Life and Garden Update

So sorry for not posting in a while.  Life is hectic, strawberry is still getting out of her pen so she now has a date with the freezer.  Won't be till close to Thanksgiving but still.  The "last straw" is when she got all the way to the front of our property and to get her back Silver made a chain leash to go behind her front legs so we could at worst drag her back.  Well.. she dragged him.  Not good for a 56 year old with RA and diabetes. *sigh*   Also doctors put Silver on insulin, odd thing about that.  Last few mornings with his shot the night before his blood sugar has run high.  Last night he forgot to take his shot and is was much lower, go figure.   Sadly however, his toe is no better and might  actually be a lot worse.  So bad it might have to be amputated.  We're waiting on the VA  to contact the podiatrist so he can go back to seeing him.  The VA drives me nuts sometimes.

Another downside, for those of you who know.  While I am trying to get us "food sustainable" here , right now we are not.  Also because of living on disability we get Food Stamps.  We just went up for re certification, was told a worker would call for an interview here back on Friday at 9am my time.  Ok, no problem.  ..yeah, I sat in the house all day waiting for that call.  At about 10 am I tried to "talk to a person" via their various phone numbers.  Yeah, nope sorry.  Seems you can't talk to a person, but I did wind up leaving 2 messages on their  "person call worker" interview option.   So it's possible we'll lose our food money.  Plus side is it'll be when our garden is producing and we have eggs so I'm not terribly concerned.  However it irks me.

As for the garden...

I have PICS!

This is my acorn squash, we are hoping to have a lot of these for this winter, I have put some marigold seeds in the center to both attract pollinators and to make the insects that don't like them to run away.  Funny thing is I planted these about the same time as my zucchini and look...

Definite difference in size there.  The zucchini  is smaller right now.  Though I know it will catch up eventually.  We're planning on drying over have of what we produce of these for animal feed this winter.

Here is one of my bunches of snow peas (I got my first pod off them this morning!), they are loaded with flowers though not many pods just yet.  I'm hoping they finish before the Cherokee purples and the lemon cucumbers get too big or the peas will be coming out.

Speaking of the tomatoes...

If you can see, just past that pea is one of my tomatoes.  They are starting to flower already!  We're definitely waiting on these to produce fruit.

This is one of the bell peppers, it's also looking like it'll flower soon even though it's not very tall yet.  I am debating pinching the first flowers off to let it grow more.

My pole beans have sprouted, we're hoping for a lot from these for chili making this winter.  Also this is one of two varieties of dry bean we are growing.  I planted tiger's eye as well.  They grow as a bush however and can also be eaten as a green bean.  I don't have pics of those as they only just started coming up.

Here are the cucumbers I planted for pickling.  If we have an over abundance of the lemons don't do well we'll be eating these too.  They were planted next too the pole beans.  I am thinking of growing some kale for the rabbits and the chickens for winter on the other side of these.

Now, this "mess" is my spinach patch.  It's really taking off after the rains we got this weekend.  Seems to be very happy.

These, would be the sunchokes.  They seem to be a prolific as I have heard and seem to be growing just fine.  That is a two foot stake in the foreground, so you have some prospective.  I have discovered that I have a few surprises in my sunchoke bed however.

Apparently, there were some tomato seeds in the chicken manure I added to this bed.  I staked two of the tomatoes this morning.  However, it seems there are five plants growing in my sunchoke bed and they seem very happy.  So I will let them grow where they are.  Also I have no earthly idea what kind they are as I  grew three different kinds last year.  So I will wait and see what they produce, here's to hoping they are edible at least.

I thought I'd share this.  It's one of the wild roses from around here.  Seems all the blooms came out white on the roses this year.  It's wonderful to walk past this and take a deep breath in.  I do wish I knew why they all are white though.  Last year they were all pink, so maybe it's yearly change?

