Life and Garden Update

So sorry for not posting in a while.  Life is hectic, strawberry is still getting out of her pen so she now has a date with the freezer.  Won't be till close to Thanksgiving but still.  The "last straw" is when she got all the way to the front of our property and to get her back Silver made a chain leash to go behind her front legs so we could at worst drag her back.  Well.. she dragged him.  Not good for a 56 year old with RA and diabetes. *sigh*   Also doctors put Silver on insulin, odd thing about that.  Last few mornings with his shot the night before his blood sugar has run high.  Last night he forgot to take his shot and is was much lower, go figure.   Sadly however, his toe is no better and might  actually be a lot worse.  So bad it might have to be amputated.  We're waiting on the VA  to contact the podiatrist so he can go back to seeing him.  The VA drives me nuts sometimes.

Another downside, for those of you who know.  While I am trying to get us "food sustainable" here , right now we are not.  Also because of living on disability we get Food Stamps.  We just went up for re certification, was told a worker would call for an interview here back on Friday at 9am my time.  Ok, no problem.  ..yeah, I sat in the house all day waiting for that call.  At about 10 am I tried to "talk to a person" via their various phone numbers.  Yeah, nope sorry.  Seems you can't talk to a person, but I did wind up leaving 2 messages on their  "person call worker" interview option.   So it's possible we'll lose our food money.  Plus side is it'll be when our garden is producing and we have eggs so I'm not terribly concerned.  However it irks me.

As for the garden...

I have PICS!

This is my acorn squash, we are hoping to have a lot of these for this winter, I have put some marigold seeds in the center to both attract pollinators and to make the insects that don't like them to run away.  Funny thing is I planted these about the same time as my zucchini and look...

Definite difference in size there.  The zucchini  is smaller right now.  Though I know it will catch up eventually.  We're planning on drying over have of what we produce of these for animal feed this winter.

Here is one of my bunches of snow peas (I got my first pod off them this morning!), they are loaded with flowers though not many pods just yet.  I'm hoping they finish before the Cherokee purples and the lemon cucumbers get too big or the peas will be coming out.

Speaking of the tomatoes...

If you can see, just past that pea is one of my tomatoes.  They are starting to flower already!  We're definitely waiting on these to produce fruit.

This is one of the bell peppers, it's also looking like it'll flower soon even though it's not very tall yet.  I am debating pinching the first flowers off to let it grow more.

My pole beans have sprouted, we're hoping for a lot from these for chili making this winter.  Also this is one of two varieties of dry bean we are growing.  I planted tiger's eye as well.  They grow as a bush however and can also be eaten as a green bean.  I don't have pics of those as they only just started coming up.

Here are the cucumbers I planted for pickling.  If we have an over abundance of the lemons don't do well we'll be eating these too.  They were planted next too the pole beans.  I am thinking of growing some kale for the rabbits and the chickens for winter on the other side of these.

Now, this "mess" is my spinach patch.  It's really taking off after the rains we got this weekend.  Seems to be very happy.

These, would be the sunchokes.  They seem to be a prolific as I have heard and seem to be growing just fine.  That is a two foot stake in the foreground, so you have some prospective.  I have discovered that I have a few surprises in my sunchoke bed however.

Apparently, there were some tomato seeds in the chicken manure I added to this bed.  I staked two of the tomatoes this morning.  However, it seems there are five plants growing in my sunchoke bed and they seem very happy.  So I will let them grow where they are.  Also I have no earthly idea what kind they are as I  grew three different kinds last year.  So I will wait and see what they produce, here's to hoping they are edible at least.

I thought I'd share this.  It's one of the wild roses from around here.  Seems all the blooms came out white on the roses this year.  It's wonderful to walk past this and take a deep breath in.  I do wish I knew why they all are white though.  Last year they were all pink, so maybe it's yearly change?

Oh one of the rabbit moms had her littler and it seems she had between 6-8 babies, they have a date with the freezer in 2 months.  (yes i eat my rabbits and if one bit you they wouldn't be cute anymore)

Well I need to head back out and weed some more, happy gardening!

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

History Lesson

So I imagine some people wonder how a Chicago raised city girl wound up out here in the Missouri wood. Now first my biggest reason for wanting to live here like I do is making sure my family has a good source of food, and that we get regular meals. This is because while I grew up in a middle class family (dad was a welder and mom went back to school to be a social worker). I married not long after high school to the biggest mistake in my life. The ten years I was with my husband we lived homeless and with little food for nine. This piece of work thought it was better to play things like video games, D&D and Magic: The Gathering and spend money on supplies for it rather than feed his family of five.

