cleaned up and harvested a few dozen carrots, washed them, cut off the tops, and grated them by hand. I put them in a freezer bag so that in a few days I can whip up a delicious dessert using veggies we grew ourselves.  

am I a sadist?

My pathetic orchard consists of 6 fruit trees that were neglected almost to the point of death when we bought our land. I have weeded, mulched, and fed the little trees, pruned their branches, and been rewarded with a harvest of exactly 2 Golden Delicious apples in 3 years. Only 2 of the trees have set any fruit, I am hopeful that the others will bear once they have another variety to help pollinate the blossoms and will give me some peaches and pears.

In the meantime I attempt every summer to keep the Japanese Beetles from devouring the leaves with traps and manually dropping each bug into a jar filled with oily water. This method has its flaws as many of the beetles fly away in the day and fall to the grass during the evening round if the branches are jostled. Last night at dusk the baby and I ambled down past the swingset with our jar and a new weapon: a flat white bed sheet. I spread it under the tree and shook the trunk a bit to see over 30 beetles fall onto the fabric. Julia Ellen and I picked them up and plopped them into the jar with more than an appropriate amount of glee. "Yucky bugs!" the baby chirped as she scooped them up. By the time we shook each tree, our little container was full of dozens and dozens of dead beetles. I don't know if our efforts violate the 5th Commandment, but I do know with certainty that no one will consider me the next St. Francis.

first harvest

The garden is coming along very nicely, as I like to go out in the evening when it is a bit cooler and weed, water, and check on the status of the plants. We haven't had any animals come to nibble except the ravens eating melon in the compost bin, in the morning I find the rinds stripped of any fruit and flung about on the grass. Julia Ellen is more damaging, yesterday she ripped up one basil plant, knocked over 3 corn stalks, and stomped on 2 onion plants.

With some of the pumpkins not sprouting, we had lots of empty ground so I let the kids loose with all the leftover seeds and they have been hoeing out the weeds, planting, and labeling markers. Who knows if any of their efforts will bear, I have the feeling that everything is planted on top of each other and they might forget in a few days to keep watering. I think next year I will give each child their own plot to do as they like, buying veggies that they might find interesting such as purple carrots, pole beans grown in a teepee (I did start these a little late, but you see, they are mine and it is NOT the same for the kids as ones they planted in their own patch), miniature corn, tiny white pumpkins. Who knows? We might discover some great new veggies and gardening techniques in the process. 

But as for my established vegetables, the cherry tomatoes are ripening and Julia Ellen and I are eating salad twice a day. My routine is to take a basket and paring knife out, thinning the romaine and buttercrunch by cutting off the tops where the plants are too closely planted, washing them off, spinning the leaves, and ripping them up before tossing them with a little Marzetti salad dressing. Time from harvest to savoring the tender leaves? Less than 10 minutes.  

grow, veggies, grow!

Last year we had a fabulous garden. We harvested green beans, tomatoes, carrots, enough pumpkins to make pies and bread all winter, more squash than a family of 8 could possibly eat (especially since only 2 of us actually eat squash), lettuce, a few melons, and at least one bushel of corn. This spring we arrived in Maine and got the garden tilled and planted earlier than before, but the weather and seeds haven't been as cooperative. A few days have been hot and sunny, but I'm still wearing my jacket over a tshirt most mornings and perhaps buying $1 packets last year out of Johnny's bargain bins wasn't such a great idea. I've replanted the pumpkin after the crows ripped out the seedlings and only 1/2 the corn and peas sprouted at all. On the other hand, the potatoes I bought on a whim at the local hardware store are a lush dark green and Maggie and I have hilled them several times. If I can keep the wild turkeys out of the lettuce then I will have a bumper crop (they took a dust bath in my leaf lettuce last year) and the broccoli is growing like gangbusters. Here is a view of the patch from the boy's bedroom window a few weeks back and today:

welts, sore back, and a trip to the dentist

After 16 hours driving the truck following Tim at the wheel of the van (after last year's jack-knifing incident, I was too chicken to pull the trailer), we hit the gravel of our Maine driveway. No traffic, no accidents, very few potty breaks all contributed to our speedy arrival. However, the house is not quite as finished as I thought, the schoolroom floor is not installed and there seems to be several weeks worth of work left before we can move in. So, instead of hoofing furniture across the pavement from the garage apartment, we have spent the past few days mowing, tilling, and planting.

In just 24 hours Tim rototilled my garden and I discovered the lovely Maine phenomenon of blackflies. Yes, I've heard the warnings and the songs, seen the bumper stickers, but it is very disconcerting to see your children covered in bloody welts behind their ears and on the back of their necks. I got hit many times as well, realizing once their season ends in a week or so, it will be just in time for the deer flies and mosquitoes to hatch.

But I have pushed onward and put in tomato and cucumber seedlings and planted corn, onions, pumpkin, lettuce, peas, beans, and various flowers. The kids raked cartloads of grass clippings to mulch the garden. While I was hammering in stakes for the tomato cages, I swung poorly and hit my mouth, busting my lip and chipping one of my teeth. A quick visit to the local dentist made my tooth as good as new and Tim took over stake pounding duties (note: next time buy the shorter stakes). We have all been collapsing into bed by 9pm with no one, save myself, emerging from their room before 8am. Julia Ellen is getting so much fresh air and exercise (especially attempting to swipe away the blackflies) that the previous 2 hour nightly effort to get her to go to sleep has disappeared. 

At this rate I will have our garden put in by Saturday, the children's school finished by next Wednesday, and be volunteering to help the builder lay floor by Thursday. Perhaps not. I'll be glad to take a break from my current frantic pace and relax long enough to enjoy our summer in Maine.       

