Update on what we have been doing

I just posted about naming our little farm, but wanted to tell you some of the things we have been doing as of late. Honestly, it amounts to a whole lot of nothing. The area has seen record highs through the summer and drought conditions. We have been spending most of our time indoors reading and researching.

We have looked into digging a small well in the back yard. We want to use it for irrigation. We have a lot of water underground as we discovered when we put the fence up last spring. Water shot up out of the ground when the auger got deep enough. We checked out a book from the library called Back To Basics. It has excellent ideas and instructions. They talk about building a small well that is the diameter of a large pipe. After the drought this year, I would be afraid that we would run out of water for our garden if we experience the same lack of rain next year.

We also found a company to build our barn shed in the spring. We can't wait for that. Our metal shed just isn't cutting it. lol

I think I have figured out what type of herbs I want to grow and how I plan to grow them. I am hoping to use cinder blocks to create a raised garden. I also want to sell them at the farmer's market in town. I have been looking more into soapmaking and plan to start that after the holidays. I am always thinking on what new project with which I can experiment.

I made the rosemary and lavender jellies. Both are very good, but sadly, I think I am allergic to lavender in food form. I am disappointed about that. I also got my rosemary all dried out, but that is really it for food preservation this year. It has just been so hot and we have been so busy with life that I have run out of time. Sorry I don't have more to report.

Oh, I mentioned in a previous post that my husband was trying out homemade upside down planters. I wanted to let you know how they did. Most of our veggies died. Two tomato plants survived and produced some tomatoes, but they are still on the vine and still green. They didn't ripen. It was a total loss. I don't know if it was the heat, the drought or the system. I will urge him to try with at least one bucket in the spring to see if it will work under normal growing conditions and let you know. I hate to give up on it. We're still going to use our fence posts for the buckets, but he plans to plant them right side up. lol

All in all, this was a pretty unproductive summer with the exception of getting the little rabbitry started. I guess it's all baby steps and I can't complain because at least we accomplished something, right?