Harvest time.

Garlic drying.

The garlic was harvested this week and it is a bumper crop.  The cloves are large and well formed and the potency of the garlic is very strong.  We will allow it to dry for a couple of weeks before we will offer it for sale.

The onions were also harvested and the crop looks very good.  These will take a little longer to dry than the garlic.

With the hot sunny weather lately all the tomatoes and cucumbers are really producing.  The tomatoes are ripening rapidly and we have started to can what we will need for the winter.  After the canned tomato stocks have been replenished we will start to make tomato sauce and then salsa.  We plan on having our salsa available for purchase, so watch for further updates.  Today Pat dug the first batch of horseradish and as I write he is busy (in the garage, as you require plenty of ventilation) chopping the root to make our first batch of prepared horseradish.  If all goes well we will have a fresh batch available this Saturday at the Farmer's Market.  In any case, if you are only needing the root we will have it available this weekend.

Nasturtiums, showing all their brilliant colours.

This weekend we will have an array of flowers available once again.  Create your own bouquet or choose from a huge selection of ready made bouquets.  Sunflowers and more sunflowers of all sizes.  Leeks will be plentiful this weekend along with Cherry Sunsugar tomatoes, (small, yellow and bursting with flavour), beets, carrots, squash and dried herbs.

Celebration.

We have reached a milestone....50 posts on our blog. Where has the summer gone. We have enjoyed writing about the farm and all the chores that go along with it, but probably enjoy writing about all the other creatures we share our space with out here. That is really what we truly love about living in the country. We have all these "pets" but do not have to take care of them, other than try and provide an environment where there is plenty of food, water and shelter. All we do is sit back and watch them do what they do.
Have to tell you about the red squirrel in the quonset......it is gathering quite an impressive stock of sunflower heads (small ones, as he cannot carry around the large ones). One day Pat went into the quonset and was looking around for wood. He came across the squirrel's stockpiled sunflower heads. It had them all stacked neatly on a pile with a piece of newspaper laying on top of the pile. I guess it had hoped that the newspaper would hide his stash from other sunflower lovers. :-)
All of the transplanting is now complete and all of the bulbs and tubers I wanted to save are dug and drying in the garage. The few pumpkins we have left are turning orange and we are now bagging and weighing the dried herbs. They will be available to purchase at the Little Market Store in the Saskatoon Farmers Market building. Our horseradish is sold there as well.
I came across an interesting tip regarding planting spring bulbs. If the bulbs you ordered do not arrive before the ground freezes, a planting hole can be prepared ahead of time and a small pot filled with dry soil placed in the hole. When the bulbs arrive the pots can be lifted, the bulbs dropped into the holes and the soil from the pots dumped over the bulbs.
The weather has been so nice that the sweet peas have started blooming again, the Bell's of Ireland have started to grow and the dahlias are getting new growth from the bottom. The weeds are still growing with a vengeance. It's been an interesting year.