Pumpkins are doing Great

We don't know what 'went wrong' but it's only August and our pumpkins are bright orange already. We had planned on selling pumpkins in the fall but are really wondering what they will look like by then.

Ok, pumpkins were a battle this year - for some reason our darling chickens kept pulling up the plants when they were a couple inches tall. I really didn't think we were going to have any pumpkins.

Well, we finally got the chickens under control and the pumpkins took off like crazy - they started taking over everything and still it's a daily chore directing the vines (some as much as 50 feet long) back into their area.

So what do you think, will we have pumpkins to sell in the fall or will they all be rotten by then? Needless to say I'm going to be busy trying to figure out how to save 30 some pumpkins for 2 more months.

Newest Additions to the Family

- to the left you can see the baby chicken just hatched in the last 24 hours. No, that is not 'Mom & Dad' in the nest. Actually both are hens, the white one has sat on the eggs for weeks while the brown and black one spent most of her time in the nest next door copping an attitude everytime someone came near the nests. We do however know that the white hen has been setting on more than just her own eggs so it is very possibly the brown chicken is the mother in reality.

The two hens pictured here are 2 of the 10 Ameraucanas that survived of several raccoon and possum attachs we had this year. The Ameraucanas are the chickens that provide us with the beautiful pastel colored eggs so we hope to build the flock up again.

Our house smells soooo Good

I had a 'bright idea' this spring and planted several herbs I'd never grown before. It's been, still is, a great experience but am today reaping the benifits of my hard labor.

You see, one of the things I use a ton of is 'Italian Seasoning' - you know the dried combination of herbs that you can pay a fortune for.

I planted (among some herbs for other things):
Thyme
Parsley
Oregano
Rosemary
Marjoram
Basel
Sage

This morning I harvested some of each herb and filled my food dehydrator. I'm not sure how long it will take to dry them but if it comes out right I will have enough Italian Seasoning to last several months and still have more growing in the garden.

When you plant your garden do you plant a lot of things for one end product such as I did for the Italian seasoning? (I did the same thing for Salsa)

Problem with Online Store

I honestly have no idea when or how this happened but it's been brought to my attention that there is a problem with our e-commerce online store. This is heart breaking as I spent hours and hours setting up the store and checked everything several times.

The problem is when someone orders via PayPal the payment goes into our account but we have no idea on earth what the 'customer' has paid for. I've tried as best I can to take the store down but if anyone has ordered anything from us over the last 2 months would you please contact me by e-mailing natureinspiredhandcrafts@yahoo.com
or leave a comment here.

I'm afraid for the time being all orders are going to have to be by direct contact either e-mail or telephone. This will be until we can hire someone to set the store up to run the way it was ment to run. But then that's ok by me because I love that one-to-one contact. I've done business selling the baby afghans for almost 2 years this way, via e-mail contact, and have never had a problem.

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