Firewood

The last day of summer is a good day to get back to work splitting firewood. A few hours and a smashed finger later this is what we have:

Last winter we just ran out of split and seasoned wood before the winter weather broke. Hopefully this winter will be a little kinder or we have more wood split.

Family Heirlooms

My mother-in-law called last week and asked if I wanted the trunk her great grandfather, Heinrich Spielman, used when he traveled from Germany to America in the 1850s. Well, how could I say no?

The hardware on the piece, apart from the exterior straps added later, is hand forged. The lock has the original key and is etched on the inside.

While picking up the trunk we took pictures of a sampler/wallhanging that was made in 1837 by Catherine Leatherman, my husband's second cousin five times removed (thank you ancestry.com for helping to figure that out.)  This sampler has been willed to the Mennonite Heritage Museum, which already has many Fretz family items (Catherine was a Fretz on her mother's side.)

Ancestry.com has been a huge help in researching all of my husband's family's history. So many of his distant relatives came to this country in the early 1700s. His family makes all my relatives newbies to this country!

It's Good to Have Help

Our daughters enjoy helping out around here, but they haven't been around much. Our oldest daughter moved back home last weekend and we have been putting her to work.
She pulled all the weeds from the area around the chicks' pen and now we can seed it. It took two days to pull all the weeds and now we have a trailer full of weeds.

Alan pulled the rest of the weeds that were tangled up in the garden fence and now we have seeded the area. Maybe we'll get some rain today.
Maddy also helped mow the pastures and had fun learning to use the mower.

I need to come up with more projects for her before she finds a job!

The Figs are Ripe

We bought two fig trees this spring and they have done well.
Finally, we have ripe figs.

Alan and Max are the only ones who like figs, so Max when are you coming home?

Good-Bye Lamb Chop and Ram Lamb

Last week it was finally time to say good bye to our lambs. They were just about 6 months old and needed to go to the great freezer in the sky. Maddy and I picked up the meat this afternoon and spent the last 2 hours weighing and wrapping it.
We have a grand total of 72.5 pounds of lamb sitting in the freezer and fridge right now. Grilled lamb chops for dinner tonight!
Here is a breakdown of all the different cuts and weights of the meat:

Harvesting

I love fall, and even though it feels like the July we didn't have, you can still feel summer coming to an end. The garden is especially gearing up for fall mode.
All the potatoes, onions, and garlic are done curing in the barn and have moved down to the basement.

I'll save the biggest garlic bulbs for planting in October and I also ordered some Elephant garlic for planting. The shallots were a disappointment, but I think I pulled them too soon. They might need a little longer in the ground than the garlic.
I was happy with the quality of the onions, but I wish I had started more. We'll see how long into the winter these last.
I was happy with my Adirondack Blue potato harvest, just not sure what I am going to do with approximately 10 pounds of blue potatoes. They do make great potato salad though.

Cover Crops part II

The oats are up! It took a while with the dry weather we've been having. Watering with a hose just never seems to do as well as a good rain. I've been waiting for rain and Saturday night we had a nice cool front move through, bringing thunderstorms and about an inch of rain. And then Sunday morning this is what I saw:

Literally overnight the oats went from nothing to nearly two inches tall.
The dwarf white clover I planted in some areas of the paths is up as well. I struggle with the paths in my gardens every year. Always the weeds get ahead of me.  This year I put down a weed block fabric, but I can feel the weeds growing up underneath. In the book, Grow a Sustainable Diet, the author just mows her paths for the compost pile. I think I will try that next year, if I can just get all the rocks out of the paths.. The dwarf white clover would be a perfect plant for the paths.