BLACKHAMMER ACRES

One of the last items we harvested this season was beans. Not only did we pick beans for eating, canning, and freezing, but we also made dried beans. They are a good source of protein, and take up much less space than other preservation methods. Maggie has been shelling string beans for a couple of seasons, but this year I also planted several heirloom varieties of runner beans that were bred specifically for dried bean use. These included Turkey Craw, Mayflower, Old Mother S

We have been chipping away on house rehabbing projects for the past 5+ years. These projects are largely wrapped up, but there was one last project that needed to be done. The paint on the two exterior doors was in tough shape, and the exterior sides were an orange-ish color. This spring, Maggie picked out paint colors and we bought the actual paint. That paint sat all spring and summer as our attention shifted to garden projects. With a small gap between the summer garden pr

Mid-Continent Railway Museum - North Freedom, WI In the summer, Ed and I thought it would be nice to take a countryside train ride in the October / Fall timeframe to see all the fall colors. We are lucky enough to live relatively close to the Mid-Continent Railyway Museum in North Freedom, Wisconsin. In addition to their museum (which features restored train engines and cars), they offer train rides that are approximately 1 hour long. We put a pin in the idea and revisited

One of Maggie's last tasks each night is to make sure all of the chickens are in the coop, and to lock the door until morning. We have one small chicken, which she calls Chicklet, that seems to always be the last one to go to bed. I was wrapping up a project in the garden on Sunday and noticed that all the chickens, including Chicklet, seemed to be in the coop. I walked over, closed the door, and went to the house to tell Maggie the chickens were all away for the night. Later

Fresh Dug Potatoes We started growing potatoes 5 years ago; yet, we never got a good harvest relative to what we planted until last year. Based on last year's success in a small patch (and wisdom gained), we decided to plant more this year (I'd guess about 2-3 times as much). It worked! Our hope is that we will have enough "seed" potatoes left over at the end of winter / come spring to use to plant next year's crop instead of having to purchase them. Meanwhile, I know we

The bounty of summer continues to roll along. The past two weekends have been exhausting. One weekend was spent harvesting honey from our bees. Our one Langstroth hive was the winner, producing nearly 60 pounds of honey. That translates to 5 gallons of honey. Our two Layens hives, which have tended to be bigger producers in the past, struggled this year after we applied mite treatment. It looks like both swarmed this year, which seems a little odd. We have plenty of honey, bu

As part of our continuing experiments with plants, we created a 50-foot strip of flowers this year. We started our flowers from seed, both indoors and direct-sowed. Everything was planted in May. It has been a steep learning curve. The Gomphrena did not germinate well, and I mislabeled the Calendula as Marigolds. Early summer brought a mix of torrential rain and weeks of heat and drought-like conditions. But, we have ended up will lots of flowers. The snapdragons and feverfew

Herbs and Flowers for Drying Our Calendula flowers are in full bloom. Time to pick a few, dry them, and add to the previously started batch of infused oil. (Prior to putting the flowers in oil, they need to be dried so as to avoid any mold issues...) Calendula flowers when infused with oil can be used on your skin to heal wounds and bruises. Most people I've seen online use olive oil for infusing - but I had some partial bottles of pumpkin seed oil and some liquid coconut

Raspberry Jam In the Pot and On the Stove We were starting to have frozen raspberries coming out of our ears from this year's harvest to date. When I say raspberries, I mean a combination of our garden variety raspberries (the kind you get in the store) and our wild black cap's. Time to make our annual raspberry jam. And when it comes to raspberry jam, I make my version (seeds and all) and Ed makes his version (seeds strained out). We still have canned raspberry sauce from

We had about a week period in late June where we seemed to be between harvests. The strawberries were just ending, the lettuce was at peak, and the peas were just starting. A stretch of 90 degree weather followed by rain pushed the garden to another level. Peas have peaked, and with early peppers, allowed a couple of stir fry dinners. The heat and the nearly 5 inches of rain we got this weekend were not too kind to our onions, causing about a quarter of them to flop over. We

This season, we took another step in trying to grow cut flowers. The past two seasons, we have grown them from seed and planted into containers. This season, we tried to plant a 50-foot strip of flowers, which I dubbed the 50-foot flower farm. Killing grass for the cut flower garden The first observation I have is that it is a lot of work to grow flowers. A new bed had to be created and tilled. I had planned the garden assuming all the seeds would germinate and grow, which di

The short strawberry season is starting to wind down in the Driftless Area. A few roadside signs are up, with the local Amish selling their crops. Our strawberry patch ended up doing much better than I had thought it would. We got anywhere from a pint to a quart of strawberries each day over the season. While we ended up with enough for a pie, we have been enjoying them in other ways. Maggie likes to eat them as-is, or cut up with a bit of sugar. I baked a batch of homemade s

One gardening challenge we have had is our attempt to grow strawberries. I think our strawberry bed is on at least Year 4. The first year we had a drought and no fence, and thirsty critters dug up our plants. We built a fence and replanted the following year, and fought weeds to get plants established. Last year, I accidently burned part of the bed trying to flame weed, and replanted yet again. This year, the bed has filled in pretty well, although there is one bare spot. Wee

Maggie was able to get another couple of gallons of milk from her Amish friend last week, so we made another wheel of cheese. We again made a simple farmhouse cheddar. After air curing for several days, the wheel of cheese was vacuum-sealed and placed in our 'cheese cave', which is a wine refrigerator I bought off Facebook Marketplace. We just need to wait 2 months for it to age, before we give it a try. Some may ask what happened to the first wheel of cheese we made. Most of

While at first glance it seems like this is the start of the garden season, in reality we have been working on our garden for the past 5 months. During January snow, we prepared our garden plan and paged through seed catalogues. In February, we went from generalities like 'tomatoes' to planning which eight varieties we were going to grow, checked our seed vault, and ordered seeds as needed. Things began to pick up speed in March as we started onions, peppers, brassicas, and h