Hot and foggy, life keeps going.

I'm sorry for not having a post yesterday. Aside from the post today I'm also going to be posting tomorrow so I keep with the two posts for the week. Life has been very busy and not particularly homestead oriented for the past week or so, leading to falling behind on getting photos, or even having things considered for a blog post. As for not getting it done yesterday, I just forgot to get at least something done. I'm setting up a reminder in my calendar so that doesn't happen again.

On the homestead, the weather has been hot and wet, leading to mornings and evenings of heavy fog, and strange lighting. There's more than that even without us actively working on things, as life keeps moving whether you're watching or not.


As for what's going on right now, we've been harvesting from the bean plants, and have had remarkable production from the bush bean plants despite only having 3 of them growing. The pole beans are slower to produce, but have a huge number of flowers on them. Only some beans are currently on the pole beans, but I'm looking forward to seeing just how much production we get out of them in the long term. We were a bit surprised at just how productive the bush beans were, especially given how little work we've had to put into them. I'm considering focusing more on bush beans more in the future than pole beans. With pole beans we have to set up trellises, and make sure the beans are climbing what we want them to instead of the things we don't. With the bush beans we can just plant them where they won't impede what ever is in the bed with them, and they won't be impeded, and let them do their thing. As most of you probably know that will also have the added benefit of building the nitrogen in the soil, which many annual plants deplete. If we do this properly and co plant with tomato plants and the like, it should help keep the soil productive, while making double use of the area we have to plant in, without having to constantly dig more garden beds. Not having to do a lot of expansion will be good, since if this year has been any indication, children take a lot of energy.

In the unfortunate side of things, we are down to two turkeys, and one hen. Mr. Bond MkII lasted just about as long as George Lazenby. We only have the one black hen left, who is sticking as close to the turkeys as she can. We suspect her lack of independence, and closeness to the turkeys is why she's still alive and doing well. It is a bit frustrating, but it just cements that before we get more chickens, which the Lady of the House really enjoyed and worked out well for us in terms of production, we're going to have to have a better living situation for them. As much as we wanted to just let them free range it just isn't a practical solution for them given the pace of destruction foxes and weasels can achieve. Over this late summer and fall we're going to set up a pasture for the chickens, turkeys, and our future livestock. Once we have that set up, we'll consider getting chickens again. Until then, we're going to focus on the garden, the rabbits, and day to day life.

Tomorrow I'm going to have more new photos than just the cover photo, and I look forward to seeing you then.