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...

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...

Ah Freebies!

I really like the people my girls go to church with because they can be so helpful.  We were asked to drive over on Saturday, to pick up a few things.

We got two of these tractor tires, Silver cut the side walls out and we're going to put acorn squash in one (for now) and carrots int he other.  Our regular soil here isn't good enough for carrots but having something that big will give me the chance to fill with enough soil to do carrots.

Then these two barrels, there are at least 6 more waiting for us when we can get them.

See how it's sitting?  These are  going to be a bake oven for my outdoor kitchen.  We just need one more barrel but it has to be a food grade one.  The bottom one will have a rocket like fire chamber but permit larger wood pieces.  That top one will be split in half to be used as the way to let the heat travel around the baking chamber.  We're going to use parts from a barrel stove kit to make this.

This wonderful person who gave us these items also has more regular tires, manure and garden soil they're giving to us for free!  We picked up[ a load of the garden soil yesterday.. three "bucket" loads which only gave that poor 1/2 ton pickup 6 inch clearance on the road on the way home.  Silver said that it wasn't "bottomed out" yet though.  However I don't think i want that much in there again.  It looked like we had half a low rider when we got home and we scraped on our dirt road coming in because of it.

Oh as to the garden...  This is a sun choke sprout:

Eh ok a couple of sprouts, as when I tried for one it was too blurry to be seen.  However the sun chokes do have a war going on with a native plant that I'm not sure I want to kill as I'm like to harvest some when they are ripe.

Those are Mayapples... not a good idea to eat unless you pick when ripe and only eat the fruit.   Around here it's common to make jam with them.  I've been wanting to make some for years, but they don't like direct sun so I'm not sure why they haven't died yet.  They are trying to give my sun chokes a run for their money however.

I have elected as it's been so nice that I'm going to "test" plant a few things that have to wait till after last frost.  As technically normal last frost is about April 15th, however last year we had frosts till mid May.  So I am going to take a partial chance at some plantings and wait on the rest till after mid May to plant.  I am hoping for no more frosts.

Hope your garden is goign well!

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...

Step 2 Gardening in Spring

SO another nice day here in the southern Ozarks, and I finished doing my spring prep on one and a half of my beds (the short ones).  I also did some planting in them too.

This bed was done with the hay from the goat pen like the pea bed was and also the composted saw dust.   Fun thing about that composted saw dust though is we've been mixing in chicken manure and wood ash into it for a few weeks and it's made it a bit more "airy".  The foreground half of that bed is planted with onions (yellow) and the back half is lettuce (red romaine).

The bed is the furthest "back" one we have, and the plan is when the lettuce is done I will be putting my zucchini in there.  I planted the onions close together so they could give us some small green onions.

This is the other portion of the bed:

This is my spinach that I [planted.  I had forgotten I had gotten spinach seeds!  I was a nice suprise when I found them getting my lettuce seeds out.  I am hoping they grow well.  Everything from the stick to the right is spinach.

Also one more thing:

This is going to be my herb garden as where I stood to take this pic is where our outdoor kitchen will be built.  I am planning on having Silver "box" the buckets so that they look better.  This way the herbs don't escape or take over my whole herb garden (love mints don't you?).

That's it for now.. we're getting ready to have a cook out in this nice weather!

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

Seedlings!

So I also have some pictures of my tomato and pepper seedlings, now these are a week and a half old (the pics).  Right now my tomato seedlings are trying to take over I think:

They, have been "reaching out" to my light that I have over them; and can almost touch it now.  Silver thinks they'll be over a ft tall when we do finally plant them.  My thought it they'll have a good start so why not?

Now what I'm really happy about is these:

Now I know in this picture they are not much to look at but, the fact I got some pepper seeds to sprout finally made me happy.  They are about a month behind on growth compared to the tomatoes.  However I think they'll pick that up in no time.  It took them a month to sprout, now they are starting to reach for the light too.

It looks like we might be out of winter's grip finally, which is good as I really need to get my peas planted this week.  I have an interesting idea for a trellis for them.  I will have to see if I can get it to work though.  I also have to get my lettuce and my onions planted very soon, so I don't miss out on time for them to grow right.

Speaking of growing.  Strawberry is growing well, she's already proven she can climb the gates to her pen.  I had to come up with a creative way to block those off from her.  Now it's going to be a race to see if we can get a better pen built before she climbs the fence.  We're also still looking for a male for her, I'm hoping to find a nice one that we can keep long term.

That's it for now, got lots of work to do now that the snow's are melting away.  Enjoy your weather!

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

Garden Starts!

