Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

Finnie

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First - You buy each other Mother's/Father's Day gifts??
I have to buy myself my own Mother’s Day gift. It’s usually chicks from the feed store! 🤣
Example: Mom bought Dad a CB radio, since he already had one, she had to take it and have it put in her car.
My husband is hard to buy for. If there’s anything he wants/needs, he usually has already bought it for himself. This year (for Christmas) I bought him a CD I really wanted, the best song of which he had already downloaded to his phone. We put it in his truck and listened through it one time, and then he told me to take it out and put it in my car. I’m very happy with it! 😂
 

Mike CHS

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The garden beds are doing really well. Onions are starting to get bigger bulbs but we had a couple of rows that we intentionally planted close so we could have green onions longer. Our leaf lettuce is looking and tasting great. We got our first cucumbers last week and it looks like they are putting on fast enough that we will be canning pickles soon.

All of this rain in the last couple of weeks has about everything growing in overdrive. We ran out of beds but Teresa still wanted to plant a bit of sweet corn so she tilled the bed right next to the retaining wall that borders our parking area and planted a couple of small beds of corn along with some cantaloupe. This bed is literally right by the back door so I'll get some pictures when the plants get some size on them.
 

Mike CHS

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I took a few pictures just to show that we really do have garden beds going. :)

The first picture is where some of the sweet corn is planted but I wanted to show what is what when I mention the retaining wall bed. This corn has just been up a couple of days but there is quite a bit more to the right of that bush. A little unconventional gardening and thanks to living in the country.

Next is the cucumber bed and then a picture of the lettuce harvest this morning. We eat a lot of salads but with this much lettuce to use, we are going to have a big batch of Wilted Lettuce. The 4th is our main bed that used to be one third of the size that it is now. This bed has a mix of tomatoes, squash and beans. Onions and green beans are in two of the next beds. One bed has squash that was recently planted. There is another two beds to the right but the only one planted now is the okra bed.
 

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Mike CHS

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I am so glad that Cooper decided not to be an aggressive ram. We have been lucky that we haven't had a ram that was ever a problem, but I have a bad habit of forgetting that you are supposed to be wary of a ram. We have a bunch of sheep that are finishing shedding but the hair is still hanging on. When the sheep see me carrying a brush they all line up for their turns. I was brushing my favorite girl this morning and kept feeling something on my ear as I was bent over our 26 ewe (she is the one that had a C Section last season). I turned my head around to see Cooper patiently waiting for his turn. :) The sheep are at the end of their shedding but love the attention when I help them get rid of the excess hair.
 

Baymule

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Cooper will get Ringo's daughters next spring, that will be 9 ewes. He should be happy. LOL LOL I'll keep Ringo and Cooper on opposite sides of the driveway so they aren't tempted to bash fences.
 

Mike CHS

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Over the last several days, we have spent I don't know how many hours fixing a cabinet. One day last week, Teresa was moving things around in one of the cabinets in our pantry and saw some mold on the back of it. In order to check behind and under it of course, we had to remove it which was a major undertaking by itself. We got it out and saw no sign of mold (?) but in the process we caused a lot of structural problems with the cabinet itself. We made all of our interior cabinets except for the pantry but wanting to have the pantry done we used MDF based cabinets from Lowe's. They weren't cheap but they were typical factory production where they used a lot of plastic supports and really basic tongue and groove construction that once, it is out of alignment, it is virtually impossible to get it back together.

We took it down to the shop and using a bunch of non standard fixes, it is as solid as those that we made but now you have to get it back in with the rest of the cabinets. That took a bunch of cutting, sanding and cussing but we got it back in place. We have a couple of Multi-tools that are made by several manufactures but it wound up being the go-to tool for this project. Those tools were the most used in just about every phase of our home renovation. I'm pretty sure we got ours at Harbor Freight because we assumed they wouldn't be used very much but they were used an amazing amount of time. I couldn't tell you how much I have invested in wood working tools but that $14.95 gadget is worth as much to us as any other tool out there.
 

Mike CHS

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We have been getting cucumbers for about a week and I have a new favorite. Besides pickling cucumbers, we planted Market More, Straight 8 and new to us a hybrid called Garden Sweet Burpless slicing cucumber. These are fast growing, slender with firm but not chewy skin. that is super sweet for a cucumber. We haven't tried them as pickles yet but that is coming as fast as they are putting on.
 

Baymule

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I’ve grown Straight 8 for slicing pickles and they are good. My Daddy grew Burpee Burpless cucumbers when they first hit the catalog. They were long and slender and he had great fun giving them away. Nobody had ever seen such long cucumbers! I thinK there may be stabilized lines of the Burpee Burpless. I’ve grown them before and they made good pickles. I haven’t grown this particular variety but I bet they make some good pickles.
 

Mike CHS

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Teresa is using one of our raised garden beds to plant a Butterfly bed. When we first bought our home we had Milkweed in just about every place where the briars weren't too think for Milkweed to grow. I got rid of most of it over the first few years and the sheep actually like it when it is young and tender so it doesn't get a chance to re-establish. One of the paddocks that got mowed this spring has a few Milkweed plants coming up so she went out and dug up a few to save them in her flower bed. We still see some Monarchs but of course nothing like the numbers we had when we had plentiful Milkweed.
 
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