high hopes gardens is a living experiment. Can a creative, hard-working family make a living working with nature? Join us on the journey from idea to practice as we revive an Iowa Farmstead.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room!
The harvest, preserving, and selling season is in full swing and it is time for weeding to fall by the wayside.
This is our best looking garden - one weeding professional Linda has managed to keep in check. It’s hard to make the switch from tending to harvest, as it is hard to let go and there is only time to do so much, and it’s time to put food up
Here’s this week’s “Thingamajig” entry.
Also check out the last thingamajig answer. Put your guess in a comment below.
As always, put your guess in a comment below.
This basket of peaches was just too beautiful not to share.
We can now see the end of the peach season. This picture is also a bit of food for thought for all those naysayers that told us central Iowa was too far north to grow peaches!
When the Costa Ricans visited our farm a few weeks ago, one gentleman excitedly moved me over to one of the gardens to tell me something.
He pointed at the agaratum as said, “In Costa Rica, if you have an agaratum flower in your wallet, your wallet will not run out of money for a year!” I haven’t tried it yet, figuring a garden patch is good enough.
Today was the first day of school for Emma and Martin.
If you ask me, August 18, is too early to go back to school, especially with a school that has some buildings that are not air conditioned and we’ve been let out in August in the past for “heat days.”
We’ve lucked out lately as the weather has turned normal and dry..
We packed up some goods to be sold by someone else at the Des Moines Farmer’s Market yesterday. Among the items were our gorgeous blackberries.
Customers at the market were suspicious that such nice berries could be grown in Iowa and certainly, they must have been shipped in from Oregon or elsewhere. This page is an invitation for all skeptics to type the word “blackberries” in the search box to the left to find photos dating back to May 2006, when the blackberries were first planted!
Here’s another testimonial straight from the field!
I’ve finally looked at the local Craigslist ads and I think it will be a dangerous thing for me!
Our first purchase was about 50 bales of moldy hay for fifty cents a bale. A storm a few weeks ago ripped a roof off a hay shed and soaked the hay - it started molding, so it was on a fire sale. I know that moldy hay can be dangerous to the lungs, so I decided to store it outside, rather than bring it into a confined space and since it will be used for garden mulch, outside storage won’t hurt it for that use. I might throw a tarp over it. It spent a couple of days drying out on hay wagons before I stacked it.
Many years ago, I promised Claire, I’d teach her to shoot a gun safely. I’ve either forgotten about it, been too busy, or it wasn’t the right time because of animals in the pasture, but she asked again recently and I said, “Let’s go.” She was a bit surprised, so we went to the back pasture in a paddock without any animals and went over the basics.
We went over the characteristics of a rifle and a shotgun and got a chance to shoot small versions of both - a .22 rifle and .410 shotgun.
I told her about how I learned to hunt. The first year I went, I was not allowed to carry a gun, but just to watch and observe. The second year, I was allowed to carry a gun and “practice” shooting, but wasn’t allowed to have any shells - just the empty gun. I still remember the first time I followed a duck on the bead of the gun right in front of another hunter’s head. It was a sobering lesson in losing track of the situation when game appears. The third year, I was allowed limited shooting with a single-shot gun.
So today was just the introduction - we set up a milk carton on a stick and she was able to hit it with the shotgun but not the rifle. We’ll take more target practice in the next few months to get competent.
Here’s this week’s “Thingamajig” entry.
Also check out the last thingamajig answer. Put your guess in a comment below.
As always, put your guess in a comment below.
Ok, we’re almost ready to say uncle with the peaches, but there still might be half the peaches left on the trees.
Here are the trays right out of the dehydrator.
The contents of each tray fit nicely into one bag in what I call the “suck and seal” machine. It’s always a bummer to see how small the fruit gets after drying.
Canned peaches and blackberry jam on an intermediate canning day. The most we’ve done this year is 28 quarts of peaches in one afternoon. We’re packing them in quarts, pints, and jelly jars for single-serving jars for lunch. Emma is a gifted peach and tomato skinner. She has great hands for removing the skins from peaches and tomatoes after blanching.
The fruity season continues in full swing.
Martin with one haul of peaches.
The plums are so thick they look like grapes. This tree is propped up with many boards to keep the branches from cracking under the weight of the plums.
The current president of the Iowa Fruit and Vegetable Growers was with us in Costa Rica and for 10 days pestered Linda to present in the ag building during the State Fair. It was easier to say yes in February than it was in the midst of back-to-school and peach season.
Here she is making her presentation about “Holiday Gift Baskets.” I enjoyed a previous segment on pruning Christmas trees. Gotta love the cordless mic, turning her into a fair demo person or customer service rep, wherever that takes you!
Today was the family day at the Iowa State Fair.
A fair day with low humidity and temps in the low 80’s really brings the people out!
Martin was captivated by the demonstration of the kitchen slicer/shredder/peeler. He spent a good 10 minutes taking in the demo and even squeezed his way to the front of the crowd. You put a mechanical device together with food, and you’ve got this boy hooked!
Tuckered. That describes this duo on the fair grounds.
Our poults (baby turkeys) arrived this week.
Here they are in the brooding area. (Knock on wood) they’ve all survived the transport and first few days. Martin has stepped up and has taken primary chore responsibility for the turkeys, so is the first one to feed and water them every day. We have 16 this year. Last year many died in transport, so this year is already better.
