It’s called homesteading

While I’m busy watering gardens, picking and canning beans, Will is out “making hay while the sun shines.” And boy-oh-boy have I been canning beans! Our Providers have sure outdone themselves providing food for us this year. I have to laugh. I only planted one double row that was 20 feet long as we already had a lot of beans left on the pantry shelves from last year and years before. (Now you see why we plant Providers!) But this year they surpassed even our wildest expectations. I’ve been canning beans every four days for weeks. Yesterday I decided to do something different and made Mustard Bean Pickles (see my book Growing and Canning Your Own Food). We really love them and were running out down in the pantry. Now we have six more pints. I think I’ll make another batch then switch to Dilly Beans for awhile as our dill crop is now over my head.

FINALLY our Glass Gem popcorn is starting to tassel, after wondering if it ever would! It’s now eight feet tall and very lusty. My friend, Carolyn, was over today and while we were picking a big batch of cucumbers for her to pickle I spotted the very first corn tassel. Hooray! Now if it hurries up and makes ears…

Will cut another hay field today and noticed a guard on the haybine was loose. He called me and asked me to bring wrenches so I met him on the road and he tightened the bolts on the guard. (If he left it loose it might catch on the sickle sections and break them.) The sun’s shining after nearly an inch of rain yesterday. We were sure glad to get the rain as the ground was SO dry.

Our Seneca Sunrise sweet corn that Will has bred back from a hybrid is now fully tasseled out and even though it’s pretty weedy, the corn looks sturdy and happy. So do the Howden pumpkins along one side of the old pig pasture. We’re hoping for a good seed crop and plenty of feed for the animals.

Another hen came out of her hiding place in the orchard with eight chicks yesterday. We didn’t even know she was setting! It’s been a good hatching year with two hens hatching chicks, the turkey hatching chicks, and another hatching her own poults. And we have another hen turkey setting right now. Our Cornish Rock meat birds are growing like weeds and between them and the extra home-grown roosters we’ll be canning lots of chicken. We also need to butcher a couple of our extra yearling tom turkeys as we have several and they fight in the spring. All that chicken and turkey will can up so nice. Mmmm, I can’t wait. — Jackie