Forgive me SFGers for I have fallen off of the wagon.

I have a confession to make. I am no longer SFGing. Well, I guess I am, but I'm SFGing only a few plants. I planted a big old fashioned garden this spring. But despite all the weeding I'm having to do, I'm really enjoying it. In February/March of this year my brother-in-law and sister-in-law moved to The Woodlands, and after their trailer was moved we had a huge gaping hole in our land (and our hearts). Rather than drive by that empty lot every day and be reminded that they were gone, we decided to take advantage of the clear spot and turn it into a traditional garden plot. We hired someone to come till it up with the tractor (after we spread semi-composted chicken manure and pine shavings over the plot), and boy did that dirt powder up nicely.

The new garden spot

Nice and soft

The weekend after the garden spot got tilled, we got busy planting - tomatoes, corn, squash, zucchini, green beans, black eyed peas, spinach, sugar snap peas, and potatoes.

The Brawn using the high wheel cultivator. I really want a wheel hoe, but maybe next season...

Getting some help in the garden from my brother and his gf

We are still using some of the things we learned while SFGing. We are trellising our tomatoes and sugar snap peas.

So far I'm pleased with the output of our traditional garden. That was one of my biggest complaints with SFG. I didn't get the yield that I wanted out of my garden space. I like that with my traditional garden I have enough produce to share with friends and family, and I wasn't able to do that with my SFG. Of course, I guess I could have made more boxes, but that would have been pretty expensive.

Here are some pictures of our harvests so far this year:







I'm still SFGing my strawberries and more recently - herbs. For mother's day my wonderful hubby built a lovely raised cedar planter box for his mom, so she could have an herb garden. She'd been hinting for months that she'd like a herb garden, so we figured Mother's Day was a pretty good ocassion for that.

My m-i-l's herb garden

After The Brawn finished with his mom's box, I asked him to convert my 12" box to a herb garden. He put 36" legs on it, and voila! we have fresh herbs just steps away from our kitchen window. (Well, technically it's closer to the bedroom window.) My herb garden isn't as pretty as my mother-in-laws, but I don't own a bed and breakfast like she does, so it doesn't have to be as aesthetically pleasing. Plus I'm a cheapskate and we already had a 12" SFG box that wasn't being used. And the chickens are currently the only ones who see my makeshift herb garden anyway. :)

My herb garden

Speaking of the chickens they are doing well in spite of our sweltering heat. I currently own 3 Silkies, 3 Delawares, 3 New Hampshire Reds, 2 Rhode Island Reds, and 3 Welsummer pulletts. I also have 7 Easter Eggers that we hatched out right here. Two of my Silkies are currently raising 5 Welsummer chicks and 2 Welsummer/Ameraucana chicks. I have a broody Delaware sitting on 7 (maybe 8. can't remember for sure) eggs from assorted hens covered by a Welsummer roo, a broody Silkie sitting on 7 Welsummer eggs, and in the incubator I have 16 Ameraucana and 6 Welsummer eggs due to hatch on June 27.

I'm hoping to have chicks coming out my ears here in a couple of weeks, but as I've never used an incubator before and the Ameraucana eggs were shipped from Washington I don't know how many will actually hatch. I need to candle the eggs, but I haven't done so yet.

Below are some pictures of the Hokey Pokey Hen House and its residents:

The Hokey Pokey Hen House

Delaware pullet

Everyone loves watermelon

Welsummer chick hiding under its Silkie mama's wing

Peek a boo

So that's a very brief summation of what's been happening around here the past 9 months or so. I've got oodles more pictures of chicken stories I could post, but I'll probably save those til next year when I post again. :)

Freezing green beans

I mentioned earlier today that I harvested some green beans. After a quick Google of directions on freezing green beans I discovered several sites with instructions for taking care of the process. It was relatively quick and easy and completely painless!

Step One: Harvest the green beans.

Done. Though I must admit there's not much to them.

Hope my honey isn't too hungry

Step Two: Clean and cut up green beans

I combined these steps because I only took one picture. :) Rinse your harvested green beans in cool water. Cut your cleaned beans into your desired length. I got maybe one serving out of the handful of green beans I harvested. That's after I culled two green beans because they were kinda soggy and off color. But I was able to get the seeds out of them.

SFGing will certainly help you stick to a diet.

Green bean seeds - almost enough to fill a square

Step Three: Blanch the green beans.

Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Put green beans into pot and boil for 3 minutes.

My pot of water didn't even stop boiling when I dropped in the beans.

I had to laugh when the instructions said I could reuse the water for subsequent batches of beans. As if!

Step Four: Cool beans in ice water

After 3 mintues use a slotted spoon to fish your beans out of the boiling water and put them directly into a bowl of ice cold water for three minutes. Add more ice if necessary.

Yes, it literally needs to be ice cold

Leave in ice water three minutes

Step Five: Drain beans and put into freezer bags.

Drain the water off the beans. I fished out the ice then poured the remaining water and beans into a strainer. The directions I found didn't say anything about patting the beans dry, but I did use a napkin to pick them up. That removed some moisture but not all. I squeezed as much air out of the freezer bag as I could, but it still had quite a bit of air in it, so I used a straw to "vacuum seal" it. Thankfully no green beans got lodged in the straw!

The instructions recommended putting the beans on the quick freeze shelf of the freezer, but I don't have one of those, so I just trotted the beans out to the deep freeze. Sorry no pics of that because it's outside and really dirty!

In the bag you go little green beans.

"Vacuum sealed" and ready for the deep freeze

Now I'm off to Google "Saving green bean seeds"

References

Green Beans n More - How to freeze fresh green beans
Pick Your Own - How to freeze green beans and other beans

My first blog

What a pivotal moment in my life. I've created my first blog entry. And what, might you ask, has preceded this monumental event? What do I have that's worth blogging about? I planted a square foot garden. And now I want to tell the whole world (or at least the 4 or 5 people that might wind up here accidentally) to know about my garden's square feet of vegetably goodness. And I want to have a digital diary of my progress. Sure up to this point, I've been using Word to keep my track of my progress, but I want to have an online journal that I can refer to no matter where in the world I find myself.

So ready or not, here I gooooooo......