This summer has turned out to the busiest in my life.

And I didn’t even have a baby this summer.

Between vacations, visitors, general summer playing there was the farm.
The farm.
My wonderful farm.
The first part of the summer there was a lot of cultivating, planting, watering, waiting and weeding. Then in mid-July we turned the corner to a lot of harvesting, preserving, noxious weed control, weeding and weeding and more weeding.  The best part of it was that harvesting. While at this point I will say our harvest has been minimal, there is quite the learning curve out here in the desert, there have been bounties.  The green beans have been plentiful, I stopped counting at 80 pounds, and we have bottled about 70 quarts.  Beets did wonderfully, as did carrots, chard, onions and of course zucchini!  All of which have been carefully put away for future use.

My larder is filling up
and that makes me happy.

I struggled with tomatoes this year, the harvest is going to be minimal at best, I will have to buy tomatoes this year to bottle, and I was hoping not to.  The heirloom tomatoes, so lovingly grown from seed, have been a huge disappointment, only a handful of tomatoes set; I think the combination of them being heirloom and the record hot summer spelled disaster for them.  I will try again next year.  I did plant some hybrid roma tomatoes, and while they did a tad better it’s still not enough for what I need.

Cucumbers are ok, I am waiting for cooler weather in hopes they pick up more, and Sassy is set on making pickles this fall.  They were planted in an area that has pretty barren soil; it is going to take a lot of work and time to get our garden soil richer and therefore more productive.

It’s been a wonderful summer.

Summertime has proved to be very busy here on Quail Run Farm.  I thought I would jump on here and give a quick update.

We went on a week long vacation to South Dakota to visit my sister and her family.  We had a great time seeing the sights, including Mt Rushmore, so busy in fact we forgot to take the camera and the only pictures we got were on our phones. By the time the weeks was over I was completely exhausted, but refreshed and ready to dig into some of those lingering projects

While we were away our garden burst forth and we have fruits, and weeds, lots of tall weeds.  I think it going to take a full week to clean it all up. Our first beans are ready to pick, and zuchinni too, the tomatoes are getting big and will be ready to pick soon.  Beets and carrots are ready as well.

Ruger has decided that chickens are fun to play with, this isn’t a good thing, we’ve got some training to do.

Tonight I want to sit down and design some labels for our farm, my dream would be to produce enough produce to sell and a local farmers market someday, and I want a cute logo and some labels.

Going to start working on the craft/school room.  All it needs is a fresh coat of paint and shelves in the closet.  Soon it will all be set up for school this fall.  I am going to homeschool my elementary kiddos (Sassy, Lou and Little Man) I am excited and nervous, mostly excited.

Big things are on the horizion for our little family and farm, its exciting to see  everything happen!