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September – The Chicken Shed

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Chester County, chickens, Farm, Homestead, Uncategorized

Isn’t it enough that we have a chicken coop? Now we need a chicken shed too?

We’ve been using a plastic storage bin that was intended for lawn furniture cushions. It has more than exceeded its life expectancy. The squirrels have taken a toll on it – nibbling to get inside to the chicken food. We knew we needed to replace it, we just hadn’t found the right thing – until the other day.

I was leaving the Amish farm market where I sometimes stop to indulge in their freshly baked sticky buns, and there it was with a “For Sale” sign. They called it a “trash condo” – intended for trash and recycle bins – but it was just the right size for the five gallon buckets of chicken feed, bird seed and chicken treats (yes, the chickens get treats). We went back out over the weekend (really an excuse for more sticky buns), so I could show it to Chris – and bought the thing.

Then another trip out on Monday to pick it up (really an excuse for MORE sticky buns). Chris was quick to point out just how useful his truck and trailer are. For a little shed – it’s heavy. It’s not like we could just lift it up and put it down. After a lot of maneuvering, we finally got it loaded, home, unloaded, settled in place, and all set up with the chicken food and paraphernalia stored inside. Now the chickens can have their treats. I went inside and ate a sticky bun – because I think I earned it.

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This box has got to go!
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So we brought this cute little shed home.
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It doesn’t look that big, but it was a project to get it into place.
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I definitely earned this treat!

 

September – The Root Cellar

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Canning and Freezing, Chester County, Farm, Garden, Homestead, Uncategorized
I thought harvest time would be in October – but here we are, barely into September, and my “root cellar” is nearly full already.  I don’t really have a root cellar – I have a basement. And the basement door has a sign over it that says “wine cellar.” It’s not really a wine cellar either. I’m not sure what the basement is other than dark and damp and cool.  I guess that makes it the perfect place for a root cellar and a wine cellar.
We’ve dug up the potatoes, harvested most of the winter squash, canned the tomato sauce and put up a year’s worth of pickles and jams – and it’s all stored in the root cellar/wine cellar/basement. It can be a bit inconvenient to traipse outside to go to the basement/root cellar when all I need is a couple of potatoes for dinner – but as long as I’m there, it’s a good thing that it’s a wine cellar too.
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The “fruits” of our labors – jams and pie fillings.
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Pickles and tomato sauce.
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Butternut squash, butter cup squash, spaghetti squash and acorn squash.
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And lots of potatoes!

September — No Work on Labor Day

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Chester County, Farm, Homestead, Uncategorized

That’s funny.  There’s always work on the farm, especially on Labor Day — a day off from work… so we can work!

The calendar changed to September and so did the weather.  It’s cool (actually chilly!), and the garden seems to be winding down.  There are still some tomatoes and peppers, and we’re waiting for that fall crop of salsify, but everything else is DONE!  Even the corn.  We didn’t exactly get a bumper crop.  We had maybe two dinners with our own corn.  I wouldn’t exactly call it corn on the cob.  It was more like corn on coblettes.  They were short, stubby cobs with a kind of starchy, rather than sweet tasting corn.  It wasn’t the best thing to come out of the garden.  But all was not lost.  The best harvest from the corn was yet to come!  The corn stalks!

Now, we’re ready for fall.

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The corn wasn’t much of a meal.
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But the corn stalks look pretty for our fall decorations. Even our “pet” crow thinks so.
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Can summer really be over already?

