It has been a few weeks, since I did a homestead update. Mostly because we have been busy with visitors and homestead projects, as well as our real jobs, and work on some other exciting up and coming projects for The Foodie Blogroll! If you would like to see what our visitors think of spending time up here, check out my mom’s blog, Travel Close Up where she has several posts already up about her visit here (and more to come)!

garden-july_collage

(black bean flower, tomatoes on the vine, lettuces fresh picked, un-ripe raspberries)

Anyway, things have been wonderfully busy. We have been eating greens, lettuces and radishes from our garden with regularity. We have enjoyed cocktails with the few currants our bushes produced this year (there may be a post on that)  and we are excited to see our potatoes, beans and tomatoes thriving – even a few fruits appearing on our raspberry bush.

garden-july_new-beds

We cleared two new beds, one for melons and one for winter squashes. We also cleared some more areas in the back of the garden for rutabagas, cabbage, more turnips, carrots, kale and chard.

chicken-july-collage

(our gimp, Non-Pengunio the possible rooster, and the flock enjoying the out of doors)

The peeps, or I should now call them chicks, are all thriving as well. Our runts have gotten their feathers all in, our gimp, is getting along just fine, eating, putting on weight and running around like the rest of them. Our possible rooster, is starting to look more and more possibly like a rooster as the days go by. They have been enjoying time outdoors in their Chicken Tractor and their new favorite treat is daily doses of greens – tops of carrots, radish and turnip greens – that we have an over abundance of. We are looking forward to getting started on their permanent home, the coop, when my dad comes for a visit in a few weeks. We have been really enjoying our Wyandottes and Rhode Island Reds, but all of our Barred Rocks, including the two former runts, have terrible personalities. They peck first and ask questions later, which is all well and good now, but when they are full grown may present a painful problem. So we are a bit bummed about that. But we will see how they mature.

Life is good in Northern Vermont – the heat wave seems to have come and gone, and we are enjoying temps in the 80’s, cool breezes and some summer rains. I am beginning to think that Thistlemoon Meadows is a very appropriate name, as we look out the window often and remark that it looks like we could be in Scotland! Which is not such a bad thing in my book.