Autumn

I was recently chastised for not blogging enough...

So here I am. And I'm thinking I really do need to blog more. If nothing else it's helps to get the words out of my head & it gives some place to put things I may need to find again.

I had to take some pictures of the goats to put on Craigslist so I took a bunch of a random pics of the garden & some of the animals & my pumpkins.

(I love pumpkins. I adore pumpkins. And all things pumpkin related. Bread. Cake. Muffins. Cookies. Pancakes. Pie. Sigh. Now I'm hungry...)

We've had almost a full week of freezing nights so there was no saving the garden. I had to face facts & call it a season.

I was really really wanting more time for the pumpkins & the tomatoes but, alas, it was not to be.

I picked all of the green tomatoes I could & put them in boxes to ripen. And I picked all of the pumpkins that had hardened off enough & artfully piled them about as decorations.

Very few of my pie pumpkins ripened so unless I can glean some from someone I won't be processing any this year. We keep the big ones & the gourds around to look pretty until Thanksgiving & then we feed them to the pigs & the cows & the chickens.


I got lots of beautiful Cinderella pumpkins this year but no bright orange ones. They all came out a creamy yellow. Cross pollinating with some of the squash would be my guess on why.

It was kind of a rough gardening year. We had a hard frost in the middle of June which bit back the tomatoes & took a big chunk out of our 90 day growing season. It wiped out the cukes & the peppers.
Then just as everything was getting a good start we had another hard freeze in the middle of July.

So all in all I'm pretty pleased with our harvest.

The cabbages & kale did great. Beets were so so. I have more turnips & carrots than I can shake a stick at. Potatoes did well. Onions were a little puny. Green beans did well. Tomatoes were pretty sad. I'm pleased with my pumpkins & sgetti squash.

We're working on pulling up all the plants to feed to the animals.

We've had a good barter year. We traded a heifer for several ton of wheat hay. We traded a butcher hog for several ton of oats. Which is all good because the animal inventory on the farm keeps expanding.

We have 2 milk cows, 26 calves, 8 hogs, 6 goats, 18 rabbits, over 100 assorted birds, 3 horses, a donkey, 2 dogs & 4 cats.

Holy moly.

Thankfully more than a few of those are slated for the freezer before winter sets in.

We have our personal wood cut but not split & stacked. That is something the boys work on after school on nice days. We're hoping to get enough cut to sell some this year.

Winter is staring us down & we still have much to do to be prepared & ready for it. Still lots of general clean up & moving pipes & equipment to safe places where it won't get lost or damaged under the snow. Some fencing repairs & barn fortifying needs to happen.

Chickens need to die. Calves need to get sold. Pigs need to get fat. The rest of the veggies need to be stored away.

I love autumn. It's definitely in my top 2 seasons. I think winter beats it though. Snow trumps all.

I hope you've enjoyed this farm update!

Blessings.