On To October!

It was a great year for our Asian pear tree!  We picked lots and lots of Asian pears and canned them all!

We ended up with 119 pints of Asian pears!  Woohoo!

I just finished making jam with the strawberries, raspberries and blackberries from our yard!  Yummy!  Tried a new recipe without using boxed pectin, used granny smith apples instead with the fruit and honey for sweetener!  Turned out great!

We dehydrated all the carrots this year and the parsnips too!

These would be all the apples we got off our trees this year.  Made 2 pints of apple sauce!  And we got enough pears from our tree to make 17 pints of pears!

Kara's 17th birthday BBQ was awesome!  Had lots of friends and family over!  Can't believe she's 17!  Wow how time flies!

And we visited with Gma Shelley on Kara's birthday.

We have added to the farm again, with 3 new piggies.  They are a cross between Hereford and Berkshire.  Nice and long, so hopefully lots of bacon!  Mmmmm bacon!

We have 2 males and 1 female.  The males were not castrated when we got them and Rob, Liam, and I took on that "lovely" task, with Rob doing the "dirty" work.  lol  Liam and I were the "holders".  Usually, they are castrated at about 8 days old.  These were 11 weeks old, so a little bit harder to do, but the job got done and they healed up fine.

We have put them out by the chickens and they are doing a fabulous job of rooting up the big mound that was left from Rob moving stumps, and clumps and such.  Hopefully, they will take it all down and then we can smooth it out a little and plant some pasture grass.  Then we will move them to another area to do the same thing!

And we added a steer to the farm.  Mr. MooMoo, as I have dubbed him, is a Jersey/Holstein cross.  He has done a great job eating the grass we do have in the back 3 fenced acres.  We supplement him with pasture grass.  He runs with Gus and Marty.

In more family news, Liam's football season is going great.  I believe the freshman team is now 3-1.  One of the high school photographers snapped the photo below as Liam was carrying the ball!  I think he's scored something like 4 touchdowns so far.

Kara is having a great senior year.  She had her first senior photos taken for the yearbook, which came out fabulous!  This is her and Tanner, after Tanner got his hair cut!  What a cute pair!

And Aylia and Alex are now engaged!!!!!!  The photo below was taken at the dinner after Alex proposed!  They both look so happy!

Robert is elk hunting, black powder, right now and at the end of this week, Liam will be joining him for deer season.  Hopefully, Rob will get an elk and both will get a deer.  Liam drew a tag for elk also, which is later in November I believe.

The garden is winding down.  We have lots of sugar pumpkins and butternut squash that we are going to can this year instead of freeze.  Want to leave the freezer space for meat if possible.

We moved the treadmill and weights out to the garage to set up our own "Box" to workout.  Liam and Grandma Susan and I did our WOD (workout of the day) the other night and it was awesome!  We have added a rowing machine, a 45lb barbell with bumper plates.  Just need to get an iHome or something better to play music with than just the iPhone.  We will be adding a pull-up bar and hopefully a climbing rope down the road.  Found a great place in Everett that sells CrossFit equipment very reasonably priced, so don't have to pay for shipping!

That's about it for now.  All is well up at Shelley Hill Farm!

End of July Roundup

Busy summer!  Rob and Liam just go back from South Carolina for Liam's baseball tournament.  They won 1 out of 5 games, not so hot, but Liam did hit 2 home runs in 2 of the games!  They had a great time hanging at the beach and being guys!

Kara has been busy working 2 jobs this summer and is keeping busy hanging at the lake with friends and clothes shopping!  haha

While the guys were gone, Runner decided to help me "pick" the cucumbers for pickling.  This is him and his cucumber below!  hahaha  He has also been "helping to pick" the apples off the apple tree, not so happy about that one! :(  He has learned to catch the chickens that happen to get out of the chicken area and then barks to let me know he caught one so I can put it back in the fenced area!  The chickens don't like it too much, but Runner thinks it is grand fun!

The garden has definitely taken off!  The strawberries are done and the raspberries are just about done, though there are some new unripe berries yet.  Below, these are different types of squash in the front, pole beans in the back and zucchini on the left.

Sugar pumpkins are taking off yay!

Leeks and cauliflower going well.

One of the rows of cucumbers.

Another type of winter squash,

Brussel sprouts and cabbage,

And the last 2 rows of cucumbers and the tomato plants.

I picked the zucchini and shelling peas,

the green and yellow beans,

And about 10 pounds of cucumbers!  Even made 12 pints of 3 different kinds of refrigerator cucumbers!

