Monday, July 9, 2018

Harvest Monday 7/9/18

It's Harvest Monday at Our Happy Acres. Join in on the garden conversation and share your harvest and happenings in the garden!

My daughter wanted homemade potato chips for dinner last week so I told her if she digs them, I'll make them! I didn't get a harvest photo but I got a pic of the finished product. They were yummy. I baked them. I may try to fry them lightly next time.

 Beans, Cucumbers, white currant and cherry tomatoes and berries. Beans and cucumbers have slowed some but are still producing and the cherry tomatoes are picking up.

 Pulled some carrots for dinner. And the first snacking pepper of the season! With more to come!
Basil, parsley, volunteer potatoes from last year, beans, tomatoes, snacking pepper, pitiful pickling cucumbers.
Enough potatoes between yesterday and today to have potatoes for breakfast and dinner! I won't argue with that! 😄 I picked the first Valencia tomato, the smaller orange one. Seems I am having a few tomato surprises in my garden for tomatoes. Don't know if I mislabeled seeds or if I saved them they didn't stay true to the original. I did buy the Valencia plant locally but I thought it read that it was a pink or red plum tomato. Surprised to see orange.


I'm always looking out for opportunities to take some nature photographs and practice with my camera, though I often still find myself using auto settings I am trying to learn some manual settings!

White Borage
 Swallowtail larvae, probably Eastern Black.
 American Goldfinch Male
 3 finches in the sunflowers
 Female



We went camping outside of Gatlinburg, Tn this week. On our last day we drove the Cades Cove loop and hiked to Abrams Falls. We saw this deer in the Cades Cove meadows. On our trail, we got all the way out to the falls and it began to thunder storm, heavy soon after our arrival! We had to hike back almost 3 miles in torrential rains with thunder and lightning and 4 kids 8-18 years old. Lots of screaming and one dead waterlogged phone 😐 It was a trip we won't soon forget. We were soaked as much as if we had jumped in the water hole, and the kids did.

Every week I get my farm fresh eggs from my friend who moved further out to the country a couple years ago to start her little farm. Thistle Rock farm. I love to get these eggs from her, the color on the outside and the intense color on the inside and I know exactly what she feeds and does not feed her chickens! Best way to have eggs if you can't have chickens yourself.
If your local, you can find Thistle Rock farm on Facebook. She has eggs but also we got to pick our own turkey out last year. That was lots of fun! I believe in the future she plans to have honey and other things. She has already got her bees. And it is fun to get to go out and explore her little farm any time we want, and wish I had one of my own!

Happy Gardening! Have a productive garden week!
ShawnAnnshomeandgarden Instagram 
 

6 comments:

  1. Yikes, that does sound like a trip to remember! I love Cades Cove, at least under dry conditions. The potato chips sound yummy. It's been a long time since I had homemade ones. And I love your nature photos too! The Goldfinches are always so colorful this time of year.

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  2. Your harvests certainly are rolling in! Love the nature shots. One of the things I like most about living in a rural area is the abundance of nature, other than the rodents. Deer are regulars here, three bucks and a doe with 2 fawns are here all the time this year. I used to keep a Goldfinch feeder but had to take it down because it attracted other unwelcome visitors.

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  3. Your harvest is so so colourful and abundant. We are still waiting on our tomatoes to ripen and then they will come fast. We recently got a Bullfinch in the garden which excited me. A new neighbour moved in and has chickens, she gave us some eggs and we gave her some rhubarb.

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    1. It's great to have friends and neighbors to make trades with.

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  4. Interesting to see your goldfinch... quite different to ours with the same name! We also have a thin orange tomato like that but it is called Orange Banana. Our daughter keeps some hens so we get a rainbow of eggs like this too.. they do look beautiful

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    1. That is so wierd about the finch. You would think they would have the same name/type everywhere. We also have house finches and other finches show up more during the winter.

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