I started the day today by labeling and putting away the canned goods from yesterday. I had 9 pints of salsa and 5 pints of mixed pickles. We don’t have very much luck growing cucumbers so I have been looking for other things to make pickles out of that we like . These new pickles are leeks, green beans, green peppers and Swiss Chard stems. We will try them and see if there are any that we like as well as cucumbers. Then I did some sewing before breakfast. After breakfast Norman went to the lower garden and weeded until break, I picked blueberries. I got 3 quarts before we stopped for break. While we were having break I called Dunlap and they said they had canning tomatoes so we drove to Dunlap and got four 25 pound boxes. They look so good, and we will start making marina spaghetti sauce first thing in the morning. When we got back home Norman went back to the garden to weed a little more and I finished picking blueberries. I got another quart before I finished. When we planted the blueberries we put in three kinds, early, mid-season, and late. The early are now all finished, OH, there are a few green one still on those four bushes but not enough to count. The mid-season never have done much. Two of the four died that first spring and I replaced them with two from Lowes. One of those died and the other is doing alright. The two original mid-season bushes have a very few berries on them but they are about twice as big as the others, four berries are a hand full. The top four bushes are the late season and those have lots more green ones so will be still giving us berries for breakfast for another week.
This is one of the late season bushes. And here are two more in that row. You can see the grapes behind, they are starting to get ripe so soon I will be making jelly and juice.
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This is the first three quarts all ready to go into the freezer. When they are frozen I put them into freezer bags and take out as many was we want each day this winter. 
Then I went around and got some pictures of the farm to show you how things are changing. It is beginning to look like fall is on it’s way.
These are the black eyed Susans that are growing down the side of the house. The hosts are behind and now hidden by these flowers. 
In the front flower boxes the Chinese lanterns are in their full fall colors and the mums are getting ready to bloom. 
The peaches are getting ready, there are only about 8 of these. 
The kitchen garden is now full of beans in bloom. In a week or so these will be all nice new green beans. There are four rows so we will have more from this planing that we got from the late one, so we will be busy again with canning beans. 
it is hard to see but if you look carefully you will see two humming birds, one on each side of the feeder. I have two feeders and there are 7 or 8 pairs of birds at the feeders most of the day. They go through over a quart of sugar water each day. 
And last but not least of the pears. They will be another month or more before they are ready to pick. These are the Moonglow pears, we didn’t get any Bartlett this year. That takes care of today. Have a great day.
Oumapetts's Blog 
Our oldest daughter uses zucchini to make pickles instead of cucumbers. John picked about a quart of blueberries today, the first “big” picking and the last of the raspberries.
Thanks for the idea, I’ll try some zucchini pickles. The blueberries that John picked, are they wild or cultivated? We got some wild ones earlier and it took the two of us an hour to pick one quart, with the cultivated ones I can pick a gallon in an hour but it is the wild ones that make the best blueberry cake so I always get some wild ones for cake. My mother in law used to pick blueberries by the case to sell to a dealer in the city and she picked the wild ones.
Mom, those pictures are awesome!!
Thank you! Hope you are still planning to come and see it all in person. I’m sewing for Dyhana for Christmas, Shirley gave me a couple pieces of cloth that is making up into very cute outfits. Love you
John’s blueberries are cultivated. Our bushes are a few years old and we also buy some wild ones. We like both kinds. My, but that tomato work must make you and Norman sleep well!
Our bushes are now 7 years old. We live on a lime stone mountain so at first the bushes did nothing and I thought we would lose them so I asked other farmers what to do and found I needed to shock them with acid so now we mulch them each fall and spring with peat moss, I also learned they needed the sulfur so fertilize them with a 90% sulfur and also side dress them each spring with Supper Rainbow which is a 13-13-13 with added minerals. It took several years to learn all they needed and to build them up. We have four early plants and they are the best, and two mid-season- they have the biggest berries but not very many and the bushes don’t grow much, then there is 4 late season and they have the most berries but not as big as the early ones. The last three years we have had good crops but this year was by far the best and I think our hard winter helped them a lot. We don’t usually have a cold winter so the blueberries don’t usually get much of a winter rest but this year it was the longest and coldest winter on record and I think the blueberries liked that. We tried growing blueberries in Florida and had had very poor showing and there we had no real cold and even tho we had a special bush for Florida they didn’t like the warm winter.