I caught this shot yesterday of the crew gearing up for a day of lawn mowing. Mark was cleaning grass out of the Honda in preparation for some heavy mower action while the herd was getting ready to chow down. Too bad I didn't take an after photo to show what a great job our trio of lawn mowers did!

Joey was asking how many watts can we expect with these solar panels?

Each 15 watt Amorphous panel puts out about 20 volts DC that goes into a voltage regulator to bring it down to 13 volts x 2.25 amps=29 watts under the best conditions.

The bad news is the biggest battery it can handle is one of those little ATV batteries around 20 to 30 AH which crushes my plans of using it to charge up 2 golf cart batteries.

It's on us for not doing the proper research before we bought these. I think a better value would be to find a 50 watt Poly-Crystaline panel with a 10 amp charge controller for less than what these sell for. Another thing bad about Amorphous panels is that they are only expected to last 5 to 8 years.

The new plan is to come up with some sort of Art project that makes use of these in some fashion. We've got another kit in the barn with 3 more panels.

By the beginning of June, the shape of the rest of the garden year is beginning to ossify. In a perfect world, the gardener was smart enough to plant only what she could easily manage, so spring crops are in full production while summer crops are growing quickly beneath their mostly weed-free mulch.

This year, I'm quite pleased with the state of my active beds. In contrast, I was starting to get sick at this time last year, and I let large swathes of the garden run away from me. The result is still being felt twelve months later when perennials (primarily strawberries and asparagus) produce at rates a quarter to half of normal while as much of a third of previously cultivated ground currently lies weedily fallow.

Luckily, solutions are simple. I'm slowly solarizing the troubled spots, then will plant them in buckwheat to bring the areas back into production a bit richer than I found them. Meanwhile, extra weeding jobs on the perennials will do the same for our beloved strawberries and asparagus. Slowly but surely, the effects of being an overzealous gardener with an underzealous energy level will disappear into our rear-view mirror as our previously problematic garden comes back to life.

This old section of an antenna pole is just barely big enough for a rain barrel.

Two ratchet straps will keep it from moving side to side.

I went outside the other night just as day was turning into night and caught these huge clouds shining against darkened trees.

I suspect the clouds must have been catching reflections of the recently vanished sun. Or maybe the half moon was bright enough to give them that pillowy glow? Whatever the reason, I had to rush back inside for the camera so I could share the beauty.

I definitely need to remember to go outside more often during the gloaming!

Learning Anna's goat routine was easy once Edgar stopped being afraid of me.

I thought you might enjoy two of my newest hand-made bowls in action. As usual, they're imperfect...but still beautiful and functional.

The real purpose of this post, though, is to let you know I'm going on a writer's retreat this afternoon and won't be back at on the blog until Thursday. Mark's holding down the fort while I'm gone, so you'll still get your daily homesteading episode in the evening, and I'll share lots of photos of my 5,000-feet-above-sea-level retreat when I return. I'm looking forward to lots of writing and hiking time, and I hope your week is as inspiring as I expect mine to be!

There is another problem with the PVC chicken feeder.

When the chickens eat it does not gravity feed like it should.

I think I'm going to have to eliminate the angle and maybe modify the bottom.

This Avian Aqua Miser has being going strong for 8 years and counting.

The lid is a little discolored from sitting out in the sun.

In the Winter we usually leave one out overnight and swap it with a fresh one and take the frozen one in to thaw out for the next day.

4 eye bolts with a cable and a turnbuckle was what it took to mount this rain barrel.

Total cost was under 10 dollars.

This PVC frame will be a new chicken tractor to replace the primitive chicken tractor we are still using.

There are as many kinds of writers' retreats as there are writers, and when I started researching I considered just about every option. But, in the end, I decided to keep it simple --- find a hotel room within two hours' drive that's close to some natural area I want to explore. Beech Mountain, North Carolina, topped the list both literally and metaphorically. After all, the highest incorporated town east of the Mississippi is so cool in the summer  months that no one even installs air conditioning. What's not to like?