We had months where we'd be living on a pound of meat with about two cups of dry rice for dinners for all five of us. We were lucky we had WIC so we had cereal and peanut butter for the other meals for the kids. I generally wound up eating only once a day.

I eventually tossed my husband out (for something much worse but that's not for telling now), and even though I lost the home my father bought me (due to my husband not paying the bills while I worked 2 jobs), I did get a stable home and job. Then I met Silver and we eventually moved here to live our dreams of being in the country and having food we know where it came from and is healthier to eat.

As for my desire to live in the country itself, I was never one who liked to be around people much. I get panicky around crowds, including going to town to buy food when we need it; or when we pay the bills. So living out here where I can be away from a large group of people and just be me I am happy. WE manage, even if we don't get everything we want done here in a month. Biggest thing to me though is. We get the bills paid, we get the crops planted. We slowly add to our meat animals, and get all the buildings we want built. That so far is happening so I am happy.

Watching a commercial this morning while doing dishes made me think about posting this and to point out a few things. A lot of people think that there are countless people in other countries who have poor nutrition or not much food. That the people “over there” have to decide on if they pay their bills for their home or buy food for their family. Let me tell you, it's a hard choice to make. When you are sitting there trying to make you money stretch to feed yourself and pay everything so you still have a home and power and put food in your kids' mouths you wind up hurting yourself sometimes.

I still have a hard time eating three meals a day and most often than not I don't even think about a midday meal, because if I eat breakfast I tend to not be hungry until evening. It's leftover from only eating once a day and me learning what it feels like to honestly be hungry.

So now you know why I live out here in the woods and spend my time growing my own food and trying (desperately trying) to teach my girls that it's a good thing to do.

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

Happy Sunday Morning!

Thought I'd write up a little update though I'm still temporarily camera-less (my girls are away for the weekend). We finished filling 2 more of the tractor tires as well as one of the tubs yesterday, and Friday combined, I had gotten a Rhubarb plant from the MFA for $.75 and it went in the tub for now. We figure if it grows exponentially it'll wind up in a tire.

This morning I planted some red onions, bushel gourds, and cantaloupes. Tomorrow I should have my pole beans in and my cucumbers as well. I also need to do more of my green bush beans. Not to mention getting in my herb seeds. One of the Zucchini seeds has sprouted so if nothing else comes up by this Friday I'll replant the rest. I have about seven acorn squash coming up as well.

I noticed something yesterday in my sun choke bed. We have a volunteer tomato plant. Since I have no clue what kind it is I am leaving it where it is, as it's on the edge of the bed anyway so it should be safe. I'll just have to figure out how I'm going to stake it up. My peas are starting to flower, the spinach is doing well and I've been getting a little of it daily. (waiting for it to really take off) The eggplant looks to have a flower forming, and the bucket tomato is flowering.

My two Does are looking fatter daily (I wish I knew exactly when they got pregnant), I am hoping to have two sets of twins but as long as they are healthy and grow well I don't really care. Still need a boyfriend for Strawberry, also a better cage for her too, but we'll get there. We should have ducks any day now, as they have hatched and it's a matter of when they get here.

I spent half of last evening making banana bread on our new (to us) gas stove. Our neighbors gave us a small propane stove. Makes me happy I can stop using the electric one. I have over a case of bananas in my freezer that I'm going to be making into more quick bread. One of those fun freebies we received.

We've been eating lambs' quarters now that it's growing everywhere. Silver gets a small amount in the morning with his breakfast wilted and dressed with a vinaigrette. Then we have some with our evening salad. The girls have about twenty days left of school, then when they are out we will move our big meal to midday-ish. Then have a snack like meal in the evenings. I like summer times as we eat better especially once the garden is doing well. I have hopes for over abundance. The acorn squashes no matter how many we get will be saved for winter eating..

Hope you're all having a fun weekend.

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

Sunday Morning Chit Chat

Good Sunday morning (for those of you in my neck of the woods). We've had a fun weekend so far, my girls were both gone yesterday morning. One went turkey hunting (didn't see anything of course), her first time hunting too. The younger one was on a choir competition trip for school after which they went to 6 Flags. We have moved my birthday present (3 tractor tires) out to the garden and have started filling them with soil.

Friday I think it was I planted some bush green beans, in another week I'll plant more. I am planning on putting cantaloupe's into one of the large tires. The tomato bucket Silver set up, the tomato is starting to curl up and you can tell it's growing. Still have lots of hope for that plant. WE were suppose to have a week of rain and it didn't happen most of the rain had missed us so I had to water my fruit trees for the first time since planting them.

We set up a sprinkler we bought a month ago this morning. We had bought two of them but we discovered one of them didn't work. So right now as I write this I have a sprinkler watering my garden. I do know that technically watering passively near the base of the plants is suppose to be better, however Nature waters the Earth from the sky so I personally feel as long as I make sure I water early in the morning (like before 10 am) and the sun light isn't strong the plants should be just fine with overhead watering.

