• About
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Disclosure
  • The Kitchen
    • Recipe Box
    • Food Preservation
  • The Great Outdoors
    • The Garden
    • Foraging & Gathering
  • Barnyard
    • Ducks & Ducklings
    • Chickens and Baby Chicks
    • Honeybees, Honey & Beeswax
  • Home & Health
    • Homesteading
    • Health on the Homestead
    • Frugality
  • Local Resources
    • Rare and Uncommon Edibles for the Home Garden

Whole-Fed Homestead

Living Close to the Land & Thriving on Real Food

You are here: Home / Monthly Update / Homestead Monthly: August 2016 {heirloom veggies, abandoned chicks, and monarchs}

Homestead Monthly: August 2016 {heirloom veggies, abandoned chicks, and monarchs}

September 5, 2016 by crystal@wholefedhomestead 1 Comment

Homestead Monthly August 2016

Tomato Dreamin’
You know what’s silly? Planting 60 tomato plants for 2 people.

You may remember that last year we were completely blind-sided and devastated by tomato blight. Forty tomato plants and one pint of tomatoes harvested… it was a terrible sight.

This year we were determined to beat the blight, so we tilled up new ground atop the windiest hill on the homestead, planted a ridiculous amount of tomato plants in landscape fabric and then mulched them heavily with straw to prevent any dirt splashing on them and transmitting the disease.

Aaaand, we still got blight.



The good news is that our efforts seem to have bought us enough time to get tomatoes (although much less yield than we could have gotten had we not had blight).

For the past two weeks I haven’t seen my dining room table… because it has been continually covered in bowls and bowls filled with tomatoes! This is my dream! This is what I have been waiting for since I started every one of those tomatoes from seed six months ago.

Tomato bowl

Karl and I joked in early spring that my goal was to have, “more tomatoes than I know what to do with.” We definitely succeeded!

Harvest 2016
We’ve eaten our weight in green beans, cucumbers and tomatoes. We’ve got bins filled with potatoes for winter, lots of dried herbs tucked away in the pantry, and we’ve had beautiful, fresh-cut flowers in the house for weeks and weeks now! I absolutely love this time of year!!

We also put up a half bushel of canned honey peaches and 25 pounds of Italian prune plums in the form of plum sauce and stewed plums with honey and cinnamon- which will be a welcomed treat in the cold winter months ahead!

Harvest season

There are still winter squash, rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, broccoli, cauliflower, dried beans and sweet potatoes yet to harvest!

Overall it was a fine gardening year. It seems that there were more pests and more incredibly resilient weeds than I’ve ever seen before (blame it on the mild winter we had?). Karl’s grandpa, who has been a farmer his whole life and at 86 still plants a garden, said this year was the “worst weeds he’s ever seen!” Now that’s saying something!

But despite those things, all the plants seemed to have produced pretty well.

I am still working on figuring out what things I can store well for the winter and which varieties store better than others. And I am also still working on getting Karl to eat root vegetables that aren’t potatoes. And squash. We’re always working on Karl’s hatred of squash. I’ll break him someday!!

Abandoned
The baby chicks aren’t really that baby anymore. At six weeks old they have gotten a lot of their feathering in, and are doing all the things chickens tend to do: fight over worms, dust bathe, and fly from one end of their run to the other while exclaiming their joy for life.

We have let them out of their pen with their duck-mother for some special, very-supervised free-ranging a couple times over the last month. And they LOVED it. These birds are going to be incredible free-rangers, I can tell that for sure!

Baby teenage chicks

Just a couple days ago we let them out and something changed. Their mother fled. Left them in her dust. She completely abandoned them to rejoin the other ducks as top-duck in charge (she’s always been bossy). She didn’t look back once and her poor chicken-babies were left to fend for themselves in the yard.

I actually couldn’t believe it. Up until then she showed no signs of being a bad mother or not caring for the chicks and being integrated with them. But apparently she had enough.

