Blackberry Bargian

I love the "death" section at Lowe's. You know that back corner where they move poor plants to die. 

Today's good find were blackberry bushes marked down to $5. I bought 3 more to add to the 5 already planted by the fence line. Our blackberries the last couple of years have done extremely well. With 3 more plants we should have plenty to preserve in the way of jams, jellies and pie filling. Thank you Lowe's for adding to our edible landscaping. Our new bushes just needed a little kindness and some water!

Chickens

A few weeks ago I was taking care of our chickens and realized I only had a few younger hens. The rest are aging out. I guess I lost my mind for a bit and ordered 25 brown egg layers and 15 bantam chicks. At the time this seemed like a really good idea!
My plan for the bantams is to use them for live little brooding machines. They are such good mamas and if I let one or two go broody each Spring I should not have to buy anymore chicks. Chalk one up for being more self sufficient if that plan actually works out.
I lost a couple the first day but they actually shipped 19 bantams so it all evened out. Hopefully I will end up with more banty hens than roosters! Everyone is settled in and doing well. Who can resist cute baby chicks? Not me. Yep this was a really good idea!

Mushroom Mix-up

Another mushroom bargain this week! I bought several packs of button mushrooms that were reduced and picked up what I thought were shiitakes to dehydrate. Opps. They were sliced portobellos. Not to worry. I canned up the buttons and supper tonight was a most delish soup made with some of the mushroom stock I canned a while back and a loaf of homemade crusty bread. This will be added to my list of keeper recipes.

Still Too Hot!

The Fall seedlings are begging to be set out. However, the intense heat and lack of rain are putting us way behind.With daily temperatures in the 90's and the heat index over 100 most days we will have to wait a while longer. Sigh. It truly has been a long hot summer!

A Gift Of Tomatoes

A sweet friend asked if I would like a bushel of tomatoes. Absolutely! I spent the day processing most of them into salsa and dehydrating some Romas that were in the mix.

At the end of the day 28 pints of salsa and 2 quarts of dehydrated tomatoes were added to the pantry. This was a huge blessing since the drought has almost completely wiped ours out. We are still looking for some much needed rain so we can start getting the fall garden in.

Fall Seedlings

Sis has been really busy in the greenhouse getting our fall plants started. Today we transplanted all of the seeds she started a few weeks ago. She started several kinds of broccoli and cabbage. We transplanted all of those pretty plants in single cell packs to be planted outside in a few short weeks. Hard to believe it is that time already!

Sis, mom and I worked for quite some time and in the end we had 8 1/2 flats - that is 306 plants!

Hopefully Mother Nature will bless us with some cooler temperatures and much needed rain by the time these are ready to go in the ground. We have had only about 1/2 inch in the last 7 weeks. The storms seem to split and go north and south by just a few miles of us. It has been very discouraging and has pretty much fried the last of the summer gardens. So we shall look forward to Fall!

Corn - Done & Frozen!

A very long day in the kitchen. Usually I have the help of family and we share (I'll still share) but today it was just me. I shucked and cut and cut and shucked until all of the corn was off the cob and in freezer bags. Whew! Our main crop this year was a non-GMO silver queen. It did exceptionally well and is super sweet.
Since it is not GMO corn, we are planning to leave most of the second ears for seed and see how they come back next year. Since silver queen is a hybrid, it may be a total flop. We won't know unless we give it a try. Some of my research suggests that it could work if the most vigorous plants are saved for seed over the next few years. Never hurts to try! That is if the critters don't eat it all before it dries!.