A year in review...

I certainly didn't blog as much as I would have liked in 2011 (and to be honest, there's still time!), but it was a good year.

In case you hadn't heard, Texas is a smidgen dry.

Dry, and hot.  We had something like 75 days over 100 degrees. 

Now, it normally gets hot in Texas during the summer, but when the large high pressure system moved into Texas and refused to budge, we were stuck with agonizingly long, sunny, hot days with no cool spells to help.  So we waited for rain, and waited, and then turned on the sprinklers for a little bit, and then waited...

And nothing ever came.

But, all was not lost.  The potatoes grew very well.  So well, in fact, that we're looking at selling 2012's bounty at a Farmer's Market, to make a few extra dollars.  The peppers grew pretty well, and the onions did well.  Everything else kind of died off.* While there is not much hope for 2012 as far as reversing this drought, I will plant again and hopefully God will bless us with some much needed rain.  The rain barrels are full :-)

*The tomatoes I grew died off miserably in the heat, and to my surprise, came back to life in September!  We didn't get a lot, but it was neat to see.

One of the major problems with 2011 was "what do we do with all this food!?"  The answer is to preserve it for later, but we did very little preserving.  That should change next year.

So, that's about it for 2011.  I'm sure I'll post a few more times before the end of the year, because 2012 is nearly upon us and I have a lot of work to do.

There was one other little crop that did pretty well in 2011.  It should be "ripe" in a couple weeks or so, and should weigh about 7-8 lbs., and be over 20" long.  :-)