We have almost used up the truck load of top soil and all the composted sawdust we have on hand. I am hoping we can go tomorrow and get more sawdust, however we are suppose to help out a neighbor get his log splitter back from the mechanic so I don't know if we'll have the gas to do both before Friday. Helping the neighbor when we promised too is more important in my mind anyway.

I should be starting to pull lettuce out of my garden today as well as some spinach, The spinach isn't doing as well as I thought it would but it might just be the amount of water it has had so we'll see. I'm waiting on my transplanted tomatoes to put on some new growth, I am glad they haven't wilted as they were very leggy. My peppers seem to be happy even though we had some cold nights. Thankfully none of the nights was below or at freezing, however we did brush near those temperatures.

Getting some greens out of the garden now is going to be a good thing as Silver had his yearly check up and the Doctor at the VA wants to put his on insulin because he's not keeping his blood sugar down. Well since we had to tighten our belts when it comes to buying food lately we've haven't been eating good for a diabetic of late so food from the garden means it'll lower the blood sugar amounts. I have discovered watching his testing that is the heavy carbs are cut out (rice,pasta,potatoes) and only have nice healthy veggies (mostly greens) and a nice piece of protein his blood sugars run almost normal. I just have to be diligent with it and make sure he doesn't cheat any.

Still waiting on our goats to give birth, and since I'm not sure when Oreo got them pregnant I am going to be surprised. I have ducklings coming soon and in a couple weeks Strawberry will have a new pen. We still need to find her a boy friend though. Why is it people always are selling what you need when you can't afford it?

Well hope everyone has a good Sunday.

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

Fruit Trees Update

So I thought I'd show how my new fruit trees are doing as I took a picture of each of them when we were out yesterday. Here is the funny part my delicious was the slowest to get started leafing out but look at it now.

Conversely the peach tree the first one to get leaves is going slow to get them full size. Maybe they go slower?

This is doing good to this is the Cortland apple, I think it'll give my delicious a run for it's money on speed of growth.

The Mac seems to be doing better, however the buds on the top that had the “rust” on them don't seems to have produced any real leaves at all.

I hope they keep doing well, and that the peach tree gets a move on with it's growing. I am pleased so far with these trees from Stark Bros, I do believe I will order from them again in the future. Granted, these guys still have a lot of growing to do.

On another note the grape we've had (now in the third year), is doing amazingly this year. It has loads of leaves and is growing like the proverbial weed. I think it's happy.

So I'm 39 today, ugh another year and I hit 4 decades. Funny how it took me to be in my 30's to decide living here this way was a good idea. I am happy though living here far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Funny how now when we go to town I have troubles dealing with all the people and the funny thing is I grew up in the Chicago area.

Our across the street neighbors are getting their power pole today and seems our power will be off for a short time while they do it. Guess what though our neighbor's aren't here to see it, it's funny as they've been waiting two weeks for it to be put in so it's funny.

Have a good day and be safe.

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

Looks like a short work week

Seems we're going to have rain all week starting tomorrow, which means no mixing dirt for plants as it's to hard to do when the dirt is mud.  So we've been working our butts off this morning trying to get as much as we can done, thankfully it has been cool out today.

Hey Dogwood season is in full bloom:

I was worried she wouldn't bloom this year as she didn't last year, but see.  She's putting a good show on this year for us.

So today's work started with a tomato in a bucket, which if you haven't heard of them is you grow a tomato in the bottom of a 5 gallon pail hanging from something so the air can flow around it good and no need to stake.

We picked up a "patio" cherry tomato yesterday:

It's very dense in growth and has some flowers on it already, I am hoping it'll be good for snacking tomatoes for Silver and the girls so I can can the garden ones.  So for starters you need a 5 gallon bucket with lid, you flip it over and cut a hole in the bottom:

So you do need to know that if you are doing a started plant that is firmly rooted (like in a peat pot) you make the hole smaller than the diameter of the whole pot.  Just big enough to fit the plant threw.

You do need to be careful when feeding the plant threw the hole to make sure you don't yank too hard on it.  Oh, we are doing this across two sawhorses so we can stand the bucket up for filling without hurting the plant in the process.

The soil you fill the bucket with should be fairly "airy" so it won't turn into a rock over the growing season.  Which would not be good for the plant:

This soil is half topsoil and half sawdust which will also retain water in dry spells here.  Now once Silver filled the bucket past the bottom of the peat pot I dug out some egg shells to crush in and he got some wood ash and sprinkled it over it.