 

August – Ground Cherries

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Canning and Freezing, Chester County, Ground Cherry, Uncategorized
My tomatoes are growing like trees, and my cherries are growing on the ground. It’s like we live on an upside down farm.
A couple of years ago we were enjoying a wonderful evening on a lake in Switzerland with Chris’ family where my dinner was served with a garnish of a tiny fruit peeking out of a papery husk. It looked a little like a miniature orange tomatillo. I eyed it skeptically and asked what it was.  Finding an English translation for this phenomenon escaped us –
but I tasted it and it was…indescribable. I think I ate the garnish off of everyone’s plate that night while I tried to place what the exotic flavor was – something tropical, or maybe apricot? Kind of sweet, but a little tart? Sort of like a grape or a cherry or a  tomato.  It was a mystery.
This spring I went to the Philadelphia Farm and Food Festival and I spent a lot of time at the “unusual garden seed booth” sorting through all the tiny packets of seeds for  something that I could still wedge into garden. And there it was! Seeds for that mystery fruit.  They called it a ground cherry.
I brought home a packet, started them in my greenhouse and transplanted them to the garden. I’ve been watching as these little bushes developed little green “lanterns” that hang from under the leaves. And then I forgot about them – because I’ve been busy canning tomatoes and fighting back the squash vines and freezing green beans. The other day I was in the garden and there were all these little papery shells laying on the ground. Oh NO! They’re dead, I thought. I gathered them up into a bowl and
brought them in the house where I simultaneously peeled back the paper husk and googled what to do with them now.
Apparently this is how they grow. When they drop to the ground – they are ready to eat –
hence the name ground cherry. When I peeled back the husk, there was the bright orange tiny little cherry bursting with a flavor that is still a mystery.
I guess I’ll just keep eating them until I can explain what they taste like.
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Little green pods that hang like lanterns.
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Until the fall on the ground and look dead.
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Peel the husks back and look at those sweet little gems!

August – The Tomato Tree

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Chester County, Garden, Tomatoes, Uncategorized
Tomatoes are supposed to grow on small bush-like plants, but our tomato plants are some sort of mutants.  The plants are so far over my head, I’ll need a ladder to pick
them. Maybe it’s because we mixed in well-composted manure, or because I planted the tomatoes with my Grandfather’s secret fertilizer formula – but whatever the cause – our plants are out of control. They are taking over, and I’ve given up on chopping them back.
The tomatoes ripen from the bottom of the plant, moving higher each week with more ripening fruit.  Right now, I can comfortably pick the produce of the week – but in another week or so, they will be out of my reach.  And maybe that’s a good thing.
I’m about at the point that we have enough jars of tomato sauce for a weekly spaghetti supper, enough dried cherry tomatoes to toss into many a pot of stew or soup, and enough roasted tomatoes with olive oil, oregano and basil to use for Friday night pizzas. So, other than those delicious summer-time bacon and tomato sandwiches – I’m about done with tomatoes.
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The fence is six feet tall — that makes this tomato plant a TREE!
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I pick this much almost every day.
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And we have a great variety — yellow pear tomatoes, red cherry tomatoes, green-purple zebra tomatoes, San Marzano tomatoes, Amish paste tomatoes and nice big slicing tomatoes.

August – The Bunny Trail

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Chester County, Garden, Rabbits, Uncategorized
The bunny trail is closed.  Permanently.  I hope.
After spending a minor fortune on a six-foot high fence to keep the deer out, with the added expense of small gauge fencing trenched in at the bottom of the perimeter to keep the ground hogs out – you’d think we would have an impenetrable garden. But the baby rabbits managed to jump through the fence just above the small gauge fencing, squeezing themselves through the 2” x 4” squares and helping themselves to
my garden’s bounty.
When we first became aware of the problem, Chris put bird netting around the entire garden to keep Peter Rabbit and all his cousins out. That worked for a while, until they chewed through the bird netting and I started noticing half-eaten beans and nibbled broccoli. Then Chris used zip-ties to fasten the netting where the holes had been chewed, turning each 2” x 4” space into just 2” x 2” spaces. Then those buck-toothed rabbits chewed their way through the zip ties.  Chris took down the tattered bird netting and fastened a layer of chicken wire around the garden. Now we have a reinforced metal fence with more metal fencing wrapped around it. Anything to protect my
tomatoes, cucumbers and squash!
Now it is impenetrable (I hope) – and if I see any rabbits running around looking like they are wearing metal braces on their front teeth, I’ll know to go check on the
fencing again!
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They chewed right through the mesh.
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We used zip-ties to patch it, and they chewed through the zip-ties.
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So now it has metal chicken wire.
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Just let them try to chew through this.
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On the outside looking in — let’s keep it that way!

