Happy Friday!

Well I'm sitting here waiting for my chicken bones to de-pressure so I figured I'd write something today.  Not as much as yesterday mind you... btw in case you were wondering it came out to about 4 pages on my word prossesor when I converted it over.  Looks back a few words.  I love those spelling mistakes that the "suggestions" have no correction for even when you know you spelled it wrong; but cannot spell it right.

I have watered all of my plants that I put in yesterday and they do seem to be doing rather well except for 1 of the red cabbages.  That poor thing is drooping.  I think I know why too, it got only about 1/2 of the roots available when I had to cut them apart.  So it probably does not have enough roots to make it.

We discovered this morning that the 2 hoses we are using can reach everything but... The pecan tree and the current.  No biggie, we need at least one new hose as one of the 2 like I said has a leaky connector.

I have discovered this morning that we have 1 small frog living near our pond.  I hope there is more but 1 is a start.  My blue berry is looking very promising so far and I hope it produces well this year.  It has buds everywhere, it looks as healthy as the Elderberries do.

Once I get my soup going I get to go out and do some clearing near all of my plantings from yesterday.  Just to ensure no over crowding and plenty of sun for my new plants.  I did notice the Kale seems to have sprouted finally, just when I was ready to give up on them.  I also may have one carrot sprout, we'll see as it grows.

Time to go work on the soup,

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Garden Pics!

Just a few garden pictures today:
  These are half of my beans that are in the garden, well almost half; more like a 1/4 of them.  they are in full bloom and seem to have secondary flower stalks.  Now these are a green bush bean after the pitiful results from the pole beans last year.  I did get some of my Tiger's eye beans planted up front with the hot peppers and if they do well there I might just go ahead and order some for next year and cross my fingers that they'll produce well.
 The Tiger's Eye beans are a bush been that can be eaten as a green snap bean or left to be a dry bean.  It's a pinto "style" bean if you let them dry.  Which if they do well would be great as we do make chili.
 I have also started some long beans growing as they take the hottest part of the summer and do well in it.
 I spent the early part of this morning feeding the animals (kids' job during the summer btw), the kids got home very late last night so I let them sleep in.  I went to check the plants which I took these pics during.  Then I did a little digging in the pond.  I came back into the house, got a cup of tea and started working on the blogs... including the one on the website that I started last year, that I am hoping to keep up to date as well:
  http://wolfwoodsinmo.weebly.com/1/post/2012/06/early-sat-morning.html
 That's today's blog post if you decide to check it out and you can get to the rest of the website while there. This is one of the green cabbages that I grew as you can see it's starting to head finally.  I hope they get big and the red ones to as I really want some cole slaw and I have just to wait on the cabbage for it...
 The girls are going on a overnight trip tonight, well they're leaving this afternoon.  I hope they have fun, it's with their church and they kinda dropped the trip on us so we can't take them we don't have the gas for it.  As we're doing "kid taxi" to the library events so we planned for that only.
 We should have a "farm hand" here after the 27th, it won't be Rayne as yet... still no word as to when he'll be here for sure.  however a young person is coming by to stay and help out in exchange for a place to live and food to eat.  I hope it works out well for us as we really do need some help for when Silver's not feeling well.  It would just make most of this work easier sometimes with extra hands. This is that volunteer squash we have growing and as you can see it's in full flower, they are still just male flowers; but hey... considering how early they are we might get lucky.  especially since the Dark Star that I planted have started to show some flower buds, which means they will be flowering soon as well.  I should be able to get a better comparison on them soon.
 The lemon squashes that I planted only one is still sprouted, and it's growing very slowly; so I am not sure it's going to do very well at all.  The luffa gourds are doing very well, or seem to be doing well.  They are still growing, I am guessing they are a slow growing gourd.  So we will see as they get bigger (crosses fingers).  My remaining bushel gourd is growing as well, and I hope it continues as last time I tried growing one it grew a bit then gave up.
 I am thinking of harvesting some Lamb's quarter's tomorrow morning for a nice breakfast, with some squash flowers if we have more tomorrow.  An onion or two, and some fresh herbs.  Maybe with some fresh flat bread, I swear I prefer it over regular bread now.  It's wonderful to use as a plate when the item you are eating goes well with bread, then the juices get absorbed into the bread an gives it such a lovely flavor.  I wonder if that is what I've read before called "trencher" bread (pardon if I messed up the spelling), I've read about it in books before and I wonder if it's a flat bread.  Maybe I'll find out one day. This one made me smile this morning.  This is one of the two flower heads on the one Elderberry that is blooming.  As you can see if you look closely the flowers are now opening.  I am going to keep a good eye on this as I am not sure how long after they produce ripe fruit.  I am still trying to figure out if I'm going to make them into jam or just save them for tea making this winter for colds. As it helped out Silver immensely I am seriously thinking of going the tea route, thing is though as we don't have a dryer yet I'll have to just freeze them and use frozen berries to make tea with.
 We have a newer project before the dryer, as I still need the money to build our house we are defiantly just considering putting on a addition for this winter to give us more space and have "rooms" for the two "farm hands" provided they both get here of course.  We need the space, so the kitchen can be just a kitchen.  I want a separate room for our TV and some book shelves for our books to go on.
 ...and if we're lucky we'll have regular internet by winter, though I am hoping to have projects to work on all winter to keep us busy.  I am determined to try to get some rugs done this winter, so next time we head to the free store I am picking up jeans to make the strips for rug braiding.  I hope I'm good at it as it seems I have an odd problem with crocheting and knitting, I do it too tight.  I was told by one woman who taught me that she had NEVER seem someone who made the stitches so tight that normally people have to learn to make them tight.
 Well that's it for now,
 Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Hi there everyone.. it is such a lovely morning today!  Despite the chilly temps that is, take a look at what I picked up for lunch today:

