Ten apples up on top

Houston, we have apples! Six years ago we planted ten apple trees in our yard. We were new to the whole country living thing, and had no clue. (We still don't.) Let's just say the deer harvested much more from our little orchard than we ever did. Which isn't saying much, since we haven't harvested anything. It's hard to grow apples when the trees have no buds.

Last spring, when we built the barn and got goats, we had to move the garden. We moved it to a section of the 'orchard.' We put up a fence to keep deer and bunnies from eating the veges. I rooted out one old apple tree, but left one growing inside the garden, just to see what would happen.

Tada! This year we have apples! Ten apples, exactly. Ten perfect green-with-a-rosy-shine apples. And all it took was a little bit of fencing. We've still got several other bedraggled apple trees in the 'orchard,' hanging on by the skin of their teeth. I wonder what a little more fencing would do? Hmmm...


No ripe tomatoes yet, just lots and lots of green ones. I can't use my jalapeno peppers until I have some red tomatoes for salsa. Guess I could make green tomato salsa. I'll have to look for a recipe.

The chicks and chickens are getting along well. I am still keeping them all shut in their run. But since they can't free-range we are going through a lot of chicken feed. I think I might let them out this week sometime. Hopefully the fox or the raccoon has moved on to happier hunting grounds.

The goats are fat and sassy. It's the beginning of August, so they are due for another deworming and delousing treatment. Their hooves might need another trim, too. But their coats are lush and lovely. Next month's shearing will give me my first saleable clip of mohair. Now I just have to find someone to sell it to.

I cooked greens for the first time in my life on Thursday. The beet greens were piling up in the fridge, and it was either cook them or toss them. So I cooked them using a recipe I found on the internet with bacon, onions, red pepper, garlic, sugar and apple cider vinegar. They were actually pretty good. The kids hated them, but that was expected. Now I've got a hankerin' for more southern food. Fried chicken, corn bread, peach pie. Anybody got any grits?