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["Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>]

Been picking a ton of Black Cap raspberries.  The red raspberries are just 
now setting fruit.  My Marionberries are flowering and some have set fruit. 
Strawberries *were* doing good until we got the 2 weeks straight of 
torrential rains.  Now they are just sitting there and looking beedraggled. 
No fruit on any of the trees.  They had all (apples, peaches, pears, 
apricots, plums, almonds) set fruit when we got the rain and it knocked all 
the little fruit right off the trees!  The grapes survived, which surprised 
me, so we'll have lots of table grapes.  Went down to the river to look at 
our favorite blackberry picking area and it is LOADED!  So we'll have lots 
of blackberry pies and lots of jam to fill the gap left by the strawberry 
plants.

The veggies are coming along.  We're still getting lots of peas.  They never 
seem to make it to the freezer.  Everyone seems to think that the 3 rows of 
peas are a buffet and every single time someone goes outside they walk 
through the rows eating peas.

The stupid chickens got the beets.  I "thought" we had all the holes plugged 
after the beet incident and blessed if the one the youngest calls Penny 
wasn't in there again yesterday.  Now, she isn't one of the problem 
chickens, the Buff Orphingtons and the black hen are the problems.  So this 
morning I'm going out to watch and see how she gets into the garden.

The peppers are doing well.  I thought for sure the rains would pound them 
into the ground to the point they'd never come back.  Most of the tomatoes 
are doing well.  The chickens also got into the Sweet Millions and the 
Rockys.  They are looking a tad disreputable <g>  Already have tomatoes on a 
whole bunch of the plants.  I'm really hoping for a load of the Green Grapes 
so that I can save some seeds.  You can't get the old type Green Grapes 
anymore, or at least I can't find any seeds and neither can my neighbor who 
does most of our seedling raising until we can get a hoophouse up.

The zucs are already loaded with fruit.  The watermelon, cantalope, lemon 
cucumbers, pickling cucumbers and pumpkins are all doing well.  The beans 
are deceased.  The rains got them too.  The season here is too short to 
start any again and the heat is too much for young plants.  We've already 
been up in the triple digits.  And what amazes me is that I'm still getting 
lettuce.  It just keeps plodding along.

Youngest got her two lambs for the fair.  Daisy and Chloe.  Daisy is a 
triplet and Chloe is a half-sister to last year's ewe lamb.  She's having to 
really stuff the groceries to Daisy.  Chloe has already made weight and sure 
putting her into a holding pattern.  There are two types of lambs -- market 
lamb and "fine" lamb.  Last year's judge liked the "fine" or "pretty" lambs. 
No one knows who the judge will be this year, so she bought one of each 
(Daisy is a "pretty" lamb, Chloe is a market lamb).  It sure would be nice 
if the judges would figure out that a *market* lamb class is about *market* 
lambs.  I know that when we owned our butcher shop I wouldn't have bought 
any of the "pretty" lambs.  They don't have as good a dressing ratio and 
they don't have enough twist to produce a good leg of lamb.  Also, they 
aren't usually as long in the loin or as meaty through the loin.  The loin 
and leg are your money makers and that's what you want in a *market* lamb. 
~~sigh~~  The joys of kidlets and fairs <g>  Only two more years of fairs. 
I can't wait!

Well, I'm off to pull a turkey out of the freezer.  DH has the smoking bug 
again.  Next week he's going out to bring in a couple of dead Gray pine 
(excellent heat) and three dead Doug Fir.  We've also got a couple of really 
old oak that have started to hollow out and he's getting them down and out 
front to age.  This year he's thinking of renting a splitter from the guys 
in town.  With everyone pitching in (there are 5 of us now living on the 
property), we should be able to split 4 or 5, or even more cords in a day. 
Might take a month of Sundays to get it all stacked but we'll have it split!

Lynda
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."  Aldous Huxley

----- Original Message -----
> Robert Walton wrote:
>
> Garden is giving. Been eating good and putting up some stuff. Still
> no tomatoes. I think they take longer when they are not staked, but
> the vines are good and full of green tomatoes. My onions are great
> this year. I swear by growing them from seed, the only ones that are
> not great are the ones from sets. I'm just eating them green.
>
> Melons look good, have some more green beans that will be in soon. I
> also finally planted some soybeans, so if they do ok will be eating
> endame. I like that. It's good frozen. Beets were mostly a bust, but
> I have a few. Carrots were mostly a bust, but they always are.
> Lettuce did not do well for me this year.