Shhhh… don’t tell Potato Boy, but as I was walking through the garden last night, I noticed that the potato plants were starting to show signs of drying down. That caught my attention so I thought I’d look a little closer. I noticed a couple spots in the hilled soil around the plant where it was bulging and cracked.

A Bulge In The Hilled Soil

I didn’t have the potato fork handy, so I just pulled back a bit of dirt by hand and look what I found…

A Red Potato Just Under The Surface

It didn’t take long to “steal” a handful of potatoes from a few plants this way – actually it may have taken longer for everyone to decide how we were going to fix them for supper.

The First Red Potatoes Of The Year

I’m half tempted to dig the rest of them up and use the garden space for some late sweet corn.

The peas didn’t get much attention this year. The most time I spent with them was when I was picking up seeds and wanted to make sure I got a variety that produced a good garden pea and didn’t want to climb.

I took a closer look the other day and was amazed at how well they were doing.

Peas, Peas, Peas

More Peas

Still More Peas

Just like everything else in the garden, a little more rain would have helped a lot, but it looks like the kiddos will be shelling peas in no time.

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve shared progress on the pasture. Now that the pasture fence is almost complete, it’s starting to look a little more like pasture and less like a random patch of weeds.

Starting To Fill In

It’s getting easier to spot the clover and the alfalfa. The various grasses are filling in.

Clover, Alfalfa, and Grasses

If you consider its only rained two or three times since the pasture was seeded it doesn’t look too bad.

Volunteer Corn Growing In The Pasture

One problem with working with an old corn field is all of the corn that was missed during last year’s harvest. Some of the stray ears of corn were covered with enough dirt to cause the kernels to sprout. The result – random spots of volunteer corn throughout the pasture. There’s an easy fix to this. Now that the corn is past 4 leaves tall a simple pass over with the mower should kill it.

One of the great things about having a larger garden this year was that we were able to try a few additional varieties of some vegetables. One example of this would be the sweet peppers. We planted 2 varieties of sweet peppers this year – 4 plants of each. They looked exactly alike on the day they were purchased and we treated them exactly the same. They were planted on the same day, in the same row, and always watered at the same time. There really shouldn’t be any difference between the two, right?

Two Varieties Of Sweet Peppers

So, what seems to be the difference? Turns out the larger plants are “Lady Bells”. Lady Bells are a F1 Hybrid Variety. The smaller plants are “California Wonder”. They are a heirloom variety from the 1920s. Both varieties should grow to 24″ in height and produce roughly the same amount of peppers, but I guess this is a good example of how the right variety for a given garden can really make a difference.

The kiddos have been working hard to keep the weeds back and Pip has been working even harder at keeping the rabbits away. All the hard work is starting to show.

One Row Of Pumpkins And Squash

One Of the Pumpkins

Last week I wrote about Sissy’s first adventure showing cattle and mentioned she was working on another “project” this year even though we wouldn’t be returning to the field day. Sissy joined 4-H last fall and has been working with a steer named Cubbie off and on since last November as her first 4-H project for the fair this July.

For the most part, Sissy has no problem digging in and getting dirty while working with the steer. Though, her favorite part is cleaning him up.

Always Dirty

Lemon Fresh Joy – The Shampoo Of Choice

No One Is Safe When Sissy’s Using The Hose

The fair is just over a month away and Sissy still has a lot of work to do. But, now that her ankle has healed and school is wrapped up for the summer, she should be ready in time.

So all the girls had a hair appointment scheduled late yesterday afternoon. That left Potato Boy and I home alone to whip up a little something for supper and have it ready for when they got back. I told Potato Boy that if he helped me make it, he could pick what we have to eat. “Steak and potatoes,” he said without hesitation. Why did I even have to ask?

So I grabbed a package of T-Bones from the freezer while Potato Boy scrubbed a few potatoes (and then one or two extra for himself) and threw them in the oven. By the time the girls got home we were ready for them.

Potato Boy's Choice

When I sit down to meals like this, I often think of the people I’ve heard complaining about not knowing where their food comes from. Potato Boy pulled the lettuce, onion, and garlic (in the beans) from the garden about 45 minutes before this picture was shot. The green beans were the last we had in the freezer from our small garden last year. The steak was from a beef raised five miles away by my brother and butchered at the local locker. The only thing that wasn’t local – ironically enough – was the potato. And if we didn’t have a brand new bag of potatoes in the pantry, I would have grabbed the shovel and found out what the potatoes in the garden have been up to since they finished blooming. I’ve got a pretty good feeling at this point that the kiddos won’t have any trouble telling how their groceries are “made” if they’re ever asked.

