Gardening and Country Life

I had no idea when we moved to our 7 acres in the country that I would become one of "those" people.  Who are "those" people?  The ones who have massive gardens, save scraps for their chickens, and can fresh fruits and veggies until their pantries runneth over.  Alas, I have succumbed to that lifestyle.  Okay, I will admit, I even enjoy it.  We got the chickens in February, and they are really fun to watch.  No, they don't do tricks (but only because I haven't trained them to), but just their every day habits.  Yes, Gene has gotten attached to them as well, finding, capturing, and feeding them grasshoppers.  The girls go NUTS over them!  What I have really enjoyed is watching Eggroll take the bugs or other treats, kill it, and give it to one of the girls.  He's such a good boy!

Sometimes the girls will approach on their own.  

The garden is huge!  We planted green beans, purple hull peas, squash, zucchini, okra, cherry tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, roma tomatoes, bell peppers, cayenne peppers, pablano peppers, chili peppers, jalapeno peppers, corn, canteloupe, potatoes, carrots, black berries, dill, rosemary, thyme, parsley and mint.  Did I mention our garden was huge?

Unfortunately, the green beans didn't do too well.  The purple hull peas did well, and we got enough for 1 dinner.  The okra, LOVES us.  It has produced a plethora of pods.  Peppers are doing well, also and the tomatoes are drowning us.  The corn has produced well---once we managed to chase off the birds that ate the first planting.  Oops.  The herbs haven't done too well, so we are planning on something different next year.  The squash has produced pretty well, but not the zucchini.  We definitely have learned a lot from this first year, and we did get some produce to show for it!

We have 14 jars of salsa, 6 jars of tomatoes, and 9 jars of peaches.  (Of course, the peaches didn't come from our garden...this year.)  

Now, off to make some zucchini bread!