HOMEinSTEAD

[VINCENT]

WELL I GUESS I WILL MAKE THIS MY OFFICIAL HOMESTEAD SPOT.

Lets start by me telling you about this seasons gardens. i bought all my seeds from a guy on ebay......not my best decision. they were marketed as Heirloom seeds. weather the guy didn't know what that meant, or he was just plain a thief I'm not sure. for those who don't know , an heirloom seed is a seed that has been harvested from a vegetable and will produce another good heath vegi just like it came from...year after year, season after season this can be repeated. apparently not in this case. GMO seeds are either not fertile, or they will grow and produce vegis/fruit but they will bot grow properly. apparently this guy harvest his seeds from his GMO plants last season and sold them to me and many others. he has already been removed from ebay and i have no recourse.

my corn stalks grew 8-10 feet tall with giant ears of corn BUT no kernels....? my zucchini plants took off at a speed that out passed the sun its self!!! 6 plants produced exactly a total of 4 zuchs. FOUR!!!! then they died. D.E.A.D. my squash plant grew at a near normal pace, and they produced many many stunted vegis, and one of the many plants produced some large squash. maybe 4 or 5 to-date. but they are knoty, and have large lumps. more like a traditional gourd or one of those odd squash you see at thanksgiving. they are tough and not at all like a regular crooked neck yellow squash.

my herbs..... well all except for 1 small cilantro plant they never grew. 100 seeds each of the following. thia baisel, cilantro, catnip, dill, thyme, parsley and several others. along that same note, my 200 carrot seeds produced exactly 1%. i have 2 carrots growing but im afraid to harvest them due to a fear of further disappointment.

[VINCENT]

HOMEinSTEAD

my spinach has never started, my honeydew, and cantaloupe are flourishing.....well, the vines/plants are. they have never actually produced a single melon. the watermelon plants have produced hundreds of melons. each about 2-3 inches long.....

i guess in essence what im trying to say is that all the seeds i got from him have been a waste of tiem, money, and effort.

BUT!!! i did plant other seeds. i bought some organic seeds from the store. sugar peas. bountiful, and delish. perhaps the best i have ever had. also, red leaf lettuce. quite good, but unless i plant 100 plants, it doesn't go far. its an added item to a salad, not enough to make a salad from itself. my tomatoes plants are huge, but no red tomatoes yet. close but i think i have another week to wait.

this brings us to my bush beans..... they are cruising along....up until these torrential rails began about 2 weeks ago. that part of the garden must be the low spot. it would be better suited to a rice paddy, then a bean field. the plant were un 4-6 inches of water for days and days effectively killing the plants only as they were beginning to be ready to harvest. i got a few dozen green beans and that it.

[VINCENT]

HOMEinSTEAD

at this point i am prepared to rip it all out, and start over with some florida summer hearty plants. something will be better then nothing. i thought about letting the goats in so they could fertilize at the same time, but then i realized my jucca palnts are going strong, but wont be ready for harvest of the tubers until fall. so i dont want the goats eating all the tops.

lets give the garden a rest. and move on to the chicklens.

ive gone thru about 50 chicks this season. both store bought, and chicks that we hatched from the incubator and ones the mommas hatched. all laid from our own birds. of these 50, i have 12-15 that are just hitting laying age, and i have another 20ish that are about 6-8 weeks old. the rest have gone to the great garbage can, or compost pile in the sky.

today i recieved 18 eggs in the mail. they are all pale green or blue. eggs from americanas. but the rooster is a french copper maran. the maran hens lay a deep chocolate colored egg. the off spring that i am attempting to hatch and raise will be known as olive eggers. they will lay an egg that will be a deep olive green color. 21 days from now we should be having hatchlings.

