Late Summer at the Farmhouse. What have we been doing and projects have we been working on this late summer on the homestead?
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Winter is already almost here.
Summer is so fun and full of busy projects that it seems to just fly by every year!
This summer in particular has been one of my favorites. We’ve been outside the majority of the time just enjoying the land and the animals.
Meadowlarks sitting in our lilac bush singing their hearts out. They make one of my favorite sounds on earth. It reminds me of that first happy summer when we moved to Montana and I heard them for the first time.
Soon our days won’t be quite as full. We will enter into the season of rest after working so hard. The chimney has been cleaned out for the year and soon, the fireplace will be crackling, the house will feel warm and cozy. We will have gotten out all our blankets from summer storage to snuggle under while we read more stories than we have time to in the summer.
I always feel sad when summer is ending, but at the same time excited for cozy winter days ahead. I suppose each season has its allure.
Late Summer at the Farmhouse
When summer starts drawing to a close, that always seems to be one of our busiest times of year. That, and early spring, are when we are racing against the clock.
Harvesting the gardens
Late summer is when the bulk of our garden harvest happens. In usual years my two biggest harvests are tomatoes and green beans. We planted over 60 tomato plants this year, and typically those and green beans are so easy to grow I thought they’d be coming out of my ears. But for whatever reason, this season both of those did terrible. We’ve gotten about 10 tomatoes and 1 green bean so far.
I’ve heard from a lot of people locally that it was just a really rough year for tomatoes because of how cold the spring was. I also have a suspicion that the green beans did badly because of left-over herbicides on our land. It was sprayed before we moved in, and its been a year and a half now, but green beans are one of those plants that are especially susceptible to toxins. We shall try again next year.
This season our biggest harvests have been beets, pickling cukes, squash and zucchini.
Canning & preserving
I’ve canned all the beets in water and salt to add to soups or have as a yummy side dish. Pickling cukes all got turned into jars and jars of dill pickles. Right now all the winter squash has been harvested and is sitting in the bed of our old truck curing in the sun. Later on we will store them all in our extra room. We have enough to eat two per week this winter! The zucchini I have had a hard time finding enough things to use it on. We are swimming in them! Sweet and sour zucchini pickles, zucchini relish, cubed and canned plain in salt and water, and loaves of sourdough zucchini bread for the freezer.
The sunflowers are all ready to be harvested now also. These giant beauties are my favorite. I’ve only cut and hung 5 heads so far and there are about 10 left. These mammoth sunflowers are just insanely huge! I still can’t believe it sometimes.
Every homestead needs giant sunflowers everywhere.
We also have done quite a bit of dehydrating this year. Apple / pear picking was a few weeks ago and I canned some and then sliced up the rest and dried it. It’s one of the kid’s favorite snacks. Definitely the best snack for during church because it takes them so long to eat!
Tree planning
This spring we planted 500 fast-growing trees around the boarder of our property. Need some privacy with how flat it is in this area!
But this late summer we have been planning out our next tree order. We need to re-order our fast growing trees where any didn’t make it. There probably won’t be many because most of them really did well.
Luke will be digging swales in our future orchard area. Swales help keep any rain water from flowing away. It makes the land more self-sufficient because you don’t have to water it nearly as much.
Once we know where the swales will be then we can plan out how many of our orchard trees we need. Apples, pears, apricots, plum, several kinds of nut trees, then maple and black locust to be mixed in. We have been researching layered food forests and permaculture and I can’t wait to see our vision become a reality!
We will put in our order soon and the 400+ trees will hopefully make it here before the ground freezes.
Animal harvests
Late summer and fall is when our animals usually are harvested. Our hogs and steers that we got this spring will be butchered mid-November. It’s always a good feeling when you see all that meat in the freezer after doing all that work taking care of the animals. You raise them up, feed and water them every day, care for them if they get sick, give them a happy life. Then their time comes where they fulfill their purpose. God gave us all these nutritious animals to keep us healthy and vibrant.
You really come to appreciate EVERY part of the animal when you raise them yourselves and really understand how nutritionally important it is to eat nose-to-tail. All the organs, especially the liver, the tongue, the fat that will be rendered into lard or tallow, the bones for broth or bone marrow. So. Much. Nutrition. Yes the muscle meat is delicious, but you need all of it for the most bang for your buck health wise, as they say.
Hay is gathered
The only hay-eatin’ animals we keep over the winter right now are the sheep. So we don’t need too much hay, but it’s one of those things that once you have it all gathered and stacked, it feels very satisfying. Like we have security for them when the ground is covered with snow. Once we start feeding hay, it will mark a new turn in the seasons. The season of snow and wind. The sheep will all stay closer to the house and will bond closer to us as we bring their food out to them daily.
What are projects and rhythms you have on your homestead or property every late summer?
It’s such a glorious time of year.
And blessings!
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