Planting season has almost slowed down. Four of the five gardens are planted, only the beans/pumpkin bed is awaiting seeds after I finish fencing it off. That’s the one thing you don’t think about when you decide that your laying hens are going to be free-range: they like seeds and sprouts – a lot. Thank heavens we thought of that before we started planting! Needless to say, come next year, everything will be going a lot smoother.
So with planting season slowing up to simply water, weeding, and planting second sets, life should be a little smoother around here, right? Wrong. Things are just gearing up. Rhubarb is up at the in-laws. We have one bag already which will be pretty much used fresh. The frozen stuff from last year needs to be thawed and jammed before I start using this season’s for that same reason.
Strawberries are up and we’ll be picking this weekend. With any luck we’ll get all twenty-five pounds done in one session so any extra I get at the end of the season will be bonus. If strawberries are up now, raspberries and blueberries are right around the corner. We’ll be doing those at pick-your-owns this year, something we’ve done with blueberries in the past, but raspberries will be an added step. Granted, we will be picking what we can of the wild ones around the house if the birds and deer don’t get them first.
As far as tea supplies go, we’re borrowing the in-laws dehydrator so that I can collect some dandelion, raspberry, and clover, if it’s not too late to do such. I’m also hoping that this will let me get a better handle on drying the mint throughout the year as well as drying up spinach for stews and the like, if there’s’ a good harvest.
This doesn’t even touch on the other projects we have going, nor the ones we’re trying to plan. We just removed all the carpet in the master bedroom and will be painting the floor before winter. I’ve been working on cutting up a bag of scraps for braided area rugs, but that isn’t anything I plan on having done for this winter. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to sweeping instead of vacuuming the bedroom, though. That will be a plus!
There’s finally another wood bin done up. While we’re technically behind on wood still, it’s nice to be moving in the right direction.
Some say that summer’s their time to relax and breath. Personally, I know I’ll be ready to sleep away those cool winter days when they come back.
