Delicate Purple Bean Blossoms

 What a joyful sight to see a delicate purple blossom coming up out of a lush row of green leaves! The bean blossoms are my favorite little visual treat. I really look forward to each and every one. As I plant a bean row I anticipate the weeks ahead that will bring 1...then 2...then 20...then hundreds of these delicate blossoms. The bees sure have loved all the new pollen they are able to dip into to store up. Soon...very soon, we will have buckets of green beans coming in from the garden!

Welcome to the back 40...feet

Welcome to "the back 40" (as we call it)...I wish it were the back 40 acres, but its just the back 40 feet! Bryan built a cute picket fence and walkway in front of the garden to help section off the garden and bees from the rest of the yard. 

We have planted 1 bed of beans that is doing fabulous and are getting ready to plant several more beds of beans as a fall crop. I love the various beans we have coming up. We planted a variety of colors so when the kids go exploring for beans they get to find yellow, purple and striped beans instead of just regular green beans...although they are tremendously fun to find as well!

Once the busy time of goat milking is done in the morning our backyard quickly becomes a very peaceful place to relax! The bee hives are tucked into the corner of the garden bringing thousands of pollinators quickly into our garden as well as a growth of fresh honey :) You can sit back and hear the peaceful hummmm of the workers comes from their hives. Then glance to the other side of the yard and see Peaches and Poppy relaxing  after their morning milking. They love spending the cool breezy morning relaxing beside their bin of alfalfa while the chickens peck around the yard finding little "protein treats" (bugs)! Its quite a peaceful time of day! I fully enjoy the relaxation of watching my "backyard work for me". The garden is growing, the bees are buzzing around pollinating and storing up honey, the goats are "replenishing their milk supply", the chickens are laying eggs and being a fabulous bug pest control, and the chickens and goats are turning the compost pile as well as "producing compost" to enrich the soil! 

 It has been a tremendous amount of work to get our backyard to this level of productivity...but we have no intention of stopping here!! We are continually trying to find new ideas to put our little plot of land to work!

The front 3 beds are now empty after harvesting the leafy greens (arugula, lettuce, and spinach) and peas. We prepped those beds to plant more bush beans and here soon we will plant our fall crop of beans in those beds. 

Then we have 1 row of tomatoes, 1 bed  of beans, and 2 beds of tomatoes. 

Last year we planted a very wide variety of vegetables, all for the purpose of finding out what we like to grow and like to eat. Then after realizing there are some things we are terrible at growing we decided to limit our variety and use the "barter system". We can grow beans and tomatoes well and it is easy to trade those veggies with people who grow other vegetables well. Then of course we had to plant a few herbs for fresh garden herbs. We also have 1 row of quite a few different varieties of peppers and I am anxious to experiment with new recipes!

Taste the Rainbow!! Our tomatoes are taking off!! We planted a variety of colors and sizes and have already harvested a dozen pounds of tomatoes...that doesn't even count what Addie and Henry have eaten while standing out in the garden "harvesting".

We have 2 beds of tomatoes...its our "wall of tomatoes". I can not wait for these fresh balls of delightful flavor to flow out of the garden!! I have alot of canning I want to do as well as sun drying! We sundried several dozen pounds of tomatoes last year (which only ends up being a few pounds of dried tomatoes) and they were extremely fun to savor during the winter months! Sundried tomatoes are fabulous to toss into a winter pasta or salad...I plan to make much more this year!! 

 

I used t-posts and cotton string to make my wall of tomatoes and so far it has done quite well. Now that the tomatoes are growing and branching out I can see that the weight of the tomatoes might be a little heavy for the thin cotton string I selected. I tied up some extra rounds of string to make sure the wall wont collapse under the weight and pressure from the plants. Last year I used some vinyl twine that held up really well but I Wanted to go with a string that would be compostable and I sure hope the walls don't collapse with the stretching of this cotton string! This method easily contains the tomatoes and helps these 8 foot tall plants have somewhere to go as they grow taller and taller. Last year we had tomato plants well over 10 foot tall by the end of the season. 

I hope everyone's gardening adventures are going well!! I would love to hear about your garden, animals and harvest! 

So many blessings

Its been quite a busy few weeks around here! We had our precious little baby boy punctually on his due date. His name is George and he was born Thursday May 12th. 

 Both of Bryan's bee hives are doing fabulously and we are excited to see their daily progress. I have so much to post about Bees, but for now here are some fun photos of their progress.

And of course the baby goats!! They love to sit up on top of the picnic table and snuggle. They are growing up so fast!

 The garden is in full swing with daily harvests of lettuce, arugula, and spinach for delightful salads. This first picture is of the tomatoes. We still have yet to put up the T-posts and twine to hold up our wall of tomatoes.

Bed of sweet sugar snap peas :) YUM!!

Bush beans are creeping up and will soon be in full swing!

I dont have any new photo updates of the baby chicks...which really are not babies anymore! Ill get some good photos and post those later.

