Corny

The garden is starting to wind down a little. One thing that is almost gone is our corn. We have been putting up corn for the past couple weeks. So far we have put up approximately 120 ears of corn, some on the cob and some off the cob. We probably have about 30-50 more ears to pick. I plant a specific kind of sweet corn every year. It is called Silver Queen and it is the one we like the best of all the varieties we have tried. I plant enough to last us until corn time next year and the way we keep it that long is to freeze it. Preserving by freezing seems to work best for corn. The ears that look nice and uniform we freeze on the cob and the uglier ears we cut the corn off of the cob and freeze it that way. The worst part about the whole corn process is cleaning the "hairs" off the corn. It is a very tedious job having to pick the little hairs off each one. I always hated doing this growing up. But I guess it is worth it to have delicious homegrown corn throughout the year. Here are some pics.

This is Margo getting the hair off the ears of corn


Stack o' corn


We have a vacuum sealer that we use for the corn on the cob. It works awesomely.


Here are the tubs of corn off the cob

Goats for Sale

Before I get to the goats I wanted to share a really funny and awesome video with you. I am sure a lot of you have already seen it but for those of you who have not you should check it out. It is of a wedding entrance and if I did our wedding over I would love to do what they did on this video. It is great.




Now for the goats. We have two goats for sale in case you know anyone looking for goats. They were both born this year.

This one is a male and was our last baby born this year (the one I had to help). He is a really good looking goat.


And this is a female. She is cute and really nice as well.

Rain dancers needed

We are having a drought here on the Farm of Hale. But before I discuss that I want to tell you about a couple new animals that we acquired a few weeks ago that I have not posted on here yet. First of all, as I mentioned a while back we took our cow from the past year, Gob, to the butcher. He is now in the freezer and he tastes good. So a few weeks ago we got a new calf to raise this year to be butchered next year. His name is Tobias and he is really nice. He was a bottle calf so he is really nice and you can walk right up to him and pet him. He was a big hit at the 4th of July party with the kids. Here he is



Another new addition to the farm is another new sheep. We decided to get another ewe so that we would have 3 ewes total. She was born earlier this year and is a Barbados mix. She is really cute. She is really light colored so the previous owners called her Snowball which we decided to keep. Here she is



Now about the drought. Even though lots of people have been getting rain in the counties and the state around us, we here in Washington county, especially this part of the county, have not had hardly any rain. There was a big storm front that came through last week in which we had 70% chance to get rain. All the counties around us got lots of rain but we got zero. By my estimations and measurements from our rain gauge, we have had around .75-1 inch of rain in the past 5 weeks. To make matters worse we have had an abnormally hot summer so far. It has been in the high 90's for most of the past month. This is the driest our farm has ever been and I think it is one of the driest times I have seen in my life. Our grass is all dead except for a few small spots that are normally wet all the time. We have even had to feed hay for the past couple weeks for our animals to have something to eat. I have never really had to water our garden much in the previous years but I have had to water several times the past few weeks. Even with me watering it is still not doing as good as it should be. I am basically just limping it along because it is so big and it would take too much water to really water it good. There is a chance of rain this week but I will believe it when I see it. Please pray for us to get rain and a lot of it. Here are some pics to show you the effects of the drought.

Here are some big cracks in the ground, normally this would all be green grass


Usually a nice grassy area


This is another grassy area that I planted the grass two years ago and usually has good grass. All these spots should be green and have grass that is 6 inches deep or so

The Big 27

Happy Birthday to Margo. She turns 27 today. I posted the pictures on the blog a couple years ago for her birthday but I thought I would put them on here again this year because I think they are funny.

