June on the Homestead

I have a confession. I have been meaning to write about what’s going on at home for almost 2 months now. I took pictures of the strawberries and rhubarb growing…

… of the seeds I started indoors…

… and of the flower blossoms on our fruit trees…

… but they never got posted.

The apple tree is laden with miniature apples this year – let’s hope the branches are strong enough! The Honey Crisp apple we moved last year in the hopes that it would do better farther away from the black walnut trees, not only survived the winter but actually produced a couple of blossoms! It doesn’t look like we’ll get apples this year, but seeing those blossoms was highly encouraging for the future.

The garden is looking bountiful with a mass of pea plants. This year we’re sticking to lots of peas, a few beans and carrots (need a replanting) and some tomatoes. I’m most excited about the tomatoes. I found we had an old package of seeds for delicious yellow grape tomatoes and didn’t think it would hurt to try growing them. Every container I planted produced at least two plants! I gave some away to a friend.  Our abundance of little tomatoes might even outlast our devouring daughter  – who along with Finley has already been snitching pea pods!

The chickens are doing well – getting fat on worms and bugs and fresh grasses. This is a great time of year because we don’t go through much additional feed. We have 13 chickens and they are in full-production right now, giving us more eggs than we need.

A few weeks ago we were still a bit behind in our rainfall for the year as we had a really dry spring. However, last week we had with close to 4″ of rainfall in a 24-hour period that I would think should set us right. It was a nice steady rainfall (no deluges) that lasted all day. They had forecasted 6+” for the day, but this was plenty.

Only bad part about all that rain is the newly hatched mosquitoes that make me want to stay indoors. I think Little Chick and Papa need to get busy and make some bat houses!