So after that we filled it the rest of the way (eggshells are for calcium to prevent blossom end rot) to the very brim so that if turned over onto it's lid (don't for get to put the lid on) it's not shifted any.  Now if you have a plant that was in a say "six pack" or doing it from seed you'll need to leave it inverted until it is rooted well enough it won't fall out when you turn it over again.  We left our's inverted while we figured out how (as in with what) we were going to hang it.

We're hanging it from the outdoor kitchen and we have no eye bolts nor do we have any strong hanging brackets right now.  However, we do have a bunch of nylon belts with the double metal pieces that is the buckle.  Effectively strapping so we strapped it to one of the 2X4's on the outdoor kitchen.

That location should get enough sunlight for it to grow well.  It is now done aside from it growing, make sure the lid is no longer attached as that is how you water the plant.   I am thinking of sprinkling moss rose seeds over the top of the bucket as they do trail and it should be pretty as well.

..hmm this is turning out to be a long post.  But oh well...

My garden is moving along nicely.  I had a Oh my Gods moment over the weekend as my tomato seedlings started drooping and were getting burnt by their light.  So they went out into their bed.

They did get a bit of a hair cut though as they had gotten leggy and I needed to bury most of the stems, good for more roots so they should grow very well.  though I do see after planting (only half a bed full) why I'd want 25 for my size family.  ..and here I only had twelve to start with.  The bell peppers went into the ground too because for some reason they were bending over, I never experienced that in peppers before so i rushed them out too.


I do wish they were bigger before planting them but It happens.

When we got the cherry tomato I picked up a couple more plants that I wanted as well, first up is an egg plant.  I love eating these but I don't know enough to grow it from seed as yet nor grow more than one plant in case it doesn't do well.  It is a Black Beauty:

This was the largest and best looking plant they had and it had some bad leaves on it that I am hoping will be ok as it grows.  We also picked up a mammoth jalapeno in the hopes we can have stuffed deep fried peppers again.  However last time I grew these they were hotter than normal jalapenos.  It is planted FAR from my bell peppers so no cross pollination in my herb garden.

I felt since we had a red colored tub it'd be perfect for a hot pepper to be planted in.  The last plant we picked up is an herb that I swear I will keep in a pot in the house this winter so I don't need to buy a fourth one.  A new Rosemary plant:

I had heard it was possible to grow them outside and they'd survive winter's here, yeah it didn't last... TWICE.  So we bought another one and it's staying potted and when we get a green house it'll prob spend the winter in there.  So aside from us trying to get the rest of the beds done up and the last two planting tires filled the hard garden work is almost done.  Then we'll move onto the "add to the soil as it grows" time.  Then the "stuff" we'll pile onto the beds this fall.  I have bean plantings in my future and cantaloupe once my last two tires are done.  If my squashes don't come up by May first I will replant them.  I was trying to see how early I could honestly plant since average last frost here is April 15th.

As for that tomato bucket please note the buckets are HEAVY with all that soil in them so be careful hanging them when you do.  I think I pulled some odd muscles when I lifted it, man did that hurt!  We got it in place though and it's not budging until late fall.  I do know that Silver had a couple of those before I moved in with him in NY, they sat on his porch all summer long and produced so many that no one could finish them all and they were throwing some out.  I'm hoping it does as just a good of a job.

How you aren't in bad storms or flooding right now.

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

Strawberry Takes a Walk

So we've had an interesting day today so far. On such a nice gentle rain (honest slow easy rain) we decided to sleep in after I go the kids moving and most of the animals fed. I learned feeding the rabbits and goats work better after the sun rises they eat better. Upon waking as I get ready to make Silver some instant coffee (we ran out of ground), I hear our oldest dog Midnight doing his playful/you shouldn't be out bark. He is so helpful when one of the other animals gets lose he has a special bark for it. I head out to see what/who got lose, so I head back as all three goats are in their pen.

As I get close to the chicken yard (btw it's still raining at this point), and see Blu our heeler/lab mix standing in the rabbitry looking miserable. Of course she had tore the side (tarp) of the rabbitry down. Blu does love chasing chickens and had tried to get to them. I get to here and discover how she was lose. She had snapped her choke chain. I did a cursory look over the rabbitry to make sure nothing else was broken on it as Strawberry has her bedroom on one side of it. It looked ok, so I put Blu back and went and made breakfast.

So about an hour or two later I hear Midnight again. I go out and this time it was Strawberry out, we chased her back into her yard (took 15 mins) and we thought we found the problem. We thought she used the heavy tire we placed on her last escape to climb out.

