The Weekly Digs #212

Hi friends! Our summer is quickly coming to a close since Cruz will be starting school again in less than two weeks, and Cam goes back to work the same day. It seems like we were just barely getting into a really good groove with our current situation and now everything will get shaken up again. 

This post contains affiliate links, full disclosure can be found here.

This post contains affiliate links. Here is the full disclosure.

I have loved having Cam around more and he also enjoyed his freedom, haha. We hope that someday we can get into homesteading and making content as a full time job so we can both be home. It is definitely within reach but we still have a little ways to go before that becomes a reality. 

But I’m going to spill the beans on a little secret and let you know that Cam has plans to start his own Youtube channel. Cam loves to build stuff and we often get asked about how certain homestead projects were built, for example, our chicken tractors.

He will be sharing in more detail homestead building projects we have going on around here, and some that we have already done! I know he is going to do one with more detail on how our garden shed was built and right now he is building a super sturdy table for our new freeze dryer so there will be a video on that too.

Even though there is nothing on it yet, his future channel can be found HERE. If you or anyone you know has any interest in that sort of thing, he would love to have a couple subscribers 🙂 I’ll be sure to let you know when he does get a couple videos up.

Anyways, while I still have my extra helpers, we are trying to knock out as many projects at home and around the garden as possible! 

In the Garden

My garden this year is a miracle. Earlier this year, I spent a lot of time thinking and praying about how I was going to keep up with it, and have a new baby in tow. At the end of my pregnancy, I was really struggling physically to muster the energy to do anything out there. Because of the lack of progress, I was mentally not at my best either.

But Riggs came, and by a miracle we got everything planted, sometimes later than anticipated but it still worked out. And now that we are going into harvest season, we are picking bigger amounts of produce than ever before and somehow doing it with less plants.

As much as I’d like to take the credit, it wasn’t me. I know that this year there was divine intervention to help me out. I still have pests, and still have some diseases that hit the plants, but we have been overloaded with an abundance of vegetables. It’s a huge blessing.

• Currently harvesting: Tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, summer squash, basil, sweet corn, arugula, lettuce, and cucumbers.
• I did a lot more fall seed starting this week. We sowed in soil blocks, kale, collards, dill, cucumbers, and zucchini.
• Working on weeding potato rows so I can replant a different crop in that area.

If you haven’t seen it, you can find July’s garden tour below.

Preserving

Over the last two weeks we made:

• 7 quarts spaghetti sauce (pressure canned)
• 10 quarts veggie loaded marinara sauce (freezer)
• 15 pints dill pickles (canned)
• 16 pints refrigerator dill pickles
• 7 pints bread and butter pickles (canned)
• 9 pints dill pickle relish (canned)
• Freeze dried melons
• Basil pesto (frozen) around 5 cups worth

Visitors

For a long time, I have been using silage tarps and caterpillar tunnels from Farmers Friend. They are some of my most used garden “tools”. The caterpillar tunnel allows me to extend my growing season, and have more protection from weather, and the silage tarps help me to keep my sanity and not get overrun by weeds.

I recently had a friend connect me to the owner, Jonathan. Jonathan and his family were recently traveling near our area and stopped by to visit earlier this week.

I was so impressed with them, they are genuine and kind people. I love their mission to equip, educate, and inspire growers to change the world through regenerative agriculture.

They are now offering smaller caterpillar tunnels which are suited to home gardeners! If you ever decide to purchase something from Farmers Friend, I would love it if you use my affiliate link HERE (it helps support the blog). We are going to be working with them on a few projects soon, so stay tuned for that!