We were out in the garden yesterday, and as I went from row to row examining my plants, I came to my swing-set trellis and discovered that many of my sugar snap and purple podded peas were ready to harvest!

I picked off a pod and broke it open to reveal two nice rows of plump green peas. I had never in my life tasted a fresh pea before yesterday. I popped it in my mouth, and was shocked at how sweet and refreshing it was!

I called out in excitement to the kids, who were playing Robinhood in the woods, “Guys, come here! The peas are ready, you have to try them!

Jada and Ty ran to me equally as excited. Although, once I handed them the pea pods they both held them in hesitation for a moment, unsure of what they would taste like or how to even open them.

“Try them!” I encouraged. “They’re so good.” And I showed them how to split the pods apart.

Each took their turn slowly placing a round pea in their mouth. And I laughed as both faces lit up with delight!

And then it was all over for my peas, for the children devoured every plump pod they could find. But it was such a joy to me, I didn’t mind one bit. That is what the garden is for, after all!

First we tried the purple podded peas, breaking them open to enjoy. Then we moved to the other side of the trellis where the sugar snap peas are growing. These were so crisp and sweet, we happily crunched on the whole, unbroken pods!

The kids contented themselves with picking and munching until there were no more to eat, and their bellies were full.

So much for saving some for seed! Ha! This was our first year growing peas, so I didn’t plant a whole bunch. Now that I know how much we all love them, and how easy they are to grow, I’ll be sure to plant a lot more of both varieties next year.

I wonder, do you grow peas? What’s your favorite type of pea variety to grow?

If you remember, I planted this garlic from store-bought cloves.

Here is my bed ready to be harvested. The leaves have begun to yellow. You don’t want to wait until the leaves have all died back before you harvest, or your garlic cloves will begin to separate, and the head won’t be a nice, tight bulb.

You can brush the dirt aside to see how big the head is on your bulb before you pull it up.When you harvest, be sure to use a tool to help you pry up the head so that you don’t break the stem. You’ll need the stem intact so that you can string the garlic up to dry.

I was very pleased with the size of my finished garlic!! Most were the same size as the bulbs I purchased from the store for my seed.

I ended up harvesting 101 good sized heads, and a handful of smaller bulbs. Pretty darn good if you ask me, considering I started out with only nine heads for seed!

We’ve hung them to dry in our workshop for several weeks. To prepare them, all we did was gently brush the dirt from the bulbs and strung them up in bunches of five. DO NOT wash the bulbs before hanging, as this could encourage mold.

After they’ve dried well enough, I’ll braid them for storage. That’ll be another post

Are you a pro at harvesting garlic? Have any tips to share??

Good Monday morning to ya! Thanks for joining the Barn Hop ladies, Amy from Homestead Revival, Jill from The Prairie Homestead, and myself, for another weekly round-up of linky love.

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend! I, for one, and EXHAUSTED!! We had Elias’ first birthday party yesterday, and I’m still trying to wind down from the craziness!

Some new happenings around the homestead… we had a surprise chick hatch out (more on that to come!), our 20 guinea eggs are beginning to hatch, and I got some fun new plants in the mail which I hope to get in the ground soon (if this rain will ever stop!).

What’s been going on around your place??

We had lots of great posts linked up last week! If you didn’t get a chance to see them, here was one I particularly liked…

I just loved these Hand Towel Aprons that Lisa shared last week. They’re super cute, and look easy enough for a newbie sewer like me to do!

There were so many great posts linked up last week, though. What was your favorite?

As always, a BIG thanks to everyone who participates in our Homestead Barn Hops! It’s so great to see so many motivated people!

Be sure to link up and share what’s been going on around your homestead! If you don’t have a blog, please say hello in the comments section! I always love to hear from you guys!

This is about half-way through the project, but this guy actually buried a sailboat in his backyard and turned it into a sweet root cellar!

Here’s a picture of the finished project…

He buried the cabin, and built a shelter over the back-end of the boat as the entryway.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any pictures of what it looks like inside, but I found this random picture of the inside of a sailboat (though a different model) to give us an idea of the space…

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE this!

For us, it would make a great place to run to when a tornado was on the way. As of right now, we have to go to my dad’s house whenever we get alerted to severe weather conditions heading our direction. We’re grateful for the safety there, but it isn’t exactly convenient at 3am.

It would be so awesome to have a place equipped with beds for the kids to lay down on, and storage space to keep root crops and canned goods cool.

