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...

Peas... DONE!

Well due to the coming rains last night and today we got a move on planting the peas.

We decided to go with the tepee styled trellis built with saplings.  As we couldn't get the saplings to go into the ground the way I wanted them.  I had wanted two more fence like trellises down the bed line to make it easier for my tomatoes to be planted there after.  However this will do, as long as I'm creative I think with the placement of the tomatoes.

I planted Alaskan snow peas in the hopes if we get another cold snap (fingers crossed) they'll be ok.  What this is planted in, is last year's popcorn bed (gods that was a failure).   We laid the stalks on the ground and covered it with the hay the goats didn't eat and tramped down onto the ground of their pen.  Then some of the composed "saw dust" we got from the saw mill mixed with both wood ash and chick manure (chick because it literally came from our brooder).  Just enough  of this "dirt" to let me plant the seeds in.  Now I just have to hope the two loose roosters don't decide the peas look good.

Speaking of the chicks, in about three-ish weeks I need to move them into the pen because one of the families my girls attend church with has offered us ducklings.  Now considering the avian flu in this state I don't want anymore other birds but ducks have to be separate anyway so I'll chance that.  I wanted ducks anyway and this'll give me the chance to have them.

Tomorrow after the rain is gone I get to work on the other planting beds I currently have.  The next on my planting list is lettuce and onions.  I plan on putting my zucchini where the lettuce is when the lettuce is done.  I will be starting these however with more of the bad hay, once all the beds are covered we'll be piling near the garden for adding to the beds through the growing season as it will help to retain water in my beds where it is needed and it'll help kill weeds as well.

Hope you're planting start(s) are going well!

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...

Record Keeping

I was filling out my record keeping info this morning when I thought that I should make some kind of statement on it. First I will say I am the worlds WORST record keeper. I have a tendency to forget to write things down, however I know with how I am living I can't be forgetting to do it.

I have a couple odd notebooks hear there and everywhere, I also have an accounting journal. I have one notebook just for my “daily” info, i.e. weather, eggs (when produces/size/how many), seedlings sprouted, food harvested (non-egg). I read in a book once that it's important to write down the weather or anything “out of the ordinary” so if anything seems “odd” in your accounting you can figure out why.

I have also made sure that our bills and receipts are stored in one location that we cannot lose. We have a lovely binder that stores each bill in it's own place (aside from the non- “regular bills) I keep the feed receipt and receipts from my seed purchases in one. The idea behind this is at the end of each month (we have money once a month) I add up our “harvested food (eggs included) and then keeping current store prices in mind I subtract my cost in. Then I let myself know how much we “made” by not buying the finished product.

Last month we made around $30 in our egg production, by not having to buy any eggs. All I did was add up the eggs I gathers over the month, broke them down into dozens and then multiplied by “going” store price for basic eggs (I wasn't even going with “organic”, or “free range”) and then subtract any feed I have bought for them. I am hoping this year we might be able to start making our own feed if things go well, then our “made” money will be higher.

just in case you didn't understand the way I stated it... no I don't sell my eggs. I am basing this on money I didn't spend buying eggs

… just wanted to clarify on that one. I hope that if you are homesteading (no matter how) you remember to keep the “books” in order, you might be surprised.

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

1st Big Planting Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Planting Folks!

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

Garden and Heritage Days

Yesterday morning I managed to get straw put out on my garden after the chicken coop got a good layer of straw. I'm going to be replanting a good portion of what did not sprout this week maybe even today.


Of course these are the squashes, the pumpkins in here (just past the bottom a bit) are now vining so much that putting the straw down now was a very good thing. Also this is only a 3rd of the plants in this bed past the top is melons and cukes, below the bottom is pumpkins and more squashes.

I am still only getting male flowers on my squashes, I hope they start getting female flowers soon, I want summer squash stir fry! I now have some Amaranth seeds and am considering planting a few here and there in this bed to see if they grow together. If I get some seed off them this year good, if not at least I will know a bit about how they grow before next year. Which is when I want to grow them as a crop standard.

I am wondering if I didn't get much in melons as it was too early when I planted them. I will be replanting melons and hoping they come up, I do have some; but sadly the only one I remember which type I planted did not come up. Those Tigger melons I want so badly to grow didn't


This of course is my bean bed for this year, we are thinking of doing peas in the fall here after the beans die off. The standard pole beans are growing more vigorously that the long beans on the back side. Also you don't see the "rice" beans to the left of the picture. I have my Tiger's Eye bush beans in the center between the two types of the pole beans. They have all grown so well so far and I have little beans growing on all but the long beans so far.

If someone knows why the lower leaves are turning yellow please let me know. I am hoping the straw will help these plants as well. I am going to replant some rice beans now that I know they are a bush type so I will get more than what is produced on 2 plants. It still amazes me that only 2 seeds out of 18 grew, again it might have not been hot enough for them. As it was a different type of bean than I am use too.

I am waiting on those long beans as when we did our squash stir fry last year our one neighbor gave us some of her long beans to try and we had them in it and WOW they were so good. So I do like long beans and I hope we like one or both of these types of them. I'd be willing to grow both of them if we like them as one is a green and one is a red one.


Half of my tomatoes are in the ground and half are in that box in front of my home. These ones interestingly enough has aside from a very small amount of aphids has no "bugs" at all. While the ones in the box have tons of aphids and I've been pulling lots of tomato worms.

My chickens are very happy about the "worms" though, (laughs) my son was worried that the big one we got yesterday would bite him. Also the one we got yesterday my son said that one of our turkey's got and inhaled it.

Sounds about right as I've noticed that turkeys are just eating machines, at least these 2 bronzes we have are. All the tomatoes all have little tomatoes on them, and again I might be wrong on again on the "types". As one plant the three largest tomatoes are starting to get color on the bottoms that are dark. Those might be the purple smudge as they get orange "shoulders".

