Summer squash and cucmbers

We had a lot of rain over the weekend. I have summer squash, zuchinni and cucumbers. I split the first squash and zuchinni in half length-wise and grilled them. They were mighty tasty.

I planted golden zuchinni. It's much easier to see on the plant than regular green zuchinni. Pictures to come later.

Voles and rabbits

Holy cow. I have horrible problems with voles and I think rabbits. The mild winter has us with a population explosion of rabbits. The voles have been steadily getting out of hand.

I think rabbits have decimated my peas and beans. They are also hurting my brussle sprout plants.

The voles have been eating my beets. Last year I lost tons of tomatoes because of voles. They ate the bottoms off all the fruit.

I ordered some Mole-med and got another, similar product. However, it's not supposed to be used around food plants. I guess I need to send it back. My other option is to get an outside cat. I don't really want a cat but we have rodent problems in the barn too. There is a cat hanging around (I hope he's hunting). I've contemplated feeding him. A friend also has a batch of kittens. Perhaps I should invest in some rabies shots and neutering and get some. Unfortunately our road is really busy.

Japanese Beetles

They have arrived. I knew it was going to be bad. They denuded a few leaves on my grape vines in 1 day. I sprayed pyola (organic pesticide) and now they are gone. I'm finding them everywhere. I think some came into the house on my clean laundry.

I also found a very interested customer for my veggies. Every day I go to the post office for work. I'm afamiliar face to the postal people. I brought samples of my eggs to my regular contacts and the other people asked for them. Today I offered Swiss Chard to one of my new egg customers. She was very excited to get it and she wanted 2 dozen more eggs. There may be something to this networking to sell my products.

Next up: Summer squash, golden Zuchinni and cucumbers.

When all else fails, post pictures

Flowers last summer

The horses our Willie and Otto. The red building is our chicken palace.

Reading

I'm reading the Little House books. Many friends that are farming/gardening/homesteading say that they were inspired as children by Laura Ingalls Wilder and her books. I decided to check them out. So far I have read Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie. I'm reading Farmer Boy now. It's about her husband's childhood. I'm liking Farmer Boy a lot. It's all about Northern NY (near where we almost moved to) and farming there. The Wilder family was pretty prosperous. I've noticed with these books that the food is almost a character unto itself. I guess if you spend all your time trying to aquire food, grow food, prepare food, store food, sell food, etc., then eating it becomes more significant. All that work also makes for a huge appetite. I would bet that 5000 calories a day would keep you fighting trim if you were doing the physical labor of farmers in the second half of the 19th century.

Long weekend and holiday

This past weekend and holiday were a bit productive. We made more progress in the basement, defrosted the freezer made a big trip to the dump and went to a party at the neighbors.

We have really good neighbors. We help each other out. We can borrow and lend tools. They have a son who will be able to baby-sit in a couple of years.

In the news: North Korea attempted to test 3 missiles (2 SCUDS and a long range one). All fell into the Sea of Japan. Ken Lay (from ENRON) died of a heart attack. He was waiting sentencing for fraud and some other stuff.