We have been seeing Turkeys everywhere – even Tina saw a whole flock over the weekend (so many, that she accidentally used a 4-letter word). But now there is proof: Sammy took some pictures this afternoon of turkeys sitting on our trellis end-posts in our blackberry patch. By the time she got close enough with her camera, some had already left.
Finally this week we were able to start making spaghetti sauce (2 batches so far), and Duff and Anja stopped by to help make 2 batches of salsa. They took more tomatoes to Pittsburgh with them, to work on pizza sauce and another type of salsa as well. We also have been having tomatoes in salad and pasta, on sandwiches and burgers. Just can’t beat the taste of fresh, ripe, homegrown tomatoes!!!
Weeding has been the number one activity for the last two weeks – and additional “tying up” of grape vines and bramble branches. The last two weeks provided pretty good rainfall, which not only made the grapes and berries grow, but created monster weeds. The wheelbarrow was soon a useless vehicle and we used the big trailer behind the four wheeler to cart the weeds to the compost pile. 
It took all of us a long weekend, and a few evenings during the week- to put away another 140 quarts of frozen corn. Zach, Rachel and Toben came to help, as did Jens and Grace – and one day even our relatives from Germany (Jan and Elly) were helping out! Plus we gave another 100 dozen ears away. This batch of corn was Silver King, a rather sweet, white corn.
Our early corn variety – Sugar Baby – is all picked…it took us a week, a few “buckets” each day during the work week, and then the remainder on Friday and Saturday. Alltogether, this resulted in – we think – about 65 quart bags of frozen corn. Not too bad, even though we lost count and were to tired to go back to the garage, where our extra freezers are, and do a recount. This was the first time we had planted an early variety and we were surprised to find rather large ears of corn on these relatively short, stocky kind of plants. (We had planted 2 lbs of this bi-color variety).
The Silver King corn is almost ripe – we are hoping for some rain to help the kernels fill out, but this is our project for the next weekend. Expecting lots of relatives to comes and help pick and take corn with them 🙂 We planted 5 lbs of this one (not sure what we were thinking).
Also spent time throughout the week to continue tying up bramble canes for next year’s fruit. We are getting some blackberries off this year, although we had tried to cut back the plants a lot this Spring to discourage fruiting and encourage the growth of fruiting canes for next year. Still, managed to make 2 pies and freeze 2 gallons of berries so far. We are irrigating the berries, since the weather has been extremely hot and dry.
Pretty much did the same “maintenance” on the grapes – continued tying up the vines, which are still growing at amazing rates, and continued irrigating.