Been busy in the last week or so. We've set up and planted a bed of sun chokes, as everything I have read on them (minus 1) says to plant them while it's still cold out, especially since they all also state you can just dig them as needed. Unless you are diabetic then they say dig them after first hard frost and store till you use.

I started my tomatoes and bell peppers today as well (here's to fingers crossed on the peppers), I have 12 pots of each set up. As I want six plants I am making sure I'll have at least six, I can always plant the extra (more for us then).

I went with my favorite tomato the Cherokee Purple (granted I like the orange smudge Cherokee's better but I can't find them), Silver eats them like they are candy. I am trying the Horizon Bell pepper, from what I read on them they seem to be fairly easy to grow. I just hope they start as I've always had issue starting them.

I have looked around and seems now Seeds of Change has my favorite beans again for sale as seed. So I am going to try to by maybe a pound of them to grow. If they produce enough I should have seed for saving.

We have to start cutting more firewood for this year as we're close to running out (YEAH second burner!), and our blasted chain saw keeps not wanting to start. So that is making life difficult for us there. I am hoping to get my apple trees this year so we can get them in the ground. We have decided on raising some pork, I'm thinking of starting with three animals one boar, one sow and one castrated one for butchering. This way we can raise our own and maybe if we get enough of the piglets sell a couple every year.

Well , that's about it for now.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be

Early Morning Bread

So I'm sitting here this morning baking bread and I figured I'd at least mention what I'm doing different to it.  I am using my sourdough dinner roll recipe, and I'm going to stuff them before baking.  Well, all but one that is.  My son the picky eater is getting a plain one.  The stuffed ones are going to be stuffed with some   fine diced lean pork, bell pepper,onion, and cheese.  I have precooked the pork to be safe at the second rising so that when I form the rolls I can do the stuffing.  Also that perhaps the meat will be slightly cool then.

Dinner Roll recipe follows...

Sponge:

1C sourdough starter

1 1/2 C white flour

1C warm water

Place your starter in a at least 2 quart bowl,  add flour and water and mix.  Cover to prevent flies or anything else from getting into it and set in a warmish place for 8hrs or overnight.  Before working the second part return 1C from this to your starter.

Rolls:

1 1/2 C of the sponge (remember you put back 1C)

1 T sugar

1/2 t salt

2 T melted butter

1 egg beaten

1 3/4 C flour

First make sure your ingredients are at room temperature.  Then (I use the same bowl that the sponge grew in), make sure your sponge is in a warm bowl and add to it the salt,sugar, and melted butter and mix in; I use a tablespoon to do this.   Then add in the beaten egg and mix it in well.  Then you add in 1 cup of the flour and mix until it kinda forms into a single piece of dough.  Then turn out onto a floured (3/4 C ) board and knead until smooth and elastic.  Then place in a warm bowl (I grease it first) and cover with a towel for at most 2 hours or until it is doubled in bulk.  (fyi... easy way to tell is to take your first 2 fingers and try to make a depression and if it leave a depression it's double)  Then punch it down and let rise again for an hour and a half.  Then you put it on your board and shape it into the size rolls you wish, place on a greased baking sheet and let rise again for about 30 minutes.  Then bake in a preheated oven (400 degrees) for 20 minutes or until browned.

I have in the last few days bought a few new plants.  a watermelon, a cantaloupe, and a lavender.  I planted them and didn't water them as we were suppose to get rain.  Well the next morning I had to water them, as it did not rain.  We bought some cherries for $4 a bag at the store.. one for eating and one whole one for drying.  I love cherries and I want some for the winter. Maybe I'll make some oatmeal cherry cookies this winter.

The kids go and visit my mom for a week starting Saturday, so me and Silver will be having a nice quiet week then.  Maybe we can "recharge"  as I think the teenager is designed to make a parent's life stressful.  Well, I have to get back to my bread for breakfast.  Everyone have a great day!

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

After the Rains

We survived all the storms moving through the area.. though I am wondering if we shouldn't call Noah in with his boat... grins

Well I know I haven't posted in a while... using the Internet is just so irritating to me right now. Not in a “I don't know how to use it” way. More like.. I don't see the point to being online unless I have good reason. It's weird.. but it's me.

I am going to keep my blog going I just seem to need a bit more motivation to do it right now.

Bit of news, kids will be going on their trip next week sometime on Saturday unless my grandmother winds up ill. My mother is spending this week caring for her then she'll pick the kids up on her way back home. We're picking them up and getting her washer and dryer as well. One long week no kids though! That is going to be sooo nice.

Garden...

