Well  it seems like it’s been forever since we have done an update!  Three  weeks or so I believe, lots of stuff going on so let’s jump right in…..You  reach that point when your body is telling you that you are ready for  fall, but the temperature in the 90’s every day is telling you  otherwise.  Well this morning we woke to temps in the low 50’s and high  today in the upper 70’s.  The outlook for the next couple week looks  like much of the same, so I am going out on a limb here and say Fall has  arrived! We had a cold snap back in August that stunted  the garden growth and production, but our late plant peppers and  tomatoes are doing pretty good, I expect them to keep delivering well  into November.  It not huge production but enough for us to eat fresh  tomatoes & Peppers until Thanksgiving!

 We have not had too much success with fall gardening before and it looks  like out luck is staying the same, we planted cabbage, carrots, radish,  a couple different lettuces, winter squash and some kale.  Well except  for the radishes we have struck out.  

 

We  need to do some more research I am thinking it has something to do with  the weather, the transplants all looked great when we planted them but  everything died for the most part.  We will do better next year, I was  looking forward to fresh salads until Thanksgiving……

Fall Friends have showed up!

 We had a pleasant surprise in the garden our strawberry patch is  producing a cup or two of strawberry's a day, makes for a nice treat! 

 We got in a shipment of Cornish Cross chicks, last one for the year.   Pre-sale commitment are filling fast I suspect we will be sold out prior  to the butchering date.  I am not sure if it is just this batch of  chicks but I have never seen such an active bunch of Cornish Cross  before, check out the video: 

 

Our  laying hens are finally laying again, molting season is finally over!  I  believe we are starting to get some action out of the new hens we added  to the flock a month ago! We are pretty excited about that!!!

 I am wondering if Roo, our rooster, is happy about having 53 girls to take care of or not, I know I would have a headache! 

 

You may remember awhile back we started to play with mushrooms.

We love mushrooms and put them in just about everything!

Well  our first try at growing them was a total bust, we had a good grain  spawn but when we moved them to our straw bales they never got started  so into the compost bin it went. You can see the post here: 

https://steemit.com/food/@svfarms/shrooooms-we-started-growning-our-own

When  I busted open the bag I found some growth of the mycelium but it was  contaminated with mold in other areas.  We learned a lot from our first  try, we start everything on a small scale to get our mistakes out of the  way before we scale up anything.

 

We received some great advice from @ecoknowmeand  I am sure we will be reaching out to him again.  We are on our second  try having some better luck but no fruiting yet and surprisingly no  contamination yet so we are hoping for the best!  Look for a future post  on how we did….

 We that's all for this homestead update, thanks for visiting with us.

Will see y’all next time! 

Bob & Colleen Browning

Serenity Valley Farms

Monticello, KY

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