As the Season Evolves

First a highlight in our month of June as it comes to a close.....finally, a little bit more rain!  We are locked into late summer weather with highes in the mid 90's-100 degrees and almost record setting dry conditions for the month of June in our area of Indiana.  We received .40 inch of rain yesterday afternoon and another 1/4 inch overnight/this morning.  Normally not a whole lot to cheer about, but in this case we are.  Along with the horses whose grass greened up overnight, and the gardens which finally received a drink from mother nature instead of our sprinklers.  (I'm sure our well pump was breathing a sigh of relief getting a break from a day of watering).  We are just hoping to be able to get the plants through all this hot/dry weather so we can keep sharing all this wonderful garden produce we are so fortunate to have the opportunity to grow and share with friends & family (including our new friends at the Market).  The season has progressed from the early season (cool) crops to a nice variety were were able to take last week, including, zucchini, green beans, squash, peppers, cauliflower, cabbage.  Our tomato plants are doing well, getting loaded with fruits, now just waiting for them to ripen.  I started some more asparagus & rhubarb this spring anticipating our participation in the Market in future years.  This week I ordered another round of asparagus & rhubarb (along with some raspberry bushes) that will all arrive for fall planting.  My husband and I are going to have to walk our ground and find a little more area that we can till for garden space and get it plotted,  keeping in mind that we may need to irrigate/water as we have this year, so we'll have to keep it within reasonable distance of our water supply.
We've been asked to add some recipes using our "in season" produce as we've been talking recipes at the Market, so I am starting to put together some of our favorite uses for vegetables and will include them on our website Double Bar-G, I will also be printing some of them up to have "paper" copies available at the Market.  If you'd like to share any of your favorite recipes, please fell free to email me at:  DoubleBar-G@tds.net.  
Two more batches of soaps will be labeled and finish trimmed for taking to market.  I made a batch that has eucalyptus oil & lemon balm dried herb in it.  The other is an oatmeal bar with just a spoonful of pumpkin spice added in.  They should be a nice addition to the others we currently have available.
I started cleaning and washing my first try of alpaca fiber and left it to dry yesterday, I'm hoping to get a feel for carding and see how this first (very small trial batch) works up to spin.  It contains beautiful charcoal gray colors, should make gorgeous yarn if I can put it all together.
My husband was kind enough to help me pick up another (new/antique) Union Loom today.  It is as far as being in the house and starting to be cleaned up a bit.  It should be beautiful and very similar to the other one I use regularly.  I'm hoping this way to keep one warped larger for rugs at all times, and the second for smaller projects (placemats/coasters, etc).  The "new" one seems to be just a bit older than my Union Loom, but very similar in operation.  Once I get it all cleaned up and am running material through on it I will post pictures.  The lady I got it from included all sorts of neat colored warp that I am anxious to try.  I've experimented with colored warp only a couple times, I mainly prefer natural warp, but this will definitely be fun to play with, and see what neat color combinations I can put together for rugs.   Happy crafting and gardening days to all of you as we bring June to a close.  Hoping and praying for adequate moisture and moderate temperatures for all of you in the month of July. 

Finally, A Little Rain!

It won't be a "drought buster" as the term is becoming popular with meteorologists in our area this year, but finally a little rain yesterday for our area - an INCH to be exact!  With that came a little wind as the cold front moved through.  I was out early this morning, standing back up some sweet corn and pepper plants that had laid over during the storm.  We'll take it though.  I'm hoping this helps the pastures to hold on a bit longer, and yeah!!!! no watering this morning for the first time in a long time, mother nature took care of it for me.  You could almost see that things had grown overnight.  Our garden is doing well (thanks to a lot of help from sprinklers) and the zucchini are growing like crazy, in fact a few are getting picked this am, and run through the food processor and into the freezer for soups, or zucchini patties this winter.  The squash are doing good as well, although I'm not quite sure what I will do with the one that is growing through the fence, 1/2 on each side, guessing I will have to break it in half to harvest and cook it for myself.  (I'll try and get a picture of it posted).  A cooler morning for us, the dogs are excited this morning even to be outside for a couple of hours (it got down to 62 overnight), the chickens were all scurrying around trying to get any worms left over from the rain.  We will be cooking our first round of brat's this weekend with our own sweet peppers to saute and put on them, last year we couldn't get sweet peppers to grow/pollinate, but this year looks to be different, the plants are loaded, greens & purples are doing well.  I picked our first green beans the other day, but gave them all to family off the first round.  I will be picking some more tomorrow to cook up for ourselves.  We love the pot of green bean, potatoes, onion & summer sausage to make a meal off of.  A large bowl of slaw was made yesterday - thanks mom for the Cuisinart food processor a few years back, it sure gets a work out this time of year. 
I found some raw alpaca fleece this week.  I had ordered some hand carders and have been watching numerous videos on washing, processing and spinning fleece.  I started by purchasing the spinning wheel a couple years ago and am kind of working backwards now.  The fleece I found was in beautiful grey tones, I'm anxious to start processing some of it and see what I get.  The main project may have to wait until fall, but I look forward to it.
Two more batches of soap were made this week.  A Eucalyptus Mint and an Oatmeal batch.  The Eucalyptus batch made the whole upstairs smell.  It smells good, just hoping it tones down a bit while curing.  Those will be ready to add to the Farmers Market in a couple weeks.  It seems like endless craft projects around the house these days, but what fun!  I may not get to it until fall, but hope to try my hand at an Etsy Sellers site.  I've signed up for it, but haven't had the chance to take photos and get items listed yet. I'll keep you posted when I get to that point. 
I best get headed back outside and finish up a few chores - the Vet is due to come through this morning for dog/horse vaccinations. 
Hope everyone's gardens are growing well, and that you are getting a chance to enjoy some of the wonderful fruits of your labor in the form of some good healthy meals. 

