Ramblings From the Day

Since it has been just me and my 6-year-old today (my girls are at summer camp), we just kind of did our own thing and wandered around the yard looking at everything, pulling weeds, watering the plants in the greenhouse, feeding THE chicken and just playing around.  I took a peak at my new squash plants popping up.  The others succombed I think due to a combination of the heat and squash bugs.  I have one bigger squash plant left and after reading online, I have been diligent about squishing bugs on the plant and scraping eggs of the backs of the leaves.  Gross!



Here is my little yard helper and his dirty hands :) (sign of a great day)

I have been experimenting with growing all kinds of vegetables in pots and surprisingly, okra has been the most resilient.  Tiny okra are forming on the plants now, so we will see!

The chickens left me one sweet banana pepper plant, but it has been a good one.  I have already pulled several peppers off of it and canned some.

I have a couple okra plants in the raised bed as well.

My Roma tomatoes are doing great.  Regular tomatoes...not so great :(

I grew some jalapeno plants from seeds, and finally...I spy a pepper!

At one point today, we decided to run to the feed mill for chicken feed.  Well they were closed and I just couldn't help but stop by our local farmer stand.  They had bushels of pink eye purple hull peas already shelled so I bought some!  I attempted my first lone act at fresh peas in the pressure canner. 

I think they turned out great, but some didn't have much water in them.  After doing some research, I realized I might have opened the canner too quickly, not giving the jars time to adjust to the temperature, which may be where I lost my water.  So these ones will be used first and I have some quarts going now and I still have some more left over.  Might have to freeze them or go buy some more jars!

Hope everything is going great your way!