Yay FINALLY some produce!

Last afternoon and most of today was spent in the garden now that there is FINALLY something going on out there. This has been such a horrible year for the garden, I was really beginning to wonder if the tomatos were going to be a total bust......but, 3 days of sunshine and they proved me wrong. I forget the large variety that we planted, but I got the first real good picking from them, today's total being 38-1/2 lbs. The roma's were EVERYWHERE, and I ended up picking a total of 40-1/2 lbs of them. There are some reallllllllly close to ripe, so I'll have more to pick tomorrow morning or on Monday. (family picnic tomorrow afternoon). Lisa has the steam juicer loaded, and she'll just can pure juice to use later in other things.

I started to dig more potato's today too, and found more that had been chewed/eaten from underground. I decided to pull them all, and was really shocked to see that we lost at least 40% or more to whatever small hungry critter invaded them. Not counting the ones we have already picked, I got 60 lbs worth. Thats just sad from a total of 90 feet planted. I pulled potato after potato the size of my fist, and found them to be half eaten or more. Some were down to nothing but skins. I have no idea what kind of diggin' critter we have, but he sure ruined our potato crop for this year. I'm pretty disgusted by this mess......

I managed another 5 gallon bucket of hot wax peppers, and about another half one of jalepenos. Hopefully we can get those canned on Monday as well. With all the canning going on, we've came to the conclusion that we need more pantry space! We have a 4x8x2 and a 3x6x18 closet, both jammed. The 6x3x18" unit from Lisa's work is jammed full as well. We'll have the tomatos and the rest of the peppers with nowhere to put them, plus the strawberry and blackberry jam when we decided to get them out of the freezer and do one big batch of each. Not to mention our habit of buying lots of pasta when the store has it 10/$10, other boxed goods we buy in quantity when on sale, and the 5 gallon buckets of flour, sugar, bread flour, brown sugar, rice, and oats that stay upstairs. Luckily we never get guests for more than a weekend, cause that closet is gonna be another pantry by next weekend.

Today I got a call from the neighbor, asking I wanted any fencing. Rather than talk on the phone, I walked that 200 yards across the field. (shakin' head) He was tearing down his dog kennels, goat fence, and the chicken run I helped him build 2 months ago. Apparantly the old bitchy couple behind him (keep in mind "behind" is 150 yards or more) called the police, zoning, and his landlord non stop for a week. They complained about the hounds, the puppies,the rooster, and the "unsightly" chicken house. The police warned him about noise, zoning couldnt do squat since they have enough land, but the landlord had a fit. He told them he wanted it all gone by tomorrow, but the chickens and small house were ok. I came back for the tractor and trailer, helped him tear down everything, and loaded it up to bring home. I'll have no use for all of it, but I'll offer what I don't use to the local "urban homesteading" group that I run. He was actually more depressed about it than mad, knowing that old suburban people tend to get their way, and with him they did. Their only real reasoning behind all of the hassle they caused was "we moved here for peace and quiet". Poor old b****rds, sorry but this isn't beverly hills. They even called about the guy next to him that had 4 bags of aluminum cans behind his garage, saying that he was stacking garbage. They even cut the old fence behind the 2 houses to snoop. My neighbor fixed the fence, but declined my idea of making it electric....woos.

It makes me sick sometimes to know that people like that exist. They live to do nothing but bitch and complain about everything they don't like or agree with. D's dogs didn't hurt anyone, they just barked a bit. The puppies yapped a lot, but hey, they're puppies. The rooster crows, but it's not like its microphoned through giant speakers for gods sake. They're just old cranky people that want to make everyone as miserable as they are. Of course no one will do anything about them either,afraid of lawsuits like the whole damn country is. We had someone like this in our area when I was about 18. He called the police every time we took the dirt bikes on the road. He called the police every time we shot. One day he went too far and shot at my beagles when they ran a rabbit through a 20 foot corner of his property during a cool September day warm up run. Well........the next day he had his 1/4 acre of tomato plants somehow all appear in a pile on his porch in the middle of the night, and his "prize" ducks all somehow missing. I never did find out what happened to those ducks. *burp* :-)