Yesterday we went to McMinnville to the farmer’s market to see how everyones gardens are doing.  There were only four farmer’s there but the one I like to check in with most is Brent Brain and he was there with his father so we talked with him for a while and got some advice on our problems.  Nothing exciting but always good to talk to  a successful farmer.  I have in my garden everything any of them had so the only thing I bought was a cake of Alova soap.  Brent’s wife makes soap and candles and sells them on his tables.  He did have tomatoes from his green house but we aren’t that fond of tomatoes so will wait for the ones on our plants to get ripe.  Then we went to Food Land and got some chicken.  They have great meat and always has the 5-for $19.95 so I go through the packages and get those that are $4.50 to $5.00 if bought singlely and get five of what ever I need.  Yesterday I got three packages of chicken breasts one of drum sticks and one of thighs.  Then I wrapped each and double bagged them and put them in the freezer.  Now I have a good variety of pork, chicken and beef so I won’t need to shop for meat for the rest of this month.  By then it was so hot outside I did not get to the garden to pick cabbage worms.  We had a dinner of left overs and just puttered and knitted the rest of the day.

So this morning when we got up at 6 am Norman went for his walk and I went to the garden to pick worms.  They had a field day yesterday so I found lots of them today.  Usually I have been getting about 20 in all and today I got nearer to 80 just in the lower garden, I still have to do the kitchen garden.  Each day I check the zucchini because I like to get them while they are small and I have only found 4 so far but today I found 6 nice small ones and then almost fell over when I found two great big one.  How I missed those this week I will never know but it does happen every year.  So we will have zucchini  every noon for the rest of the summer and Joe can take as many as he wants and then I will can the rest for Becca.  When Norman got back from his walk we stopped for breakfast and then back to the lower garden.  We had to pick two big broccoli crowns and two small cabbages and one cauliflower.  This morning I will freeze the broccoli and cauliflower and eat the cabbages as cole slaw.  We have that every noon with our main meal and again at night with our sandwiches.  I never plant many of them as there is always so much in each plant and we get feed up on it after a couple weeks.  It is always something you can get rather cheaply at the farmer’s market as summer wears on.   Then we dug some potatoes.  In March we planted 20 pounds of red pontiac and those took up the first 8 rows of the part we set aside for potatoes, then we put in 20 pounds of Yukon gold in the last two rows.  Those two rows were very long, the potato patch is in the shape of a trapezoid  which is a triangle with the top cut off so the bottom is four times as long as the top.  The Yukon gold potatoes didn’t have as many eyes as the red pontiac and they didn’t produce any where near as many potatoes.  Today we dug the four shortest rows and got more potatoes in those four rows than we got from the two rows of Yukon Gold so I guess next year, if we are still here, we will plant all red pontiac and will only need 30 pounds of seed potatoes.  The red ones look better too, much larger and almost no scabs.  There were a lot that had been chewed by the mice so we lost some that way but I guess they have to eat too.  The green beans have recovered from being eaten by what ever and now have grown new tops and starting to get nice looking beans on them so we will have some to pick by this weekend so Joe and his family can take home a nice batch of beans as well as zucchini and broccoli.  I guess this week we will have pizza for dinner as we have so much in the garden to put on it.  The Italian sweet peppers are ready to pick too.

I love this time of the year with all the things in the garden coming along so well.  I just hope it rains today so I don’t have to water tomorrow.  Have  a great day.