Well... I saved all those Tiger's Eye beans to grow as no one sells them right now. They all sprouted... then... our “tame” buck and his buddies came by and mowed 80% of therm down. Sighs I guess I'll be growing them just for seed this year again.

My grape is finally grasping onto our grip trellis, I'm going to have to work out how to prune it with how our trellis is. I'm hoping the cucumbers will get big enough to start up the trellis this week. Two of the three types of gourds have sprouted, and my sunflowers are spotty. I have all my squash plants growing, and my cabbage family plants as well as my onions are HUGE this year. The cabbages themselves have not started heading yet, but they are twice the size they were last year at this time. The onion stems are about ½ an inch... those are growing in the buckets from last years tomatoes. Speaking of tomatoes... My three little tomato plants are turning into trees out there. They also have tons of flowers on them.

We have been harvesting kale and lettuce every other day, while the kids are gone I should be able to daily. The herbs are doing very well this year as well.. also the one eggplant we have seems to be growing. Our strawberries are looking good, we have not picked any yet as Silver keeps saying they aren't ripe yet. Shrugs I am use to store bought ones which are sold under ripe. The elderberry.. TREES are taking over, they should flower this year and if so there will be tons of them.

I got to try an interesting jelly at the farmer's market yesterday it's white zinfindel. Yes you heard me.. as in the wine. It is soo yummy! Goes really well with banana bread too!

That's it for now.

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

Planting Done!

I finished planting today, I got my Tiger's eye beans in the ground, the cucumbers, the summer squash, and three types of inedible gourds. I am hoping to make a few things if they grow well. What surprised me when I started planting my Tiger's eye beans was that I had many more than I thought I did. I think I planted 4 rows in a 8 ft long bed.

I also had a few flowering shrubs to plant that one of the neighbor's sent my way. My son is going to be working for her and her husband on and off this summer and she figured if she was having my son thin the bushes out she may as well send a few my way. They produce a small yellow flower, and she said they were eating her driveway. So I put them where they can grow as much as they want.

My strawberries are starting to set fruit, and I am hoping they produce a lot as I am looking forward to making jam, drying some and maybe make a few syrups with them. I'll have to look around for a few other ways to use them, maybe some chocolate covered strawberries!

That is about it for now as we are still on tentative hold on house building as we need the kids out of school and a ladder to continue.

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

Planting too Soon?

Well this morning after cleaning up some and getting half my laundry out on the line, I noticed that my plants not in the ground were looking a bit sad.  Sad as in drooping badly, they weren't dry, or missing sun either.  OK, well one was droopy .. three others seemed to be wilting but not drooping.

So we rushed to finish off the tomato tubs and get everybody in the ground.  Interestingly even though I only had 2 pots of basil they wound up having 7 plants in those two pots.  I am hoping they do well considering I did split them.  The mammoth Jalapeno's are in with some of my onions and my one egg plant is with my lettuce as I've yet to have them grow for me and I want to keep a good eye on it.  My sweet peppers are in the box we got 2 years ago.  Which I think I said before we are retiring the box at the end of this year and we'll move the soil to a good spot.

I still have some seeds to plant.  Three of them are three types of non-edible gourds that I am hoping to make into useful things.  My cucumbers, sunflowers, and a straight necked summer squash.  I also have to get my tiger's eye beans in the ground once I figure out where I'm putting them.

We've been having net issues for almost 2 weeks and today it just got fixed, about an hour ago.  The service guy thinks it may have just been nudged loose during a high wind and only needed a quick adjustment.  We have a meeting at the kids' school in a short while then we get to stick around as the girls have a concert tonight and we don't want to waste gas.

Thought of something interesting while hanging the laundry today .. due to the fact that a young buck has decided he likes to eat across the street.  I've heard vegetarians say that you shouldn't eat meat because the animals are beautiful.. or cute.   OK, flowers and some plants are very beautiful.. yet you eat them...  Interesting thought is it not?

