Well we definitely won’t go hungry, at least not for awhile. Today I’m making a delicious soup for my lunch with some grass fed beef, homegrown potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and fresh herbs…

Yum!

Unlike my chickens who are just starving to death every morning (according to them). Poor things…

This one couldn’t wait and was heading out of the pen to knock on the door to tell me to hurry up before they all dropped dead from malnutrition, apparently. 😄

The garden is producing like mad right now and I expect a bumper crop of just about everything that’s left (except the cucumbers grrr) even though the temperatures are going back up into the 90s for the next week or so.

The pumpkins don’t seem to mind a bit and are staying nice and cool down under the big, umbrella of leaves…

In two or three weeks they should be ready to harvest. I’ve already begun pulling some full sized carrots and a few of the bigger onions…

I’m really excited about the potatoes after pulling up those delicious reds the other day. It was a “test pull” as I like to call it, sort of like when I pull the carrots too soon but not so soon that they aren’t edible (and tasty!). They are showing signs of being ready but I don’t want to pull them too soon because the bigger the potatoes, the better.

Speaking of too soon, or rather too late, these cucumbers really bummed me out! I have ONE that is trying to form now…

I planted them in the raised trellis beds hoping they would have climbed up and covered it completely by now but they’ve barely gotten a foot in height in one bed and maybe eight inches in the other thanks to being stunted by the insane heat we had in July!

Oh well, hopefully next year will be better. I think I’ll plant the mini white pumpkins in these beds next spring.

The starlings have been “testing” the cherry tomatoes lately…

They are so annoying but I guess they have to eat, too… except they don’t seem to eat them! They just pluck them and leave them lying, which makes them even more annoying! 😆

At least there are plenty of those to share. I am getting 20 to 30 a day from them. I also topped off my big tomato plants to see if that will help speed up the reddening process since they are taking sooo long to turn red still.

They stop changing color when it gets too hot, so topping them off and trimming a few “useless” branches off can help stimulate the plants to divert all their energy into finishing the fruit that’s already started.

Speaking of fruit, the Honeycrisps are turning super duper bright red now!

It’s enough to make my mouth water when I pass the tree, which I have to do several times a day as I’m out and about.

This morning I gathered up pheasant eggs to incubate so we can raise up a winter flock to put in the freezer this spring. My little rooster was hoping for more lettuce but it’s all gone now.

Our cornish cross chickens are almost ready to process and are getting fatter by the minute it seems and I can’t wait to get them put away for winter.

There is nothing better than slow roasted garlic chicken on a cold, wintry day! Well, except maybe grass fed beef soup with homegrown potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots and fresh herbs. 😉