Oh What a Beautiful Morning!

It's in the 60s this morning in South Alabama and I'm loving it!  Everything is so green and pretty and it is not too hot to go out and get some work done in the yard.  I've been doing some here and there, but I've really been slacking.  The morning sun comes right up over my backyard beds and after a few minutes of working or weeding, you can hardly stand it, but this morning, I spent about an hour and a half weeding one of my beds and planting some seeds. 

I had a little helper this morning.

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We still have just the one and she is spoiled rotten.  She doesn't get let out of her pen a lot because I'm so worried the neighborhood dogs are going to get at her like they did all my others.

I was weeding one of my beds and she was right up in it with me.  I literally had to keep a big stick by my side because she thinks our fingers and toes are worms and goes crazy sometimes.  I don't hit her with it, I just use it to gently push her away. 

It didn't really deter her though.  She wanted to know everything that was going on.

We had another  little helper too.  This little stick bug hanging out on the wall while we were working.

As I was going inside, I realized I had several peas growing on my pea plant.  I am so excited.  I pray they keep at it so we can have some fresh peas.  Yum!

Everyone have a great week!

This post is part of the Homestead Revival's Barn Hop

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!