By Pops
Well, we have hit the dog days of summer. It’s hot. It’s humid. You’ve got to get the chores done early and make sure to keep up on hydration for yourself and watering for the garden. That is the bad news. The good news is that the garden is producing at a break neck speed.
Tomatoes are in and in a big way. We are harvesting our favorite grape tomato which is called Chocolate Sprinkles. The are sweet as grapes with a tomato taste. Big slicers are in as well, but this year we have had a bird problem. What we really need to do is put up bird netting, but it’s one of those things we just haven’t gotten around to doing. Our corn is still very early, so we are buying from local farm markets and whoo boy is it sweet. Eggplants we have a plenty. Up to our ears in cucumbers. Summer squash is about done for the year after great early production. Peas are long done, but beans are almost ready. And we have more peppers than we can handle. Now the winter squash is starting to be harvested including small butternuts, some pumpkins and Robin’s Koginut from Row 7 seeds. Oh yes, melons are coming in as well.
As far as putting food by, we have made Hungarian wax pepper jelly, jalapeno peach jam, pickled hot peppers and we are about to start on cowboy candy. We will puree winter squash, and for certain we are drying beans for the winter. This is a crazy time of year for the farm. It’s chores plus every day.
The baby goats are growing, but we are starting to have a few come down with scores (goat diarrhea for those not in the know). So we have to separate the sick kids, dose them with anti-parasite meds, copper and vitamin drench. It also means we need to rotate fields to get their heads off the ground that may have parasites.
Never a dull day.