Am moving on to the beets for canning/pickling, carrots and parsnips for dehydrating and then replanting for another crop of beets, carrots, parsnips, peas, and harvesting the potatoes tomorrow!

Later!

It's been a while, so thought it as time to catch up with the new going's on at Shelley Hill Farm.

Below are the two kids that Ashley had.  The first is a doe, that we sold.

And below is the red buck that we still have, are trying to sell still.

Made some yummy pizza the other night!!!

Had with salad and pretty much ate it all!

This is the recipe for the pizza that I used.  Since I used a Silpat mat under the crust, I would cook it longer than the 5 minutes is says in the recipe, otherwise it tasted fabulous!  I used our tomato sauce we made and canned.  Mmm, mmm good!

Kara had Runner in seventh heaven the other day, scratching his chest.  haha

Gma Shelley went to one of Liam's baseball games the other night and we got a picture of the two of them.

I had a wonderful Mother's Day (Nik had to work so could not come up) with the kids.  In the picture below, Liam is standing in front of me and you can't see me at all.  hahaha  I am definitely the shortest one in the family now.

Aren't my kids lovely!?  hahahahaha

This is the awesome book I got from Nik for Mother's Day!  Excited to put it into use!

Kara and her boyfriend Tanner at Liam's tournament this weekend!  Yep, she still likes to steal my phone and take lots of photos!  Don't they look cute!

And two of our three rabbit does had kits.  One had 10, but we lost one so has 9 and the other had 7 and all are doing great!

Kara holding one of the baby rabbits, it is almost 3 weeks old now.  Looks just his daddy, Blue!

These are the videos and the second one of the new rabbit tractors that Robert built!  Click on the link and you can see the videos.  For some reason, I can't seem to upload them to the blog, so you will have to go to YouTube to watch them.  The bunnies love the tractors, eating all the grass and especially the weeds, dandelions and such!  They are so cute!

Below is the garden with veggies growing!  Yahoo!!!

These are squash below.

More squash, spaghetti squash to be exact.

Sugar pumpkins.

Shelling peas and sugar snap peas with twine to climb.

Bush beans on this side and pole beans on the pole side.

Brussels sprouts,

Cucumbers,

Broccoli,

 Cauliflower,

And leeks planted so far.

Am so excited, we are going to have sooooooooooo many raspberries this year!!!!!

This is the one grape plant, Aurora grape to be exact, that I got free when we ordered the fruit trees from Raintree Nursery this year.  Excited to actually have our own grapes!!!

Celery that Mom grew from the cutoff ends of celery she purchased from the store!  And asparagus on the outside of the bed.

Lots of carrots!

Lots of red beets!

More beets and garlic,

Lettuce, celery, and two different kinds of onions,

Our strawberry bed that I want to make into a terraced bed so we can have more plants and make it easier to pick, but we will see.

More garlic, multiplier onions, and shallots.

Moved all the blueberry plants from the front of the house and they are doing great!!!

Our two cranberry bushes we got free from the fruit tree order at Raintree Nursery!

Plant starts in the greenhouse are doing great!  Figured out that if I start them in the house they germinate quicker, and then move to the greenhouse where they are a stronger plant to transplant.

Making wheat grass fodder for the bunnies, pigs, goats, and chickens.

Here are the two potbelly/kune kune cross pigs.  As you can tell, the pink guy was talking away when I took the photo!  hahaha  What great personalities they have!

Our potato patch this year.  In the front are red potatoes and in the back are the Yukon Golds.

Our trees from Raintree Nursery that we planted in January/February.  They are doing awesome.  One apple tree, Akane, actually has apples on it!

Our cherry tree seems to have a lot of cherries on it this year!  Will be netting this to see if we can get more than the birds do!

One of the apple trees.

This is a multi-kind of apple tree, not sure what kinds are left, it had four, but I know some of the branches have broken.  It does have apples this year, though.

This is our Asian pear tree and it has tons of Asian pears on it this year!

Our oldest pear tree, has lots of pears, but the leaves seem to have some sort of curl fungus/or something going on.  Hmm, will have to look into this.

In front of Mom's house, we planted more garlic, which now has scapes and we will be harvesting those.

Mom's gutter planters are doing great.  She has strawberries, lettuces, and radishes going.

And more strawberries!

I sprouted a sweet potato from the Co-Op in Mount Vernon and transferred the slips to the jar with water so they would grow roots.

Once they had roots, I transplanted them with Robert's help to these larger containers and will be transplanting again in a couple of weeks to larger containers that I am going to try on the front deck, as the soil will stay nice and warm that way.

So that's it for now.  Hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend!  It's almost summer!  Bring on the sun, please!

Later!