So we go back in the house and ten to fifteen minutes later Midnight starts again, Strawberry made it out of her yard again. I was alone this time and after setting her door as a “chute” I slowly and quietly walked up to her grabbed her tail and an ear. Did you know while pigs like their ears scratched they don't like them grabbed? So I let go of her ear and kept a hold of her tail and she ignored that. Yeah I'm thinking so I make sure I can't lose my grip and I start trying to get her back to her pen. If she went a way I didn't want I held her still saying no. That worked, and after I stood around trying to figure out how she got out. No idea, how she got out though and I went back inside.

Ten minutes later she does it again, I repeat the process to get her back and then as I am standing next to her pen trying to figure out how she got out. She strolls into her bedroom and I hear a weird noise. So I walk in and see her pushing at the bottom of the wall to get out. Yeah I told her no and held it in place trying to figure out what to do next when Silver made it out asking me if I found the spot yet. Looks like Blu's fun this morning damaged more wall than I had thought. We got that fixed so she can't get out (she tried and failed) and now I can breathe easy until next time.

She's a good girl, but damn she's almost too smart for her own good I swear. Enjoy your day!

BE Well BE Safe and Blessed Be...

Homestead Happenings

Yesterday right before getting a little bit of rain we planted 8 potatoes in those tires I lined up in between my fruit trees. (yes 8 even though I have 7 tires) They are Yukon Gold's as I'm hoping for some nice potatoes out of them. It's also a trial on what I see/have seen from some other homesteaders using old tires to grow potatoes. Especially after any time I did a potato “bed” my chickens would get loose and wind up digging through the patch and eating them. Guess what chickens love potatoes.

My peas are starting to grow faster, and I am hoping for a good amount of peas off of them. My spinach is starting to set true leaves and the onions are coming up now as well. I am hopeful that I will be thinning the lettuce in a week. I had to rebuy my Dark Star zucchini as I could not find the seed packet, thankfully a lot of local stores carry Seeds of Change and they had them in the display. For the most part I do buy my seeds from Baker Creek but this one variety I happen to really like and Baker Creek doesn't carry it.

Yesterday had some interesting happenings on Craigslist here, I'm not sure if it happened near you or not. However, due to it being April 1^st some idiots decided to post some fake free items with other people's phone numbers. I was caught by one as if it had been real it would have benefited us a lot here. I do hope however the person didn't get many calls. I don't understand why people would do something so asinine though.

Yesterday we went and got another truck bed load of composted wood from the lumber mill (free is good in this case). We did mix in some of the sawdust with it to help keep it a bit more loosened. It will soon become part of new beds that will grow as time goes on.

...and speaking of that “style” of gardening I did find the video of Ruth Stout's garden on youtube. I had forgotten that someone did a video on here in the 1970's. I was very excited to see it, her methods are very simple and if you take hers and add in lasagna gardening and regular no till it makes wonderful soil.

We have a few days of rain ahead of us (yeah spring), so we'll be workign as weather permitts us to here.

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

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

..it really was too...

It overfilled my pond a wee bit, the young willow on the right of the picture has wet feet.  However it's not the only one with wet feet...

That would be my Macintosh tree.  It's kinda swimming, so as soon as it dries up a little bit (yeah Spring and dry prob not anytime soon) I need to get more dirt around it to keep it from happening again.  I just need it dry enough to move the dirt without it being clumped.

The other side wasn't so wet thankfully:

Not sure how well you can see it, but the Redhaven peach is in water that isn't in water now.  It soaked up in a few hours where as the Mac is still in all that water.  See the tires?  I thought I'd try the grow potatoes in tires since I have 7 tires right now.

Also I have  another picture of the cinder block stove.

The back will get raised up like the sides, then we'll fill up the holes of the  cinder blocks then they'll be capped and some rebar will be put across to cook over.  Also the center will get a solid block for the burn surface.   I can't wait for it to get done so we can cook in the mornings on it.

Hope you're safe with the severe weather moving about.

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

Garden Sprouts!

I went out this morning between rain drops and this is what I saw:  That is a pea.. and it's not the only one either, seems so far half of the peas have sprouted and I'm waiting on the rest.  I can't wait to see them climbing all over the place.

Then there is this:

There is a row of spinach seedlings there.  I am sooo excited.  I have lettuce sprouting too but the pictures did not come out at all what so ever.  I know my red current did survive and is putting on growth big time and the willow I planted last fall near my pond is alive as well and greening out.

I LOVE Spring.

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

Wood Fired Water heater

This was written by Silver and I, Riven have posted it for Him.

A couple years ago we were given a gas fired water heater. Upon inspection it was apparent that the entire burner assembly was useless. So a week or so later I removed all of the burner and the insulation from the bottom foot or so, at first thinking the tank might be useful. About that time I watched a couple videos on using wood fired water heaters and decided to see what I could do with it.

