the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

made some good progress on bean shelling yesterday and this morning.

the part bag (about 1/4 full) i shelled out yesterday was from a poorer soil garden and there were not very many decent quality beans in there (perhaps a half cup). there were a mix of varieties.

today's shelling i did a box full (which is about 1/4 of a bag) and it was Purple Dove beans picked from the very last garden i planted. almost every pod was full of nicely shaped beans. only a few were wrinkled or not edible. even the wrinkled ones will be edible but i'll put them in a different container from the rest. the wrinkles came from them being finished off by the frosts and not quite done. i've rarely had so many bean pods look nearly perfect without mold spots or damage from bugs or critters. i had about 2 cups worth which is a lot of beans from this variety and a lot of the pods had already shattered so those beans are still on the bottom of the bag. i'm hoping about 6lbs from this bag total but won't be able to measure that until i'm done (and likely i'll forget to do it by then ). have another bag just like it...

 

[flowerbug]

finished shelling another bag of beans... 3lbs of dry beans. not as many as i thought but still a welcome bonus as it came from a garden outside the fence. only ten more to go, but before i can get back to them i really need to get the garlic bulbs taken apart and some cloves set aside for planting so they can get put in a garden. i know where i want to put them and the space is even ready for them for a change.

 

[flowerbug]

got the last of the strawberry patch done (turned under) in 1&1/2hrs (it probably took me six hours total). digging a hole and burying most of the surface debris and weeds is much much faster than getting all of the weeds apart from the old strawberry crowns. the only weeds that went in the bucket for the weed pile were some of the oxalis that was taken out of the pathway and some from in the strawberry patch too that were easy to remove, but i didn't dwell on doing that and also the dandelions and thistles and a few other larger weeds that i thought might be able to resurface from being buried.

feels good to have the exercise and also to have this task crossed off my list (it's been on there for four years or more).

[p.s. this is an older picture and not how it looks now ]

 

[flowerbug]

i did get some pictures today including an "after" picture of the strawberry patch. will post eventually, just not sure when.

 

[flowerbug]

back to shelling beans the past few days, but very slow going due to other things needing being done. today no exception. Mom baking cookies and i'm on tap for cleanup duty in a while.

will start in on another bag. i'm going to need to get some outside work done this week as i'm getting rather stacked up with empty bean pods in bags here. these can be used in the worm buckets this winter so i will keep a bag or two for those but having reduced the bucket count to 7 instead of 10 means i can't do as much at a time. the rest go back out into the gardens this fall (on a not-so-windy day, take them out and spread them on a garden and then lightly turn them in) - i have some wood ashes to put down too so both of those can be done at once for gardens i've not put ashes on in recent years.

the weather has not been as cooperative the past week, but we'd been very lucky for a few months so it isn't any kind of a surprise and we also needed the rains.