Garden Update

The sun is creeping over the top of the garage this beautiful gardening morning...its so peaceful! I love sitting out at the garden watching the goats and chickens working and playing in the yard with the kids and seeing all the work we've done finally come to harvest!
The beans gave us quite a good crop but they are on their last leg and so is the broccoli so that will open up 2 more areas to get ready for fall planting. The radish bed is empty and getting ready for a new veggie...still not sure what though. I pulled up the rest of the potatoes a couple days ago and got about 20+ lbs which was pretty exciting! The sweet potatoes are taking off and looking good, as well as the tobacco! The squash is hanging in there, but we lost all the zucchini (along with the spinach!) :( We have several watermelons and pumpkins getting bigger and bigger! We have 2 beds of celery that we planted a couple weeks apart and the first bed is almost ready! All the onions and garlic are done...and yummy! Definately have to plant more onions and garlic next year!! The basil, mint and sage are very abundant! I even did a few herb bouquets for the house that turned out real good...the idea was from my Aunt Jill!! Jill was in town for a few days and was able to stop by the house to see our backyard chaos in person. I'll post more on the herb bouquets later...its such a great idea!! The sunflowers in the front yard are just starting to open up and they look fabulous!! I am SO excitted about those sunflowers!! Oh and the carrots! How could I forget about Henrys carrots!! They are getting closer and closer and I cant wait to see the look on Henrys face when all those carrots come out of the ground!
The tomatoes have taken over the little tomato cages and we had to build a 30 foot wall of twine around the whole row to help contain them! (We put 8 foot stakes every 4 feet and attached the twine with galvanized nails every 12 inches up the stake) They are producing quite well and taste absolutely magnificent! I have never tasted anything that can compare to eating a ripe heirloom cherry tomato right off the vine!!
Overall we have had some tremendous success so far (being our first year here and everything) and I look forward to seeing how much more this little area can produce!!
One things is for sure...working the soil with a good amount of compost will really help the garden be more productive. We added alot of compost to the back 4 rows of the garden and those 4 rows are fantastic!! But we didnt add as much to the front 2 rows because we added them later and had ran out of compost...it was a good experience for us to see how much less that area produced and how much slower the plants grew as well. We have quite a bit of compost that is getting ready to throw out there though so we will work the soil good this time!!

2 Little Green Bean Farmers

Henry and Addie love heading into the garden with their little "harvest buckets" and going "exploring"!

They did a pretty good job :)

Garden Update! Beans, Tobacco, Tomatoes, Celery, Garlic...Oh My!

I am super excitted about the garden!! It has been ALOT of work, but its looking good :)

The Tobacco is coming up beautifully! This has been one plant that we really thought wasnt going to make it. It was a SLOW starter and then once we finally got it in the ground it just didnt take off like we had hoped...then after the few weeks of rain we got a while back it just exploded! We planted 6 plants - 2 each of 3 different varieties.

The Green Beans are in harvest and SO much fun to pick. Addie absolutely loves getting in there and "exploring for beans"...at first she was picking the "tiny ones", but then she learned to leave those alone because "they are the babies and still need to grow"...so she just goes after the "daddy beans" now.

Oh and the tomatoes!!! Could they be any more excitting!!! We are eagerly anticipating their redness!

Their are green tomatoes EVERYWHERE! I am afraid it is going to be a race to beat all the birds and squirrels to the ripening tomatoes, but hopefully they dont present too big of a problem...

Alot to cook and can here soon!!

Celery :)

Garlic!

Green Beans!! Canning

A couple days ago I tried my first round of canning green beans! It did take a lot of time and work, but sure was alot of fun! Addie and I went out to the garden and picked and picked green beans. We ended up with about 10 lbs, came inside, cleaned and destemed them (by this point Addie had lost interest), then got the canning recipe ready!!

I went with the "Hot Pack" method.

Step 1: Wash and Drain beans, Remove strings, trim ends and break or cut freshly gathered beans into 2 inch pices.

Step 2: Boil 5 minutes. (Get your jars and lids sterilized and get your pressure canner ready)

Step 3: Pack Hot Beans into Hot Jars leaving 1 inch headspace. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to each Pint and 1 teaspoon of Salt to each quart.

Step 4: Ladel boiling water over beans leaving 1 inch headspace, remove air bubbles.

Step 5: Adjust 2 piece caps and place in pressure cooker.

Step 6: Process Pints 20 minutes, Quarts 25 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure in a steam pressure canner.

Step 7: Once your canning time has expired, turn off the heat source and wait for pressure to leave the pressure canner...this could take a few hours...NEVER take the lid off or try to speed up the process or you could destroy your contents, or injur yourself. Just let the pressure canner slowly dismiss the pressure and once it is resting take off the pressure weight first to make sure there isnt any pressure remaingin and then take off the lid. Jars will be hot! Remove the jars to a towel and let them set 24 hours until all the seals pop. If seals do not pop eat them asap or put it in the refrigerator to eat soon. One of my seals didnt seal properly, so we had those beans for dinner that night...they tasted fantastic!