Oh one of the rabbit moms had her littler and it seems she had between 6-8 babies, they have a date with the freezer in 2 months.  (yes i eat my rabbits and if one bit you they wouldn't be cute anymore)

Well I need to head back out and weed some more, happy gardening!

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

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...

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...

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...

Silly Things in Life.

There are some really silly words/phrases in the English language and sometimes other ideas are strange as well. Example... “They shot him dead.” So can someone shoot someone alive? Really, come on folks think about it. The phrase is just downright silly.

We even have silly things in gardening, Everytime I look up how to grow something different, everything says “sandy loam” is the perfect soil to grow “X” item. So what doesn't like sandy loam if you are going to grow it? Think on it how many things tell you that what you want to grow wants hard pan, or heavy clay soil?

On the concept of silly things in existence, P.E. class at my kids' school. Now, this school always has the money at the end of the school year to buy all the seniors a gift because they are graduating. However, they don't wish to keep up the gym floor constantly so all of the children are required to have brand new gym shoes that have never been worn outside for the kids to wear for gym class. Otherwise they are required to do P.E. in just socks, which personally I have an issue with.

Now anyone who regularly reads my blog knows that I am a Pagan, and I let the kids go to a local baptist church as it's what they want. I discovered something that is done there that I have an issue with. They bribe the kids with candy to learn their bible verses, and to get them to keep coming back. That isn't right because it shows kids that you only want what someone is willing to pay you to do something. Also I find it wrong that kids are gaining belief in something because someone is paying them to believe in it. What happened to following with your heart?

As for a homestead update, tomorrow barring rain we pick up rabbits and we just got the rabbittry built yesterday. It has temporary sides on it at the moment (tarps) but it is weather proof, as Harriet and Snowball have shown us as they did not get wet with all the rain we had last night and this morning. We have constructed a new sawdust toilet for the building my and Silver are in for this winter, it still needs a seat on it, but shrugs we'll get there. Granted it would have been great to have had it done this morning with the downpour and all the lightning we had. The garden is still producing tomatoes, cucumbers,peppers, and squashes. Seems we did have one pumpkin on the vine, however once it started turning orange it started rotting away. The chickens loved it.

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

Long Over Due Update!

I know I have not written anything in some time on here, partly due to money issues and partly due to just being busy. At this time we have 2 interns staying with us, both are here either because they want to learn about how we live or because they want to live like this and wanted an easy way to get a start. One of them is our current mode of transportation as our van is officially dead. We are planning on turning it into storage and using the oh so comfy seats in the house (honestly they are -very- comfortable). The same one who has the vehicle is also working at a town job 4 days a week to help out a bit and to assist in getting them out of the debt issues they have.

As for what is directly going on here, well first our money situation is starting to turn itself around (btw my dear friend whom we got the water tanks from payback is coming to you in a couple weeks fingers crossed). We acquired some more goats, an adult and 4 babies.. 3 of them however did not make it. It's a learning experience as one died due tot he fact that it seemed to have been sick when we picked it up. The other 2 shrugs I am not sure what got them though I suspect bloat got one of them. However we have our started herd of milk/meat goats.

We also got a new -small- flock of just hens, they aren't producing the amount of eggs I wish they were but again, it's building and the point is to make it till spring when we buy a new flock. I have 2 rabbits at the moment for our meat production. (Oh for those of you who whine about “don't hurt the cute bunny!” Let me tell you that -cute- bunny has teeth and claws and can hurt you and have you ever seen a cow that is raised on a farm and has good feed, plenty of land to graze one? They are adorable, so if you think the cute bunny shouldn't be hurt .. don't eat the cute cow). I have contact with someone local who is going to sell me a good breeding stock on bunnies so that for us is a big plus.

Our garden this year has been doing 100X's better than we have had before due to my new garden beds. I even pickled some cucumbers the other day. I am still trying to get enough tomatoes to can so I can do sauces and have chili fixings for all winter. I managed to pull 1 melon so far out of my garden, I think I still need to tinker a bit to get good big melons from my beds.