10 little, 9 little, 8 little pumpkins

We harvested 20 some pumpkins out of our garden this summer and I wheedled enough to get Tim to put every last one among the bikes and suitcases in the back of the truck to bring back to Virginia. I spent a lot of time and effort growing those babies and I didn't want to just toss them in the compost pile like the tomato plants (though we did have a fun, but messy afternoon playing tomato baseball).

The children have  decorated the front yard and claimed several of the large squash with taped-on signs, but I have snagged 2 pumpkins since we have been back to make pie. After reading advice from several of you, I roasted chunks of fruit in the oven for an hour, let it cool, and cut off the rind and pureed it in the blender. So far the pies taste a little less robust than tinned pumpkin pie and much lighter in color, but since there haven't been any leftovers, no one seems to be complaining. At this rate we might not have any pumpkins left in the yard by Halloween.

1st race in over a year

Boy, it has been a busy week here on the farm. Tim arrived on Tuesday, and I started painting the apartment because 3 summers of muddy fingerprints have left a real "impression" on the walls. School is progressing along, despite the 7th grader giving me grief about his workload. Yes, he does have more work than everyone else, but the girls finish first usually because they start to whittle down their stacks the night before.

But Saturday was the busiest day of all, starting when I took the big girls up to Bangor to watch me run in a 5K (23:50). It was a very small race, but a good re-entry into the world of competitive running.  When we got home the sun was blazing so we all worked outside on likely the last warm day of the year. After harvesting the last of the pumpkins, Tim tilled up a brand new bed for next year. The children picked out rocks and spread mulch hay all over the garden beds. The boys made a compost bin for me out of leftover pallets and Tim used the loader on his tractor to combine 3 compost piles into the bin to rot over the winter.

Tomorrow will be a much more relaxed day with friends coming over after Mass to see the progress on our house and to say goodbye for another year.  

soup from h&*%

In my effort to productively use the tomatoes we have been harvesting from the garden, I scoured my battered copy of Joy of Cooking for recipes that require fresh tomatoes before heading to the commissary a few days ago. I stocked up on garlic and basil for bruschetta and heavy cream for tomato soup. Since real Italian bread wasn't available, I decided to go ahead and make the soup, which ended up being a huge mistake.

First, I chopped some onion and put the oil in the pan, turning my back for a moment to tell Mary to chop up the tomatoes, only to hear her scream, "Mommy!" Turning around, I discovered that the oil in the pot had caught on fire and was shooting 18 inches above the rim, almost hitting the exhaust fan. I yelled, "Open the back door!" and grabbed the pot, ran out onto the back porch and threw the whole mess into the grass below. After racing around the garage, I found a trash can and filled it with water to dump on the smoking pot.

With my only large pot permanently out of commission, I proceeded to make the soup (I didn't even have to cut up another batch of onions) and put it in batches in the blender. Another mess ensued with even a 1/4 full container swirling up and burning my hand and spattering red goo all over the counter.

Finally after a big cleanup, I served my homemade tomato soup to a unenthusiastic audience. Every child asked for a piece of bread as an alternative to eating my preparation-intensive dinner. Maybe that was a good thing, since eating a large bowl of the stuff made me more sick than I have been in a long time. So... I think in my effort to use up the rest of our garden produce I will refrain from any more culinary experimentation and take it all down to the food pantry so someone who's tummy can handle tomatoes will put them to good use.   

children of the corn

No, I'm not taking the children to a Stephen King film festival (but, I should take them to see the spooky wrought iron fence surrounding his house in Bangor), but cooked up a big pot of corn for supper. Finally, our Silver Queen is ripe, but we were not able to start harvesting until September because silly me planted a 90 day variety. Next summer I'll plant a much faster maturing corn, knowing that they children beg, literally beg me to serve them this vegetable for lunch and dinner. Both nights we have set the water to boil and gone out and picked plump ears, stripping off the husks at the compost pile, before cooking the already tender veggie for only 3 minutes.

Will sets out the plastic holders and Mary pours the milk, while my job is to push each holder into the ends and smear butter in an assembly line fashion. Twice I have had to harvest seconds in the middle of supper because of the clamor, "Can I have another piece, pleeeease?" Julia Ellen refuses to eat the kernels I cut off the cob, but holds the greasy piece in her tight grasp and gnaws them off before attempting to chew off the whole tip. I'd give them corn every night, but our patch has to have a few days respite to produce more ripe ears.

Our next culinary project is to make pumpkin pie from scratch, using fruit we grew ourselves and not from a can. I'm only guessing, but am pretty sure that turning pumpkin into pie is going to take longer and be slightly messier than harvesting and cooking corn.  

produce saturation level reached

Even after pulling up the bean plants and several squash vines, we are inundated with veggies. I have been taking a bag or two of produce to our town's food pantry, but it only is open once a week, too long for tomatoes to be sitting out. We picked all the ripe pumpkins in anticipation of Hurricane Earl, so of course we merely received 2 hours of rain, but despite almost no wind all my tomato plants fell over.

There are 8 more pumpkins in the patch yet to turn orange, rows of sweet corn that is almost ready, and over a hundred of green tomatoes in various stages of ripeness. We ate our first home grown cantaloupe and are checking the 5 still in the garden every day in hopes of harvesting another.

So far we have been very happy with our first year of gardening, next summer I want to plant more beans and put some up as well as can tomatoes and sauce. I'm going to try to start the melons inside and build a trellis to keep their undersides off the dirt/damp hay that allows them to rot before they ripen fully. 

Our favorite crop so far? Pumpkins, which grow almost as fast as kudzu and need tons of room (which we certainly have) are the hands-down winner, but the clear spines along the leaves and stem hurt like the dickens. Before we leave for Virginia, I must pull all the vines to compost and I will be sure to wear my work gloves. Ouch!