The babies are fine- they actually haven’t really needed her for a couple of weeks now. I’m glad that she is off enjoying life as a duck again- taking long baths and dabbling through the grass instead of being cooped up all day.

Save the Monarchs
At the recommendation of some friends, when I spotted this Monarch caterpillar on some milkweed in the front yard, I knew I wanted to bring him in the house to watch his transformation (and make sure he stayed safe). He was the biggest Monarch caterpillar I’ve seen, so I knew he was close to turning into a chrysalis.



I made him a little home and set him on my barn wood shelf overlooking the kitchen- a prime location for a creature of utmost importance!

Not 12 hours after bringing him in, he had not only escaped but had started the process of getting ready to transform. There I found him, spinning a little web on the screen outside his home, where he would then dangle himself over my kitchen counter. And certainly I couldn’t move him now!

Monarch caterpillar

So, there he sits, with free access to my kitchen. Of course, now he is a chrysalis and should emerge as a Monarch in less than a week! I just hope I catch him while his wings are wet, before I find him fluttering about the house.

For more info on how you can help save the Monarchs, and for pictures so gorgeous (and kind of creepy) that they make you feel like you’re raising one right in your own home too, check out this post from The Art of Doing Stuff.

♥♥♥

Thanks for being here with us!

Enjoy reading about what’s happening on the homestead?
Check out our previous monthly updates!

Homestead Monthly July 2016

Homestead Monthly Jun 2016     Homestead monthly April 2016     Homestead Monthly March 2016

Homestead Monthly Jan 2016     Homestead Monthly December 2015     Homestead Monthly Nov 2015

Homestead Monthly October 2015     Homestead Monthly September     Homestead Monthly August 2015

Cukes in crock Feature Image     June homestead photo feature     The homestead monthly May 2015

Homestead Monthly April     Homestead Monthly Feb March     Homestead monthly december january, Whole Fed Homestead

fall leaves     chicken gang porch w words     homestead monthly w words

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click through them and end up purchasing an item (any item, not necessarily the one I recommended even!)  I may receive monetary or other compensation. The price you pay is unaffected by using this link, and buying stuff you were going to get anyways through an affiliate link is a great way to support your favorite blogger and fellow homesteader! Thanks!

Instagram Collage Whole Fed Homestead

Filed Under: Homestead, Monthly Update Tagged With: chickens, garden, homesteading, monthly update

Comments

  1. Shadycreek Homestead says

    September 6, 2016 at 12:11 PM

    Beautiful pictures! I hope to one day come upon a monarch caterpillar so the kids can see the process, very cool!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow the Adventure!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
Wholefed Homestead Glad Youre Here Sidebar Header 2 karl and crystal 6 Welcome to Our Homestead!
Wholefed Homestead Newsletter Sidebar Header