My condo at Pinnacle Inn was quiet and tranquil...although my rural-accustomed eyes would have preferred the streetlights to be quenched at night. Other than that, though, the location was quite a treat, and I split my days between pounding out chapters about werewolves and hiking stunning trails (the latter of which I'll tell you more about in tomorrow's post).

In the online circles I frequent, I'm a bit of a slow writer, publishing only four novels per year. And up on the mountain, I realized that if I changed my daily routine, I could easily double or triple that output. It's just so easy to write when nothing distracts you from the fictional world you're spinning within your own mind, when a hike in the middle of the day helps plot threads weave more closely together and when there are no husbands or animals or gardens to feed and enjoy.

On the other hand, I missed my husband and animals and gardens like the dickens, and the very best moment of the retreat was when I hiked back into our farm to greet Mark with a hug. I'm pretty sure I'll line up more writers' retreats in the future, both for the productivity boost and for the mental clarity that comes from four-mile hikes combined with 4,000-word days. But I wouldn't want to live there --- I prefer to merely visit.

Thanks for all the useful comments on my Harbor Freight solar panel post. I need to learn more about MPPT charge controllers.

I especially liked Harry's idea of charging up our two best 6 volt golf cart batteries with a 120 volt battery charger.

The next test will be to see how long my 12 volt fan will run on a full charge.

When I wasn't writing, I spent most of my time on Beech Mountain visiting the town-owned park called the Emerald Outback. Located near the peak of the mountain, this beautifully laid out trail system provides stunning vistas both large and very small. Shown here is mosses, lichens, and fungi hiding in the gravel at the edge of Bailout Road, a gravel track that runs down the center of the park for easy and quick trips home once you wear yourself out on the more woodland paths.

Weather up there changes on a dime, so be prepared. I visited twice for a few hours apiece, and in that five hours or so spent on the mountain I enjoyed blazing sunshine, pea-soup fog (which I'm pretty sure was actually low-lying clouds), and a brief storm. Based on the height of the main canopy --- probably no more than twenty feet above the ground --- and the windswept appearance of brave emergents, I suspect the park often sees pretty windy conditions as well.

Over much of the Emerald Outback, the forest floor is lushly covered by soft-leaved sedges that remind me of a well-managed pasture. Boulders are common as well, and in several places the trees perch on the edge of rocks as if they sat down to rest for a spell and forgot to get back up.

Wildlife includes tremendous numbers of deer --- I think I saw more than a dozen during my first hike. The astute visitor will probably also notice juncos, which are winter residents at lower elevations but stay year-round on the mountain in order to raise their young.

If you're more into the big picture, the Southern Ridge Trail includes three overlooks, the last of which is the best. Blueberries all along the trail, but especially at this final overlook, were just beginning to set fruit when I visited, so I'm guessing you'd get a trailside nibble if you hiked the mountain in late July or early August.

All-told, this is one of the most beautiful parks I've been to in a long time! Plus, I could walk to the entrance from my hotel, which made for a perfect commute. If you're interested in following in my footsteps, you can read more about the Emerald Outback here.

We had some car drama this week involving a transmission failure.

Luckily it was a leak in the fluid intake which our local mechanic fixed.

"How did your peppers do with the half composted goat manure? Was it not too hot?" Becki Wilson asked, before going on to explain that she has access to fresh --- but not composted --- manure and wants to garden now.

First of all, I should say that the half-composted goat manure I was using tends to have the opposite problem. When the most volatile nitrogen has leached away and the majority of the organic matter hasn't yet broken down, what I tend to see is plants yellowing from lack of nitrogen rather than getting burned from too much. That was indeed the case for the first couple of weeks for our peppers, but they seem to be greening up and growing now (as long as the slugs will leave them alone!)

