Garden Update

As you can tell from the upcoming and uploaded cooking videos, I've been harvesting a few herbs and strawberries. Well this week while tending and crimping (cutting bits and pieces to promote growth), I found a fairly large zucchini squash. It had been hidden beneath some leaves ( aka a very bushy tomato plant). I promptly cut it. I usually don't like my summer squashes to get this large. I like the smaller variety to eat, can, or freeze. This sucker was a foot long and six inches around!

I'm going to play around with an Eggplant Parmesan recipe but use the zucchini in it. Yes, I'll video tape it if I do it. Or I just may make Zucchini Bread with it. It will probably make five or six loaves. I may video that too. I'm still fighting with Mel about eating her vegetables. I haven't decided whether to post my recipes on a page here or on our website yet, but I'll keep you posted. Y'all keep asking for them and I'm trying to comply.

I found our first tomato. It's only about 2" around right now. Something has been chewing the leaves off my tomato plants. I've searched several times a day for the culprit to no avail. We lost all sixty English peas plants due to the weather (more on this below). I replanted green beans and corn both have a sixty day harvest cycle. Up here is a much shorter growing season than I'm used to. Since the chickens have scattered all the seeds I planted, I found some ripe beans in the Hardy board bed that I had no idea what kind they were. I picked them (4 of them) and shelled them. It turns out that they were red beans. So now I know.

Speaking of Mel, she's been training Bennie Dufus, he now answers to both names, LOL! She's also been cleaning out the barn/workshop. (More building project videos on the way) It was a disaster! Almost all the bales of hay which the chickens had scattered everywhere and the wayward stuff has been reorganized. It's now looking like an actual workshop. She can actual find the tools she's looking for. The hay was a mixture of dirt and chicken poop so it's going into the compost pile.The last zombie rooster's days are numbered because she found the hatchet. I've just have to wait until she grinds a sharper edge on it before I attempt killing him off again. If he walks off again after I decapitate him, I'm leaving the homestead. LOL!

The weather has been so hot (mid 90s) that it's rivaled my south Georgia homestead. Not only that but we've had a drought. Not a drop has fallen in the past two weeks. At least on our side of the mountain. It evaporates before it reaches us. We need rain desperately. It replenishes our spring water system. We've started conservation measures already. But the garden needs water too.We find ourselves in a catch-22 situation. Later this summer I'll be purchasing some 275 gallon IBC totes for a rain water catchment system, but that doesn't help now. I'm also planning an automatic watering system for the rabbits. Every gallon of this life giving/providing fluid counts. It will also be working towards our goal of self sufficiency and our expanded homestead.

Well that's about it for this week on the Cockeyed Homestead. As always...like, subscribe, and comment. We love hearing from you. Y'all be blessed!