Root Cellar Update!

OK, I know it's been a while; but while Silver was sick we put the root cellar on hold. Now even though he feels better he's still coughing bad, and by his choice we got back to work on it this morning.

This first picture is of it when we started this morning:

Ok, I took this a few days ago; but still this is what it looked like before we worked on it this morning.

Now here is what it looks like now:

I put the shovels into the "hole" to give you some perspective on what it looks like now. Even though the one is "tipped up" a bit the soil under the handle has been loosened. We had to stop for a bit now due to my back and Silver's back. As of now it is about 9 1/2X 6 1/2X 1 1/2.. a bit closer to 2 ft on the depth.

We have noticed due to here that the hardest part has been the first bit of ground as there is so much rock in the top layer. I am sure it would be taking much longer if we were not using the hammer drill with the planting bit. I wish we could find another one of those bits as it has be a good tool for us. We were in Lowes the other day and hunted for one, but it seems they are out. I guess it is past the "season" for those.

Well we have decided the walls will be done with the ferrous concrete to save money. It will still be strong and keep the soil/clay out of the cellar. Silver is also thinking about making the floor into a concrete floor. Not fully sure on that one as yet though.

So what have you managed to do before breakfast? almost time for me to cut our bread for breakfast this am, and it's already been a busy day so far.

Oh, fun news on the kid front, my son left this morning for a 2 day one night camping trip with the local church. I do hope he has fun, seems they are going to go canoeing and he's really looking forward to that.

Be Well and Blessed Be...

Is summer already here?

WOW! it's been hot! So hot that we have only been digging our root cellar in the morning when it's the coolest. Over the weekend we bought one air conditioner for $40 at a yard sale. It has made sleeping at night in all this humidity wonderful. However the down side is it makes it so that we don't want to go outside in this heat. During the middle of the day that suits me fine, we just have to make sure we are doing our outdoor work as necessary. I don't recall it being this hot this early last year either, but then again I don't know the 'norm' for here either.

If you see me on facebook you'll know that I posted that we have lost one of our young hens. It was one of the white ones, something (Silver thinks it was a fox) dug under part of the fence and got into the yard. I think the one that died was probably defending the others as it was on of the more aggressive young hens, also due to the fact we had smaller ones in there that should have been easy targets; but they were not touched. So today's project is to (hopefully) finish the chicken coop today.

I wish I could get some pictures right now but, my batteries are dead in my camera and the ones we recharged did not last long. The root cellar right now is about7X7X2, It needs to be a bit bigger in two directions and a lot deeper.

I did get some pictures of my berry plants before my batteries died so here we go with those:

This is one of the three raspberry plants I got for my birthday, now I have not been watering these. I am thinking of starting too, but they seem to be doing well. Oh the picture of the blueberry you can't see the actual plant so I won't be posting that one. The lavender is in bloom, and the "red hot poker" lilies are coming up; I hope they flower this year. Oh, my bleeding hearts are looking lush, one of the Dahlias is looking well as well.

Here is one of the Black Currents:

Now to be honest I did not think these would do so well, however they seem to be growing fine. Though a couple days ago I did discover that one of them is broken in the middle, so I am down to one plant. I hope we can get a few more.

I am hoping (very much so) that we can dig up a spot for my herbs to go into later today. They are getting pretty nice sized and a few of them have been drooping in the heat so I need to get their spot set up very soon. I do know for sure now that my basil and Sage have both come up, I still have to figure out the rest of them though. My rosemary is doing fine, the Stevia though; I think I might lose one of them. The one that looked stronger seems to be drooping more than the one that looked worse. Go figure.

I do want to mention in this last little bit a minute bit about food storage. I have seen a good many people writing about it of late, and I'd like to comment on it.

#1 it doesn't hurt to keep extra food on hand.

Why? think, if there were some kind of weather problem and you couldn't get to a store you'd need it. Also if one of those is predicted people seen to rush to stores to wipe out what they think is "essential".

#2 Store what your family uses.

It does you no good to store 20 pounds of dried beans if you don't eat them.

#3 Stock up on non-perishables.

Why the distinction? I have seen people who plan for possible power outages by buying TV dinners... come on folks those won't last!

#4 Rice,flour,sugar,dry beans can go a long time in storage.

It is good to have these items "in stock" in your house as they can be used in almost anything.

#5 Don't forget your pets!

If you are stocking up for you it would be good to buy extra for Fido as well, if you can't get to the grocery store for you; you aren't going to make it for you dog/cat.

#6 Remember water!

You'd be surprised at how many people do not remember they might need to store water, but if you do not have power; you might not have water either.

Only you know how much your family uses of anything, or even what you use. So take a moment and figure out what you use the most, and my suggestion would be to buy those in bulk. I but flour, sugar, and rice in 25 pound bags, I am going to start buying them in those every month, not just when we get low. Now please folks this is just my suggestions on this, you don't have to follow it; but it wouldn't hurt you either.

Catch Up Day

Well as it is the second today is our catch up day for having spent yesterday out doing things, that we needed to do when we get some money in the house. We found a very good price on cat food at the one farm store we stop at. I also found these there:

2 sad looking Stevia plants that were $1.36 a piece, that was a good find as it is the end of the 'buy plants' season here. Does anyone out there know and can tell me if they are a perennial or an annual? ...and... would it be better to have them in a pot or in the ground? I am hoping that they will do well as after my first taste I do have to say YEP! They are sweet! The 'growingyourowngreens' guy on youtube commented that it has an odd taste to it as well. Well, I wouldn't call it odd; I think it's just a little different. However I can see myself drying this and powdering it to use in tea, or Silver's coffee.

So, in case you were wondering; no we have not done any digging in the last 2 days. We will be out digging in the root cellar in about an hour once the sun starts lowering here, or gets behind some trees anyway. I have a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering away right now, and for my white wine in it this time I used a local sweet white ST James Winery "Velvet White". We bought a bottle for $4.99 a bottle, and Silver thinks due to it's delightful flavor; that it would be a good dessert wine.

Here is a picture of what we did get done last in the root cellar:

As you can see it is much wider than it was in my last picture of it. The shovel is in the same place that it was before, my arms have been feeling so heavy after about 10 wheel barrow's full of dirt that I dig out. That I think I might wind up with some impressive muscles by the time we finish. My youngest daughter in her infinite wisdom thought that just pushing the barrow was hard. OK, so I let her try the digging out, she could not even fill it up once. She stopped complaining about how hard it was after that. Funny thing is the first day she had no issues doing the work, it was the second day that she had the issues.

I hope to have more pictures up, once I get more batteries for our camera. It seems recharged batteries don't last long in it. Oh well, lesson learned; right?

Be Well 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...