Other than keeping the heat shield used to hold the burner assembly, I found a old unused steel tire rim that the shield fit into snuggly. The lower half I filled with dirt and gravel to help keep it in place. The opening in the shield where the gas burner had entered I opened a bit and used for the wood feed.

Given the fear of over pressure and possible explosion fed by all the warnings we had seen on the net, I only filled the tank with water and left the lines unattached. After filling the “fire box” and lighting it using small branches and kindling, we found that to heat the initial forty gallons took approximately a hour. After, it took less time, refilling the used water, keeping the fire running with only small pieces of fire wood.

At the time we did not have a water heater so it was a godsend for us. Much easer than heating the water on the stove or a fire a gallon at the time. Some time later we were given an electric water heater that with some parts worked and so we stopped using the wood fired one. Given the setting up of our outdoor kitchen I moved it to that location and am setting it up once again for use there. This time I will not have any fear of running it under pressure as it is fairly easy to tell when it is getting hot enough and the pressure relief valve is attached. Given the fire box is less than a cubic foot does not hold enough for a long burn time.

One last thing the warnings online also mentioned the chimney being too small to work accurately. We had no trouble with it on ours nor do we expect to. My guess on others experiences is they were trying to have to big a fire going in it. As we were not in a hurry to have the water heat up we did not over feed it.

 I hope this helps any that are interested to try there hand at it though only if you feel comfortable with attempting it.

Silver has said if anyone has questions feel free to post them and He'll do His best to answer them.

Mostly done Kitchen

Well have the main structure on the outdoor kitchen mostly done.  As is I don't have a floor and we need about 6 ft of roofing still...

We ran out of it, one and a quarter rolls apparently wasn't enough.  That ladder on the front side is the one Silver built for doing building jobs around here, it takes 2 people to move it.  Right now we're planning the locations for everything and deciding what color(s) to paint the uprights.  We're going to put a wood floor down on 3/4's of it.  Where we are putting the rocket stove and bread oven needs to not have a wood floor.  Silver is going to make a counter top with 2X4's.

This is the start of our cinder block cook stove like the one we started out in the first six months of being here, it was so much fun cooking on it.  Oddly it did not use much fuel to cook a meal on it.  We need to get some new blocks to make the rest of it as I'd like it to be permanent and figured new would work better.

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

Out door work

So we got started on a long over due project today.  The outdoor kitchen.

The wood has been sitting for a while now and the weather has been cooperating with us while Silver is feeling mobile enough to do some building.

We have been waiting to get this built as we really want to be cooking outside again, and in the summer it's better to bake outside in the heat than in the house.  After a long winter I can't stand the being cooped up feel of having too cook inside the house.

Our intern was helping out with this today, we have discovered she is very good at eyeballing distance.  See the corner post in the fore ground?  It is made with 3 2X4's glued and nailed together.  Silver has a habit of making buildings that'll live a few hundred years..  Or that you could prob store an elephant in.

We should get the roof finished on it tomorrow which is good because we have storms coming in Tuesday.  The floor'll be put in later and some half walls on the side.  We're going to use that water tank to catch water off the roof for my herb garden.  We're hoping the first cooking item placed in (err just outside) will be the cinder block cook stove Silver made that first year we were here.  It was fun to cook on it especially in the early mornings when the sun is just beginning to rise.

Looks like we should have across the street neighbors soon, we had 2 groups stop by today to check out the property there.  I hope someone decides soon.

Hope your Sunday went well.

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

Pot Bellied Pig info

Well since Sunday I've been searching online for info on raising pot bellied pigs for meat. Well, oddly... there isn't much info on it. The most of the info online about pot bellied pigs is on the “pet” trade for them. The only places where they even mention it tend to be online forums. So I went around and posted pretty much the same question to all of them.

“I'm getting 5 pot bellied pigs, once I can buy and set up the fencing for it. However I'm not finding much about how to care for them. I'd like to know some basic info about care.”

Well, I've had a few responses. A lot say DON'T it's too fatty that it's only good for lard. Also that you don't get much from them. I expected with a small pig you wouldn't get much, small pig; small meat. Now the ones saying it's only got for lard have from the responses only butchered one pig and it was one they bought at what they considered proper weight.

Now aside from the ones who wanted to know more as well there were a few that raise pot bellied pigs normally who have ALL said... “..if you are getting a large amount of lard then the hog is OVERWEIGHT.” Seems that a pot bellied pig NEEDS to be a bit on the “trim” side. Also every one of these regular raisers of them have said they prefer to butcher them a bit on the old side. As in older than most would butcher a typical hog.

They have all said you will get mostly sausage out of them. Though you will get some small hams. That is fine by me, though I am thinking of trying to get some chops out of them. I am not expecting to get roasts out of them at all.