July — Pickles and Jam

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Canning and Freezing, Chester County, Farm, Uncategorized

I have a favorite pickle recipe.  I’ve been making it for years.  This year I started with 24 cucumbers, 12 cups of vinegar and 12 cups of sugar, some peppers and onions along with some pickle spices (mustard seed, celery seed and a little cayenne pepper to give it a tiny bit of a kick) and a huge galvanized canning pot.  Everything was going well until I realized that this is a lot of pickles and I didn’t have enough canning jars ready.  In the middle of the preparations, I had to put things on hold and run out for more jars!

Now we have four cases of bread and butter pickles!

But that’s not all.

We also have wild blackberries growing all over the place — and now we have three cases of blackberry jam.  And I accidentally bought 30 pounds of blueberries — so now we have two cases of blueberry jam, 6 quarts of blueberry pie filling and two gallons of blueberries in the freezer. (I didn’t realize how many blueberries are in a 30 pound box when I said I’d take a box of them!)

And then there are still beans and beets to freeze and tomato sauce to can and squash to pick.  I think we won’t go hungry.

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24 cucumbers doesn’t seem like a lot until you have to slice them all.
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And cook them in a big pot.
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And run out for more jars!

 

July – The squash are escaping!

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Canning and Freezing, Chester County, Farm, Garden, Uncategorized

When I planted the squash in the side garden that we created this year, they looked so small and vulnerable inside that big space fenced only by some chicken wire.  I wasn’t sure they would make it.  The chicken wire was just about low enough for any hungry bunny to hop over, and certainly wouldn’t deter the deer if they wanted to just step over it and invite their friends for dinner.   We did put some stakes around it with some webbing tape sprayed with deer repellent and we’ve been lucky so far.

In fact, the squash have grown, and grown, and grown some more.  At this point — they are escaping the fence and running away, and there is nothing I can do about it – but wait for harvest, put on a my safari expedition attire, grab a machete and fight my way in to the squash patch and hope for a bounty of acorn, butternut and spaghetti squash — and some pumpkins and gourds.

I guess what is growing outside the fence is fair game for the rabbits or the deer.

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The squash are so tiny you can barely find them in the dirt.
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But they grew…
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And they’ve crawled over the fence and are escaping — I’m afraid I’ll wake up tomorrow morning to find that they’ve covered the chicken coop!

July — It’s empty till next year!

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm After, Before, Chester County, Farm, Garden, Greenhouse, Homestead, Uncategorized

Spring and early summer went so fast.  I got a late start on my seeds since the greenhouse didn’t arrive until mid-March.  By the end of June the greenhouse was empty — except for some weeds growing up from the floor.  Seriously!  I have enough weeding to do in my outside garden spaces.

I washed all the pots in a bucket of soapy water and let them dry so they’ll be ready for next spring.  It’s kind of sad seeing it empty.  Maybe I can start some seeds for a fall planting — there’s always spinach or lettuce.  And I wonder how hot-house tomatoes might taste at Thanksgiving!

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Weeds! In my greenhouse!
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A good scrub to get rid of slugs and creepy, crawly things
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All cleaned up and drying in the sunshine — ready for next spring.

July — Knee High by the 4th of July?

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Uncategorized

I’ve never planted corn before because I never wanted to give up valuable garden space — and you need a lot of space to grow corn.  It needs adjacent rows of corn to be able to pollinate, and we always had good corn from the local farm market — so it wasn’t a priority.  But since Chris tilled a second garden for me this year — and he wanted to grow corn, I relinquished a small part of the garden.  We planted a square area about 6 rows deep and 12 feet long.  I don’t know where that saying came from, which part of the country it pertains to, or whose knees they are talking about — but my corn is NOT knee high — and it’s 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July — maybe by Labor Day we’ll have corn!

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This corn is well above my knees – but no corn yet.