Progress

Lots of progress to report on around our farm.  Over the course of the last two weekends, we have ...

Finished the High Tunnel!

All except the doors.  Those will be added soon ... 

 

And ...

 

 

Finished the greenhouse!

 

Whew!!  Feels GREAT to have these two big projects wrapped up!

 

Meet Marley

The newest member of our family.

She is just the best!  I don't know what we did before we had our little lab puppy!  (oh right ... enjoyed un-chewed belongings ... but that's a whole different post.)

Look out, Milo!

Puppy's in da house!

Deep down, I think Milo likes her.  He just doesn't know it yet.

"What?  You mean the cat's NOT an acceptable chew toy??"

Bruce likes his new puppy, but she is a little rambunctious for him.  I think it's a little overwhelming!

But I think they will learn to be great pals!

 "Finally.  Higher ground.  I think I'm safe ..."

Early Freeze

These last few years have spoiled us, in regards to our last freeze date.  I have almost come to expect that we won't have to worry about our plants until at LEAST late October.  Not this year!  Saturday we scrambled to harvest whatEVER we could before our first projected freeze that night.

Pears and the last of the apples were picked and moved under the stairs (temporarily) ...

Right next to the hibiscus and geraniums who are residing in our living room (temporarily) ... 

Green tomatoes, red tomatoes, bell peppers, chili peppers, jalapeno peppers and even a few eggplant were pick and took up their temporary residence by the back door.

I drew the line at picking the okra.  I could not FORCE myself to pick more okra at this point in the season.  

Right now, I'm still stick right in the middle of being disappointed that we lost all our plants, and relieved that the craziness of summer is almost over.  

On Sunday, the real work began.  Roasted peppers - yum!  I tweaked my roasted bell pepper spread and it is now DELICIOUS! 

(Okay, I know these look gross, but trust me, they are yummy!)  

Harvested the last of the basil for a huge batch of freezer pesto - YUM!

Lots of the ripe tomatoes were used for more tomato jam.  This weekend, I am going to try green tomato salsa verde.  Let's hope it's good ... because there are LOTS of green tomatoes.  :)

We also found a little time over the weekend for the Annual Udall Fall Festival parade.

The sirens on the fire engines were a little scary ...

But once the candy started flying, everything was okay.  :)

The Next Big Thing

Well, the next big thing on our farm, anyway.  :)  What is the next big thing?  A high tunnel!  

We got a great start on it this weekend, thanks to a lot of help from our families.  This little puppy should allow us to grow crops later in the fall and earlier in the spring.  Kansas tomatoes in May?  Maybe.  June for sure!  The possibilities are endless.  :)  And with the size of the one we are putting up, we should have plenty of space to grow LOTS of things.

And, of course, plenty of space for little boys to play in the dirt.  :)

Autumn in Kansas

Autumn in Kansas means plenty of round bales.  I had a hard time getting my son down from this one.  He thought it was pretty great!  :)

Bluegrass!

Another Bluegrass has come and gone!  What a great time at the Walnut Valley Festival this year!

End of Summer Synopsis

While my weekly picture post has obviously gone by the wayside this summer, I am going to attempt to make up for it here with a MEGA-post (which is really the opposite of a synopsis which, by definition, is a brief summary, but we won't get into that ...)

We got a new kitten named Milo.

Here he is cute and tiny ...

  ...And then he grew.

We did some fishing ...

...and some more fishing ...

... Sometimes we fished for cats.  :)  
(don't worry ... it's only a bobber, no hook)

We planted tomato plants ...

 ... and we harvested tomatoes ...

... we sold at farmer's market ...

...we picked more tomatoes (and a few peaches and apples!)

...we made salsa ...

... picked more tomatoes ...

...made LOTS of delicious Caprese Pizza ...

(And pasta sauce, and tomato soup, and bbq sauce, and tomato jam.  That's right, tomato JAM.  I know it sounds gross, but it is actually delicious.  Just ask Bruce!)

... sold more tomatoes ....

Okay, I bet you are sensing a theme.  :)  Let's just say that other than keeping up with our two year old son, keeping up with the tomatoes has been the driving force this summer.  

Now back to some other NON-tomato related activities ...

As I posted this spring, we got bees ...

This summer, we harvested honey ... lots of honey!  We will be selling this at market next year!

Gage, Roger and Jeanette worked on the greenhouse and shed a lot of the summer.

These pictures aren't the most recent ... it is almost finished!

They also worked on putting up barn wood on the porch ceiling.  Neat!

We harvested apples ...

...ground apples ...

...pressed apples ...

... apple wine, anyone?  

Okay, so this isn't really the apple wine.  :)  And while Gage did make wine with the apples, we also bottled and labeled LOTS of wine from last year.

See?

We sold our 66 Chevy back to Aaron Moreland, which is okay because we now have the Red Beast from Dighton ... Grandpa Kalo's old pick-up.  I think Gage likes it.  :)

Bruce learned his favorite place on a hot farmer's market day is the back end of the SUV.

I learned to start checking Bruce's pockets before throwing his shorts in the wash.

Our little pond is a lot littler due to the summer's drought ... but we got an inch of rain last night - hooray!

We played hard ...

... we napped a lot ...

... We picked more tomatoes.