That's what I have learned at the moment. If/when I learn more I'll pass it on!

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

Cattails

Fyi this is -NOT- my picture... I'm have camera issues again...
  We went out this morning and gathered some cattail shoots to try. I have never eaten them before and neither has Silver. So we went over to the pond across the street, me wearing shorts. To gather some from our neighbor as the ones we have planted do not have enough of a hold in the pond to be worth harvesting from. I am glad it is a not cold morning as the water was definitely cold and let me say unless you have a dry spot, you will be in the water to try and get your shoots. They are almost at the stage of not being small enough to eat. Granted there are tons of “baby” cattails growing there, no bigger than wild onions. From the instructions I received on it the section I want is the white part closest to the “tuber” without cutting up the tuber. I harvested about 8 of them of different sizes. They have a pleasant aroma when they are cut semi-sweet. After cleaning off the outer section that was a little tough and washing them thoroughly we tried them raw. They taste very good raw, slightly sweet. I have discovered that lightly frying them in olive oil ruins their flavor. Silver's estimation of them they would be best serves sliced up on a salad raw or maybe in a stew. If anyone has an “cooking” recommendations for cattail shoots please pass them along. I love the flavor and want to find other uses for them. BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Chilly, but a nice morning

Such a nice morning out there even though it's still a tad chilly outside.  We have one more day before the house guest/farmhand moves on to their new home.  They just didn't work out here, I do hope their new place does work out well for them.
 Any who.. I finally got the pictures from the first snowfall from this year onto the computer.  These are a couple weeks old so please remember this.
  Doesn't it look soooooooo.... pretty?  I always like watching snow fall and these were the big fluffy ones.  The funniest thing through was the two pups, neither of them wanted to go out into it.  Like they were afraid to touch the strange "white stuff" on the ground. We have not had anything measurable since this  snowfall, though Arkansas did get some a day or so ago.  I wish we had gotten it, we could really use the precip.  Though we are ahead on the precip for this new year ... so far, things can change and I do know it.
   Now for a really cute snowfall picture:
  That is Merlin enjoying his first snowfall, mind you when we saw him there he was jumping each step trying to not get his paws wet.  His sister handled the snowfall much better than him... or at least she didn't do anything silly in front of us.  
 Well so far I can tell you that putting the chickens onto wild bird food does have a downturn in egg production.  It seems by at least half what we were getting before.  Live and learn is my opinion on it, and while I was hoping they would do good on it; I need the eggs.  I think we're going to have to really 'fiddle' with the feed portions when I start making my own.
 Wood stove update:
 It is still working very well, the only thing that I have seen as a problem so far has been one... we needed to do some better sealing around the chimney with the cement.  We are also having an issue with the handle for the door not wanting to move, but I think that's just a simple mechanical issue with the nuts.  It is still putting out a very good amount of heat, and we can simmer food on the surface, which next time I make my stew I may try putting it on the wood burner after the initial cooking.  The beef stew, my lentil stew already simmers on it.
 I have also discovered a side benefit for me anyway.  We have all those cinder blocks around the outside of the burner.  It makes a lovely spot to proof and rise bread dough.  Since having it here my breads have risen beautifully.

 Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Breakfast Cereal

    Breakfast cereals, the iconic American breakfast. Sometimes called the Breakfast of Champions, most children eat it every morning. I have stopped buying this as of a year or two ago. I discovered that the cereal was not really cost effective for me Also as we have been trying to keep the kids away from as much HFCS as we can, as well as GMO grains not buying it does double duty.  
 Oddest thing I've learned about not buying this product that I, myself grew up with. Once in a great while I miss the flavors of the cereals, in a snacking sense. As I am one of those who when they were in the house would eat it as a late night snack. My mother when I was a child refused to buy the more sugary of the boxed cereals. So we tended toward just the plain Cheerios, honey nut Cheerios, and Chex. While they do contain less sweetener than say Cocopuffs, they are still filled with grains some of which are GMO products.  

I have run into one major problem with my kids and this however. My kids are all getting tired of eating eggs. I think it's funny, as I prefer a couple of fried eggs for breakfast almost daily; and since we are “growing our own” it's cheaper. Also my youngest is tired of eating pancakes. Now mind you with them in the local school they eat breakfast at home two days a week unless it's some kind of time off from school.  
       Sad thing here though. I think the school's breakfasts are not very healthy no matter what the First Lady has done to the school “lunch” program. The offering at my kids' school in the morning consists of :  
 Cereal

 Cereal Bars

 Honey Bun(s)

   Chocolate Muffins  

 OJ

   Chocolate Milk  

 Vanilla Milk

   Now tell me how kids are suppose to have a healthy breakfast on that????