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

Garden Pics

Well lookie at that two posts in one day.  This one being pictures.. sorry about the quality I defiantly need to get a new better camera.
  This is one of the flowering strawberry plants we now have by my Elderberry trees.  Who by the way are trying to take over the spot here. It does not bother me that they are trying to take over there as eventually I want them to fill the space in.  Technically Elderberry is a shrub not a tree, however for a shrub it grows very large.
 I believe these strawberries are ever bearing, which would be very nice as I am planning to dry half the total berries, then half of the remainder will be jammed and the rest will be eaten straight.
 My wintergreen that was planted in the same area is trying desperately to come back, I hope it does as I was looking forward to harvesting some of that this year.  Considering only two of the four plants made it to winter, then the two seemed to be doing well all winter then they seem to have just given up once it warmed up.  I do not know why, I can just hope they come back.  Once it drys up out there I need to get into that "bed" and remove the unwanted plants.
  This minor monstrosity is the combined planting of the Thyme,Marjoram,and mint.  As you can see it is just a mass of green right now.  I think the thyme is going to be choked out.  While the mint and Marjoram will be fighting the remaining space out between the two of them.
 In a few hours I have my first batch of Marjoram to take out of my food dryer.  That does mean this picture was taken after I harvested mint and Marjoram from it.  They don't seem to be hurting from the haircut I gave them.  Which is a good thing as I plan on keeping it up.  I have some nice amber glass jars that I need filling and I know about how much it'll take to fill them full.
 I don't think you can see it, but the mint is trying to escape under the tire... My thought is if it does "get away" that's more mint for me.  I do now know that at least these two plants will need to be controlled once I have my herb garden set up.
  I do not know if you can see this one or not, however if you can.  That's not onions.  That would be my first attempt at growing garlic.  They seem to be doing just fine, however they seem to grow slower than my onions.
 I wish I had pictures of potato sprouts, but my potatoes seem to be taking the slow route to the surface this year.  I do know they are growing as one day the chickens escaped and thankfully they were so stuffed all they did was unbury the potatoes.  They all seemed to have roots and little sprouts working their way up.
 We will be ordering some sunchokes in this next month.  We may also be buying some locally as it seems right now Craigslist is full of people trying to sell them off.  I have no problem with growing them, and letting them take over if they taste as good as I have been lead to believe.
 Well that's it on my "good" pictures as the rest did not look good enough for me to be willing to post them.  Have a great afternoon!
 Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be

Happy First day of Spring!

Well it's a lovely cold morning, so nice to have to light a fire on the first day of spring... yeah ...  Anyway. not much going on with the weather not co-operating.  WE have a winter storm warning which starts tomorrow...fun.  I did manage to get something done yesterday, besides laundry.

I went out and first I fluffed up the potato patch and then I planted my seed potatoes (we didn't manage to get the sun chokes again).  The one red potato I planted last fall is starting to  grow as well.  I did have a surprise when I got out the seed potatoes, they had all sprouted and had roots on them already.  So on the few I had to cut down to be smaller I cut them so that they would all have some actual roots on them.

Had some good news from the weather people the other day, due to all the precipitation we have gotten ourselves out of the "severe drought", and are now just listed as "dry"; I am hoping pretty soon we'll be past that too.

A friend of our's Mark Cheneil writer of the "Missouri Journal"  over on homestead.org is in the hospital, we all wish him good health; and to get well.

That's it for now...

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

Gardening Time

Well it's coming to that time of year my friends, and I am hoping to have my taters in the ground by week's end.  Also I just found out that the Elderberry trees have baby leaves on them.  As the snow is melting in the lovely temps of the last few days our pond shrank a little, which I expected; I hope the rest of the water stays.  My day lilies are coming up as well, so I defiantly think that the warm weather is on it's way.  I set my plant starts outside they have to come inside tonight, but they should be able to get some time outside tomorrow too.  My good tomatoes are not doing as well with the weaker light we have this year.  While the eggplants love it.   Go figure.
 Hope it's warm by you!

 Be Well, BE Safe, and Blessed Be...

Early Weekend News

Yes, I have some minor news for all who are keeping up with what is going on here.  Yesterday evening me and Silver went out to peek at the pond and discovered that it is about an 1/8 of the way full.  So we seem, so far to have a good possibility of having a full pond.  I am certainly hoping it'll be full enough by the time the local farm store has their fish ordering days.  As they will send for catfish, I do not know if they do tilipia or not though.

I will be once the pond is full enough and it's warm enough.  Be going across the street to get some cat tails and one bucket of pond water.   Why the pond water?  Well I have in one of my homesteading books that the best way to make sure you have the right microbial life in your home made pond is to go to a living one and get a bucketful of it's water and dump it into your own.  There by adding the "pond life" that is surviving in one pond to your own.  Also this way you know the microbial life is acclimatized to your area as well.

I already have permission from the people who own the property across the way to go over and gather some cat tails.  They had, had a hard time finding a place that sold them when they put them in, so they were very willing to let me go and get some once we had a pond set up.  Now that said I know of one nursery that has cat tails at it also Lowes has them in the middle of summer in their "water garden" area.  So I do have them available if necessary, but I'd prefer to get some that have grown "wild"

That's  it for now, have a good Saturday!

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

Great Day TODAY!