Answering Becki's question about her own garden is a bit more complicated. Different types of manure have different strengths --- chicken manure, for example, is very hot and I'd be leery of using it close to most living plants when fresh. Topdressing about a foot away from newly planted seedlings is generally okay, though, because by the time the roots grow out into the impacted soil, the manure has broken down enough to be helpful rather than harmful to their growth. But use more than you think you need with fresh manure because you will hit that low-nitrogen period in the middle and want your plants to have enough nutrition to survive the gap.

If you need more in-depth information on using manure in the garden, my Ultimate Guide to Soil contains a whole chapter on the topic. Good luck...and I hope your new garden grows fast and luxurious!

Last year, we ate one apple off the small branch of William's Pride I grafted onto a Virginia Beauty tree in February 2013. There would have been two...but a deer walked through the garden and stole the second fruit (eating almost nothing else!) in a move reminiscent of one of the most memorable books I had as a child.

This year, there are so many apples on that one small limb that I had to prop it up on a log to keep it from bending to the ground. With a solid month to go before the fruits are due to ripen, I'll have to keep an eye on our borders and hope the deer don't make a reappearance.

Our sweet corn is a little over knee high thanks to a layer of cardboard and straw.

We never have quite enough bird pressure to make it worth the daily annoyance of raising and lowering netting on our berries, but some years individual fliers are worse than others. This has been one of the worse years, so I've been picking our berries a little underripe to beat the birds. The fruits are still delicious when topped with whipped cream!

This is the time of year when any mistake you made in the garden amplifies by the second. If, like me, you left last year's mistakes alone to be dealt with later, your garden may look more like a weedy lawn than a growing space. (At least the goats are impressed!)

Conventional gardeners fix these troubled spots by tilling (and maybe tilling again). I'm instead solarizing some areas, kill mulching others, and (for the easy spots) hand weeding and following up with cover crops (buckwheat and soybeans). I cover the first two of these methods in Small-Scale Gardening Basics and the last in Homegrown Humus if you want to follow my lead.

Then, once the garden is reclaimed, I mulch heavily to maintain my tenuous win over the weeds. Win, lose, or draw, I generally get at least some harvest, plus many beautiful mornings in the garden to boot...so I guess it's really always a win.

This post is to remind us to apply for absentee ballots before the deadline.

Our local election board seems to have switched back to a paper ballot machine.

I was only the 8th person to vote as of 10:45 am.

What do goats and tomatoes have in common? When you raise them by the dozen, it's all about a herd mentality --- damage control. But with just a few on the farm, each one turns into a cosseted and cared-for pet.

This year, we have four pet tomatoes rather than our usual three dozen. With so few looking for homes, I was able to chose niche habitats for each. Two are beneath our west-facing roof overhang and got trained along strings while the other two are in a more conventional garden setting. I'll be curious to compare and contrast which setting does better when the time comes to harvest from our pets.

The egg eating has seemed to scale back to every other day for some reason?

We are pretty sure they are getting plenty of calcium.

When the garlic plants are no longer lush and beautiful, it's time to think about harvesting. (You can see all of my tips on when to harvest garlic here.)

This year, Aurora and Edgar "helped" me with the harvest. Apparently, garlic leaves are a good garnish after a morning spent grazing on clover and plantain. I guess I should have tethered the herd just a little further out of reach....

I decided to upgrade our PVC chicken feeder to a 3 inch pipe diameter with a wye fitting where the chickens eat the feed.

The plastic lid fits into place but needs to be secured with screws.

I like to have at least two dependable vegetables on the menu so we don't get bored eating the same one over and over. As a result (and despite what I said in my recent blog post), I've waited to pull out our broccoli, letting it put out the first round of side shoots instead.

The pea vines, on the other hand, hit the compost pile yesterday and the last bed of lettuce is really too bitter for the gourmet palate. Good thing we're already nibbling on carrots and will be enjoying green beans and cucumbers by this time next week. The summer dining season is nearly upon us!

The new PVC chicken feeder is a 3 inch pipe with a 2 inch opening for feed.

