Outstanding In Her Field!

Aug17

What other person do you know who on her birthday would be out cutting wheat by hand? My wonderful wife, when we heard that the farmer who leased a lot of our land to plant wheat had abandoned it because of hail damage, didn’t want to leave it to simply die. After all, it might not be a good harvest for the industrial combines, but it certainly is good straw, chicken feed, and…. people feed! Right now there is over 30 acres of it just standing there.

She started messing with the idea of getting a Scythe. Not knowing much about them and not wanting to spend a ton of money should it turn out to be a dumb idea, I ordered her a sickle designed specifically to harvest wheat! What a birthday present! Anyone you know get a sickle for his/her birthday!? I’m thinking I ought never make her mad again!

So this morning out she trots into one of the wheat fields and starts hacking away! We got a couple of wagon loads; one of which we fed to the chickens and the other she is still out tying into sheafs. We watched a couple of videos on how to thresh it and process it and we may be onto something! What fun! Making our own homemade bread from wheat harvested on the farm! Whoda thunk it? Pretty sure the neighbors (conventional farmers) must think we have a serious case of the loonies.

We Got This Stuff Wired!

Aug17

I am sooooo happy to see that there have been far more successes than failures on the farm. Our first gardening attempt in unknown soil, unknown conditions, flying by the seat of our pants after over a year of blood sweat and tears has come in with a significant amount of satisfaction!

I was noticing the other day that one of the rows of potatoes was starting to die back. At first, considering how many setbacks we have had, I thought they were getting blight. Not uncommon, it was a large contributor to the Irish famines. But then it dawned on me that this is August and these are 85 day potatoes and this is day 85 ish. So, to test my theory, I pulled up the plant on the end of one of the rows and VOILA!! Taters!! While we are headed back to the shitty today and going out to dinner for Zina’s birthday, next week will begin potato harvest! If this one plant is any indication of what is happening all along the rows, we are going to have taters out the wazoo! We planted 180 row feet (3 different kinds) and they look to be doing what potatoes are supposed to do!

I’m thinking, yup, we got this homesteading thing wired.