Down on the Farm

I'm so glad I planted other vining green beans, since the rabbits stripped our bush beans down to stalks. I bought a package of "Yard Long Beans," just for fun. Here are some picks:

 

Yes, that green bean is 14" long! Not quite a yard, but still! I pick two or three each time I pick the garden, and I stick them in a ziploc freezer bag (my new preserving friend). I have quite a few. Each bean would break into 4 or 5 regular-length beans.
Did I tell you I made more tomato paste in the crockpot, and froze it in tablespoons? Worked quite well.

More Yard Long Beans. Aren't they cool? Here they are on the trellis:

My loofah plants are blooming away. The ants love them, and I'm wondering if the ants are nibbling off the flowers, etc., where the fruit (the loofah) would grow?

Anyway, thus far I have one nice loofah growing. I'll save the seeds and put the dried loofah into some soap.

What to do with ALL this basil? Honestly, we haven't figured it out yet :(
I may try drying and freezing it for later use. But that's a lot of basil for "later use."

Now I'll tell about the Chair Saga. Adam had a nice upholstered chair in the barn office, which is the doorway below with the white door. That room has a concrete slap and some shelving, but that's about all I can say for its civilization. Ned and Baby sleep in there, and it's pretty trashed. They chew everything and destroy everything, including that chair. We found its innards all over the field.

Adam came home late the other night and said, "I picked up a recliner on the side of the road." I laughed, thinking he was joking, but he wasn't. "I helped him," Julia said. I looked at her. I thought she deplored this rural-Pamlico-County-farming-rustic-slipshod lifestyle of ours. Didn't she know that picking discarded furniture (especially an upholstered recliner!) off the side of the road was a NO-NO for a cool, chic, urban college girl like she aspires to be?
I was not that surprised at Adam, except I couldn't believe he willingly added one stick of furniture to our already abundant collection of creaking hand-me-downs.

He put that recliner in the barn office, and (like any good sailor) wrapped it in an old sail to keep them from shredding it right away.
Last night they tore up the sail. They chewed and pulled on the sail. By the time Adam went out there this morning, they'd pulled the chair nearly out of the room and into the outdoors. Dogs!
Well. Adam will not be bossed by his dogs, oh no! Today he threw them out of the office. He has reclaimed his man cave!!! The dogs now reside in one of the barn bays next door, with a dirt floor (poor things). Adam will watch football this fall in a chair with stuffing.

Our garden continues to produce. I pick every other day.
Anybody know what kind of melon this is? It was a volunteer. We have three on that vine. The leaf looks vaguely similar to a cucumber, but smaller.

The bugs are getting to our cucumbers, so I picked all of them -- even the tiny baby ones. Many were already bad. But I made two quarts of pickles -- my first pickle making! The recipe is from my sister-in-law, Anne. I think it was her grandmother's recipe. I loved it years ago and wrote down the recipe. It's a lovely combination of sweet and dill.

I've made more pints of grilled garlic tomato sauce too. I'm running out of pint jars!