I hope you have all been having a good week. Things have been good here. The garden is slowing down but still producing. The late beans I planted are blooming so they may produce a harvest. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I put up a few more pepper poppers this week.

Hydrated cherry tomatoes. I put them in olive oil to store them. Curious to see how they taste later on. I am hoping to try fermenting some this week.

Speaking of fermenting, I did some pickled corn last week. A little different than how my mom did it but it is really good. It has some garlic, peppers, onions and tomatoes in it.

Jess and I made some elderberry syrup.

Also made “dragon eggs” for Daniel’s birthday party.

I finished Katie’s superhero cape. She loves it. I used Caron Latte cakes yarn to make it. It is hard yarn to work with but very soft.

We had a beautiful moon the other night.

Also had quite a few foggy days. These days are Grace’s favorite. She loves foggy days. I enjoy them too.

I hope you all have a great week. God bless.

Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a good week. I love this picture of Katie. She loves to catch frogs. I forgot what she named this one.

am is very interesting in learning the violin. He just got this one and is very happy with it. Look, he is even sitting still.

Daniel is really into dragons. This one is so cute.

John Luke is doing so good with his words and with his motor skills.

These babies are growing up so fast. God is SO good!

God bless.

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well. My garden has been so much fun this summer and also very productive. This is a rampicante squash. I measured it and it is 40 inches long.

I took this picture just a few days ago. Yesterday it was touching the ground so I harvested it.

This is what it looks like when cut. The seeds are in the rounded part on the bottom. It makes really good fried squash. I breaded and froze 12 meals from it yesterday and still have some left. I have already harvested about 5 of these and there are many, many more up there. Amazing!

I also made some squash bread and butter pickles. There is a mixture of different squash in there. Mostly patty pan,a few yellow squash and zucchini.

Also made squash relish from yellow squash. My squash has been extremely productive this year. I fought a hard battle with the squash bugs but it was definitely worth it.

I have many gallons of breaded squash in the freezer for fried squash this winter. Also many, many bags of shredded squash.

I have did a few bags of these pepper poppers. I do a mixture of 1 block of cream cheese, 1 cup shredded cheese and about a tsp of cumin. Mix the up good and fill the peppers. Then wrap in bacon. Freeze on a cookie sheet, then bag up for later use. These are so good and convenient.

I also made this cowboy candy. I do not have any jalapenos so this is made from the nadapeno peppers. Hopefully they will be good. I only did a few jars because I have to save my peppers for something else.

Oh yes, that’s right! It’s tomato season. I can a lot of tomatoes. Salsa, pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce and just plan canned tomatoes. Tomatoes are a staple here and one of my favorite things to can!

Just a little peek into Dave’s project. As you can tell, we are using sawmill lumber. Poplar to be exact. It is beautiful wood but has proven to be a challenge to cut.

I will have more pictures on this as we progress.

One exciting thing happened yesterday. This blimp flew over our house. It was pretty cool to see one.

That’s all for now. Enjoy your day and God bless.

Hello everyone! Sam got a drone for his birthday. He loves it! He brought it over yesterday and Dave took a few pictures of our house and garden.

I think it is really cool to see what it looks like from up above.

God bless!

Hello everyone! I hope you have been enjoying these nice summer days. I have definitely enjoyed this summer.I have found a new seed company to order from. It is called Hoss Tools. I have never known seeds to germinate as quickly as theirs have and the plants look beautiful. I am experimenting with fall crops this year.

These are Max Packs cucumbers from Hoss Tools. Just look how pretty they are.

This is a late bean crop I planted on Monday of this week and they are already up on Friday. This is just amazing to me. These are called Momentum beans. I also planted Dragon’s Tongue and Rattlesnake beans. The Rattlesnake beans are a pole variety which I am very excited about. I think I really like the idea of picking beans standing up!

One of the the things we are battling right now is tomato hornworms. David fixed us up two black lights and every night Grace and I go hornworm hunting. So far we have found five. They are huge. I do not want them to destroy our tomatoes. They can do so much damage in a short amount of time.

Speaking of tomatoes, I tried something different this year. A lot of the homesteading people I follow do not trim their tomatoes. I have always trimmed mine but I thought I would try a different approach this year. As you can see, they were quite a jungle. This made it so hard to see the hornworms even with a black light. So yesterday, I spent four hours in the tomato patch.

Now they are all trimmed, tied up and so much better (in my opinion). I think that I prefer to trim mine.