NOTE FOR SAGAMORE WEST FARMERS MARKET 6/20

For those of you that attend the Sagamore West (West Lafayette) Farmers Market and follow up on this blog, we wanted to let you know that we will be unable to attend this week, Wed, June 20th.  We will return the following Wed. June 27th.  We are sorry for any inconvenience.  For our regular customers, email us at DoubleBar-G@tds.net and we'll get a sack of veggies together and drop off to you mid-week in place of the Farmers Market.  Thanks, have a wonderful day.  Please pray for rain!

Watering & Still More Watering

Yes, Mother Nature brought us an early, lush spring....but the faucet shut off the first week of May and since that time we've had only about 1/2 inch of rain.  We are grateful for our good well and the ability to water our gardens to keep them growing and producing.  We are fortunate to have enough pasture to rotate for the animals, but some neighbors aren't so lucky and are feeding hay to carry their livestock through until rain comes.  This is only June, what will summer hold for this area?  Some areas of our state are anywhere from 3 to 8 or more inches below normal in rainfall for the year.  Along with some extra warm weather, it is becoming concerning.
Thanks to watering, our rhubarb has continued to produce, we have our first broccoli, cabbage, zucchini being harvested.  The lettuce is done till fall (it's just been too hot & dry to keep it high quality).  The moles have been hard on my strawberry bed this year, I've been enjoying some fresh handfuls of bright/sweet berries to eat, but I am battling the moles to keep the plants rooted.  I have a good mole dog -Eggy, and occasionally he leaves me the present of a mole he's eliminated out in the yard. 
We're hopefully about a month away from seeing our first pullet eggs from our new batch of layers.  Good fresh eggs are in demand, both from people wanting to get them off the farm & at the Farmers Market,  we are anxious to see the girls start laying. They've been getting lots of good grain, grass & garden scraps.  Let's hope all this encourages them to start laying "sooner rather than later".  This unfortunately is one area where you need to plan way ahead.  By the time we decided to participate in the Farmers Market and start some new hens as well as add to our flock, we didn't have time to get the chickens laying before it all started.  (In other words we should've added chicks last fall).  It will all work out by July-August when they start laying regularly, but there's a lot of anticipation in them getting started.  From baby chicks to laying pullet eggs, it takes 4-6 months for average brown egg layers. 
I purchased a couple balls of rovine (wool processed ready to spin) from another vendor at our Farmers Market.  I'm anxious to try my hand at spinning, but it will have to wait a bit.  People are starting to catch on to our candles & soaps and purchasing them pretty regularly at our Market.  I need to find time this week to get a couple more batches of candles and soaps going.  A customer requested a mulberry scent.  I ordered a scent called "Mulberry Wine" from our supplier (Mill Creek Soy Wax Candle Supply) http://www.mcsoywax.com/ .  I absolutely love the scent!  My customer that requested it was quite pleased and we've had several others purchase it.  This will definitely be added to our regular list of scents.  We've purchased from Mill Creek for several years.  They are great people to work with, and they are located in Indiana (just over an hour away from us), which pleases us to support another local "small business". 
Time to sign off from here, time to get out and do some more watering (I think peas need picked and shelled this morning too).  Wishing you all a nice dose of rain followed by some bright sunshine to keep those gardens/pastures growing.