Been a while since I updated!

The garden is going well. Little green tomatoes all over the place. I got my first bean harvest yesterday and canned them today. Wax beans. I've got a lot more bush beans (mostly green) getting ready, and my pole beans are starting to form beans. I've got some little tiny watermelons on one of my plants. I should have a squash tomorrow or the next day ready to pick. The cucumber plants are getting ready to start growing cucumbers. The broccoli is all picked. I'm letting the remainder of my peas dry on the vines for seed. The corn stalks are getting pretty good sized. I've got some everbearer strawberries getting close to being ready to pick, but not too many of them. They'll be nice to eat as a snack though. There should be a bigger crop later in the summer that I'll turn into jam.

The weeds are pretty bad, I've got some work to do one of these days here. The rain just makes the weeds grow faster than I can pick them!

If anyone thinks the economy is still "okay" I'll invite them here to look for a good fulltime job. I'm hoping I can have a successful trapping season this winter to help pay for my move to AK. Of course that depends on the fur market, and what I can manage to catch and skin and flesh well. It'll take catching lots of furs to be a good source of income, considering we don't have the marten, wolf and lynx that can be trapped here, that bring in better money than beavers and such. We do have fishers so hopefully I can catch some. But I think beavers and raccoons and foxes may be my main targets, along with muskrat since they're less work. I don't have a lot of traps now and snares are banned in this state, but I'm adding traps to my collection everytime I can. I should have a lot of them by trapping season. Just got a few in the mail yesterday, including a big antique number 4 double longspring. Antique but still working!

It's a real shame that land trapping all ends December 31, by law. What a stupid law, let the wildlife biologists in the Fish and Game Department determine the seasons entirely, many of them could be much, much longer. Seasons on animals like bobcats could of course remain short to protect their numbers, but why end trapping on the common raccoons, foxes, skunks, etc. on December 31? Good thing water trapping for beaver, muskrats and otters continues well past December 31 and I can take some furbearers by shooting (oddly enough, including bobcat, but they're so reclusive I suspect the longer shooting season doesn't cause problems) after December 31 but hunting them is a lot harder than trapping them! A .22 will work fine on raccoon but I don't think I want to hunt coyote with one, might not be a clean kill, but my mauser and mosin would be overkill and could damage the fur too much. I might have to make some decent hunting loads for my nagant revolver, I think it would be perfect with the right loads. My .36 Colt 1851 Navy replica might work too but the bigger .36 lead ball might cause more fur damage than a .30 caliber jacketed bullet, I'm not sure so some experimenting will be in order I guess.

Recently, there was an article in the local paper about the town of Brandon (VT) Select board trying to stop a family from using an RV as a guest home. It's not hurting anyone in any way but these stuck up arrogant control freaks don't like it and want to stop it. These control freaks are precisely what's wrong with this country and this state in particular: people just can't leave each other alone even when no one is being harmed. If a person wants to live in a tent on their own property it should be legal if no one is being hurt. We need a new revolution of sorts, in which we throw these people out of office. I'm not talking violence, but there needs to be a good publicity/ad campaign of some sort against control freaks in office. The members of the Brandon select board should all resign if they want to do what they're trying to do to that family. That's not the job of government! I'm glad there are no building permits, zoning or any of this other nonsense on my property in Alaska. Thank the Lord that we have Alaska with its Unorganized Borough, the last truly free place in this country in many ways!

Big week in the garden!

Well, not too long ago the garden was flooded by some very heavy rains. Luckily, everything dried out and survived, but where I sank almost to my knees in the mud shows! Anyways, I've got blossoms forming on some of my little pepper and tomato plants (they're still growing bigger but they have blossoms already). My peas are growing peas and soon I'll have some to eat. I noticed my first little tiny bean growing yesterday. On the Golden Lumen wax beans (a bush type). My pole beans are vining and climbing. They take longer to grow anyways.
The watermelon plants are going slow but I put some clear plastic down on the soil around the plants to warm things up since the weather has been fairly cool most of the past month. Today's weather has been a miserable, humid heat though. I don't think the peanuts will do anything from the looks of it but it was worth a try and a little fun just the same. The cucumber plants and the carrots are taking off and I even saw some squash flowers starting to form. The potatoes need more soil hilled up on them. I might actually use mulch for the rest of what I put on them to make things easier. The onions are doing great but I'm seeing some flower stalks appearing where I don't want them. The broccoli was attacked by some wildlife (I saw deer footprints a couple weeks ago so I improved the fence and haven't see any lately) but recovered quick and is forming some nice heads. Still, not going to be a great crop and it's starting to get to where it'll be too hot for it. I'm going to do a fall crop of it, I have better luck that way anyways. My everbearing (actually, day neutral type, I wanted Ozark Beauty plants but couldn't find any but found some day neutral types) strawberries are doing nicely but so far no fruit but a couple small berries since I planted them this season. I should get something later in the season though. I'm keeping a close eye on a nice big patch of wild blue berries I found so I can hopefully get some before the critters get all of them. My dill this year has been a total loss, something ate or killed it, and I don't know what. It went missing overnight without a trace. Probably eaten. I'm growing some more but I doubt it'll be ready on time for my cucumbers to use it in my pickles. My corn has been attacked some but so far I've got enough growing for myself. I replanted some seeds for the stalks destroyed by my enemies the chipmunks, it might grow before the frosts hit since it's an early/short season type (yukon chief) but we'll see...