Summer is gone, Winter is coming

The last month has been a blur, with our warm nights gone we are now starting to get ready for winter.

Our first freeze happened on September 27th and it was hard enough that when we went out the next morning all my tomato vines were blackened. 

Because we saw it coming, my husband came home from work and we spent an hour or more outside harvesting everything we could  find to bring in. 

This is what we could bring in, Tomatoes, Winter Sqash, Carrots, some Peppers and only one more Watermelon. My lovely girls wanted to showoff the carrots and watermelon :)

We didn't hardly get any of the tomatoes that were on the vines and found out later after quite a few freezing nights that we could have harvested the green ones and stored them over winter and they would have rippened. Unfortunately it was too late and the vines went flat.

I felt so bad seeing them all out there but they didn't taste very well since they had froze. We are pulling the vines and all the tomatoes so I don't have them all trying to reseed next year.

I did however get a good yield of Spaghetti Squash as you can see.
I had to fight the mice over growing these guys and I only had 2 vines (out of an original 10) going but I am pretty happy with the turnout, I just hope they all were ready since we just brought in everything.

Our strawberry plants are still looking great and so are a few herbs but everything else, including my grapes are down for the season. Praying the grapes will make it thru the winter!!

We also didn't get all of the onions or potatoes, technically the potatoes can still be harvested but I am not sure how long they will store. We had friends come over on Saturday right after the first freeze and they happily took 3 rows of onions. While they were with us they shared some of their chili harvest.

One of many batches roasted.

Now that everything is dead we are ripping it all out and tilling some straw in, now we get to plant some garlic we ordered.

Hope everyone is enjoying the change in weather.

Week 1 Living and Active DONE

Well last week was a challenge. 

With the kids and hubby around all week I really didn't have time to myself which would normally be my workout time. 

However with hubby home we spent tons of time in the garden/field at my mother in laws. We had rows of onions and potatoes to harvest and with temps dropping it was time.

My workouts looked like this:

Monday: 2 Fitness blender videos each 15 mins long

Tuesday: working at the Food Bank= loading over 150 food boxes= constantly moving for 2.5 hours.

Wednesday: Two 30 min sessions of harvesting potatoes plus 15 mins or so on onions.

Thursday: Absolutely NOTHING!! My body was hurting so I took the day off.

Friday: 30 mins of harvesting onions and a fitness blender video for stretching (I was still hurting after Wed!!)

Saturday: Random work around the house but nothing to big

Sunday: 3 Fitness blender videos= 33mins total

All in all I had fun starting the challenge and on a plus note I can now hold plank for more then 15 seconds at a time. Its amazing that one week of regular working out can help you feel better.

Eating went okay, I did find out that I don't eat enough calories every day. So trying to work on that now.

I got the memory verse memorize and have been checking in regularly to my group, they are the best!!

Here are some potato and onion photos from our work days to enjoy:  

Thirty minutes of harvesting
set to dry.

One of 3 rows we dug. 

Truck Load on Sunday for Hubby
to take to friends and family

Mini Melon sized onion.

September Already!!

Wow where has this year gone? I honestly can not believe that we are in September, I am so not ready for fall. The past month went by really fast and I am so behind in my fall prep. I am hoping to get a jump on them this week. Biggest job right now is cleaning out the kids closets. I have noticed that all the kids have had major growth spurts and now have out grown last springs wardrobe. Normally we have quite the score at or local thrift store but the last few time I have gone in there was nothing in my munchkins sizes. 

I need to sort and donate all the stuff we no longer need and try to see what I might have stashed for this fall. I am so not the organized type but I try so wish me luck as I enter a very scary zone since the first room up is the girls......the two of them have trashed their closet in the last couple weeks since our rain has made it nice and cool, I guess that's taken in their young girl minds to mean dig into everything because they are cold.

On top of that we are having our first week off of school (started today) and it will be spent with quite a bit of it harvesting the remaining potatoes and majority of the onions from my mother in laws field since it is getting closer to freezing time. My husband is planning on taking a truck load of onions to friends and family when he goes to work next week.

For a fun part of their week the kids also requested that they get to have target practice with their .22 rifle and their bow. 

All of that is on top of our bi-weekly food bank volunteering which is this afternoon. 

 I look forward to sharing pictures!! 

Weeding and Planting

Today I spent the morning weeding.

I despise weeds!!! Not all weeds, just the nasty ones.

Mostly TUMBLEWEEDS!!! 

Why do they exist?? What is their purpose? Other then to stab me when trying to plant peas??

That is what I did today. Stab the crap out of my fingertips and plant peas. 

Snow and Snap peas, yummy!!

 We had some planted from the spring but they didn't produce much and something tunneled underneath them. 

I then built a trellis for my one pickling cucumber vine that made it. I kept scratching myself with the chicken wire so I decided to use some old wire shelves I had. I have plenty of it left for the peas when they are ready. 