Superwoman


Pillow Head


Lady Liberty

New Farm Toy

We bought a new toy yesterday for the farm. It is actually not really a toy but something we need. Whenever we have to haul a cow somewhere or a bunch of goats we have to find someone who has a stock trailer who will haul them for us. We have even had to pay someone to haul cows for us before. We have been thinking for a while that it would be nice to get our own small stock trailer. But they are usually really expensive and more than we are willing to pay. Well, one came for sale on craigslist that fit our cheap budget so we got it. It is actually a two horse trailer but we are going to use it as a stock trailer. It is in pretty good shape overall. It needs a little work like replacing a couple boards on the inside, fixing the light wiring, and fixing some slow leaks in a couple of the tires. It could also use a new paint job at some point. We are very happy to have it, it will be very helpful. If anyone needs to borrow it just let us know.

Fishing

Something that I have never really got in to before is fishing. I don't know why but it is just something I have never really done much. Last Friday morning I had a day off and I was looking for something to do so I decided to go fishing with one of my friends, Luke. He really likes to fish and does it pretty often. We went out to Lake Elmdale in Springdale which is just a fishing lake. Neither of us have a boat but Luke has a canoe so we took it and just paddled around the shore. I have to say that I had a really good time. It was nice being out on the lake and we both caught several bass. I think I may try to go more often and make a hobby out of it. We will see how it goes. Here is a pic (with a cell phone camera) of the biggest bass I caught. In fact, I think it is the biggest bass I have ever caught.

Garden Update - The Drought

I don't know if we are officially in a drought or not but it feels like it to me. We have had very little rain with high 90 degree temperatures for the past month. Several things in the garden are really struggling. I have even had to start watering the garden which I have never had to do here before. It is even getting to the point that the grass is dieing and I am going to have to start feeding hay this week to the animals. It also seems like the bugs are a lot worse this year than before. I am not sure if that is caused by the dryness or not. I have been overrun with squash bugs and they have killed most of my squash. Even with all these problems the garden is still doing pretty good. We canned approximately 50 jars of green beans and 15 jars of pickles. We canned our first batch of spaghetti sauce yesterday and it made 7 jars. We hope to can some salsa tomorrow. We also ate our first corn today which was really good. We will have a lot more in the next couple weeks so we will be freezing it. We have been getting a few blackberries as well, not enough to really do much with, but enough for Margo to eat a handful of them every couple of days. We have small watermelons getting bigger by the day. Another week or two and we will have lots of them. I also planted some fall crops last week, hopefully it will rain soon and get those going good. I planted some winter squash (butternut and spaghetti) and some indian corn. I am hoping to plant some fall tomatoes, sugar snap peas, and potatoes as well. Sorry, but I don't have a lot of pictures of everything. But here is one that I thought was cool. This is our picking bucket (aka old 5 gallon paint bucket) after we went out and picked the garden yesterday. I thought it was cool because of all the different things in there. Maybe we could have a competition on here to see who can name all the things you can see in the bucket.

4th on the Farm

Last Saturday was our second annual 4th on the Farm celebration. We really like the Fourth of July and have decided to have an annual celebration. We invite friends, family, and coworkers to come celebrate with us. This year we had 58 people which is basically double from last year. I decided to try and smoke a whole hog this year. I have never done it before but I thought I would give it a shot. I built an above ground smoker out of concrete blocks and smoked it for about 8 hours. It was a lot of work but it turned out really good. We had potluck side items and homemade ice cream for dessert. We had lawn games, fishing, and let people pet the animals. At the end of the night we had a fireworks show which turned out pretty good as well. It was a really fun event, I think everyone had a good time. I was so busy while it was all going on that I did not take many pictures. But here are a few.

This is the pig while it is smoking. I had it butterflied so it would lay flat and cook easier.


Here it is after it is done smoking


This is us getting all the meat off the pig. Everyone came and watched us cut it up, it was quite a show. It was a 50lb pig which I was worried about being big enough, but it was more than enough to feed everyone.


We had like 15 young kids at the party, this is some of them feeding the goats. I think the kids really enjoyed seeing and petting the animals.


I am hoping to get some pictures of the fireworks from a guy who took some. As soon as I get them I will post them on here.
We are already starting to plan our celebration for next year.