Our second intern is a young man, who has spent most of his life living in the city playing video games and living the life of the average city kid these days. He's been chopping and hauling wood for about 3 weeks now interspersed with some dirt hauling. He is -just- starting to gain some muscle on his arms. Yes, we are still working on our winter wood. We got a chain saw this spring that after 2 days of work died, and when we took it back we needed the refund for bills so the new chainsaw got put on the back burner till we could afford it. We just got a new one and we are trying to get enough wood put up for this winter. We have 2 buildings to heat this year, so we have 2 wood burners to feed all winter.

The kids head back to school tomorrow morning, so they are excited; as are we as we get quiet then. We'll even get more work done as we won't be chasing them around to get the jobs they need done completed. Oh for those of you who know me on FB, I really don't go in there anymore unless there is something I feel is important enough to get out to -everybody-, I am not even sending links to this blog there anymore. For me FB has become a bit of a joke and I just don't see the point in it anymore.

I cannot guarantee I will keep things major-ly up to date as we have tons of things going on around here and I had a free moment and someone locally asked I update the blog as they feel what we are doing would interest a good deal of people out there. I am honestly not sure how true that is as from the bit of lurking I do have time for online I don't see much activity of this kind out there anymore. It is like homesteading in the woods -was- a fad that is now over with. I might be wrong, but I don't see much in the way of people being interested in it at this point.

Example, we had another person here for about 3 months. Boy, was it a failure; this young man thought that life here would be a breeze. As whenever he was online we tended to be as well to chat with him. What you don't wind up seeing is this young man stays up till 3 am and doesn't wake up till about noon. By noon we have our morning chores done and in the spring we don't work 100% of the day any more than the rest of the year. However there are times we come very close to it. He moved down here supposedly to assist us and as he needed a place to live. He after a couple of times flatly refused to do any work as quote”my back hurts too much for that”. Now anyone who reads this blog knows that my partner Silver is disabled, he has a bad knee and suffers from RA horribly. Some days he can't even get out of bed it can be so bad. So we have a 19 yr old young man who can barely lift a shovel to move some dirt because his back hurts. However when we suggested he see a doctor he refused to do that. So after a while of that and him wasting our food we sent him away.

I had at one time a person who looked at my blog and told me that what we do there had to be a lie because no one could live like that or do that much “stuff” in one day. It bothers me that (this person was under 30 btw) people younger than me think life is just about sitting in their chairs infront of a screen all day and walking to the car to go to work is hard exercise. Where has the work ethic of people gone?

Well that is about ti from here right now, hope everyone is well and healthy.

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...

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

Quiet Days

We have been have a few quiet days here, between the rain and the cold.  My mom has flooding up near her in the Chicago area, though where she lives it would take a great deal of water to flood them out.  All of the seeds and plants I have put in seem to be doing well so far.  The one exception is my mini pak choi and edible chrysanthemums, something seems to like eating them;maybe I just need to give up on them.

Our next set of plans on building things is to get either the well house redo, the outdoor kitchen, or the pipe and wire for the new house.  As we sat down and figured we cannot really do any work on the house itself till the kids are fully out of school so they can help as we have at least one spot that needs three people to do the work.  ...and with how the weather has been I can't guarantee we'll have a clear day on the weekends.  So we wait on house construction till they get out and we have them around all the time.  Silly thing is we only need the "extra man" to put up the rebar for the frame the rest we can do two person.

My strawberries are starting to bloom, I'm taking that as a good sign that they like their new home.  We are going to order some huge jalapeno peppers and some sunchokes around the first and a lemon grass plant.  Seems I cannot get lemon grass to sprout at all shrugs oh well we'll just have to do with a started plant.  We are going to have to buy a pot and keep it inside in the cold weather, but I believe it'll be worth it.  I am considering when we get the dome built to get a laurel tree in a big pot.

I hope you are all about to work and get around in all the rain we've had and I alps hope you won't be in the path of any nasty snow melt when it starts up.

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