This summer on the homestead has been fabulous. We’ve definitely done our fair share of grilling, entertaining, and bonfires. We like to live life in the country to the full extent. This excessive funness has only been accentuated by the presence of my little bro and his wife these past 6 weeks. They are moving to their very own homestead on Friday, and we’re all filled with mixed emotions.
They will be taking with them our baby farm kitten (James) that we found in the cornfield a couple months back. I sincerely hope that he survives the treachery of dwelling with two large breed, cat killing dogs. We will be keeping Otis… and the ladies of the house (Blanche and Lucille) will be joining him in the great outdoors as soon as the killer dogs are gone.
We had a short stint with fleas, and Nick decided to shave the kittens. We are once again without fleas.
We were excited for our late-blooming tomatoes…
….until we picked them and they looked like this:
Help? Has this ever happened to YOUR tomatoes? What did we do wrong? There are bugs everywhere and these big cracks in the tops.
In other news, Reuben only brings occasional dead wildlife to our front porch anymore these days. Yesterday it was a blackbird that James feasted on.
One thing I know for sure, Nick will be missing Tim’s company while mowing. Boys bond in the strangest ways.
Two new baby trees have been planted in the grove… a birch and a red oak. There will be more planted before the season’s up!
I will leave you with this photo of my bruise. It was gifted to me by the dogs.
think of cracks as stretch marks – they grew too fast for their skin due to too much rain and then drought. Make sure you keep watering them and the cracks won’t happen.
Tomatoes crack when they get a lot of rain at once, and then it doesn’t rain for a few days…or any time they don’t have regular, consistant water. they are still good to eat. You can always pick them a little early if they are starting to crack, and let them ripen the rest of the way on the window sill.