Fresh perspective

Our garden has been on overdrive mode for the last few weeks. The cucumbers, peppers, squash, eggplants, and tomatoes are bountiful. We harvested the potatoes, mountain tea, onions, bush beans, and finished the fennel, dill, strawberries, yellow beans, spring greens and spinach. We still have some kale and collard greens. Planted additional parsley last week and are picking fresh blackberries.

Shucking beans drum edition.

We've started the preservation process of canning sauce from the peppers, onions and tomatoes. Two rounds of sauce canning has been completed and more to come.

The food forest has fresh ripe pears, cornelius cherries, two plums, figs, and a few grapes.

So tasty.

The walnut, chestnuts and hazelnuts are nice and plumpy.

The jujubee dates, persimmons, apples, pomegranates, oranges, lemons, and mandarin are ripening and have survived the heat thanks to Art's rigorous watering routine.

We walked the pomegranate orchard today. It may be our worst year yet. The frost did it's worse and won. And the cicadas are chowing down on the branches too, we found a few apple trees in the orchard damaged limbs.. We'll take the loss and enjoy what yield it does produce.

July had two additional mama hens and added eleven little fluffy chicks to our flock of almost seventy chickens. It was impressive the hens were broody in the scorching heat of the first few weeks of July. Both are super protective and all of our chickens are doing pretty good. The egg count has dropped with the heat to about four a day and the older chicks have been moved into the hoop coop.

I did have the opportunity to play tour guide with a few lovely guests this month and we took two trips to the Albanian Alps. It's a beautiful drive up the mountain and down into a canyon. The road is parallel to the river fed from the mountains springs and it is stunning no matter the time of year. We even stopped to drone a mysterious cave that sits high above the valley with a small fence (for goats, maybe?). I stopped at Art's favorite spring waterfall that spills out of the side of the mountain and we swam at the top of another waterfall. I love showing new people all the beauty of the north.

Seven months into our new roles as hosts for the Orchard Guard Tower here at Homestead Albania, I've grown closer to my 'Why Albania'. We've had the opportunity to share meaningful conversations with the majority of our guests and their first experience with our wonderful spot we are blessed to call home. It has been a direct reflection of how we've felt about this dream come true. Most of our guests are enamored with the amount of plants, trees and vines have on the property and some varieties guests had never seen before or heard of. I feel their wonderstruck awe because I was that girl walking around the garden the first time with Art seven years ago. Their appreciation for everything we done to cultivate a working food forest, garden and vines are why we stay here in Albania.

The birds did not disappoint as they are enjoying the wild pears and the remaining mulberries from our food forest.

And our trail cam action was full of birds, turtles, snakes, hedgehogs, foxes, amd even a badger.

Until next time my friends. Cheers.