Half of my back yard used to be wild blueberries. We’ve had older people tell us about going blueberry picking there when they were younger. I’ve been picking blueberries there since we’ve moved in, but each year it seems to get worse. The patch, which I would assume used to be half an acre, is now nothing more than a few square feet. This year, I was lucky to pick a small handful of berries. We had a very late, heavy frost in June, that may have killed a lot of the blossoms and we’ve had very little rain this year.

The summer we bought the land, we mentioned about cutting them down and burning them. And we’ve mentioned it every summer thereafter, for the last 8 years. This year, as you may see in a previous post, I wanted the bushes near the chicken coop cut down so I could go in and clean out the garbage the previous owners threw there, concerned about my birds getting injured during freeranging. That prompted my husband to basically start whacking everything. He cleared out a lot by the coop. Then he went to the woods near the old Apple tree. He even has his little backhoe down there to try and remove the roots and stumps of the alders. Which brought him to decide it was finally time to do the blueberries. Initially we thought we’d just do half of it, then we’d still have some for next year. So half of it is done, and it looks amazing!

I had him cut around the few trees that were there. Here is a little oak and a little maple that I’m hoping will now grow. We still may cut the other half of the patch out, as we really don’t think we’ll get much out of it anyway. We’ll see how it goes. There probably won’t be any burning, as it’s been very dry this year. Here’s the other half of the patch, so you can see some of what had to be cut.

Its that time of year again. Fall. Don’t get me wrong, I love fall, but those beautiful colors don’t last long. And then it’s winter. And I hate winter.

The top of the coop needs to be closed, and the bird netting on top of the run needs to come off. I made the mistake of leaving it on last year and the snow almost pulled my whole run down. Before I do this, I’ve got to take the roof shingles off the nest box. The younger birds are standing on it and I’m concerned they’re just going to fly over the top. I’ll replace it with rubber, hopefully that will make it lighter to lift as well.

There’s garbage in the yard that needs to be burned. The blueberries, blackberries and quince all need to be cut. And trees need trimming. Unfortunately the bush saw is broken. Now what do I do?

The blueberries haven’t been cut or burned off in years, and we’re not getting much yield from them any more. Cutting them down, we won’t get many next year either, but the following year should be better. So much to do, and with daylight lessening in the evenings, not much time to do it.

I’ll leave the rabbit and chicken waterers out until it gets colder, then the rabbits water bottles will need to be replaced with dishes and the chickens nipple waterer will need to be replaced with a regular one.

On my he bright side, I’m getting new cages for some of the rabbits. I’m finding the large 24x30 cage trays are difficult to handle when full of water (from a leaky bottle) and especially when frozen, so I’ve got 24x24’s coming to make it a little easier.

Its that time of year again when the land provides! My garden is doing poorly this year. I may get some tomatoes in a few weeks, maybe one pumpkin of I'm lucky. The cucumbers haven't even started to crawl yet. The carrots aren't doing too badly and I've got plenty of dill seed. I was hoping for some quince this year but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. Next spring I will have to cut down the bush and see if that helps.

Something that I do have is wild blueberries and blackberries! Out behind the rabbit building is an abudance of blueberries and all along the edges of our property are blackberries. It's been a very dry year so they're not as many as last year, but there's always enough to for me and a few friends! It's great that I don't have to tend them and I get a great harvest. This fall we may now off half the blueberries to see if that helps with production the following year but we haven't done it since we moved here.