[VINCENT]

HOMEinSTEAD

my great bunny experiment..... yeah.....no. still no babies.....at least not any that have lived past the hour mark. but im still trying. and no. i dont want to talk about it. oh...plus one of my females died last week. i think she heard me say that if she didnt produce this time i was going to eat her.....the pressure was to much for her and i didnt even get a decent BBQ out of her because im not prepared to eat meat that has been laying in the heat for hours. gag.

the goats have produced several babies and all the babies have been sold off. we also picked up several more females for the heard. a viariety of breeds. im not shoing them so i only care about food quality not colorings and such.

our pot belly pigs have gone to new homes oncve the babies were sold. i only want to focus on eggible animals. and yes...the pony is considered edible....at least by me.

our regular pig who was due to be the feast for my birthday party that we had to cancel was given a temp reprieve. he is getting big and will be filling the freezer come fall or winter. for those that i had to cancel on when mom got so ill(surprizingly she still is alive thankfully) i promise we will still do a party, but it will wait until we have a young pig next season....unless i decide to do one of the goats sooner.

i have 15 or 16 ducks that i am preparing to butcher. JT aint all excited about the prospect of the ducks but i figure once we eat one she will either jump on board or prohibit me from killing any more.

we shall see

[Gena.KY]

HOMEinSTEAD

That is a terrible thing Vincent. Sad Sad Sad, I know I don't have to tell you but the next time go to bepreparred.com and get you some real heirloom seeds. There may be other places out there, but that is where I get mine.
Damn....all that hard work for nuthin! Sorry for you!

[VINCENT]

HOMEinSTEAD

DID I MENTION THE ORANGE CUKES???? DID I???

the cucumbers that i bought from the guy were sold as green medium cuckes. good for eating, or pickeling. they are the size of a nerf football and they are half green and half orange. WTF!!!

[VINCENT]

HOMEinSTEAD

some of our chicks, taken just a few days ago

[unseenone]

HOMEinSTEAD

Sory fel frea to uncorekt it.

[DMH]

HOMEinSTEAD

That just sucks. All that effort for nothing. Feast or famine is the life of a farmer.

[DMH]

HOMEinSTEAD

Aww. They are cute. Did you name them? LOL!

[angeryamerican]

HOMEinSTEAD

Well, sounds like you still got a brown thumb. Keep it outta yer ass an you may be able to grow sumthin.

[VINCENT]

HOMEinSTEAD

So i decided to rip out the garden this weekend. as i began ripping out the yellow droopy soggy zuchini plants i made a discovery. underneath were very happy thriving green bean plants. to the tune of 15lbs of green beans. then i began finding cukes. yep they were still orange, but they are hella good. plus several of my herb plants are growing. not as many as i would like, but i was able to harvest some rosemary, some basil, and some cilantro. i found one3 zuch, and a few more that will be ready in afew days(not all theplants were mush and dead). a few yellow squash should be ready by mid week. my peper plants are bloomoing and doing well. now if i could just remember which peper plant is which. chives are growing well in some area, and in others they had all died off. but basicly the garden is doing better then i thought. dont get me wrong. i threw out ALOT!!!!! the goats were well fed. but all in all i was surprizingly happy with my harvest this weekend.

[VINCENT]

HOMEinSTEAD

then on sunday a friend dropped by. he manages a hunt camp that is open from september til july. well the last of the people left this week and the kitchen was still fully stocked so he came by with gallons of milk, loafs of bread, sugar, 4 dozen eggs, and 5 boxs of groceries. enough to over fill my fridge, both freezers, and pantries. plus he brought me a bunch of venison that one of the hunters had left him.

and so what did JT and i do on sunday????







we used our fresh harvest veggies, and herbs, plus the venison and potatos he brought over.

then we







and we







12 lbs of beans, 10 quarts of venison stew(plus what i ate), and 60 pieces of french toast(in the freezer for kids breakfasts).

[VINCENT]

HOMEinSTEAD

oh, and one dead chicken. i found his head, and both wings . either i have a predator, or someone preforming santanista rituals in the chicken yard.

[Gena.KY]

HOMEinSTEAD

Tha tis a purty peksture Vincent. Funy lukin cucs u hve.