deer

the deer keeps eating everything,
I allowed the fence project that should have taken 2 days to be in the control of someone else,
and it has been most of the summer now,
so much of the garden is gone now I wonder if I should even bother watering it anymore,
I am kind of happy the deer is getting food,
but going to so very much work to just feed the deer is not worth it at all,
even if I was going to eat the deer it was just to much work, 

the sorghum grain heads were ripening from the outside in,

and were close to being done, but not totally done,
I am sure they are good enough to sprout next year so I am not that worried,
either way I just picked them all before the deer figured out what they were,

the deer ate half of a rather large pumpkin,

the next day it finished that one and started on the next,

and already finished off several water melons,

it seems to love eating the sweet potato leaves,
ate about half the tomatillo plants, so no large harvest like I was expecting,
likely made sure I will not get another cucumber this year
ate 3/4 the one tomato plant I had,

 leveled all the potatoes,

there are 2 good reasons not to have your compost pile right in where you are growing food,
one is that the mold will get to your growing plants and hurt them,
the other is that it will attract the wild life that will find the rest of your garden because of it.

by the way, someone else is adding the compost there

the really sad part of this is that it is time to plant beets and turnips and other fall things before the soil cools off and they will not sprout,
and because of the deer and lack of fence I have no where to plant it all,

now that I have figured out how to really grow plant easy here,
I have no real hope of doing so because of others.
it has been 2 years here and I am not really closer to any of my goals, only thing that has changed is that I spent my money on food while not growing my own, and due to that can no longer can buy things like fencing and other things that could have got the first year that would have let me grow my own food way easier, it is all still possible, but way harder, hard enough so that my heart is just not in it anymore.

the lesson with all of this ?

 

deer like your garden as much as you do and can eat more, also they don't harvest as to not pointlessly kill the plants.

don't trust others that can block projects (even if they are trying to help)

don't bother planting anything you can't defend,

and don't think about how hard things are when you only got 4 hours of sleep.
things should be better with more sleep, I am sure of it.

grain threshing

so threshing your own grain is made out to be quite hard,
but it is not really that hard at all,
check out my how to video of the friction grain threshing method

I know I should have had someone else hold the camera, but you can see enough to copy it
some people use an old shoe and not a block of wood with rubber on it,
I wrap the hardware cloth down around the bucket so it does not move,
but others will make a fancy wood frame for it.

so get to work and build your own small scale grain threshing setup,
that is if you plant grain on a small scale...

hulless pumpkin seeds

if you ever grow a hulless pumpkin seed pumpkin,
you should know something,
the seeds sprout very easy,
the instructions I read sad to remove seeds within 2 months of harvest or they will sprout,
now I know that when it changes color you have about 3 weeks,
you can't leave them till the first frost to harvest,

I will try the entire thing again next year and see how it goes.
and don't forget that small farming errors can take an entire year to fix. (or more)

goodby summer

so summer is going away,
I am now closing windows to keep the heat in, and not to keep the heat out,
was cold this morning,
it is sad to see summer slipping away, the tips of my fingers are holding on tight, but I am not winning,
it is not frosting yet or anything like that,
just getting to be fall.

I will miss being warm all the time.

fire

there is a big fire near here,
I listened to the radio most of the day,
here is what I learned:
lots of people have no where to live now, 
first thing they did is to cut the power to the areas,
so people trying to stay and fight the fire themselves likely had no water,
also people that just drove past the road blocks were let go due to no one being available to go after them,


gets me thinking about my plan for fire,
fire is hard on houses, people and gardens,
and hard to fight a fire without electricity,
I better get more ready

cucumber issues

so I planted cucumbers this year,
I really like growing them,
I like going out to the garden and being able to get food I don't have to cook,
but the deer started eating the plants,
so I set up a fence to stop them,
it is not much of a fence,
just 3 foot tall, but it is right on top of the plants, so it works,
the issue is that it was suppose to be there for only a few days,
maybe 4 days at most, 
a bigger fence was planned, and it would have worked,
but I made the error of letting someone else have control of the project,
and it is still not done,
now the issue is bigger
the cucumbers have climbed up the small fence and now I have to leave it,
seems like a small issue, but it is not,
I can't get to the cucumbers on the far side due to the fence,
I need some to go to seed, so it was fine for a while,
but now many have gotten quite big where I can't reach them,
and the plant quits producing if it has enough places for the energy to go,
so I will have hundreds if not thousands of times more seeds that I will need next year,
and I have no new cucumbers for at least a while this year,
things are out of balance,

so just remember to plant your cucumbers so you can harvest all of them (until you want one for seed)

next year I am putting the same fence up, but it will be in the center of the row so the cucumbers can climb up them and I can get to each side, they should all be super easy to find that way.

onion seeds

anyone remember the onions I planted 2 springs ago ?
if I remember correct it was about 900 onions, and quite a few types,
only about 30 or so grew really well,
and 10 ended up storing well over the winter (they did not rot),
I planted them out this spring, 
and they have been making seeds this summer,
so now I have harvested seeds form 9 plants
almost time to plant seeds and see what I get

getting a good local onion from seed takes a bit of time,
but is worth it,
and very exciting.
I am likely almost half way there