Sunday, July 31, 2011

The Grape Harvest

The proud husband went out and cut our grapes from the vine as they were perfectly ready this week. He was happy to haul in about 15 lbs from 1 vine. Our second vine is only 2 years old and didn't produce this year, so I can't wait to see what kind of harvest we have next year!


Saturday, July 30, 2011

Unfortunate Late July

To all the world, they must know my luck is not very good! I just spent most of July sick and spent weeks getting to the bottom of the problem. In that time my garden suffered and I fell way behind where I needed to be with my responsibilities. Some days I wanted to scream because all I could do was sleep. Other then complete exhaustion morning noon and night, I would be dizzy and feverish. On that went for weeks, and I'm still recooping. Turns out I had a compromised immune system from picking up Mono somewhere and then that was topped off when I contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I never want to be that sick again, especially in the heat of a southern July!

Though it feels like I haven't accomplished anything this month, I am happy to say I got lucky and got a boost of energy to complete a few things at least.

So I will share that I have managed to pick 2 buckets of figs, I froze 4 gallons to have for later, 4 pints of halved figs in syrup for pies, 4 pint of jam and 16 8oz jars of jam.... and 2 lbs sliced and dried. I had a 2 gallon bucket left when I was done I was just too weak from being ill to finish :( But don't worry, not wasted! They went on to someone else who needed to do that same!

Today I harvested and cleaned my popcorn and stored that for winter snacks. My hands are aching from scraping all those rock hard kernels into bowls, and I even wore leather gloves. It was quit, but painful work!

I also got 2 quart jars full of peaches and covered in vodka, its time to start fermenting the fruit for Christmas schnapps. I always gift the best liquor! I will post the how-to again when I do the big fermenting project, only the peaches are ready now, and I only got 2 jars out of what I had. Hopefully when all the fruit is in and fermenting I'll have at least 10 quarts going.

Some quick pictures to share with you, sorry about the quality, my camera is dead and the charger is missing... so had to use the handy cellphone camera!




Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Today's Harvest


Lacking of rain and the heat has made production slow to non-existent in most cases. I'm bummed to say the least, but things are finally starting to ripen. Giving I did have a good onion and garlic harvest you can see if you scroll back. Today was strawberries, cukes, peppers and tomatoes!