With the spring garden nearly done and the summer garden beginning to produce, it's time to think ahead to autumn. We started the first round of brussels sprouts inside two weeks ago and this week we planted a flat of broccoli (with a few more brussels sprouts at one edge). By the beginning of July, we'll be direct-seeding the first fall crops (carrots), and so the wheel of the seasons continues to turn.

We were a little unsure about using white plastic for solarization of weeds.

After 4 days of sun it seems to have begun the job of baking the weeds to death.

We liked this plastic because it was thick and cheap and should endure several applications..

I realized it's been two full months since I gave you a progress report on Edgar. Without lice to rough up his fur, our new wether sleeked down and developed moonspots!

Meanwhile, while I was gone on my writing retreat, Mark bonded so thoroughly with Eddie that our wether turned from a pretty-good goat into someone who gives Aurora a run for her money in the resposive-and-loving department. During those same three days, the last clumpiness of his poop and even part of the troublesome coughing disappeared --- clearly I just needed to let Mark at our newest herd mate sooner.

All told, Edgar is an excellent playmate for Aurora and me. He comes when he's called, is less of a prima donna than his "sister," and is always cheerful and ready to eat. Now, if I could just get him to stop peeing on my gear when I'm out enjoying the woods with the herd...but maybe that's just the goat equivalent of leaving the toilet seat up?

The trick to a smooth goat hoof-trimming session is high quality bribes. Since neither Aurora nor Edgar is pregnant or lactating, they're currently getting no concentrates. So a bowl full of homegrown sorghum and field corn once a month definitely gets their attention.

For best results, leave the sorghum on the stalk so it takes longer to scarf down. Spoiled goats may or may not decide that corn on the cob is worth the hassle....

The Summer Solstice --- the longest day of the year --- will be tomorrow...and, as usual, I can't think of a really adequate way to celebrate. I always love the idea of jumping over a bonfire...then the reality of sunset falling near my bedtime when it's still hot out kicks in. Maybe I need to learn a sun dance or practice some sun salutations instead?

What's your favorite way to celebrate the solstice?

What about the design should change to prevent hens getting to the eggs?

Thanks for the question Kaat.

It might be possible to glue an extension to the tray to keep eggs out of reach?

We go back and forth about deleting the two or more hens who are eating eggs.

I never thought of raspberry patches as coming with an expiration date, but last year I realized that all good things must come to an end.

Our everbearing red raspberries started as a single freebie thrown in by Raintree in 2007 when we ordered several fruit trees. Now, a full decade later, that singleton has expanded into two patches on our own farm plus several in the gardens of family and friends...but the original planting is finally starting to lag. In the photo at the top of this post, the dividing line between the summer-bearing raspberries (begun as one plant three years ago, background) and the ever-bearing raspberries (ten years old, foreground) is startlingly clear.

Luckily, the solution is neither difficult nor expensive. This fall, we'll buy another single plant of an ever-bearing variety (or maybe several if I'm feeling like a spendthrift) and we'll be rolling in spring and fall berries in no time. So despite their expiration dates, ever-bearing raspberries continue to make the cut as one of our easiest and most dependable fruits.

Trimming Aurora's hooves is easy as long as Edgar is occupied with treats.

Edgar requires me to hold him down while he's being trimmed.

Look who's getting bigger by the minute! Our Ananasnaya hardy kiwi has at least a dozen clusters of fruits this year for the first time ever and they're plumping up nicely. So I headed to the internet to look up when the fruits will be ready to harvest.

The answer is that we may run into the same trouble on the harvest end as we did on the flowering end --- frosts. Depending on the source, I've seen reports of hardy kiwis ripening anywhere between July and November, but you definitely have to bring them in before hard freezes hit.

To find out if your hardy kiwis are ripe enough to pick, cut one open and look inside. If the seeds are black, the fruits are ready to pick even if the flesh is green and hard. These kiwis can be stored in the fridge for a couple of months then taken out to ripen at room temperature a few days before you want to try them out.

