Food, Food, Glorious Food!

This is a picture of my cucumber trellis.  One we purchased from a local feed store, the other my husband built himself.  I think it's a great idea for my butternut and acorn squash as well but we may not get one built for them this year as we are still working on the new barn.  We have to get the second room finished before our 40 new baby meat bird chicks arrive!

This is a picture of our Owl.  He spends his days watching over our blueberry plants.  His job is to scare away the birds so they don't eat our berries as soon as they ripen.  He also entertains our Beagle.  My husband moves him from one post to another so the birds think it's moving (haha) and certain "perches" catch her attention more than others.  I have yet to apologize to my neighbours, but I will.  I actually enjoy listening to her rabbit hound bark, some people might not share in that joy.  :)

Finally getting some peas!  The rain we are getting today will make them fill nicely.  Sugar peas are such a treat, I munch on them as I work in my garden.  Another nice thing about growing organic produce, you don't have to run to the house to wash it before you can eat it.  You pick it, you eat it!  One of my favourite summer time meals is fresh picked peas with roast chicken and new potatoes.  And when the roast chicken is one of our own it's even more delicious!

A yellow bean blossom, won't be long now!  Can't wait to set down to a nice plate of yellow beans with a bit of cream and butter.  My mouth is watering....

I was surprised to find tomatoes on my plants already.  Time is flying by so quickly, guess I lost track of it.  Now the waiting begins, watching for it to turn red!  We have some delicious home smoked bacon in our freezer just waiting for fresh garden tomatoes to make the perfect BLT sandwich.  The bacon is from a side of pork we purchased last fall, locally raised.  Next year we hope to raise our own pigs.

We went to a local farm market on the weekend.  We picked a few boxes of berries, it's a little late so the berries were few and far between.  I also found these fabulous sweet potatoes and field cucumbers.

We believe being part of growing and harvesting your own food is a great learning experience and makes you appreciate the food that is put on the table.  The cucumbers are going to be served beside roast pork and mashed potatoes for our supper tonight.  The sweet potatoes are waiting to accompany a yummy roast turkey later in the week.

I turned those berries into Jam yesterday.  It is super sweet, like candy, as the berries themselves were very sweet.  We had strawberry jam and toast for breakfast this morning of course!

Our meat chickens are doing great.  We have cut back their store bought food and are feeding them more greens from the garden and, of course, they are eating the vegetation growing in their run.  Last night I pulled out all my spinach which had bolted and gone to seed, put it in a bucket and placed it in the run for them to munch on.  Some of them are soon ready to take to the butcher.  Some of them have another month or so to grow.  This is what is great about growing your own food, you choose how it is grown.  We choose not to force feed them and allow them time to graze.  This means they grow slower but their diet consists of more than just grain feed from the store.  As I mentioned above we are also getting 40 more meat chicks next month.  At that time I am hoping we have ample garden veggies that we can share with them.  Though, as we all know, anything can happen between now and then.  I am told we have some deer hanging around, that means they are probably watching my garden, waiting for a romantic moonlight dinner of beans, peas and tomato plants......And, I also realize that some day I am going to have to plant a garden just to feed all our farm animals!

'till next time!