2/7ths to Go

I'm down to two county fairs to judge. Fair season is short and it goes quickly! 

Yesterday I judged indoor gardening for the first time. I don't have a ton of plant knowledge, but I do know some things and I know how to ask questions, so I figured I could handle it. 

The day before in a different county, I asked the veggie judge next to me for a crash course and she gave me good questions to ask: how did you choose your pot, what kind of materials are inside your pot, how long have you had the plant, how do you care for it, where do you keep it in your house, do you fertilize it, what kind of plant is it? 

Many of the kids I judged brought succulents or cacti, in which I am well versed. I was able to give quite a few of them pointers, and the ribbon placings weren't too tricky to manage. 

There are three age categories that can earn champ/reserve. Interestingly, there were a lot of contenders in the youngest group and oldest group. The middle group didn't have much. The girl who won that category brought a project of homemade soil and three plants she grew from cuttings. The guy who got second place in the youngest category bought his plant from the garden center G works at!

Mountains

I found two mountains today. 

The first is this ant hill inside a cinder block. Look at all of those eggs! 

The duck pond had been resting on top of that block. G and I noticed a hoard of mosquito larvae growing in the pond, and thus emptied it immediately. 🤢 

It was too heavy to simply dump it out, so we created a siphon using one of our garden hoses. Pretty soon a trickle of water turned into a steady stream. G had the idea to fill a pond inside the trampoline for the ducks, and as you can see, the ducks adored it. At one point five of the six swam at once. 

My second mountain is kale from the garden. I just trimmed the big leaves on the outside of the plant. I'm hoping I left enough that the plant will continue to produce. The kale was stacked almost to the top of the basket! 1ft high, 1.5ft wide, 1ft across. Kale chips, here I come!

Pants

I've had most of my chores pants for over a decade. Didn't have much call to use them in teacher mode! Gardening and goats have been pretty tough on them though... Most of mine need patching, all in the same area! It seemed like a strange place: the upper right thigh. I realized later that I often rest my hand/fist on my leg in that place while driving. It must wear the fabric out.

G's shorts are worn to shreds. I've already fixed them once, and now they've upgraded to patch-level fixing. 

He has a pair of pants that shrunk in the wash, so I cut that up for patch material.

Boy it's hard to sew the patches in the leg! Not much room to maneuver.

The ones with holes near the hem aren't too bad. Lots of room there. 

My machine is the one I learned to sew on back in my childhood. It's pretty clunky and doesn't work well. My mom found out and sent a better machine she doesn't have need of anymore, so now the mending should go much better! 

Now I need a not-great-for-working-outside day to do it...

Emily, Emily, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

Eh, still pretty slow, although I have harvested a little produce!

The other night, G and I weeded and put down more landscape fabric to kill the grass. The grass has overgrown our potatoes and onions and choked a few of the plants out. 

Can you spot the potato plants in this jungle???

I pulled up some of the dead potato plants to see if they'd managed to grow anything... just a numb a smidge bigger than a hazelnut. 

I weeded the row of onions, hoping to find a few survivors. There are a few hangers-on!

I left those and dug up the ones with dead tops. 

The garlic tops are dried out too, so I pulled all but two of those (picture at the end). Not the big garlic bulbs I expected, but garlic nonetheless.

Our kohlrabi looks good! I picked one to take in the house and left the others growing a little longer.

The cabbage is forming heads, and as of right now doesn't have too many bug holes.

We have okra! 

The carrots are pretty tiny yet. These are from the row we planted last fall. 

I'm no radish expert, so maybe these aren't ready, but I was ready to pick them, so here we are. 😅

Broccoli. Some bolted, some look like they're forming heads. 

My vining plants haven't naturally grown up the trellis; they're growing out instead. Tonight I wound them through hoping they'll follow my lead. (And my lettuce looks ready!) Some zucchini looked ready too!

The tomatoes and peppers just won't grow! But they are slowly producing a few fruits. 

Here's my final haul, minus a couple beans and peas I tested for quality control, my hand as a size reference.

Over the Fence

I looked into the pasture one afternoon to find four blond heads peeping over the fence. Our neighbor's grandkids I presumed. I invited them to come over to our side so they could actually go into the pasture. 

Their heads disappeared and after a long moment they came around, quickly getting distracted by the chickens and ducks. 

The oldest girl introduced herself to me as our neighbor's niece, here from Missouri all week. The two littlest must be her siblings. I showed them all how to get into the goat pasture and told them about Mopsy's kittens in the shed. Eyes lit up and they scampered off. 

"The goats love treats, so if you have any veggie or fruit scraps, you can bring those to feed them if you want." The youngest girl thought that was a great idea and soon she was back with a plastic carton of mushy grapes and whole strawberries. We paused at the chicken trampoline to give them a few treats. 

Her parents meandered over a few minutes later, I'm sure curious what their kids were up to. 