I can't wait for the garden to start producing food.

Onions are starting to fall over and random potatoes are drying up. Squash are coming and hopefully tomatoes are soon to follow.

Here are some photos from Saturday.

Eight Ball (Green Round Zucchini)

One Ball (Yellow Round Zucchini)

Green Patty Pan

Hale's Best Cantaloupe

Wednesday = No Kids

It's pretty weird having Wednesdays all to myself.

For the past month I have dropped the kids off at Grandma's for "summer school" and  when she also started taking them to Wednesday night church it just made sense for them to spend the night giving me quiet time.

Now the question is what have I done with a day of no kids. 

 The first day I literally cleaned like crazy. We had been super busy the weekend before so the house/ kitchen really needed a good cleaning. Then by 4:00 pm I was going a bit nuts, the house was too quite. I don't like quiet!! Being a mom of four kids quiet feels like something is wrong. I solved that by blasting my music. I don't get to do that much with kids, someone always asks to turn it down (their dad's influence even though he used to blast music too!!) I also found myself in bed early, like 9 pm early. Lights out and everything!

Second time I didn't work myself nearly as hard but cleaned out "trash" or what I call trash and the kids called treasures. I bagged it all up and then tied the bags so they couldn't see inside, then when they got home they helped load it up to take to the dumpster. 

Week three was a different since I wasn't home. I helped my brother in law and his girlfriend take their dogs into be fixed so I spent the day driving back and forth to town and preping school and this time I decided to take it easy again. 

Now here on Wednesday number 4 without kids I finally relaxed for a bit. I started by eating breakfast since I didn't eat with them before they left. Then I walked the dog (we adopted a new dog last week that likes to chase ANYTHING that he sees so he has to be walked on a leash). Worked on breakfast dishes and a few other things in the kitchen, with me going shopping for the month next week cleaning out the fridge and inventorying the freezer was needed. I also watched some NCIS, we started watching them a few weeks ago and I am totally hooked. 

Then I decided since it got cool outside a little earlier then it has been the last week I would go feed the garden. I have been wanting to do this since I noticed some squash on the vines Saturday. 

It took me over an hour to feed all of the squash and cucumber plants, grapevine and sprinkling it around the tomatoes. 

I then transplanted some chocolate mint from root cuttings my husband got and  my aloe plant that has been needing to go outside. The aloe will have to come back inside at some point before freezing nights come but I am hoping this will be good for it. 

Then I transplanted some standard mint and a tomato plant. I had to transplant these guys because something is messing with my waterlines. We noticed something wonky with the watering this weekend but assumed it was because of the unusually hot weather we were having last week. I assumed wrong!

I still don't know what is up with the water but plan on getting out there tomorrow night with a kid or two to find out and to dig up a few more herbs that are getting deprived of water. I am hoping moving them at this time of year won't hurt them to much, but since the waterlines are buried where they currently are I can't figure it out without digging them up. Hoping that with monsoon here (in a way) it will help them.

I spent over THREE hours out there working before I realized the sun was basically gone.

Tomorrow I am planning on doing a good cleaning job inside the house since Friday will be spent helping at the food bank and hubby comes home. 

That's enough for tonight. I will be back tomorrow with new tales of gardening work and how much laundry I folded (staring down some that's been calling my name all day).

Goodnight!!

Summer Planting and Spring Harvest Begins

Well with our last frost finally behind us we have started our summer planting in the gardens. We have just about 3 complete rows of tomatoes in the ground and will be doing a bunch of peppers in the next few days. This year I didn't start all the squash inside as last year they didn't transplant well, so this year we are just going to direct seed. We are tilling up some rows for the last time this week and soon everything will be planted. The next week promises to be a fun but busy one planting everything outside.

With it coming to that time it meant it was time to check the garlic and sure enough we have scapes growing, we chopped some up and included them in a meal with family that was visiting last weekend. With the scapes coming it means garlic will be harvested shortly. We have mustard greens just begging for me to cut them and make some eggs, since its a small harvest I think I will wait till my dear hubby is home this week-- with all his extra work away he deserves the first spring harvest. With in a few more weeks we will be getting some salads and maybe even some beets and turnips, they are coming along nicely.

Our potatoes are looking very nice also. We are experimenting this year with them. We kept some of the tiny potatoes from our last harvest last year and put them away in our pantry which is a fairly cool room all year long. Sure enough the potatoes sprouted eyes and even started vines while in there. They are now planted and look just as good as the seeds we bought. We are going to wait till after the harvest to say whether or not it is a successful experiment since we want to see if they produce good potatoes but we may be able to cut out seed potatoes soon if this works.

Next week my mother in law will be vacationing at her house close by so it will be the start of a fun summer for my kids with Grandma and a weeding partner in the garden :)

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

Galatians 6:9 NIV