 We have had a great weekend so far folks! We got some of our building money, and we have a load of rebar coming tomorrow. We have decided to go down to a 34ft diameter dome. When we staked it (40 ft dome) out we noticed that we mis-staked it and the 34ft is not that much smaller than what we had staked out..

I got my apple trees ordered, I ordered ultra mac's for Silver and double delicious for me. I love the golden and red delicious. The company I ordered from a local nursery for this state Stark Bros nursery, they offered free shipping on orders over $85. So as I ordered 2 of each the order with the free shipping was just over $100. So I saved at least $20.

We had gotten a “pay later” flower catalog, that had Dahlias (edible root) and a few herb and bee friendly plants, We have been approved on their credit plan and I have a order of quite a few flowers coming that will be planted in a few various places one being our outdoor kitchen that will make it nice there and I will have lots of butterflies, bees, and humming birds stopping by.

We have also prepaid on the track hoe for next weekend as we had rain yesterday evening and this morning it would have been a waste of time and money getting it for this weekend. My son is crossing his fingers and behaving overly well in the hopes of getting to learn how to use it. Well, a 16yr old boy should have that opportunity to learn it. He's not doing all the work however. Especially since we need to dig a ditch from the power pole out to the clearing. I'm NOT having a child no matter how old digging near the power pole.

The next pay day we are going to get the chicks ordered, I wanted to do it Friday; but we didn't get a chance to. I did get the chick food and the new light for them. We will still need some pine bedding and a cover for the brooder before they get here though.

Now for the next week we have to clear area for the track hoe to run in. Yesterday my son and Silver started on it before the rain showed up. They'll go back out today after the rain lets up and it drys up a bit. Tomorrow it'll be just me and Silver working out there.

On another note, I was thinking about the weather and I believe we are already in our “Spring pattern” for here as we are getting tons of rain. Which is normal Spring weather here. Oh, my plant starts have started sprouting. Cabbages, grains, and tomatoes; also a couple of herbs! I am very happy about that.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend!

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...

Friday Catch Up

Well yesterday we were able to gather some black raspberries, and a few slightly under ripe wild blueberries.  Seems our wild berries are going:

black raspberries

dew berries

blueberries

blackberries

Somewhere in there we might have wild strawberries (no flowers yet), and the wild grape harvest; I am hoping that we'll get rain soon or the blackberries might not get big.  We dug out about 12 wheel barrow loads of dirt from the pond yesterday, today... well... we did decidedly less as my back is seriously hurting today so I can't bend to do the cutting of the soil.

I got the remaining tomatoes planted this morning out in the garden itself as my other type of tomato is up in front of the house in "pots".  I don't want a repeat of last year's cross pollination lesson.  So the tomatoes varieties are separate, as are my pepper plants.  I also got my bushel gourds planted this morning, in the spot we had our potato experiment last year.

Speaking of the experiment, we  have our potatoes planted in the same manner.  I need to get more straw as they are getting tall now, so we need to go and cover them more.  I am thinking though that next year we'll use that spot to try to grow some heirloom corn, and I'm going to use the "weedless gardening" method as after the 'taters are done all the current plants there should be smothered by all the straw.  So all I'll have to do is cover the straw with dirt, compost, and manure.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

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

Working Weekend

Well, it's been a fairly quite week; but this weekend is rushing by so far. I have my son out clearing our potato patch, and of course being a 15 yr old he's taking forever to do it. I and my youngest did some “chicken salad bar” weeding, stuffed a 5 gallon bucket full of clover,grasses, and what ever else was trying to choke our Rhubarb.

I transplanted the eggplants last week, while I do see some new growth on them it seems something likes eggplant leaves. I have seen on my wintergreen the suggestion of new flower buds, and plenty of new leaf growth. I discovered a small possible melon plant growing in my onions the last time I was picking Lambs Quarter. I am hoping it grows well as I had accidentally pulled it up I had to quickly put it in the ground.

One of the volunteer squashes, has been growing amazingly and seems to have possible flower buds showing up now. One of the cold hardy bananas seems to have survived transplant and all my day lilies are growing fine as well.

I transplanted a couple of my paste tomatoes that OMG needed it. They were starting to reach out at me, so I cleared out where I had some planted 2 years ago and planted 4 of my pots and added a small amount of fresh chicken manure.. well relatively fresh I had to dig it out. I think I'll have bean flowers soon, and I should be getting some more lettuce tomorrow.

We are also prepping for a young man who is coming out next week to help us out around here. He's an old friend of mine and Silver’s and he's going to be at first staying in a tent till either our house gets built or we break down and get a secondary building.

Well that's it for now.

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