We had a really bad lightning storm the other day. Lightning ran our phone line and knocked out our phones and internet. The phone company came quickly and replaced the damaged parts. So thankful for good grounding so that no other damage was done. The sky was beautiful though after the storm passed.

So that’s about all for now. I wanted to end this post with these pretty sky pictures.

Grace took this picture last night of the moon just peeking out from the cloud. God bless!

Our squash is producing really well this year. I shredded some yesterday and put in the freezer for zucchini bread later on. I also chopped up some really fine and froze in one cup portions for soup.

This method, however, is the one I am most excited about. I breaded and individually froze three trays for frying. This is our favorite way to eat squash. I wasn’t sure how it would be so I fried some yesterday evening for supper after it had been in the freezer about 3 hours. It was delicious! To be honest, we couldn’t tell any difference in it and fresh squash.

I got one gallon bag yesterday. We definitely want to do more!

Just look at all the blooms on this squash. If all goes well, we will have lots more to do.

God bless.

Hello everyone! I hope you have all been enjoying these warm summer days. We have been having beautiful weather here in Floyd. It is pretty dry, some rain would be nice but that is usually how summers go.We are enjoying our harvests from the garden. Starting to get some squash and cucumbers. Yum!Look at this cute baby watermelon. Maybe we will actually have watermelon this year.These are called lemon squash. I attempted to grow them last but wasn’t successful. The squash bugs destroyed them. I have been able to stay more on top of the bugs this year so hopefully they will do better.The blueberries are slowly ripening. They are about 3 weeks later than last year.Jess and her family came over Saturday for a socially distant cook out. Just look at how big John Luke is.The geese were at the pond the other morning. Seems a little early for them to start coming in but lots of things are a little off this year. All in God’s plan.Enjoy your day and God bless.

Hello everyone! It has been a beautiful week here in Floyd. I went to our local supermarket the other day and found these beautiful apples.

I purchased about a half bushel of them and made applesauce. The metal dishpan you see here belonged to my mom. It makes me happy to use her things.

I saved the peelings and made apple jelly from them.

Yay! We are working on building back up our jam and jelly section of the pantry as we were almost out.

I am trying out a new seed company. I have been watching a lot of their youtube videos and like them a lot. The brush on the left is a corn silking brush. I used it last night and really liked it. It made silking the corn so much easier.

Just look at the size of these black cherry tomatoes. This pot is at our front door. I have never put tomatoes there before but they seem to be doing good so far.

The squash on the right however is not doing so good. I ended up pulling it up yesterday and throwing it in the field so hopefully it won’t spread to the other plants. I sprayed everything this morning with neem oil. I have never used it before but so many of the gardeners I watch use it all the time. Hopefully it will help.

I thought I’d share this little pretty corner of my front porch. It is such a peaceful place to sit.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

Hello everyone! I hope you have all had a good week so far. We have been busy catching up. It rained all last week with kinda cool temperatures so we were a little behind on garden and yard chores.

Everything is growing good in the garden. This is our cucumber row. Some of them are blooming! We are definitely looking forward to fresh cucumbers. Last year we probably didn’t get ten cucumbers. Hopefully we will harvest lots of them this year.

The tomatoes are in the lower garden.

On each side of the tomatoes are beans and corn. I planted these about two weeks apart in hope’s of spreading out the harvest. Asparagus bed is at the end of the row.

We have certainly enjoyed our cabbage this year. Only two left!

The peppers finally seem to be growing.

Squash are starting to appear!

The first patch of green beans are getting bloom.

We have been enjoying fresh peas for several weeks now.

The radishes have all gone to seed. I think they make beautiful flowers and did you know you can eat the seed pods. They are delicious!

Blueberries haven’t started to ripen yet but hopefully soon.

Raspberries are ripening! These are such a nice treat.

Well I guess that’s all for now. God bless.

Hello everyone! I hope you have all had a good week. As you can tell by the picture, we are started to harvest from the garden. Such an exciting time for me. I love it when food starts coming in!

We harvested our first cabbage this week. These are small cabbages. I can’t remember the name but they are supposed to be small and they mature in a shorter time. I chose these so that hopefully we can eat the cabbage before the bugs and slugs get to them.

Flowers have been beautiful this year!

Beans and corn are planted in this section. One more section to plant. I am waiting about 2 weeks to plant it so that hopefully the harvest will be spaced out some.

When I am working in the upper garden, the cows come down to the fence to say hello. Actually, they want to see what kind of treats I throw over the fence for them. Cows are such curious creatures.

We have had a beautiful moon the last few nights.

That’s all for now. I hope you all have a good week and God bless.