Back on Track

A lot has happened in two years. Three moves, a new baby, and suddenly we find ourselves back at the site of the original garden (abandoned last year due to a move that took us an hour and a half away), but for good this time, not just to visit. In May we moved into the old section of the farmhouse Sam grew up in, and have made the first push into putting down official homesteader roots.

We dug a new garden in the yard - easier to water and get to, but more Japanese beetles. So far we haven't seen any squash bugs or Colorado potato beetles - perhaps they all stayed in the old plot - but we don't have much for variety that they might like to eat, either. Due to the late-season move and my lack of time to get anything done with a baby on my hip, the garden is rudimentary to say the least. That's okay; it's a start.

Despite a small planting, we have a bumper crop of tomatoes and cukes (I put up about ten gallons of crock pickles before the powdery mildew made off with the late season cucumber crop), and will have a decent crop of soup beans and soy. This year we only planted Dutch brown and Jacob's cattle for soup beans. My goal next year is to increase that to two more varieties, as the beans make such an excellent storage crop. Today's picking pulled in a fairly good haul of green beans along with the first round of dried-on-the-plant brown beans, ready for the kids to shell:
 

Sam has invested a lot of time into permaculture research, and to that end we ordered but have not yet received several varieties of nut and fruit trees. They should be here this fall. We put in elderberry and strawberries already, and hope for a good yield next year.

On the non-garden front, we have started a new flock with 9 guinea keets and 18 chicks. They're still young, and still waiting for us to have time to finish their new coop in an outbuilding closer to the garden (where the guineas will be able to eat all the Japanese beetles they can handle). More on them, and on our progress, in future posts.