Well, today I decided that I needed a day off.  I needed a day to “catch up” on sleep and things around the house and garden.  I’ve been working until pretty late every night and sometimes into the early morning hours.  Unfortuately, that hasn’t left me much time to do anything around the house. 

First of all, I went to bed early last night and slept until around 1 AM.  I got up, got on the internet and started browsing through all of my favorite blogs that I needed to catch up on.  It seems like most everyone is slowing down on their gardening efforts with fall and cooler weather kicking in.  Here in the South, it’s awesome weather to grow so many veggies!  I got sleepy again about 3 AM and went back to bed.

It was time to get up this morning at 6 AM so I could get my day started and get DD to school.  But, even with all of the sleep I had, I just felt pretty run down and worn out.  So after I took DD to school, I went out and fed/watered the chickens and calves and visited with them for a little while.  I came back inside and decided that I would lay back down for a little while.  Well, that little while turned into 1 PM!  I guess my body just needed some R&R for a while.

After picking DD up from school this afternoon, I went back out to feed and water as well as get some more seeds into the raised beds.  In the garden I have the following veggies planted:  lettuce (Red Sails & Romaine), peas (Sugar-Snap & Alaska), carrots, turnips, broccoli raab, radish, and some swiss chard.  I’m really getting excited about growing cool weather veggies.  In the South, we have so many bugs to worry with during the summer months.  About the only time that we get any relief is during the cooler winter months.  We rarely have freezing temps (only a couple of times over the winter months) and when we do, we try to cover the garden to keep it from freezing, which has worked so far.

The two types of peas I have planted are Sugar-Snap and Alaska.  The Sugar-Snap vines can get as tall as 55-65 inches!  I have them planted so that they can grow up the 7′ high trellis that I used for the tomatoes last summer.  I also have more of them planted where I normally plant my pole beans.  So these peas will have plenty of room to grow :-)  I can’t wait until they start producing!  They are 66 days to harvest.  I hope that I have enough planted to allow us to eat fresh snap peas as well as plenty to blanch and put in the freezer.

Now the Alaska pea vines do not get that tall.  The package says that they will grow to be about 2 1/2 feet tall.  These peas are the shelling variety (like English peas).    I have them planted next to the 3′ high fencing that surrounds the garden.  I also decided to use some of my tomato cages as trellises to grow this variety on.  I will try to take some pics and show you tomorrow on my blog.  I placed the tomato cages inside the raised beds and planted the pea seeds on the inside of the tomato cage.   They have already germinated and aren’t too far from grabbing hold of the tomato cage.  On the outside and around the tomato cages, I have planted some Swiss chard.  This raised bed is going to be beautiful once it’s mature.  The chard I planted is the 5 color chard.

I took a pic last week while I was outside working one morning…. it’s a picture that only a gardener or farmer can really appreciate LOL!  It’s 3 days worth of what I picked up behind the calves to put into my compost bins….  DH and I keep the grazing field “picked up” of the bombs that Kitty and Davison leave for us.  We do this for 2 reasons.  The first reason is that I don’t want my back yard smelling like a cow pasture and the 2nd reason is that this stuff is GREAT for the compost pile!  I like to keep everything cleaned up and tidy even if it’s in the calves’ area.  We keep it picked up using the pitch fork and the wheel barrow and then toss it into the compost bins and cover with some leaves.  You wouldn’t believe how that keeps the smell down.  When you walk into our back yard, other than hearing the calves mooing and the roosters crowing,  you don’t “smell” them and wouldn’t know that they are there.  Anyway, here’s an idea of how much manure 3 day’s worth looks like:

Our wheelbarrow has been used so much… unfortunately this week while I was going around picking up “bombs”, one of the handles broke and part of the underneath bracing broke.  That on top of the tire that must be air-ed up on a regular basis and it has several holes rusted through, well… we need a new wheelbarrow!  This is a tool that we just can’t do without around here.  For my birthday last week, my mom sent me a check — guess what I’m going to use that money on?  LOL

In closing, I would like to share a video that I took with my cell phone.  The quality is horrible but still, you will get to see how sweet Kitty and Davison are and how they are like big puppies.  I took this video last week when I went out to feed one morning.  You’ll get to hear Capri crowing several times - he’s such a loud-mouth!  I am hoping that I can get another video with the calves moo-ing so you can hear the way Kitty moo-s.  He sounds like an elk!  Anyway, enjoy!!