Wholefed Homestead What Were Reading Sidebar Header
Ad
Wholefed Homestead Pin with Us Sidebar Wholefed Homestead Pinterest Sidebar
Wholefed Homestead Sidebar Instagram Header
I’m not starting tomato seeds anytime too soon, I’m not starting tomato seeds anytime too soon, but I am thinking about it! Here are some varieties that are on my definitely-will-grow list for this coming season! These are standard must-grows for me, with the exception of the two new varieties I mention. I’ve been honing this list for many many years!
.
🍅Juliet (mini-Roma, excels at everything)
🍅Chocolate Cherry (deep flavor, stunning color)
🍅Valentine (dark, meaty, rich for a cherry)
🍅Sunrise Bumblebee (she’s a looker)
🍅Russian Rose (gorgeous rosy red, delicious)
🍅Big Rainbow (multi-colored, good acidity)
🍅San Marzano (classic paste variety)
🍅Super Sauce (gigantic meaty paste)
🍅Pomodoro Squisito (new, elongated paste)
🍅Tegucigalpa (new, rare, tapered paste)
.
There’s one more variety I’m excited about, it’s a chance seedling that popped up in our garden last year. We have a lot of rotten tomatoes on the ground every Fall, which means we have a lot of volunteer tomato plants every Summer. Most are tilled under, but this one survived hiding amongst the potatoes. It produced really cool tomatoes like I’ve never seen before!! I saved the seed and will plant them and see what we get!
.
We’re fortunate to have some amazing greenhouses in the area, so I always pick up a handful of unique tomato plants-whatever catches my eye- from them every year too.
.
We plant close to 30 tomato plants every year- they’re one of my very favorite things to grow! (Can you tell?!) 😜
.
#heirloomtomatoes #organicgarden #gardening #oldfashionedskills #homesteaders #homesteadlife #lifeonthefarm #homegrown #homegrown #tomatoseason #tomatogrowing
Feels like sunshine getting this gorgeous glowing Feels like sunshine getting this gorgeous glowing citrus delivered every month! What an amazing way to brighten the dull winter here!
.
In partnership with @uscitrus, who ships the most delicious, juiciest, fresh citrus! That gorgeous smoky pink-orange one is a “Super Red” Grapefruit. It was spectacular- check out my stories today to see the inside, plus see the other citrus that came in my box this month!
.
This citrus is grown on small farms in Texas, picked when it’s perfectly ripe, and shipped directly to you for a very reasonable price.
.
I’m eating a grapefruit, orange, or tangerine nearly every day, and I’m making copious amounts of sparkling water with lemon and lime juice... what a wonderful way to get my daily vitamin C. I LOVE IT!
.
#sponsored #craftcitrusclub #uscitrus #freshcitrus #homesteaders #homesteading #homesteadlife #winterinwisconsin #winterblues
Finished shelling the last of the “Cascade Ruby Finished shelling the last of the “Cascade Ruby Gold” flour corn today! I really enjoyed growing this one— it was a fast finisher, which I appreciate for our short growing season.
.
The colors are wildly stunning! Each ear was one of four colors: yellow, light red, dark red, or orange. I’m not sure if planting a yellow seed kernel made a stalk with yellow ears, or if the genetics are such that it’s totally random and a yellow seed kernel can produce red or orange ears... but I’d love to know! Perhaps an experiment for next year if I grow it again.
.
Now we just have to grind it and then it can be used as cornmeal for cooking and baking with. It’s supposed to have amazing flavor, so I’m looking forward to giving it a try!
.
#organicgarden #gardening #oldfashionedskills #homesteaders #homesteadlife #lifeonthefarm #homegrown #homegrown #homegrowncorn #cascaderubygold
Load More...
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error: The account for needs to be reconnected.
Due to recent Instagram platform changes this Instagram account needs to be reconnected in order to continue updating. Reconnect on plugin Settings page

Wholefed Homestead Behind the Homestead Sidebar Header Karl Crystal 1
Wholefed Homestead Preserving Sidebar
Wholefed Homestead in the Garden Sidebar 2
Wholefed Homestead Keeping Chickens Sidebar
Wholefed Homestead Honey Bees 2Sidebar
Wholefed Homestead Recipe box sidebar

Tags

barnyard beverage breakfast canning chickens chick starter feed Christmas craft or project dinner ducks eggs farmhouse kitchen foraging freezing fresh herbs frugality garden growing mushrooms handmade gift health history holidays homestead Homestead Blog Hop homesteading honeybees informative kale made with honey main dish maple syruping monthly update orchard preserving ramblings raw honey recipe review side dish skincare snack starting seeds treat turkeys using preserved goods

Featured

Preserving Tools & Supplies to Stock Up On Now

Strawberry “SUN” Jam – The BEST Jam Ever! No Pectin, No Canning, Lower Sugar

Veggie-Loaded Homemade Marinara Sauce (Large Batch for Freezing)

Copyright © 2021 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in