Course, not my lettuce plats look a little weak now; but we will enjoy it!  It's just going to be the lettuce, those couple of early onions, and a tomato that we bought (ugh) that is in the fridge, a lite vinaigrette and lunch will be served.  Maybe we'll add some chicken.. but I doubt it.

I wound up taking a lovely walk down to the mail box this morning, as I forgot to hand my son our outgoing mail.  Stormy the cat, and his grandson Holstien followed me down and we had some lovely opportunities for pictures with the light.

This is a pretty "wild" rose that is across the street from us, the "wild" roses have all been blooming for over a week now here.  What I don't "get" is that when we first moved here only the one in the old foundation was white, now all the ones up and down the road are; they use to be pink.

Here is a picture from the beginning of our road toward us:

We live down that "hill" and up the next one (which you can't see from this picture) it's roughly a 1/2 mile walk one way.  So it's a nice little bit of exercise.

Now I mentioned how we are going to have an abundance of black berries this year?  Here is a close view of just a couple plants:

Look at the amount of flowers on those canes!  We are going to have a massive crop of them this year!  I can't wait till they are full of ripe berries, and I can make more jam.. and have a few berry desserts.  This picture has come from our "clearing"  the canes moved in last year and this year we will reap the rewards of letting them go wild.  Next year they will probably be going so we can put in a few big garden beds.

The puppies the girls have been caring for are leaving this week, supposedly today.  Not a bad thing to me, as in the last couple weeks they girls have not wanted to work with them.  It has been a fight to even get them to feed the two girls.  I hope they have learned that animal raising is not as easy as they thought.

Now one more picture:

I am still amazed by how well these cabbages are doing!  they are getting so big and this recent batch of cold weather has made them grow a little faster.  So I hope they finish in time for my planned cucumber planting next month.

Well as my laundry is almost done I need to head back out!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Volunteers Line Up!

So here I am after removing a 5 gallon bucket of greens from the garden to the chicken salad bar, I noticed while out there "weeding" that I had a couple more volunteers than I thought I had.  So here they all are:

Our first volunteer is a squash of unknown variety, I know it's a squash as I planted squash here last year... but, considering I have moved the earth around here and I don't quite recall what got planted where in that bed last year.  It shall remain "nameless" till I see the fruit on it.  I am hoping for a pumpkin, maybe Lady Godiva.

Next:

Here is another unknown squash, seems some of the seeds I planted last year that did not germinate decided they liked the ground better this year.

Yes, that's another squash... I hope at least one of these is a summer squash and at least one is a pumpkin.  I don't really care what they are though if they grow well and produce copious amounts of veggies for me.

