Family Fun: First Ice Cream Cone, New Toys, and Silly Hair

We needed to visit a flooring store right next to Brewsters -- so we stopped for some of our favorite ice cream and Baby A got his first big treat.  He didn't like strawberry, but my Graham Central Station flavor was a hit.

 

Big Brother M made a plan to earn money for a fancy drone.  He is in the learner's permit phase and can only fly it with daddy. 

Both boys needed haircuts. Big sister A took advantage and made S a fuffy hair-do.  During Brother M's haircut the power went out!  We had to use bottled water and a damp cloth to wipe off the scratchy hair residue instead of having him hop in the shower. 

Farm Fresh: Harvest and Hatching Guineas

 We've been eating as many fresh tomatoes as we want and there's still plenty. Loads of things are growing and ready or nearly ready to harvest. Canning and preserving are about to become a full time job. This week we had some delicious fresh garden meals of pasta salad, basil nettle pesto on homemade pasta, and roasted beets and fennel with beet green omelet (duck eggs).

I saw lots of goodies, but didn't have a basket -- so shirt to the rescue. These became pasta salad. 

Pesto pasta for eating and as a skin cream. Haha.

My peppers have become like little palm trees from the muscovies nibbling on them.

I'm increasingly convinced that one can never have too many zinnias in the garden.  These are interspersed with the tomatillos and I love this row. 

The bee house has its first occupant... not sure whether it is an actual mason bee or something else. 

This poor mama duck found a hiding spot behind some rabbit cages.  Unfortunately, her plan and mine were not in sync. I had to kick her out.  I moved her eggs into the incubator, as she probably would not continue sitting on them in a new location. 

This is what I was working on -- getting all the rabbit cages up on cinder blocks instead of bricks.  The bricks' surface area is too small and the cages were tipping and wobbling.  Now they are much more stable.

We moved our first group of guineas out to the white chicken coop.  I cleaned it all out and put in nice clean mulch for them. There are 9 in that group. 

My neighbor also gave us 20 guinea eggs that I put into the incubator.  They have now started to hatch and are moving into the brooder.

I added some plants to my shade gardens this week.  We took down a holly close to the house (again). I chopped up the stump as best I could. Digging out the last one took me a week and I definitely don't want to waste any time on that, plus it's right on top of some electrical lines. I planted Angelica, which will grow to about 7-9ft tall, at the back and Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) down in front. 

I've been slowly creating a woodland herb garden.  I have a Spice Bush, Black and Blue Cohosh, Baical Skullcap, and now added some of the same Skullcap mentioned above (official variety, some call it American Skullcap). 

I also planted several clusters of Sweet Woodruff at the base of a large oak tree along the driveway.  A lot of the front garden is a wild mess.  Zinnias, artichokes, cardoons, hot peppers, and basil down in front make me smile each time I pass by though. 

Farm Fresh: June Wrap Up

 

We happily harvested our first dozen tomatoes. All were eaten outside as a snack break during choring time.  Speaking of choring.  We did a big weeding blitz on Friday.  Normally, the kids have to do 45 minutes of a garden chore (or complete a garden task, faster than 45 minutes if they hustle).  On Friday morning it was drizzly and cool.  When I did my garden walk I saw a lot of prickly amaranth and other weeds popping up.  

I went back in the house and told the kids that we would skip school work that day and do a big weeding blitz.  If they did a good job helping I offered Cafe Rio as a reward for dinner.  The weather was perfect for pulling weeds, damp soil and cool overcast skies with a light breeze.  We all were outside in the high tunnel and fenced garden from 9:30am to 2:30pm.  Baby A slept about 3 hours of that for his usual mid day nap. I assigned a row to each child and they tried to keep pace with each other and were able to talk while working along.  They did a great job and we got it all done!

We collected and destroyed our first twenty tomato hornworms this week. 

I also noticed some blossom end rot on 4 of my 60 tomato plants.  Our soil test showed that the soil needed more calcium and in the spring I added the maximum that it could absorb in a year, plus put some in with each tomato as I planted them.  It was still not enough apparently -- since blossom end rot is a sign of calcium deficiency.  

I decided to try foliar feeding a mixture of calcium and magnesium. Hopefully, that will give the plants a quick shot of what they need. 

I uncovered/un netted most of my fruit trees this week.  The top branches show some damage from the weight of the netting.

The bushes that had no netting have a lot of flagging (cicada damage), especially the blueberries.  I think they will recover though. 

Japanese beetles are out en masse now.  I still am offering  5 cents each for kids who want to pick them off, but I also bought a couple traps.  My friend told me that she thinks their beetle population is a lot less than last year thanks to serious trapping and I decided it was time for me  to get serious.  There are doing a lot of damage.   We had to change the bag on one of the traps after only 3 days -- there are about a thousand beetles in a full bag like this.  It's also nice because it's not poisonous or dangerous to other insects.  It's a pheromone scent that just attracts the Japanese beetles. 

Brother M is very into bug photography.  Here is a spider that we spotted in the kitchen and he followed it around taking pictures. 

Our Silver rabbit kits are one month old and just adorable. 

A friend called them Beatrix Potter rabbits and now I always think that when I am handling them. 

A couple years ago our friends shared some wineberry cuttings with us. We planted a small patch and got our first harvest this year. 

They are so delicious. We all agreed that we like them better than raspberries. We will work on expanding our patch over the next couple years. 

More bug pictures from brother M.  He found a "huge" ant and went out to document it. 

Another dead groundhog was delivered to me this week by my garden protector:

This is her third one.  She's such a good hunter!

A cool moth that Brother S spied and wanted to document.