The goats were huge fans of the berries. One kid even got Fritz to eat from his hand, although he said that was the goat he always fed through the back of the fence (he's a grandkid that visits our neighbor often). Svetlana ate from hands through the fence. They were going to get more treats, but I heard someone over the fence call that it was time for cake, and the crowd quickly dispersed.

Man, these goats are going to be lonely after all the attention they've been getting!

Perfect Summer Day

My morning started with a hearty garden breakfast... Garlic and potatoes we harvested from the garden along with a few eggs from my parents' farm. 

I finished setting up the sleeping arrangements in the tents while G finished mowing and sprayed our natural mosquito spray around the front yard and outdoor game setup. 

The tent on the left is the current tent my college friend and I use on our trips. The right one is our old tent. It felt good to put it to use again! I remember why I liked it so much... good door zipper, good internal pockets, good airflow with rain fly attached... If only it were a tich bigger. 

Our friends arrived just before lunch. We did a quick homestead tour and introduced our animals. The goats were a huge hit. The kids hung out in the pasture feeding them leaves while we set out the food. All our meals were eaten outside, either on our front deck or on the picnic table and benches on the lawn. 

The homemade Miracle Whip worked well in the salad and tasted pretty good. Not as much flavor in the salad as I'm used to, but I think that could be tweaked with more spices. The recipe was pretty light on the amounts.

More animal time for some of the kiddos in the afternoon (one parked herself in the goat shed next to the baby kittens for a few hours). Some took naps. A few enjoyed the library. I guess it's a good thing I didn't get that mattress relocated to the garage. 😜

Lawn games were another hit for the afternoon: badminton, bean bags, ladder ball, bocce. The littlest guy drove our red and yellow Little Tikes car up and down the driveway with his sisters. 

For supper, we grilled burgers/steak and cooked hotdogs over a fire with a walk around the pond and s'mores for dessert. And more bonfire into the night. 

At one point, there were five kids bundled together in the biggest tent. As you might have guessed, that didn't work out too well for sleeping, so a few relocated inside. 

We were all up bright and early the next day! I heard the goat pasture gate chain rattle as I got ready for 4H judging. Out the window three were giving the goats a little breakfast. 

I know I won't get them all, but here are a few random highlights from our time together: 

• One of them gave us a "couple" name- Gimly 😄
• Setting aside "goat beans" at lunchtime (the big tough beans no fun for people to eat but loved by goats... Especially Ilsa) and saving all our other veggie scraps for the animals 
• Kids rushing off after eating to feed the goats, then rushing back bursting with excitement that the two most skittish goats ate out of their hands
• Tree climbing! A few tackled the big maple tree in the goat pasture. The first one to do it jumped down on the other side of the tree and needed a rescue because he couldn't climb back over the fence (The same thing has happened to me minus the tree climbing; our goat fence is not good for people climbing! We've thought about leaving a stepstool out there so we don't get stuck.)
• Chickens pecking leaves out of people's hands through the chicken wire
• Best homestead name idea: Holzhueter Haven (still thinking it over, but I really like Haven as the last word in the name)
• They also gave the goats nicknames: Svetlana is Antelope because she looks like an antelope, Gerda is Shantlers because she has short antlers, Fritz is Peg because he's small like a peg (Ilsa's I can't remember at the moment)

☺️

A Camper, Two Tents, and Miracle Whip

Today is prep day for the first Holzhueter Homestead Sleepover (no, we haven't named our homestead yet, that's just a working title 😜). Our friends from Marshall are making the trek tomorrow with their entire entourage of children. Sleeping arrangements: two tents in the front yard for the most adventurous, a popup camper for the semi-adventurous, and the guest bedroom for the not adventurous (and couches if there are more not adventurers vs. adventurers). 

I'm very impressed with myself. Most of the food is prepped for the three meals they'll be with us (veggies and cheese sliced, meat to grill thawing, ingredients for the pasta salad ready to go). I'm making a Heintz summer favorite for lunch, Summer Salad, which uses Miracle Whip as the dressing. Problem: no Miracle Whip in the house and this recipe definitely needs MW to taste the best. I could buy a container, but we both prefer mayo and we don't use either condiment often. So... can I make it from scratch? Answer: yes.

Here's the recipe I used. 

I made the first batch with olive oil (the recipe calls for canola oil). I know Galen, I should've stuck with the original instructions. 🙄 I was trying to be healthier. It came together well, but it's a yellowy green color and the taste is slightly off, not bad, but different than actual MW. Since that taste is central to the recipe, I made a second batch this time following the recipe to a T (although, I did cut the recipe in half, so is that following it to a T???). Batch #2 turned out much more like storebought MW though I can still taste the difference. Maybe I'm missing the preservatives? TBD how this works out in Summer Salad. Stay tuned!

Mulch

4H and county fairs are on my mind, and not just because it's judging season... 

We finally finished our fruit tree mulch project. Whew! Cedar was the mulch of choice and the smell of it reminds me of the cattle barns at the county fair. Every wagon load brought me back to my 4H days. 

Here's our finished berry patch. We snugged up the white fence against the edge of the mulch so we won't have to mow inside the fence.

