The Flicker Haven Farm Files-Bottling, Bouquet Making, And More Than A Modicum Of Back Strain

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Since I am spending many of my mornings baking all manner of things from pecan rolls to croissants now, I find myself doing most of my homesteading work in the afternoons. Not that I mind, it has been in the upper seventies and lower eighties for the past couple of days, so it's been downright pleasant. Although with it being July I know that will probably change.

Anyways, today I got my baking work done early and was home by 10:30, so after a snack and a bit of coffee, I got to work on homestead to-dos.

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The first order of business was weeding the fountain garden. We have had rain and humidity galore the last couple of days, so the weeds responded with steroidal level growth.

I in turn responded with my stirrup hoe and gardening gloves. The fountain garden and rock area was de-weeded faster than you can so Kat doesn't use glyphosate.

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I then moved on to some watering chores. Thankfully with all the rain and our drip irrigation being fully installed, I didn't have much watering to do. That said, there is a large pot under cover on my porch, the marigolds in the wishing well, and my peppers in the greenhouse that needed a good soaking.

The peppers are really growing nicely!

This year I put all my hot chilis in the greenhouse to see if I can get the heat hours needed to develop the amount of heat I like. Our growing season is short here, and I can totally tell the difference between a chili grown here from one grown in Hatch, NM. The depth of flavor and heat is not even comparable between the two, so thus this year's experiment.

While I was doing my outside chores, the hubs was bottling vino. Today's bottling extravaganza was the blush grape wine that he made last fall. Wine takes more than a bit to make, but oh is the end result ever worth it! This particular wine could be described in one word, refreshing. It had a crisp taste and I swear I could taste a hint of apricot!

After my little impromptu wine tasting, I went out to the garden and cut some statice that was ready for drying. One thing I promised myself when I made the decision to grow flowers is that I would actually enjoy them, so with the bouquet on the kitchen table looking way past its prime, I also snipped some sunflowers, apricot colored yarrow, and a bit of greenery.

One of my favorite foliage to use in bouquets is asparagus fronds. Their lacey structure just appeals to me for some reason, and it goes really well in sunflower bouquets, especially if one has some peachy apricot yarrow to toss into the mix.

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Not that I am a florist, I just make bouquets with whatever is available and purely for enjoyment.

After placing the bouquet on the table for this week's eye candy, I strolled out to the barn to hang the statice. It joined some fine company. So far out in the barn I have this year's garlic crop. lavender, hyssop, sunflowers, strawflowers, yarrow, and some zinnias drying. Well, along with the statice. Oh, and wildflowers and grasses too.

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I am thinking before the summer is over that there will be a ton of drieds hanging in that barn, and I am so definitely not sad about that!

While standing on the milk crate I got a kick out of our laying hens. They are currently penned in the barn waiting for the hubs to finish their new pen, and they are incredibly vocal about their annoyance at being penned up. His project this week is building the girls their new yard. It's got wire buried a couple feet in the ground and will have a peaked roof that is attached to our barn roof. With all the shotgun competitions that we have to attend with our son this year, we decided to take a well-needed break from livestock save our six chickens. As the barn is the easiest place to keep them since our winters are a bit on the brutal side, the hubs decided to build them a nice new yard affixed to our barn for them to enjoy. We also have a chicken tractor he built should we decided to throw the girls out for a bit of a portable living scenario.

And now I am going to wrap this homesteading missive up, I still have dinner to consider, and since I have been up since 4AM, well, I am wanting to get all my chores wrapped up so that I can can wrap up in a light sheet and pass out at a respectable time, for tomorrow is another day full of baking and homesteading!

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's currently sweet pea scented and not at all inebriated iPhone. The text divider image was made in Canva.

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