Fall Garden Plans & Meat Birds

Join me as I chat about my fall garden plans and share about the meat birds we just added to the freezer!

#fallgardening #gardeningforbeginners #raisedbedgardening #zone7b #meatbirds #growyourownfood #farmtotable #homegrown #homesteading

In this video, we’re going to talk about fall gardening plants and what we’ve been stocking in our freezer. [Music] This weather is like straight up fall here for it. Although I’m not ready for summer to be over. Let the record state that I’m not ready for summer to be over. So, a couple of weeks ago, a while back, whenever on another video, when I was talking about cucumbers, I was like, you know, I’m going to plant some more over here in this other bed, and then I never got out here with the seeds. So, we’re going to do that. Now, you can literally see that the flowers are berserk, but we’re going to go down here in this little spot and plant the cucumbers for them to go up this trellis. And I will probably just have to move some of the flowers out by then. I may have cut them and used them in bouquets anyway. So, we’ll just be intentional about that. Um, but with rain in the forecast, I figured it was a good time for these seeds to get started and also cooler temperatures. Uh, last week was really hot and that was another reason I hadn’t come out and put the seeds in because I’m like trying to set them up for success. So, these are seeds from Johnny’s. It is an organic pickling cucumber. I’m pretty sure that was like all the the label said. Um, but if you go on Johnny Seeds, you can find that. And it’s the same cucumber that I grew in the other bed that has done so incredibly well. So, I highly recommend these. Well, it’s been a minute since I’ve been out here, but I have decided that I’m going to start some attempt to start some Brussels sprout seeds. So, we are in the greenhouse. Going to get these started. Again, the weather being cooler, I’m hoping is setting me up for success with this. I cannot believe that we are even talking about fall gardening. I feel like last week was the 1 of June. That’s kind of when things got hectic around here and like unexpected stuff happened and um yeah, we’re talking it up to spiritual warfare. But anyway, things have just been insane. And so yeah, I looked up ordering fall plant starts online. Y’all, that’s expensive. A lot of the places around here, and again, I live in smalltown, USA. A lot of the places around here only do spring plant starts. So, I am hoping that the local feed and seed follows through. They’re saying they’re going to have like broccoli and probably cabbage. Uh, I need to get some more carrot seeds. I planted carrots back in the spring and like none of them came up. pretty sure it’s just because I got old seeds. So, I want to do fall gardening this year u for the first time. Normally by this time of the year, I am so burnt out. I am assuming I haven’t hit that yet because everything’s coming in so late. Like, we’re we’re not even rolling in tomatoes yet, you know? So, hopefully I’m not biting off more than I can chew. and things are going to go well. But this will be my first time starting Brussels sprout seeds and my parents have grown Brussels sprouts before and they’ve been so amazing and she freezes them and yeah, I just feel like adding something else to the freezer for winter nutrition is never a bad thing. So, let’s do this. I decided to go ahead and start another one for if they do turn out well, my dad’s going to want some. So, here we go. I put two seeds in each cell. This bed here did sustain storm damage when we had that storm come through. Uh the peppers were like laid over. So, this one was like it was going to break, so I just kind of left it. It seems to be doing okay. I know a lot of times because I had another plant get like sunburn on the peppers, but this seems to be doing okay. I have a couple of pepper plants that are acting like, you know, they’re not working. And then I had the zucchini over here earlier in the summer. And so that came out and later tomatoes went in. So this is kind of like later tomatoes in this bed. And then this big basil that’s doing great. Um, super low weed pressure here. Super low. I’m very very grateful for the health in this box this year too because last year it didn’t hold moisture at all and then with all of the watering all of the nutrition was leaving and basically this bed was like a loss. I got a few straw flowers out of it and maybe a couple of peppers but like even the pepper plants were pitiful. The tomatoes the plants were big but that was because I was watering all the time. But then we ended up not really getting many tomatoes off of them because there was lack of nutrition in the box. So you live and you learn. So I doctorred on this bed um late winter, early spring and it has done so much better. So much better. So looking to the future, I would love to have another box exactly like this one just on the other side. Talking my husband into that is what’s going to be key. He doesn’t mind building me the boxes. It’s filling the boxes that is the challenge because either you’re going to spend a boatload of money buying dirt or you’re going to try to find dirt around here and it’s going to be weed ridden and like it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. So, I don’t know if that will happen for next year or not, but we’re gonna ask and we’re going to try. The birds have been enjoying that. sunflower. The heat over the last week is definitely taken a toll on the cucumbers. So, they’re probably on their last leg. I can definitely tell those getting they’re getting crispy. But, we have gotten so many cucumbers off of these, so I’m not going to complain at all. The butterfly activity out here is insane. It brings me so much joy. I’ve been doing photo shoots here in the garden and I did my girls last night. So, I’m really really excited to have those memories. We did our