As my mother had come out for a visit, and she was looking for something to do; and also that Baker Creek had a "Heritage Day" going on we went.


Here is the funny thing, as aside from a couple of seeds all my seeds have come from Baker Creek's store. Which is also the only building in there we have been in, until yesterday. This picture is where they do music and shows during their events.

They were doing a trivia contest, and dang it I missed the answer to the final question. "What plant is eggplant closest relative?" I did know it was a non-edible plant, I guessed Nightshade and got it wrong. So, because no one had guessed it he gave a hint so big I blurted out the answer. My daughter (I had thought she had heard me) tried next and said "pillow weed", which was wrong. The answer is, "cotton" . If she had guessed correctly we would have gone home with a basket of goodies worth $60, which from what I saw included seeds and a T-shirt.


It was the kids' first trip to Baker Creek as we generally go when they are in school so we don't have to keep saying "don't touch". Thankfully there was so much going on they we too busy looking around.

We did try out some Sumac tea at one of the booths and I can happily say that Sumac does not cause allergic reactions in us. YEAH! This means I can harvest our Red Sumac's and make tea or lemon aid. My mother even liked the tea and found it refreshing, so I imagine if I get some dehydrated this year she will want some sent her way.

We found a vendor of local goat's milk who also does cheese and ice cream, and I liked the cheese and ice cream. The kids liked the ice cream and tried the fudge she had as well. I think aside from my son my kids would like goat's milk. I'd still have to see if I'd like to drink it as last time I tried to was store bought and I could not get it past my nose. Silver says it should be very different tasting to me considering I did like the ice cream and cheese. We have to woman's card and will be contacting her about her milk products. Now this does not mean I's prefer goat's milk over cow's as I still want butter and I'm a heavy milk/cream drinker/user. So I want my Dexter cows still.

I'd like to say Hi to Juli from Wild Moon Cottage:

http://wildmooncottage.blogspot.com/

I saw her at her booth at Baker Creek and bought some herbs, which I have to say are -very- fresh! Nice to finally have met you in person Juli, I hope we get a chance to see you again!

I am going to continue my pics from Baker Creek tomorrow with the "seed museum", I am hoping to get a chance to head over there on the next heritage day and get more pics. My mom has MS so she couldn't manage the whole place in the heat, but she still liked it. She even liked the seed store even though she only does flowers at her house. She was happy to see they carry flower seeds and I put her down for one of the catalog's for next year.

BE Well, Be Safe and Blessed Be...

Another Movie Review

Yes I have another movie review for you today as we watched this one this morning after discovering that the rain was going to hamper any progress on our root cellar today. (yeah a big just up out of bed when I noticed looking out the window while half awake that the air was yellowish orange) Just a minor freak out then run out to get my morning feeding chores done.

But anywho the movie in question:

"Ingredients"

Directed by: Robert Bates

This movie is about how some chefs who love eating "good tasting" good foods, have been sponsoring sustainable agriculture. It follows a few different farms and those farmers from those farms talked about how they got started in sustainable agriculture based on these chefs needs.

It also touches again on CSA's and also something else. Remember the last movie I reviewed about the girls? Well it seems since that movie was made and this one one of the farmer's market "owners", that was trying to get fresh veggies into the little corner markets has succeeded in getting the food into the markets in Harlem and other areas in the NY city area.

This movie also goes season by season and does show some of the crops/veggies garnered from those times. Which can be eye opening if you don't know about things like "winter vegetables". There are many winter vegetables out there, or at least vegetables that are harvested in the winter.

So take some time and check this one out, as i am sure you will like it!

Update day!

We as I can't take any pictures *pouts* I just decided to give an update on what I can. First thing, we did not work on the root cellar this morning, we instead we got my herbs that I have been growing from seed in ground finally. Used my favorite new garden tool (the drill) and tilled the soil that we amended last year for some flowers we had then. We added a bunch of the semi-composted chicken "stuff" from the brooder in it. I do hope they wind up very happy herbs. I did discover that yes the rue did sprout, and I have placed that in a separate spot; as i have heard that is grows very large.

Our chickens for some reason other than eating will not go into their coop. We need to put a door on it and keep them in it at night, also I am hoping they will spend more time in it when the rain comes this weekend. I have had no more dead chickens so i think we solved that problem, by putting heavier things around the edges of the fencing. Granted if they burrow under that will not stop them what so ever, which is why we need to get the door for the coop done as we put chicken wire under the dirt on the coop floor.

My pole beans are starting to vine, now if they would just go up the poles... I wish the rice beans had grown better I only have 2 out of 18 seeds. The Tiger's eyes are getting their secondary leaves now, so I am sitting here hoping to see some flowers in a couple weeks on them. I do not know how fast pole beans flower as these are the first ones I have ever grown.

My potatoes are getting ready to flower, and they have what the kids call "stink bugs" on them. they look like those green shield bugs, but they are brownish in color. does anyone know what they are and will they eat my plants? My bushel gourds are planted near the potatoes and seem to be doing Ok now, though I have no idea how quick they grow. It seems it is starting to get their secondary leaves as well.

Out in the vine bed my bitter melon has sprouted (one anyway), it took a while to sprout and I'll be keeping an eye on it closely. It is suppose to be a good supplement for diabetics to lower their blood sugar. I am hoping to put them into a stir fry with the long beans, and zucchini once I have all of them.

I believe I do have some melons coming up but as yet I am not sure which ones they are. We will see as time goes I am really hoping to try the Tigger melons this year, as i have heard they are wonderful.

Well that's it for now, back to the root cellar tomorrow; and we will see how my herbs do in their new home.

Be Well and Blessed Be...