Our first harvest

Yum, berries from our land!

Of course, we had nothing to do with the planting or the caring...that was all the previous owners and mother nature, but still. Food from our land! How cool is that? H insists that these are raspberries - but I'm not so sure. They don't have the hollow center. These look more like red blackberries to me. Is there even any such thing?

Last night we got in the remainder of the seeds we wanted planted this year (summer). We'll plant more in early August for the fall, but for now, we should be done (outside of additional rows of corn this week). I don't feel too behind in some cases...our corn is just as tall as the larger commercial farms down the street. Everything else is doing well. We are getting cauliflower and lettuce sprouting...so hopefully they'll make it (it's a little hot for them, I think). The only thing I haven't seen hide nor hair of is the 'spinach' we planted. It's not really spinach, but a New Zealand variety of lettuce that tastes like spinach but handles heat better. We'll see. Oh, and none of the sunflowers I planted sprouted, either. Those were likely eaten by birds while they were still seeds, though.

We also did some weeding. I dug through the row garden and made some progress there. H tackled the raspberry bushes. He managed to really clear out all the undergrowth and added another tier of wire for the 'trellis'. Hopefully they'll flourish next year. The blackberries are coming along nicely. You can tell which plants are intentional and which are PNW 'weeds'. The intentional vines have no thorns! They look virtually identical other than that, though. We will probably hold off on trying to clear out any of that mess until we've harvested some of the berries. It's such a tangle right now and we don't want to overly disturb them.

I just got shipment of books I ordered from amazon (some were used, of course). Two are going to be helpful, I think. One is about preserving your harvest (for beginners!) and the other is about using things like cardboard, newspaper, eggs and such to improve your yields organically. I'm really excited to dig into that one! I also got two 'pleasure' reading books. Once I've had a chance to read them (in all our spare time! *sigh*)...I'll be sure to post reviews.