Sometimes I get so engrossed in the minutiae of homesteading that I forget to share the big picture. So here's a disjointed post with a few photos of last week's triumphs. Above --- the forest garden weeded and mulched, with tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash thriving.

Summer pruning completed...and three baby seckel pears discovered amid the foliage! I guess that late frost didn't get quite all the blooms (although it did twist the developing fruits a little).

Another happy surprise --- our hazel bush is completely loaded! The only troubling fact? For the first time ever, squirrels entered our yard last year, as evidenced by the dozens of walnut seedlings I've been pulling out of various parts of the garden this spring. Will the tree rats get our delicious nuts?

In the vegetable garden, we're starting to hit the stage where there's so much produce that the freezer and larder are slowly filling back up. The newcomer this week is baby carrots, which I pull out to thin the beds. Nothing like carrots to remind me of how much our soil has improved over the last nine years!

I hope you'll take a step back from frowning at the weeds and pests today to enjoy the beauty of summer. Now's a great time to take pictures so green they'll make your eyes pop in January. Happy solstice!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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