Alternatively (if there's time), you can let the hardy kiwi fruits ripen on the vine. Vine-ripe fruits will become soft and most will blush red. If picked at this stage, though, you'll have to eat them up quickly because they won't last long in storage. Sounds like such a hardship! I can hardly wait....

Anna likes to clear her head from long hours of writing with berry picking.

It takes her somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes to pick a nice size bowl.

Mom came over Thursday with some old family photos, of which this is my very favorite. My great grandfather (lower left) was apparently a prep school boy in 1891. As the youngest in his house, Mom informed me that Prince Henry (yes, that was his first name; no, he wasn't a prince) was made to run errands for everyone else. So maybe the pout isn't feigned?

Fast forward ahead forty-odd years and the pouting school boy's daughter was adventuring in Panama. You can jump forty more years into the future to see the canoer's daughter (my mom) in this post. And then check out most of this blog to see the next generation (me) nearly forty years after that. How time flies when you're having fun!

It's been a year and a half since our Celeste Fig got too cold and died back.

If we think of something better for this spot it might get pulled up.

I finally pulled out the broccoli now that the summer crops are coming in. Beans, squash, and cucumbers pick up speed fast once the first harvest happens, so we won't have room in our bellies for much else for the next little while. Time to enjoy the bounty of summer!

Mark will be getting home shortly from his annual visit to Ohio, so I thought I'd give him a break and post in his place. A huge Thank You! to Rose Nell and Jayne for helping him track down a 2005 Corrolla to replace our old 1994 Corrolla. And, of course, for the usual wonderful food, fun, and fellowship. We love you guys!

Despite its hot, early start, this summer has since turned wet and cool. We've seen rain for 15 of the last 30 days, adding up to a bit over 7 inches ---  nearly double our usual average.

So what do gardeners do during a wet summer? Watch plants grow slower than usual. Snip off blights as soon as they form so the fungal diseases don't spread to take out your entire planting. If you've got spare compost or manure, topdress to replace the leached nutrients. Barring that, plant nitrogen-fixing cover crops like soybeans so at least the next generation will be adequately fed.

On the plus side, at least we haven't had to do much watering this year!

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments on our egg eating roll out nest tray issue.

We decided to go with the light blocking experiment to see if that helps.

If it works I'll make something more rainproof.

A few of you asked why we'd need to start our ailing raspberry patch from freshly purchased stock rather than just digging up new shoots the way we've done to expand it in the past. The short answer is --- viruses.

Over time, viruses tend to build up in both raspberries and strawberries, causing declining vigor that carries over to any offshoots you propagate using homestead methods. Reputable nurseries instead rely upon lab techniques to clone without allowing viruses to come along for the ride, resulting in certified virus-free stock.

So if your patch starts ailing for no apparent reason, a fresh start can be worth a few bucks of nursery stock. Be sure to plant in a new location so the diseases won't spread quickly to your new plants and you should get many more years of raspberry for relatively little effort or expense.

The first day of blocking the light on the roll out nest tray failed.

There might still be some light leaking in from the top that I can block.

We took the day off to see the Solar Eclipse planetarium show at Bays Mountain.

It was a good primer for the upcoming event in August.

My first barge ride in many years.... The boat has been upgraded, the phoebe is still nesting in the rafters, and all I had eyes for was waterlilies.

Spatterdocks and water shields....

Light on water and ovals of chlorophyll....

Down the hatch!

We tested the driveway again today and proved it's still too wet here.

The good news is our first time using the winch on the rear hitch receiver worked without any problems.

Our new plan is to seek someone local with some equipment and experience in driveway building that does small to medium sized jobs like this.

Previewing the eclipse at the planetarium got us fired up about coronas and Baily's beads and diamond rings. Only seven and a half weeks until E Day!

The inventor of the Roomba-Joe Jones has invented a Roomba for weeds.

It seems like a serious product for someone with the right size garden.

Maybe weeding the garden in the future will be more about robot repair and less about kneeling down and pulling up weeds?