The mulberry area took longer than I expected... It's bigger than it looks! G weed whipped everything while I broke apart cardboard boxes. Then he laid them down. 

Once everything was in place, G filled our wagon with mulch, dumped it inside the deer fence, and I spread it on the cardboard. It was a good system. 

The pile of mulch dwindled quickly; both of us wondered if we'd have enough to fill the area. But we did! 

Home Again: Good News and Bad News

We'll start with the bad news... While at the lake, we got a text from someone checking our animals that seven of our ducks had escaped the pasture and were chilling on our front lawn. She was able to herd them back in, but the others weren't around. We figured they were in the back pasture or something and told her not to worry about it. 

The next day, our other chore person found two duck bodies in the pasture. Ohhhh. That's why those seven were out... escaping a predator. They were the smart ones; none of the other eight have been found so we suspect they got eaten. 

Not much you can do while on vacation. 

The following day, there are were only six ducks and another clump of feathers in the lawn. Our chore person moved the ducks back into the trampoline and there have been no more deaths since. 

Time to get a dog. I put out a call on Facebook and got a few suggestions. We applied for approval to adopt at the two shelters/rescues in Mankato and are checking out a dog today (an Australian shepherd terrier cross). Hopefully he gets along with our animals! The dog foster parent is bringing the dog out to our house this afternoon so we can see.

Now for the good news! Our fruit trees were ready to harvest when we got home! This is our peach tree:

The netting bags worked better than I expected. Some of the fruit had fallen off the tree but stayed off the ground in the bags so it was still good to eat. 

The apricot tree was ready too. Here's our complete harvest of both (minus one peach we ate immediately after picking). So sweet! Better than candy!

Even though deer decimated our cherry tree's load of apples early in the summer, we ended up with two to enjoy. 

Our garden hasn't taken off at all (well, except for the weeds). Too cold? Too much water? Our tomatoes and peppers look almost the same as the day we planted them. The cruciferous veggies are finally growing. Our potatoes that looked so good in June don't look so good now... Yellow leaves and stunted growth. G hoed a few rows and accidentally unearthed a few little potatoes. Hey, they're producing at least!

I used the weed whipper to cut down the sea of grass between the rows. I found a couple beans!

Our garlic has produced scapes. I wondered how big the bulbs were, so I dug one up. Answer: not very. Hopefully they'll grow some more, but I'm not very hopeful. 

I'm disappointed in our garden, but G keeps reminding me that this is our learning and experimenting year. Hopefully next year will be better! 

Kittens!

I didn't think I'd post while on vacation, but....

Mopsy had her kittens! Friends from church (the ones who gave us Raz) stopped by to visit Raz and found the new babies in the goat shed. Seems like there are four. 

I wondered if Oreo, the black and white cat we see around from time to time, was the dad. Based on their coloring I think it's an unknown third party. 

TBD if the kittens are boys or girls!

Vacation!

This week I'm camping with my college travel buddy up in the Iron Range of Minnesota. We're staying at McCarthy State Park and will do day trips out from there. 

The day after we get back from that trip, G and I are heading up to Brainerd for his family's annual lake trip. 

So, you'll have to wait two weeks for the next homesteading update!

Fruit Trees

Even with the battle with the deer, a couple of our trees are actually producing fruit! One peach tree and one apricot tree, to be specific.

I covered the fruit with seedling netting I saved from the garden center hoping it will keep the bugs off and other creatures out. 

Some fruit fell off the trees. I wonder if they'll ripen on the counter. That little guy on the left is an onion from our garden.

I finally got to the mulch stage around the orchard. The deer fences around each tree makes it more time consuming because I have to fill pails instead of the cart.

It does allow for precise placement!

 

Hostas!

When I close my eyes, I see hostas. 

This was not my plan for the day. I wanted to put mulch around fruit trees. But, while I waited for G to be ready for that, I dug up the hostas growing among the berry bushes along the fence. It was hot and windy, so I worried the roots would dry out if I waited to dig them in. 

So we spent the day placing hostas. 

We had to move some boards I had relocated months ago. Interesting little mushrooms underneath! 

Step two is to put cardboard and mulch around them. Step three: figure out a border.

Fun With Elderflower

The last time I was at the farm I brought back some elderflowers. I dehydrated some for tea and kept some fresh for kombucha and flavored sugar. We'll check the flavor in a few days!

 (I've actually remembered to shake the jar every other day.) 😅

Lawns to Legumes

I started my medicinal garden today. Here's what it looked like before I started:

Step one is to put down a tarp to kill the grass (or in reality weeds).

That's all the progress I made today!

Wood Pile

I finally moved the wood pile away from the garage and into the goat pen. I found some interesting things...

These logs have been here for months, but I guess it's been so wet, this one sprouted! 

Who knew we had ferns growing along the fence? Definitely need to relocate those before we expand the goat pasture.

More evidence of hostas' incredible resilience.

I pulled two big logs apart and found some incredible mold. 

When I flipped the log over, a mouse popped out. The log was hollow! The mouse had built a nest inside.