Here is a surprise I got that I believe I have mentioned:

This is the "pot" that I get my lemon cucumbers in last year.. so what sprouted when I tried to grow chives...?  Cucumbers, they seem to be doing alright even with early morning temps being down to the high forties sometimes.  ...and no they are not being moved.

Now I showed this picture I believe yesterday:

My potato that is in the spot we grew them last year that later became our compost pile.  Now here is the one I haven't shown yet:

Here is the other potato volunteer, it's growing out of my current compost pile.  Also yes, you see a lot of paper in there, I recently read about the entirety of the types of paper you can use if you are willing to let your compost "mature" a little longer.  So, I am giving it a try.  The potato likes it.

Now I have a few pictures of that I had to free from crowding due to the "weeds" (I hate that term as most of mine were Lambs Quarters).  First the lettuce:

I don't know how they wound up only sprouting in clumps, but they did.  I harvested some leaves this morning and this is how they looked after it.  We will be having a nice little salad for lunch today.

Here are a few cabbages I planted as just seed, and some of the "spillover" onions from the sets I bought and didn't realize there was more than would fit in the initial spot.

..and last but not least Silver's Sprouts sitting in my pea bed.  This is where I am going to have the squashes I plant this year.  Also we have 4 sprouts, though I had planted 6.  The 4 legged lawn mowers ate 2 of them along with all my broccoli.

Well that's all the update I have right now, I am going to try to double this post on wordpress in a bit.  We had a lovely LambsQuarter wilted salad with a berry/lilac dressing.  I'm thinking of making bread dough when I get my dishes done and the remained of my laundry

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be....

1st Big Planting Day!

Well we have had a nice day today getting a nice bit of plantings done, also we are dealing with a minor animal issue. Now we had a couple of Polish crested roosters that we left to free range once we discovered they were roosters as, one... they are scrawny. Also they are very cute looking, now just recently we received two more roosters from a woman who needed to get rid of them. So we set them lose with the other two.

Well that worked for a bit, but this morning we discovered a small problem. They are eating our seed potatoes, well the ones we had already planted anyway. We have decided they need to be dinner guests. We have managed at this point to catch the two newer ones, the Polishes seem to be a tad harder to locate. Yes I said locate, we had an issue catching them in day light hours so we waited for “roosting time”. WE have not been able to find yet where the Polishes are sleeping tonight.

OK, not onto my plantings for today; we planted the 2^nd half of our potato plot (11lbs worth). I have planted 6 yard stick long rows of yellow onions and 1 of red. Planted some Swiss chard Fordhook Giant. Hot Peppers; two types... Lemon Drop, Craig's Giant (Jalapeno) in two peat pots each. 12 peat pots each of Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge, & Amish Paste; tomatoes. I also planted 3 peat pots with Purple Beauty sweet pepper. Then plant wise I put in four Pacman broccoli, and 6 of my cabbage plants that I started myself.

I picked up yesterday some fish emulsion and gave each transplant a small feeding after planting, I am hoping it will help them; I've never used it before. My soil this year is wonderful compared to last year. The “bed” I have my cabbages, etc... have the remains of last year's soil, overwintered straw blanket, my finished compost, and chicken manure from our coop. Now that chicken manure of course has some straw in it. I was able to gently push the extra onion sets straight down in the soil, that makes me a very happy camper.

Our potato bed is in a new spot this year and is much larger, the plan is; because the straw did a nice job as a “late compost pile after potatoes. We had noticed when we dug out the “finished” compost that the ground under the “pile” was very pretty looking that it might be a nice way to “clear” land for future garden spaces. We will see if this idea works or not.

I am for the first time going to be growing eggplants, and I hope they grow good. I have three very small started plants and I hope they grow bigger before transplant time. I picked a drought resistant variety, I'll list the name later as I have to look it up. The plan for the tomatoes this year is to only grow them in pots in different locations. Three plants per “pot”, and we are going to use straw then a mixed soil over that with some oyster shell mixed into as the soil for them. After the plants are spent I'll remove the plants and move the soil into the garden beds. Then the following year(s) we will just redo the pots.

Well that's it for right about now, the only other thing on the “near” horizion for me is that we have a very good possibility of getting our fruit trees and berry plants this year if every thing goes the way we are planning.

Happy Planting Folks!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...