Happy Friday!

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

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

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

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

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

Time to go work on the soup,

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

Strawberry Day

Yep, today is the day to plant...
  looks outside
 ...ummm MUD my strawberry plants in.
  This is one of my little strawberry babies, I have 50 of these.  My thought(s)?  If I have issues with them growing at least some should do Ok, right?  The two worst case scenario's are:
 #1 they all die
 #2 they all produce
 I just don't see with #2 that being a problem and if #1 happens... well then I learned something.  It took me about an hour to plant them all in the mud.  I put them in today as we are due to spend the rest of the week in RAIN.  Fun for us yes?  However I can't leave the poor things in their box for a week or more, they would die.  So I went out today and mudded them in.  About half of the little plants had really good crowns on them really think, a few were pretty small.  So we'll see.  
   I planted them in our old onion bed that the Elderberry trees are planted on both ends of.
  You can if you look very closely the escapee onions that we have growing there.  My thoughts at having the plants there with the Elderberry is that they will become the ground cover for the trees (shrubs, elderberry are tech shrubs).  I know the ground there is very good as it's full of worms and we already have things growing in the soil there, besides the onions.
 From what I have read over the years you should let the plants not produce the first year after you plant them.  I am debating this as I know the strawberry farms harvest yearly including the first year.  Anyone have some suggestions?   My Elderberries have been doing wonderfully since they were planted where they are, I think due to 2 reasons.  First is that they were grown locally, also Elderberry plants grow here naturally.  They have been sending out "suckers" too.
  This is the taller of the two "trees" see near the base?  that is the "sucker" plant.  Elderberry is one of those that can reproduce by suckers, or plants growing off of roots that grow near the surface.  There are quite a few of them around the "trees"  I do not know how fast they grow, I do know that they are going eventually I should be able to have tons of elderwine, and cough syrup.
 I was covered with mud when I was done with that planting, and when I was done needed a good bath.  
   I need to run for now I have to post these pics to pintrest and start on dinner, have a wonderful evening everyone!
 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...

Garden Surprise!

Well looks like I'm doing at least 2 posts today for both my blogs, as I sit here waiting on my laundry to finish; then get my dishes done.  I seem to be suffering from a cold right now and I am considering taking a nap after my work is done here.

However I have a nice surprise to share with you from the garden:

That folks, is a flower head on one of my Elderberry plants.  It's the taller of the two plants and I saw at least 3 flower heads on it.  I am hoping the other Elderberry produces some flowers as well, but I have no idea if it will.

I need to now look up a good elderberry jam recipe or if anyone out there knows if you can mix them into another jam like maybe a blackberry jam?  As we are going to have tons of black berries this year and I'm thinking of a mixed berry jam.

That's it for now,

Be Well, Be safe, and Blessed BE...

Root Cellar Info

Yes Root Cellar, we have been playing with the idea of having one since before we moved here; and our first house plans always included some "foresight" as to where a trap door could be kept. The real deciding factors (yes there is an 's' there), was the Joplin tornado; that was just a tad bit to close for comfort. Also we had watched a video the other day that had a man now in his 80's who hand dug his root cellar in 1980, which would have put him in his 60's when he dug it. Well... in my opinion if a 60 something person can dig a root cellar so can we!

Now there is absolutely no storm shelters on our road, and I think the closest one is about a mile away in a cow field. so the plan is to have it big enough for our food storage while giving us room to stand in it in case of a storm. Seeing as how the storms I'm worried about generally aren't likely to be going for more than a few minutes. Tornado's don't sit on you like a hurricane does.

The plan is to dig down at least to 7ft and we think we are going to use concrete floor and walls, with only a ladder for entry and exit, as an attempt to keep the kids from playing in it. We have rain going on right now, and it's suppose to continue for the next couple of days; so I guess digging some more will have to wait for a non-rain day. Well, at least not while it's raining.

We did manage to get out and do some more digging in it yesterday after the girls went to VBS(my son has spent a couple nights at a friend's house). I think we have dug down to a foot at least on one side of the part of the cellar we have started on. The plan is to get down to a foot then move down and dig down to a foot again; then move down again and dig a foot again till we get the full length. Here is a picture of how it looks now, I left a shovel in the hole for some prospective:

I hope this gives some better perspective than the last few pictures I have put up, the plan is to have it only under the addition to our current home. The thought on this is, if it does take more than another year before we can get the house we want up, at least we will have some comfort.

We have been putting all we dig out to good use, as the path to our garden floods when it rains so we are "raising" the path too it. We fill our small wheelbarrow with dirt/stones and my youngest munchkin takes it and dumps it on the path then it gets smoothed some and we make a very big point to walk on it.

This is the section closest to the garden as it was the furthest from the house. My daughter had asked, "but mom how am I suppose to do the whole path? The wheel barrow will get stuck after a while from me pouring the dirt out." You know, kids are just soooo much fun sometimes! It never occurred to her that she needed to start at the far spot and work her way forward. Then I really made her day winks I got a picture of her -working-, the best part is; I had utterly no complaints about her doing this work. Which for her is not easy to do.

We have also been digging up quite a few large stones that we are saving out for the house foundation where the ground needs building up:

As you can see from this picture we found a "few" stones already, I guess one of Missouri's natural crops is stone. I know it's that way in up state New York. These will be moved in the next couple of days either later tomorrow or on Thursday, as my son's job of late has been to move the stones to the house site. So we have to wait till he comes home (late tonight) from VBS before we can think of putting him to work. it's amazing how he manages to get out of doing hard work sometimes, as we had only realized (one of those silly moments of clarity) that we really needed to get this dug before we started building the addition.

Now for a plant update:

This is one of my 2 Elderberry plants, I think it's a very happy plant right now. It's hard to believe that it was just pretty much a stick when we planted it in April. I wonder if it will produce any fruit next year? I imagine it is possible that it will.

Here is the other Elderberry plant:

Doesn't this one look happy too? The first one sent out new branches off the original stem and this one is growing off that original stem and it's sending up new branches. I have side dressed both of these with some extra peat moss that I have had, which I have put right over the straw that I put on them after I had planted them. I will admit to something though, as I was worried about these having a good start I did buy some fertilizer stakes and used one on each of these. Which is probably why they are growing so well. I think I'm going to start looking up Elderberry jams and wine as I can be ready in case I do get them next year. You never know sometimes.

Be Well and Blessed Be...