The Country Garden Showcase #41 Special Edition

Happy Monday!

It's been another crazy weekend... If you've read recent posts you know that we just started escrow on our dream homestead.  It's a fixer-upper on the Kaweah River with about 7 acres to farm and graze.  Things have been moving along so well, we cannot help but feel as if our heavenly father has been helping us.  

Well, Friday we called the local real estate agent that sold our current home to us, back in 1995.  She came by to look at the place at about 10am.  She came back with clients she thought "might" like our home just a few hours later, and by 5:30pm we were signing the contract for the sale.  It's SOLD!!!! Whew!  Thank you Linda Costelloe-Clough, you are the best agent EVER!

Things have been moving at the speed of light around here lately, and my head is swirling just trying to keep up.  I keep thinking I must be dreaming.  Things can't really be falling into place so perfectly like this, can they?  

Well, since we start escrow here on this place today and we will have to be out in 45 days... this will likely be my last chance to share pictures from my garden here because everything is staying.  The buyers liked everything, and even made the sale contingent on the coop, arbor, and three of our sweet laying hens.  Don't you just love that?  I did.  I am going to miss my greenhouse and raised garden beds, but we can build more later on.  I am so grateful to this nice couple.  I was really worried about  having to remove the raised garden beds and the coop if the buyer did not want them.

Here are a few pictures from my gardens from the last year or so...

Thank you for reading and for supporting me with your own blogs and ideas as I have taken my gardening and homesteading journey.  I look forward to sharing my next garden journey with you.

Okay, if you have a garden post you'd like to share... please get right to it!

Barn Hop #32

Link up here!

Welcome Barn Hoppers!  I hope ya'll had a great week.  Like you, I look forward to the Barn Hop.  I learn so much from all of you. THANKS!

Well,  this last week I didn't get much done around here, as I was out of town; but I did can another batch of my homemade red sauce. 

 I used a jar of it to make my husband's favorite dinner- corn tamale pie. The recipe can be found right here on the Alber's yellow corn meal website.

I made some cute fabric pumpkins for a swap

(directions to make your own can be found on my Fall Harvest Blog HOP post)

New Hoop houses

A big surprise to me has been the success of those new hoop houses.  I only covered things a few weeks ago, in preparation for a 3 day frost and night time freeze.  Under them, everything has been excelling, better than before.  It has warmed back up again, so I have the ends open on those hoop houses, but they're staying on 24/7.  I am amazed by the results.

They definitely extend harvest and more importantly, bloom time, which means more food.  Also important to note- honeybees and mason bees are getting in just fine to pollinate everything. Because of the hoop houses, I continue to enjoy tomatoes, zucchini, beans, leeks, arugula, eggplant, peppers, and lettuce from my garden.  The tomatoes, eggplants and peppers should have died from the freeze, but inside hoops, they are thriving.

Daikon radish and tomatoes

Eggplant in the hoop house growing and blooming more...

 I am really surprised at how much bigger the cabbage and broccoli transplants are under the hoop houses than the ones planted the same day, from the same batch, uncovered.  The above cabbage are not inside hoops

 The above cabbage and broccoli inside hoops are nearly twice as big. 

 Plants are still putting out lots of peppers under hoops

 beans thriving...

 lettuce growing well inside hoops, but struggling with rabbits and slugs at night.  I don't mind sharing so I just plant more than I need.

Fava beans have the prettiest flowers

Rabbits like zucchini. Who knew?

Scarlet red runner beans are so pretty.  The vines grow 20' tall.

gonna make some fried green tomatoes 

This is what's left of the 3 sisters experiment.  The spent corn is still supporting beans.

Lima beans are still producing

tomatoes too...

I love arugula and arugula loves hoop houses.

This is my Autumn Blaze maple tree.  

Its leaves are turning fire red while every other plant is still green or yellow.  So pretty.

In closing, I want to share with you a little idea I had.  I am enjoying hopping so much that I'd like to HOP more often, so I have just started a NEW BLOG HOP- for Fall, and I'd really like everyone to join by linking up a favorite family recipe, tradition, decorating idea, or ???  You decide.  Enter as many posts as you like.  We'd love to see your ideas.

Please join us and share your special Fall and harvest stories.

GIVEAWAY ALERT!

At the end of the HOP, the posts with the most LIKES will be entered into a drawing for a set of cute fabric pumpkins like the ones in the button above.