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...

We're Back!

Well everyone looks like we have some internet again, though it's not very good and we have a bit of restrictions to it. A good deal has happened here since I last updated the blog. We bought 2 goats, which unfortunately we only have one now as during the time they had been playing together the younger of the two was injured and died from it. The remaining goat we have is named “Momma” she is black except for a small white spot on her head and she's over 5 years old. The only info the seller gave me on her is that she is a “Spanish” goat and that her last kidding she had 4 kids. Now all I need is a buck for her and maybe I can increase my population. I am looking to buy her a friend as well, the one plus to the death of her old friend is that now Momma is a much friendlier goat that she was when we bought her.

In the last few months due to one of our neighbor's moving away we acquired some building materials so we have an addition to the building we live in. So now me and Silver have a fully private bedroom (YEAH!).

Most of our chickens wound up getting eaten by a stray dog, and now we are down to just our rooster and 2 hens. I am hoping to fix that problem this Spring as well as get out rabbits going as well.

I am making some new planting beds based on a few different ideas I have read over the last few years in the clearing behind where the dome house will be built. I have taken the idea of lasagna gardening,Ruth Stout's(correct spelling?) no till method, and a permiculture idea. I have started with a 4 foot wide bed that has at the bottom of it a bunch of brush and twigs. On top of that I have put a layer of composted chicken manure. Next a batch of mixed top soil and bagged manure. I am also sheet composting on it as well as adding wood ash as winter goes by us. Next throughout winter I will be adding the occasional layer of straw to it. Come spring when I clean out Momma's “bedroom” I'm going to add that too it as well as any left over hay once there is good forage for her again. I have high expectations for these beds. I am also going to attempt to plant some bee balm at the ends of the beds in hopes of attracting lots of bees.

Since not having the internet here I've taken up to getting up at 3:30am and starting my day off with the animal feeding chores. I'm usually done in 30 minutes which then I make Silver a pot of coffee me some tea and watch the early edition of the news then I watch AG Day. You want to hear something weird? By watching the program I have noticed that while yes it does fall under the heading of most “national” news broadcasts (AG Day/Farm report), AG Day does contain a lot of good info about what is going on in the food system. Even more interesting is some of the commercials on during the program. Like ones for herbicides...

Did you know...? that now just using glyphosphate is not good enough? Granted I had some idea of this watching local farms who don't grow canola, having canola“weeds” in their corn and soy fields. “Roundup Ready” now includes something called dicampa(spelling?), my guess would be for the “super weeds” and for the unwanted crops(read as weeds) popping up in their fields. So I wonder how long that one will last. I have also seen a commercial for a “weed control system”, this “system” includes 5 different kinds of herbicide. Now I know there are many large scale farmers who farm the way they do to make a living and love what they do. I just wish that we didn't need the large scale farms and could supply the populous with smaller farms who does have time to go out and hand kill their own weed problems.

On another subject the recent decrease in the food stamp amounts federally. Now I know there are a good deal of people out there who do abuse the system, however for those who do need it; this is really going to hurt them. Our local news this morning highlighted a college student who needed to go to a food pantry due to this decrease. Problem locally here is I know in the county I live in if you need to use the food pantry you can only use -ANY- of them once a month. So if you go to one that gives you only one day of food and you still need to cover a full week because you funds won't stretch that far you can't do anything but try to make what ever you have on hand last till you can buy more or go again. With the talk of milk prices possibly going up very high and the talk of all food prices going up if the farm bill doesn't pass soon... I think there will be big problems in this country involving people having enough to eat if they don't make enough money.

Well I guess if you living in Washington state now you might be able to afford your food bills with the increase in the minimum wage there to $15.. however I get the feeling that due to that the number of jobs will drop considerably.

I am hoping to be able to keep the blog up to date, and I hope I give everyone something to think about as well.

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