The Weekly Digs #173
The best part of this week can be summed up in one word, RAIN! I never thought I’d be so happy to see it. Sometimes it works against us but after our long 8 weeks of dry weather a good soaking of the earth is just what we needed.
The pigs are rooting more, the chickens and turkeys are happily pulling up bugs and worms, and the cows are out roaming more now that the weather has cooled and the earth is soft and wet. I am so grateful it finally happened!
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We are quickly approaching the busiest time of the season. I’m cooking, gardening, and preserving pretty much nonstop when I’m home. We also got to celebrate a birthday in our family last week and have another one next week! School is also right around the corner for my kids.
We do a little bit of homeschooling in the summer, mostly audiobooks as we drive around and also do history lessons. But around mid August we’ll start the core subjects again.
In the Garden
- Direct sowed carrots and kale, a 50 foot garden bed for each. I’m taking advantage of wet soil and cool temps to get some fall crops going!
- The kids and I have been working hard to weed our strawberry patch. I don’t like plastic covering the soil on a long term basis so we used mulch instead. The method my sister Amy used worked really well! I have way less weeds than last year and they are easier to pull out of the soil. If you want more information on the method, I originally talked about this HERE and linked to Amy’s blog detailing it in that post.
- Harvesting tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, a few potatoes, a couple ears of sweet corn (they were a little immature but I wanted to test them), and watermelon. Cruz grew the watermelon and gave it to Cam for his birthday because he loves it! It was perfect timing!
- Using duct tape to remove harlequin bugs from brussel sprouts, and using it to remove squash bugs and eggs from squash. Blister beetles I still see around here and there but not in the same massive numbers so the damage is minimal.
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Preserving
- 6 pints pizza sauce
- 12 pints dill pickles
I have 20lbs of tomatoes I picked today, they are next for preserving.
Other Homestead happenings
- Cam got the hot wire hooked up at the top of the garden to keep the raccoons out, just in time for the corn to finish ripening.
- The onions and garlic finished drying and over the last week we’ve been cutting and trimming onions. I’m going to braid some of them when I get time, haha, which will probably be next month. They all dried in the garage for 2 or 3 weeks now I’ve brought them in where it is room temperature. The onions will eventually go in the cold room but for now they are still finishing curing.
