Busy bountiful summer!

The new pullets have just started laying. We had to hurry up and add some nest boxes to their coop, since the older hens don't share their house too well.

Coop with a view! This Welsummer was a little perturbed by the sudden appearance of 'air conditioning'.
Much better! The young gals are getting the hang of laying now, but we did find a few eggs in the barnyard this morning. Practice make perfect!

Here's a bit of the squash patch. You can just make out the yellow yardstick in the middle of this jungle. The vines literally grow more every day, and we have to chop them back from the melons, cukes, beans, maters & peppers that are trying to hold out against the onslaught.

The warm summer is good for the few melons we're growing this year. Not quite ripe yet, but close. This is a Blacktail Mountain watermelon, developed in Idaho and good for cooler summers.

We totalled up our harvests so far this year, just to see how we're doing....

1lb asparagus
27lbs assorted lettuce
3lbs mint/lemon balm/catnip
3lbs nettles
15lbs chard
27lbs kohlrabi
14lbs carrots
6lbs onions
15lbs tomatoes
32lbs cukes
17lbs broccoli
116lbs taters
25lbs blackberries
20lbs green beans
50lbs beets

1340 eggs
59 heads garlic
4 heads cabbage
28 pints pickled beets
21 quarts green beans
5 pints relish
5 pints sweet pickles

Still to come:
-onions
-carrots
-squash
-beets
-maters
-peppers
-melons
-chard
-berries
-apples
-cabbage
-broccoli
-kohlrabi

-lettuce

We're frantically watering, harvesting, processing, and even starting some veggies for a late fall harvest. Maybe we should follow Newt's example and find a hidden nook to relax in. Here she is, tucked behind a stump in the barnyard. When the cows noticed me taking pictures, they came over to ham it up. Newt high-tailed it for some other hidey-hole.....

Frantically harvesting!

Another pretty sunset. We can't quite see the water from here, but the San Juan islands aren't far from us, to the west.
Does anyone grow purple-podded green beans? These were grown from seeds from Bosnia that a coworker gave me. They are beautiful, and the vines are very robust with dark magenta flowers. I would love to identify the variety, but there are so many kinds of beans I'm sure it's impossible.

Check out Gemini & Stewart getting scritchies. If you look closely, you can see pony's upper lip flapping as he drools. Stewart isn't much more dignified.

It's busy season here at Seven Trees, and one of us is recovering from surgery. Luckily we've had lots of help, but any of the veggies that survived the cold spring are growing like gangbusters. We've put up plenty of dill pickles, pickled beets, chard & beet greens, and next up are green beans and applesauce. We have a few tiny melons in the greenhouse, and hopefully they will keep growing before the frost hits. More potatoes to dig, blackberries and cukes to pick, but what I really look forward to is the Painted Hills sweet corn. Not quite yet though. Sad to say, I'm already looking at the current garden's successes and failures, and planning for next year.

August = chores!

Yet another load of hay stashed in the garage. Some really nice fescue/orchardgrass that the critters approve of heartily. We have a pretty good menu of various cuttings and grass varieties to accommodate the needs of all our herbivores. I wouldn't mind having a round bale dumped in the barnyard to give them something to snack on between meals. With just one of us taking care of the place for the next 6 weeks, every shortcut helps.
Here's Princess Stella having a pedicure. Too bad we didn't get the lifting process on video. The metal stall part starts out upright. She walks into it and gets lifted and turned with heavy duty slings.
The giant "bolt cutters" take off the bulk of overgrown hoof, then she gets her nails filed with a hand-held grinder. She wasn't too thrilled with the process, but she looks great now. There aren't too many people willing to come work on just one cow, so finding such a skilled and friendly trimmer was a huge relief. Email us at the info link or post a comment if you want his contact info for cow trimming in Whatcom County.

Beets! These are Early Wonder Tall Top, a new variety for us this year. The greens are just ok for eating, but the beets themselves are really tasty, and even better pickled. I still blanched & froze the greens anyway, since come winter we'll be happy for any "free" veggies we can get. We've been harvesting chard, kohlrabi, the last of the lettuce, carrots, cukes (8 quarts of dill pickles so far), a few Stupice tomatoes, Anaheim & Islander peppers, and of course lots of potatoes. The Reddales are about ready to dig up completely, and the Island Sunshine & Ozette fingerlings are not far behind. The garlic is harvested and drying, green beans are getting a late start but starting to shape up, and the corn looks very happy so far.
Got the trim on the back corners of the run-in installed. Now Gemini & Ryder have a lpace to get out of rain & wind and still have lots of fresh air. We'll keep fancying it up later this year though.
Stella and Doug, posing for the camera. The vet didn't think she's pregnant, but we think she is. With Dexters, sometimes the fetus is too small to feel so early, so there is a margin for error on his diagnosis. We could do a blood test to be sure, but we'll just wait & see. She's weaning Doug right now, and will all we have going on this summer, I decided to stop milking. There just isn't time to do twice a day milking, and I also don't want to deal with the bellowing that will commence once they are separated. We got 5 good months of milking, and later I'll post a grand total of how many gallons we got over how many days. I'm still pondering how I want to milk next time. I'd like to milk longer, but the convenience of letting the calf do most of the work is very tempting. We are back to buying milk. It's raw, local Jersey milk from Jackie's Jerseys. Tasty, but nowhere near as rich as Stella's.

Here's Ryder, modelling the new stanchion. He got dehorned Friday, and his shots. He's settling in ok, and we've been walking him and working with him, and enjoying the learning process of training a bull calf.