family picture here in the garden last year. So, I have to come up with how what I want to do for our family photo this year to give it a different feel. If you’ve been following along, you know about the butternut squash crisis and we lost all of those and it is what it is. But the lofah look really good. There are right many young ones even coming along and then I’ve got some that are more mature that hopefully will dry themselves out. That was the issue I ran into last year is they didn’t actually dry out in time. It took the plants so long to get going. So hopefully this year at least the bigger ones will mature on and dry themselves out and I will get more um lofah to turn into sponges. This Oh my goodness. This is insane. But I love it so much. I love it. You just take this and it just lifts up and you walk on in. I’m most excited about having that yarao this year. Cosmos were an epic fail. Most of them didn’t generate, germinate, whatever. And then the couple that I did get have done nothing. So, this zucchini plant, I did get one zucchini off of it. I think the pests are taking it out. Um, and there’s like one pitiful little over there. I don’t think it’s getting enough sunlight. This tomato right here in this cage is not doing anything either, but I think it’s because it’s too shaded under that crepe myrtle. I pruned some of it, but apparently I didn’t prune enough. So, this area is where I’m planning on doing a lot of the fall stuff because it’s just not much in here anyway. So, we’re just going to clear it out and get a lot of the fall stuff started in here. And then as for any other plant starts that I man get managed to get my hands on, we’ll just stick them in here where we can get them in. Um the days are definitely numbered on the flowers. So there will be spaces opening up for more planting. Our family appreciates you being here. We hope that you are enjoying this video and that you will like and subscribe so that you can follow along for our future ones. So, we just butchered chickens. We ordered 25. Good starting point for us. And there was some loss, so we were only able to get 20. And the way that it worked out for us this particular time is the farm where we have our herd share um they raised the birds and then we showed up to help process and were able to get them at cost which was absolutely amazing. I’m hoping that at some point we will be able to fix our own solid style chicken tractor and be able to do our own here but we just aren’t at that point yet. So, I’m very grateful that this worked out. And even though my husband had to work this weekend, he finagled his schedule a little bit so that he could be there to process with us. And we took Colton also and it just it was great. We had had so much heat during the week and then this cold front came in and we were able like I was actually chilly. So, it was great conditions for processing the birds and um I learned how to cut them up. So, we only did a few on location. We’ve got the birds in the cooler. I’m going to cut up a few more, most of them, and we’re going to leave a few of them whole. And then we’re going to um seal the bags and get them in to the freezer for yummy farm-raised meat for our family for the winter. So, I’m literally sitting on the cooler. That’s why I’m over here. But I decided not to open it and show because I just know people on the internet can be weird about me. So, um I was able to get the feet, the necks, and the livers and hearts. Um we chose not to really save anything else. So, um even the other family that was processing wasn’t into having the feet in the necks or the livers. So, I was able to get all of that, which is awesome because why you use that in making broth. So, the carcasses that were left from the ones that I cut up, I took those carcasses and made broth bags. And so, I fixed like the bones and then you had a neck and a few feet and that then we bagged it. And so when I’m ready to make a round of broth, I don’t have to have cooked a chicken to do that. I will have just pull a broth bag out of the freezer and throw it in my Instant Pot um or crockot. So that was really cool to me because people will say, you know, oh this organic farm raised meat is so expensive. you know, I’m spending, you know, 16, 20, $25 depending on the size of the bird, depending on where you get it to on a chicken and then it’s like one meal. And I’m like, yeah, but you can also get so much more out of it when you take the next step and do broth. So, I’m excited to have those broth packs. My husband laughs at me because he’s like, who would have ever thought you would be excited about some chicken feet? But here we are, chick. So, while we may not have the garden and the homestead at the point of full sustainability, we are growing closer to that every year. And that is the goal. Like my massive massive goal is to never have to buy meat from a store or a market. Like I want to raise it. Um, and then I want to be able to put up enough from the garden in the summer to get me through to the next one. One of the holdups with that is storage. So, I need a root seller situation. So, that’s like a goal, but there’s like all these goals. And you know, of course, things are not always going to go to plan, but at the end of the day, we’re taking steps closer every year towards that self- sustainability. That gets me excited and it always always has me looking to the future for what we can do better, what we can improve on, and the the next steps that we can take. Whether you’re in the thick of summer gardening or you’re also fall garden planning too, I pray that you can enjoy the entire process. Even when things don’t quite go to plan, the blessings can still abound. The Lord has given us so many nutritious things to keep us healthy when we follow the process by his design. Thank you so much for watching this video, and I hope that you’ll like and subscribe so we can catch you on the next one.