 I certainly don't know how they can call this better for them, I think one of the things they should offer there is (I hate the amount of packaging but in this case it is a good idea) prepackaged cut fruit, maybe some granola (and I realize that they'd buy it from Big G), yogurt, plain milk with the OJ. To me that would be 100X's better than what they offer.

 Now when they were still in the grammar school there was a “hot” breakfast as well... those entail bread sticks , or biscuits and gravy, or... “super bun”. Now I know when “super bun” came to my mind I thought of just a large roll maybe toasted... it's not. What it is, is a LARGE honey bun sometimes covered in chocolate. Again how is this a healthy meal?     I think that it's not just the “lunches” that need looking at, breakfast needs to be as well.  

 Think on it...

   Be Well Be Safe, and Blessed Be...  

Update 11-1-2012

Heya Folks!

Been a while I know, but again with no internet we tend to have to chose what has a higher priority. Doing the blog isn't as high up as say gathering info about our various projects. Also, seeing as how we tend to only stop maybe once a month for internet if I don't get a chance to post something it'll just have to wait.

...and yes I am sorry I don't post more often. I certainly hope everyone out there that does read this is excitedly waiting on my next posting (Tink told me people have been asking HER about when I'll be posting next).

As for our garden, I have started my fall tilling of the main garden beds; including the addition of some lovely compost from one of our large old oaks that got struck by lightning about 2 months ago. It was one of those really big oaks that gets hollow once it hits old age, then composts from the inside out. A bonus for my garden, also it was a tree that we had been wondering if we needed to cut down. The other big plus is that “mother nature” decided to be nice and drop it into the forest instead of into the clearing.

Even though it's not really producing nice ones to eat my tomatoes are still churning out fruit, we have figured that even though the “pots” we are using are big... they aren't big enough for four tomato plants apiece. Next year we'll be doing just one per pot.

The jalapenos I planted did well as well and are still producing even though the plant got snapped by my luffa gourd when the remains of Issac came through. Silver thought the Brussels sprouts had a wonderful flavor. He anticipates it would have grown more and produced more if it hadn't been for the drought.

My luffa gourd has tons of them on it, one is huge I think it's over a foot long and really round. We do have a few more large ones but that one is the biggest. Once the plant is fully dead I'm going to find a way to hang them so they can finish drying. We did manage to get some dried beans from my Tiger's Eye beans that I planted on a whim this year. Considering I planted maybe six seeds and got back about ½ a cup I think it was a good return. An odd thing though they were suppose to be bush beans but they wound up vineing.

We used the wood stove for about 3 days at the beginning of October, and it worked out well. The base did not get overly hot. On October 15^th the lady bugs were swarming for their winter hibernation areas.... I have a question for everyone. On the main day for your local lady bug swarming did you have a large amount? I know that the whole front and side of the building was covered in them. This is the largest amount I have seen since we have moved here before winter starts, and I wonder if it will be a tell of a bad winter this year?

On the 19^th we went out and did some “yard work”, we fell back to the premise that we need to stop waiting to do all our work when we have ever possible thing we need to build or work on something. So we went out and mostly cleared an area for the pig pen we are hoping to have next spring. “Mostly” cleared as pigs need shade and with oak, hickory, and butter nuts in the area the pig will eat those things on their own so might as well keep them so they have some browse in their yard. We also started the “finished” clearing for the good chicken coop that we will be building over the winter. We are also going to plan ahead for a barn and mixed pastures, and these pastures will have a lot of trees in them as we are not planning on many cattle. A dairy cows or two and a few long horns... which btw eat almost anything.

Well, we have finally done it here... we are now trying out the “no poo” challenge, which refers to no shampoo. This is because lately we seem to be getting more allergic to soaps that are commercially made than before and since starting the challenge The allergic affects have dropped. I will say there has only been one downside so far... it has been harder to brush my hair. I have very thick curly/wavy hair and getting a brush or comb through it after just using water and nothing else made it very hard to remove the tangles.

Now I know this might be a tad late when I post this but...

The hurricane Sandy as it approaches NYC and the shore, a local organization here; Convoy of hope. Has sent a semi full of water and microwaveable meals. While I applaud them sending food and water, I'd like to ask people to think a moment. If the power totally goes out what will the microwaveable meals do for someone who cannot cook it? How about pallets of canned tuna, and fruit? Peanut butter and bread? To me that makes much more sense.

Last bit of news is kinda a explanation, I am setting out 2 blog posts today; the second is about our wood heater this winter we brought it in and set it up on Oct. 4^th. It's very cool and we will keep info about how it does over the course of the winter.

Well that's about it for now.

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...