New Things & More Good Eats

After the Fourth of July Celebration in Little Switzerland (Happy Birthday Mike!), we returned home to see what the garden had for us. We have harvested bunches of green, yellow and red peppers, and have canned and eaten and given away bushels of green beans. The tomatoes are slow to come in, however, Lisa is making salsa with all the goodies she's harvested (garlic, onions and peppers) with the ones we've picked. The picture above is our harvest of potatoes for the year. We got approx. a bushel of potatoes split between redskins and kenebecks. Man, are those good eaten'. In addition to the veggies we have now officially picked over 2 gallons of blueberries from our bushes.

Lest you think all we've done is pick and eat from the garden, we have done a few more things to the barn and acquired a couple of things that were just too good to pass up.

This is a donut glazing rack I picked up at the Ingles' warehouse annex in Black Mountain for $15.00. No, we don't have plans to open a donut shop, we do see tons of possibilities for the trays (they are stainless steel and have a mesh bottom in them) and the rack (also stainless) for storing lots of stuff. I could even see it as a place for drying car parts once they've been cleaned. 

                               

We also picked up a couple of garbage cans with lids for the kingly sum of $10.00 for both. Seems Ingles think the white ones show too much dirt and are switching out to grey. I don't mind dirt.

                                       

The best part of our haul from Ingles' was this stainless steel sink with a built in faucet and hot and cold handles operated by your knees. Lisa wanted to have a sink for washing stuff she gets from the garden and this seemed too good to pass up and at $30.00, ( Lisa looked it up on line and MSRP is $1,136.00!) I think she's right. 

                            

Finally, we have completed the siding on the right hand dormer and have a coat of paint on it.  If it wasn't so blasted hot, we would have the other done as well but that will have to wait for another day. We are spreading mulch on the berm with Lisa running the front end loader on the tractor while I run the pitch fork. She's getting to be quite an operator and can place a load right where she wants it. We'll be getting another load this week so she'll get plenty of practice.