Welcome October!

Wow...October is here! Fall in the PNW can be a wet muddy affair on our little farm. This first week of the month has been decent. The last couple of days have been warm though, so that's okay. 

This week I pulled up tomato plants in the garden and removed the tomato hooks and set aside the veggie clips. Afterwards I got my Little Buddy Zeke into the garden first, without the rest of the swine, so he could do clean up on his own. Sorry no photos...He got the weird corn that grew and first pick of the leftovers before the younger swine joined him as well as little momma. After she showed up he decided he was done. They did a pretty good job with clearing the veg and some of the plants. All I have to do is gather up the stuff they didn't eat and dump it on the compost pile. Then try to clean up the weeds that I let go out of control. The plan is to get some raised garden beds for the 2024 growing season. More on that later. 

This week the last thing from my Territorial Seeds order arrived! Garlic!!!

After a poor harvest of this year's garlic I decided to order a different variety of garlic. After a checking out all that Territorial has available I landed on this variety. It's a hardneck variety and seems to grow well in different climates. The next thing I needed to decide on is where to poke these into the ground. My plan is to put a cover crop in the garden before tarping it for the winter. My current garden boxes are not big enough so I decided that I would plant as much as I can into the hoop house and if I have leftover, those could go into one of the 4x4 garden boxes. I'm excited to try out a new variety, just because I had been growing the previous garlic from cloves that I kept from a sampler that I purchased and grew a few years ago. 

The other thing that happened this week is this....

After watching a homesteading family explain what these are - Egyptian Walking Onions - I decided to try them out. Evidently, this allium is very forgiving and does alright in a variety of conditions. Early this week I went to spray some water on the bed and saw that they sprouted! So very exciting. I'm a learn as you go type of person, so I'm not sure how this is going to go, but so far so good. 

Besides these two things I've been busy getting ready for an event at our church and running errands and doing all the things. Today I plan to take it easy and do some stuff around the house. If it weren't for prepping for the event a couple of days and picking up stuff that I had on order I think I would have a better attitude. I'm just feeling run down and tired lately. It could be fall, but then it could be living. I'm usually pretty good at balancing my time between home and other activities. It just seems that the running around activities are increasing when all I want to do is hang out at home. Life is supposed to slow down a little bit right? Meh, I just need to adapt I guess.

Here's to the first week of October! May life start to even out, just a little bit. 

May Homestead Challenge

Favorite Homestead Meal

Had to think about this one for a minute. In the last few years we have shifted our view on where our food really comes from and that it is better to grow as much as we can. There is all sorts of satisfaction in knowing exactly what went into growing the chicken or vegetables that we put on our plates. Anytime we can sit down and eat a meal that incorporates veg from the garden and meat from the field we feel pretty good and are so very grateful for this farm and that we CAN do what we are doing. 

So, when we do a roasted pasture raised chicken and beans and potatoes from our land that would definitely be my favorite. Now that we have our own home grown pork that will make meal time really special

Our first real meat grown here on the farm - Victor Chops

A couple of weeks ago I was rooting around in the fridge looking for something for lunch and I came up with this...

Eggs from our chickens and jowl meat from Victor. This was a few days after we had Victor slaughtered. So very tasty!

So anything that we grow is my favorite!