I realized tonight that I was behind on my posts. I’m still recovering from this weekend. Late last week I got a wild hair and rounded up a post auger for the front of my skid loader, my brothers, and a couple hundred fence posts. We dug the first hole around 7:30 Saturday morning and by Sunday afternoon, all but around a dozen posts were in the ground.

The North Fence Line

We’re putting in a five wire high-tensile fence so we needed to set the posts about 14 feet apart. The system works pretty well as a pasture fence and allows for the wires to be held tight by a spring and ratchet system. If for some reason the wires get stretched and sag – say after a long winter under a snow drift – a few clicks on the ratchet will return the fence to new.

A Portion Of the Pasture Fence

We were able to get in almost all of the perimeter fence posts and the main pasture fence posts. Not a bad weekend. Potato Boy and I still need to set a few of the brace posts and run the wire, but that’s easy compared to digging out a 3 to 4 foot hole just to turn around and fill it back in after setting a post in it. We did run across a bit of trouble though…

A Few Of The Challenging Holes

The bottom half of that photo shows some of the debris left from the farm buildings that were tore down and buried over three or four decades ago. The top of that photo is proof we live on a big rock. We hit about a half dozen holes like this one where we could only go down about 6 to 12 inches before hitting bed rock. We hit well over a dozen more with rock, but were lucky enough to get them deep enough to sneak a post in. I have a plan for getting posts securely set in most of the shallow holes that don’t involve dynamite or a jack hammer – though I can get my hands on the later if the need arises. I even have a plan for setting a post here…

I’ll be sure to share how it turns out.

Last week after posting the recipe for Zucchini Muffins, I was asked about the cookbook in the photo.

Last Week's Photo

That little cookbook is a collection of some of the best recipes ever assembled between two covers – or well, it will be once I’m finished with it – and by “best” recipes, I mean family favorites.

The cookbook was actually a gift from Mom and the kiddos for Father’s Day two years ago. The four of them stopped by a craft store and picked up a blank book, some cooking decorations, and some adhesive. It made a great project for Potato Boy and Sissy and an even better gift.

Dad's Favorite Recipes

Since that time I’ve slowly been filling in the pages with recipes – hits with the kiddos, old family recipes, and Mom’s favorites. It should be complete in the next 15-20 years.

There are not any pictures with today’s post for two reasons: 1) I didn’t have a camera with me to get pictures of the cool stuff, and; 2) nobody wants to see pictures of the rest of the stuff discussed in today’s post.

I guess it’s time for another update on how Pip is doing on her new found hobby of guarding the pumpkin patch. Since the last update, she’s managed to compile quite the list:

1 raccoon, treed;
1 raccoon, dried;
1 deer, cornered;
4 rabbits, caught;
3 birds, caught;
1 big fat mole, caught;
1 wood chuck, treed;
An unknown number of field mice, caught;

Not shabby, if you consider this is only the stuff we’ve been around to see during the last 10 days. Who knows what she’s caught while we’re not around. The only real threats left to the pumpkin plants at this point are one or two remaining rabbits. They’re a lot more cautious now.

The deer caught us a bit by surprise. Last Saturday, Potato Boy and Mom woke up early to give Pip a bath so she’d be clean for her visit to the vet. I don’t think Pip minded the vet. He has a big-old-fat-cat that sleeps on the counter most of the time. Pip enjoyed a few minutes of harassing the cat while waiting for her turn. But, as soon as she got home it was off the leash, to the timber, and into the creek bottom mud. She was gone for about 10 minutes before she started in on her “I found something” bark. After 10 or 15 minutes of that I figured I’d better go check it out. I should have grabbed a camera. After stumbling through the undergrowth I finally found my way to the creek bottom. Pip was standing 5 feet from a doe and barking manically. She’d approach the deer and it’d back off. Then the deer would drop her head and advance on Pip. Pip would back off. I watched the game for about 2 or 3 minutes before I figured out the deer was trying to lure Pip out of the timber. She must have had a fawn hidden near by.

The rest of the list wasn’t nearly as entertaining. The dried raccoon carcass was even a little nasty – what threat did a half mummified raccoon pose to the pumpkin patch? And apparently, once Pip trees something she losses interest quickly. Though, I would like to see how she manages to catch the birds.

Like I said earlier… no camera when I needed one and when I had one, it was nothing you’d want a picture of.