Blueberries

This is one of three such collections of blueberries so far this year. We pick the ripe ones about once a week. We only have a few bushes and they aren't producing very well except for one that is more tree like in structure. They were planted in rows between the muscadines and when the muscadines took over for a few years without maintenance the blueberries suffered. We had to cut back some of the blueberries to get them untangled from the muscadines. To be honest, we didn't even know they were blueberry bushes at the time. We've got one tall bush that produced most of these berries and 4 or so more that are making a strong comeback and should produce for us in coming years.

Opening Up the Driveway

We are hoping to get a brush cutter soon which will make this sort of task much easier, but until then we just wanted to open up the driveway a little bit right by the road. The driveway has a slight bend in it and we wanted to be able to see straight down the drive to the road and mailbox. Meredithe mainly used hedge shears and I stuck to my favorite tool, a Fiskars 9047 folding hand saw. It took us a few hours, but we opened up a significant area which should give us somewhere to start when we get the Gravely Pro 24.

#Fiskars
#Gravely

Chicken Coop Roof Close up

Here is a closer shot of the inside of the right side of the chicken coop. There are two doors, one into each coop front and back. We added the three new posts to better support the wire and billboard roof. It's actually surprisingly dry and sheltered in the coop. The coop sits back in the woods about 20 feet so there is a light breeze, but it doesn't feel drafty considering how open it really is.

Wild Blackberries

Wild Blackberries

There are patches of wild blackberries growing all over the place, but there is a particularly large patch growing along the Northern edge of the garden. We left a strip 10' x 30' of the blackberries when we cleared the main garden this spring. The berries aren't managed in any way so the crop is small and difficult to harvest for the amount of area that they are currently occupying. We started trimming them back in early June as we began to harvest. June seemed to be more productive than July has proven so far, but that first harvest probably heavily weighs in on Junes total.