Blush Family Farm

Ours are about to bloom! Exerpt from article here:

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Okay, so in a previous post I talked about growing Calendula. This post I’m going to talk about harvesting and drying it. The next post I’ll do on the topic will be about making a skin-healing salve from the dried petals, olive oil and beeswax.

When to harvest:

Start harvesting your Calendula as soon as the first flush of flowers is in full bloom. Don’t try to “save” the flowers. The more you harvest, the more flowers each plant will put out. After the first cutting, you can probably return to harvest more every 3 days or so.

The ideal time to harvest is in the morning, before it gets warm, but after the dew dries. You want them all fresh and perky and at their peak. This is traditional wisdom. However, I believe it’s better to harvest when you can than not at all, so I harvest at all times of day.

A side note regarding seeds:

If you don’t harvest the heads, they die back on their own, and then they’ll go to seed fast. If you don’t like the idea of Calendula volunteering all over your yard the following year, you’ll want to collect all the heads before they die back. However, you may also want to monitor them carefully and collect ripe seed for planting the next year (you want to collect the seed when it’s brown, not green). And if you want to keep track of such things, if you make a point of saving seed only from the plants with the best blooms, your favorite colors, etc., over generations you can breed your own line of Calendula.

4 days ago

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Photoshoot with Freddie the Peacock.

Lately the birds all mingle inbetween the barn/coops and the garden in the evenings. Last night Freddie was working it for the camera. He also went in to snoop on the young chicks in the brooder coop, so I snapped him up close in there (he then flew into the closed door twice, not walking out the small open one LOL

4 days ago

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Our new “bean room”. Soon it will have green walls. And momma Cat will have a special place to mediate in hearing distance of baby when she wakes. Ahhh!

Oh, and yummy beans and peas for our family and friends!

4 days ago

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The pullets we incubated from the Frost’s Easter Eggers. And a white meat hen pullet we bought as soon as the others hatched. Getting biig!

5 days ago

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Central Texas gardeners! Check your tomato plants! Yesterday I pulled off 2 dozen caterpillars in the AM then another dozen in the PM! Only found one left today, but look at how much they were eating!!!! Came out of no where!!! Check your plants every day! Our chicks and pullets sure loved this treat! Thanks roomie, Stephen, for helping remove all these little buggers!

5 days ago

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Theme: Cavalcade

Gathering around for our evening chirpchat at the waterhole.

4 days ago

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Big Momma decided to stop sleeping with her chickadees and started roosting with the big birds again. Now they get to hang with the pullets like the big little birds they are :D

Oldest birds are New Hampshire Reds, second oldest are Easter Eggers, and the little ones were hatched by Big Momma here on the property. Not sure what breeds they are yet - could be one of two roosters, looks like Checkers was the daddy for most..

4 days ago

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Chickadee riding on Big Momma’s back. Too cute. There were two on her at one point, but I missed the shot :(

Helloooooo, birdies!

Goofing around with Mommy!

5 days ago

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