Wrapping up the Garden

The last bit of produce it being plucked from the garden patch and preserved for the winter.  Life on the homestead is shifting as it always does season by season.  We have busy seasons and seasons of rest.

Marilla Moo our faithful milk cow is now across the lane with her friends.  Or I should say her kin folk! She has her daughter, son, and her grandson, little Bubba.  They are one big happy family.  They have all the grass and water they need and most importantly, they have each other.  Cows really thrive in a herd, haven’t you heard?  They have a strong herding instinct.  When you separate them, they get scared and cry out.  Oftentimes we would hear our milk cow call out to her family across the lane and I could not wait until she was free to that greener pasture!

No more milk until December.  She deserves her vacation!  In December she will calve again.  It is always a time of excitement when you welcome a new member of the farm!  I just don’t know what I will do without my milk, yogurt, butter, and cheese!  All farm fresh!  So now I may have to find another source.

In Tennessee, we have had the rainiest month!  Pouring rain nearly every day for the past several weeks.  You know what that means for us farmers, GREEN!  It means lots of weeds, upkeep, and even rotten root crops also. They can’t handle all the moisture in the ground for too long.  We lost about half of our potato crop.

Here is our overgrown mess of a garden, weeding has been in full swing again!  You can see our shack in the back!

Mark and the boys pulling weeds like mad men.  They put it all on a HUGE compost heap beside the garden which looks more like a mountain!  That will be great for later!
Wheel barrel after wheel barrel, the weeds were exiting the garden.
Here is our potato rows, all dug up and all weeded.
We still had some potatoes that we could save, thank goodness!
These peppers are in plenty, we unsure what they are, I thought I only planted habenero, jalepeno, chile, red, and cayenne peppers.  This was a fun surprise, we must have had a fun seed mixed into our seed bag!  Anyone know what kind this is?  Leave a comment below and let me know what I can do with it.  They sure are pretty, they grow in an upward fashion.  I love them!
We plucked the most beautiful green peppers off the plants today!  Wow.  In fact, we harvested a bushel a couple weeks ago and thought the plants were done.  After all this rain, I went out and checked the plants and they were FULL of peppers.  The branches were breaking with the weight of them. I was pleasantly surprised.
I picked over a bushel of them!  What a precious gift!  We use green pepper for so many things.  The easiest way I have preserved them is by chopping them and putting them in freezer bags.  They keep great this way, no need for blanching, we have done this for years, it is a very easy and fast way to keep them.  I just add them to different stir fry dishes, casserole, egg bakes, omelets, pizza, and soup.  It is great!
God has been so good, we had a great garden this summer.  I would love to know how your gardens did in the comments below!  Have a blessed day!

Keeper of the Homestead is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Related Posts

17 thoughts on “Wrapping up the Garden”

  1. Those are tobasco peppers. I have them too. I dry in a dehydrator and then grind them to a powder and use them wherever I want. I was going to do like the tobasco sauce but I don’t like the store bought with vinegar and the recipes I have found call for a lot of vinegar. May keep looking. Otherwise I just put them in a bag whole and freeze them.

  2. Dear Erin,
    Thank you for this blog!!!! I am not commenting on this post. Although the garden looks lovely even with all the weeds! I am looking for a different post you wrote a while back. I am not even sure of the title. Sorry!!! I was hoping that you could help me find it. It was on routines for the day. It was a great encouragement to me. I have let things in my house go…..we had a very sick winter and this spring and early summer I caught up on homeschool, and we have just had our sixth beautiful blessing, a little boy!!! With school just around the corner again l am desiring to run my home better and more efficiently. As I have a few new challenges and I am striving to leave overwhelmed out of my vocabulary!!! Thank for your time in doing this blog!!! May God bless you!!
    Heather

  3. Dear Erin,
    Thank you for this blog!!!! I am not commenting on this post. Although the garden looks lovely even with all the weeds! I am looking for a different post you wrote a while back. I am not even sure of the title. Sorry!!! I was hoping that you could help me find it. It was on routines for the day. It was a great encouragement to me. I have let things in my house go…..we had a very sick winter and this spring and early summer I caught up on homeschool, and we have just had our sixth beautiful blessing, a little boy!!! With school just around the corner again l am desiring to run my home better and more efficiently. As I have a few new challenges and I am striving to leave overwhelmed out of my vocabulary!!! Thank for your time in doing this blog!!! May God bless you!!
    Heather

  4. Those kinda look like the chillies here in Malaysia. We call them bird’s eye chillies. They usually point to the sky too. They’re tiny, but really spicy compared to the usual red ones. But not sure if yours are that kind though, still trying to guess what yours are though. But I must say, your plant is really healthy compared to ours, which had been infested by tiny white insects 😀

  5. Our garden this year did well. I am still harvesting melons and a very late season for tomatoes. That is ok..we will just have them when other don’t
    Not sure if we will do a winter garden this year…yet Ill miss it if not
    Our jujubee trees are nice an full this year and ready to harvest come Sept thru Oct. A short window..yet this fruit is packed with a sweet punch..
    Shalom

  6. Amanda Stoltzfus

    Miss you all! Your place is thriving. Are you going to can potatoes again this year? I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since we’ve been there.

  7. What a great surprise to find another crop of peppers! I can totally identify with the weed situation. I am also composting mine. I am hoping if I smother the seeds with grass mulch that I won’t just be planting weeds when I use the compost later.
    We have a bunch of tomatoes and I am excited to can them. I also planted too many pumpkins and squash so that end of our garden is crazy! We had some volunteer potatoes grow from some kitchen scraps and we are seeing the beets, carrots and peas almost ready to harvest. I think I will plant more of those as a fall crop as well.
    Thanks for sharing your garden adventures this year. What a blessing!

  8. What a great surprise to find another crop of peppers! I can totally identify with the weed situation. I am also composting mine. I am hoping if I smother the seeds with grass mulch that I won’t just be planting weeds when I use the compost later.
    We have a bunch of tomatoes and I am excited to can them. I also planted too many pumpkins and squash so that end of our garden is crazy! We had some volunteer potatoes grow from some kitchen scraps and we are seeing the beets, carrots and peas almost ready to harvest. I think I will plant more of those as a fall crop as well.
    Thanks for sharing your garden adventures this year. What a blessing!

  9. What a great surprise to find another crop of peppers! I can totally identify with the weed situation. I am also composting mine. I am hoping if I smother the seeds with grass mulch that I won’t just be planting weeds when I use the compost later.
    We have a bunch of tomatoes and I am excited to can them. I also planted too many pumpkins and squash so that end of our garden is crazy! We had some volunteer potatoes grow from some kitchen scraps and we are seeing the beets, carrots and peas almost ready to harvest. I think I will plant more of those as a fall crop as well.
    Thanks for sharing your garden adventures this year. What a blessing!

  10. Wonderful garden you all had! Another simple, space saving way to preserve bell peppers is to dice them and dehydrate them. No blanching needed. We add the dehydrated peppers with the ground meat when making spaghetti, chili, and barbque. You would never know that they were not fresh peppers, and they last indefinitely in airtight jars.

  11. Those are hot banana peppers. Also called Hungarian peppers. I have them too. Canned them after slicing. My husband loves it on his sandwiches.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top
Share
Tweet
Pin
Email