A boat would also do a great job of keeping moisture and insects out, I would think.

This fella got the boat for $500. After doing a little search on Craigslist, I’ve discovered that it wouldn’t be hard to find a similar deal.

Hmmmm… might be a viable option.

What are your thoughts? Is it brilliant, or can you think of a reason this wouldn’t be a good idea?

Can you believe baby Elias is a YEAR old today?!

I know. It’s nuts.

Happy Birthday my precious little pooh bear!!

I just don’t know how an entire year can go by so quickly. (If you missed Elias’ homebirth story, you can find that here!)

Elias has grown into such a little character! He giggles when I take his shoes off, ’cause it tickles his feet. He loves to open and close cabinet doors, rolls the dishwasher tray in and out, and concentrates on how the wheels on the toy car go around. I tend to believe he’s very mechanically inclined (aren’t most boys?!).

He also loves to hear the funny noises he can make. He particularly enjoys putting an empty yogurt container over his face to yell into. But his favorite is a recorder, you know, the flute-like kind. He’ll sit forever and blow into that thing to hear the whistles it makes. And he’ll stop to giggle at himself for a second before he goes back to his business of making music. It’s precious. And yes, I’ve caught it all on video.

He isn’t quite walking yet, nor is he even thinking about taking any steps, but he gets into plenty enough mischief by pulling up to everything so I’m in no hurry to be chasing him through the house.

I think he empties my cabinet three times a day, pulling out all of our plastic containers and cups and banging them together. They scatter all over the kitchen floor, and he entertains himself for quite some time before crawling off to find some other exploring to do.

And he knows when he’s doing something he shouldn’t, too. He’ll look back to see if I’m watching him, and a half-grin will spread across his sweet mouth when he catches my eyes. Then, as the word “No” is heard coming from my mouth, he’ll turn back around as fast as he can and scoot away as if teasing me to catch him, and smiling all the way.

This boy LOVES to eat. But he’s pretty picky. He loves bread, applesauce, oatmeal and bananas mostly. Veggies not so much yet, though he does enjoy mashed potatoes. It’s nice that he’s progressed to finger foods now, and can pick up bits of food to feed himself whenever possible.

He has four teeth so far, two on top, two on the bottom. With which he likes to bite my shoulder. And he laughs when I shout. Rascal.

He really loves to go outside and watch the chickens with me. And he chuckles every time he hears the roosters crow. Now that we have baby chicks inside, he’s constantly crawling over to their brooder to peer in at them.

So many changes in such little time.

Baby Elias, we all love you more dearly every day. We are so grateful to have you in our family, and praise the Father constantly for the gift that you are. It has been nothing but JOY to have you in my arms every day for the last year, and I look forward to all of the love we have to share as you grow into a little man.

Remember me telling you about my broody hen? Well, the chicks hatched five days ago! Yay! There are two solid black ones, a solid yellow one, and four striped ones. I love the striped ones, they remind me of little chipmunks.

There are seven total, but one little black chick has been sickly from the start. I really don’t expect it to make it through the night, though I’ve tried to doctor it the best I can.

After all of the chicks hatched out, I moved the mama hen and chicks to a doghouse out in the common run with the rest of the hens. Then I surrounded the house and a bit of scratching area with small mesh wire to keep the other, curious chickens away from the babies for the first few days.

Having chicks separated from the rest of the hens is also a good idea because they eat different feed. Chicks and the mama hen will eat chick starter. The rest of the flock eats corn and laying mash. It is very dangerous for chicks to eat laying mash as the extra protein can cause major complications in the growing chicks. And so, it’s just easiest to separate them for now.

I had also ordered baby chicks online before we had a hen go broody. We got 12 Rhode Island Reds, and 13 Black Stars, all hens. Plus, McMurray Hatchery also threw in a mystery “exotic” breed. It’ll be fun to see what that one ends up being!

Anyways, our shipment came in yesterday! We got a call from the post office at 6:30am that they were here. Jerry was sweet and went to pick them up for me.

They arrived in a pretty small box. There was a lot of chirping coming from it as Jerry brought it into the house. I held my breath as I opened the lid, fearful of finding dead chicks inside, as I’ve heard tales of happening to others.

What a relief to find 26 healthy, happy and hungry little babies inside!

We put them in the brooder right away. The chirping woke the kids up, and they all rushed to crowd around the box, super excited to find our newest members.

If all goes well, by this time next year we’ll be up to our eyeballs in eggs. Ha!