Two years ago Brandon helped me plant about 200 garlic bulbs. The following summer when It was time to harvest I was almost 9 Months pregnant. We ended up not getting any of it harvested and it popped up again this year. The 200 we originally planted turned into 800+. I decided to plant them in my raised beds. They are super easy to harvest that way. Plus I’m making a bunch of amendments to my market garden soil so I cant really plant them there. I got 650 of the 800 bulbs planted. I’m going to finish up this weekend.
We had our first killing frost. So this weekend I’m going to mow down the tomatoes and corn beds to get cover crops planted. It’s the last section I have to get in before it gets really cold. I’m planting a field pea/oat mix with tiller radish in between. Hopefully, the tiller radish does its job breaking up the clay soil so I can plant potatoes next year. I also harvested our last basket of peppers. The plants officially died from the frost. Not 100% sure what I’m going to do with them but I think I’m going to make more fermented hot sauce
My husband is one of those people who is 100% in or nothing. So this week he has been working on setting up our basement as a cat haven. He got a cat scratch pole and toys, and now we have cat nanny cams set up so he can watch them during the day. They are both warming up to us, more to him. I’m hoping they keep the mice out of our cellar.
On another note, we unfortunately lost a chicken this week. She had an egg stuck that broke and then fully prolapsed. How the egg broke I do not know. I have never had that happen before. We brought her inside and cleaned her up. We kept her in a dog kennel in our dining area with food and water hoping she would recover. Unfortunately, she did not make it and passed away that night. So that really sucked. Our other chickens are doing really well, and the goats are just as mischievous as ever.
I successfully made my first challah bread. I have been obsessively watching braiding bread tutorials and finally gave it a try. I will say, having ADHD and trying to watch a 30-second clip tutorial is very difficult. It took me 17 watches but I finally did it. I think I should have stuck with just 3 braids, it would have taken me 1/4 as long but in the end, I got it and It turned out tasty. Brandon said it would be really good as a giant pretzel with cheese. So that Is next on my list of baking. I’m attempting to make a sourdough version. If it turns out, Ill share the recipe.
I also cleaned out my fridge this week. I had a bunch of oranges, lemons, and limes that needed to be used ASAP so I decided to dehydrate all of them. You can hang them to dehydrate but I find that using my Excalibur dehydrator really helps keep a pretty color. When hanging things, they always turn brown.
Every year right after our first frost we get a swarm of beetles that come by our house. This year they were here for a day. Our one door is an old wood door so it has some gaps along the edge. I went down to the basement and our door was crawling with Mexican Bean Beatles. I yelled for Brandon and he came down and helped me kill all the bugs that made it inside. Then I panic duct-taped the door until I could run to Menards and pick up insulation tape to fix the gaps. So currently our side door is out of commission. The good thing is that we found a couple more gaps to the outside around a couple of old windows in the basement and some other spots that needed to be recaulked. Our house definitely feels less drafty now, which is perfect before it gets really cold.
