Yep – I’m building these

Even though our garden is well fenced, we always have interlopers. Perhaps these… 

http://www.grit.com/farm-and-garden/building-garden-fence-boxes.aspx#axzz2wWvo24jZ

are the answer!

A wee miss calculation

Well, as it turns out, my confidence in my lovely garden may have been a wee bit misplaced. In addition to a picking failure in which my absence meant ripe beans went unpicked and in turn, start to turn to seed, therefore, become tough and stringy but not yet ripe enough to eat as dry beans; my adorable Muscovy babies have nibbled the heck out of my cabbage, and decimated my lettuce (yep, I still have edible lettuce). But seriously, how can you get angry at this?

 

 << muscovy cuteness

 

In addition, the baby chicks (just hatched and adorable) have also infiltrated the garden. Because they come from a long line of vigorous scratchers, at a few days old they were able to up root my almost mature onions, eat a fair few of the rare, ripened cherry tomatoes and add to the cabbage destruction. But I can’t be too angry with them (and if they’d stop moving for long enough that I could get a picture, you’d see why). 

 

Now if we were truly dependant on the garden, this would be a huge set back. And I do mean huge – between the bean (including broad beans) failure, the scratched up peas by one hen that I just realized re-scratched them up therefore ruining my fall crop plan, the lettuce and cabbage eating and the aphids that have destroyed the kale, we have lost I don’t even want to think about how many lbs of food. It’s made me realize what it would take to be truly self sufficient. 

 

All is not lost however, I have still got the green house (bursting with herbs, peppers and tomatoes are just starting and cukes are coming slow and steady), sprouting seeds, potatoes, some carrots (I think – I hate to check as they were poorly thinned) and abundance in my area. Not only is today market day but we have been the lucky recipients of pears, pears and more pears as well as plums, plums and more plums. Much is being put up (mostly dried) for this winter but there’s enough to keep us in produce. Also – we have two GIGANTIC zucchinis that were picked before the infiltration. I’m going to try krauting at least one of them with just salt and maybe a bit of vinegar. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. So all of that plus there’s got to be stuff to forage – perhaps now is the time to try the wild greens we know are growing everywhere (including the garden).

 

Anyway, I have no shortage of things to do today. And tomorrow we’re butchering meat birds (so long as the wasps aren’t posing a problem). It will be a very full weekend.

Happy Saturday everyone.

It’s still Flannelberry Friday

No, I didn’t forget. I actually had so many things I wanted to post about that I couldn’t decide what to actually post. That and the fact that there is a frog living in my greenhouse that I wanted to get a picture of. Evidently s/he isn’t as into Flannelberry Friday as I might like because when I had the option of a picture, s/he wouldn’t come out of hiding. 

 

I wanted to use this post to remind everyone to hurry, hurry, and get their fall planting started. It’s getting late for most things but there is still time if you’re in a warmer zone than mine (Zone 5), have a greenhouse (or row cover/hoop house/cloches) or are just willing to give it a try. 

 

Right now I have various greens (mustard, lettuce, kale)  sprouting, broad beans (Martoc, Purple Fava and probably Windsor), sweet peas (yep, the ornamental ones), sugar peas, beans (because why not?), various broccolis, nasturtiums, and I can’t even remember what else. I have to say that there’s so much going on in the greenhouse that even when I don’t get frogs out of the deal, it makes me stupidly happy to see it all.

 

Here it is peeps.

 

One blog?

So, here is my dilemma. I have a blog for the fibre business, a blog for the farm and this one, just for fun. Do any of them get updated? No. Part of the problem is that I have this weird thing about making it fair. If I update one, I should do all of them. And, unlike other bloggers, I also feel like I have to have some deep and meaningful thing to post every time. And long. I feel like little bits – like this one will be – cheats the reader.

 

So, what’s a girl to do? Besides leave you with this…

 

A little rain and some fry bread

A little rain is falling and I couldn’t be more grateful. We’re in the full swing of summer squirelling for winter enjoying. Apricots were last night, cherries the night before. While I love the end result of canning, the sticky, sweet heat can get to you after a while. This cleansing rain is just the thing.

 

And to go with it, because I didn’t make “real” bread because of the heat, we have fry bread:

 

It’s not really a hardship – neither is it difficult to make. Today we’re going stove top because the bbq is in use for canning and it’s actually cold. For the stove top method –

 

flour – your choice of flour. I haven’t used gluten free -ymmv.

water

baking powder

 

Mix to a firm and not super sticky dough (unless you use rye flour – in which case you’ll have a bit of stickiness). Melt a wee bit of butter in a cast iron pan (yes, you could use other oils and other pans but why?). Brown slowly on each side. Eat with fresh jam.

 

Yum!

Summer

I don’t know about you but here we’re having record high temps. Not fun but that with the early rain means we’ve got more berries growing wild than we can keep up with. It’s a great problem to have.

 

Summer and gardens

Well it’s been a busy month and some. I guess that’s the trouble with Living Simply – you can’t be glued to the computer to do it. I think my biggest problem is that I am not as skilled as my lovely friend at Warm Dirt at popping up a little post with a great pic.

In the garden there is bounty. Mostly of it is leafy and green but it is bounty. Herbs, of course but also kale, Asian greens, lettuces, garlic scapes and broccoli. The peas and broad beans shouldn’t be too far behind. Nor the currants and courgettes. It’s the time of year when you can eat good food and be nourished. You may get bored but you won’t go hungry.

<< ok, so not the garden but lovely. 

Tea and lots of it

We drink a lot of tea in this house. By a lot I mean epic amounts. A pot in the morning before work (per person) would not be out of the ordinary.

Imagine my surprise when I learned why my tea bags don’t decompose:

http://alice-in-blogland.blogspot.ca/2007/05/composting-tea-bags.html

and this:

http://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/content/food-grade-recycled-polypropylene-pp-packaging-0

or this:

http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/food-grade-recycled-polypropylene-pp-packaging

That’s right  they’ve got polypropylene in them. Now there are many sites who say it’s safe because it’s food grade but is sounds to me too much like the whole BPA/food safe plastics thing (update: check this out:

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/tea-bags.html)

So, from now on here, we’ll be opening up the tea to make our bagged tea into loose leaf and reconsidering what teas were buying. At this point we’re moving to bulk and organic but there is a lot of tea in this house to drink up before that happens.

If you’d like to compost them, tear them first to start them breaking down.

(thanks google, for the image)

It doesn’t get simpler than this…

So, we saw this online somewhere and just had to make it. As I am up to my eyeballs with too many things J took the task on for me. 

Check it out:

 

We used coconut oil that had been expired. Yep- it was solid but we heated it a little and made it liquid and it didn’t revert. i suspect there’s enough oil in the cotton to ignite the next on and the heat will keep the oil soft enough.

 

Instructions are here:

http://www.judyofthewoods.net/diy/lamp.html

 

No more throw away candles for us. And, all of the fats I’d planned to make soap with and didn’t (and still have) will be useful once more. And there was no ‘off’ smell from using old oil until we blew it out.

 

Oh – and I keep saying we but I literally sat on my butt while J did it all.

 

Nice ash

A fringe benefit of having so many creatures in our lives is the abundance of good soil they grow for us. Sometimes though, the soil is so good that you can’t get root crops to form their roots (sorry, no pic but if I had one from last year it would be this awesome carrot top with a spindly little root). The fact is, too much of a good thing is, as my gran used to say, still too much. So, too much nitrogen means I get killer kale and cabbage and no carrots or onion worth mentioning. of course there are additives I can purchase at the garden shop but… as I’m an aspiring Viking (and thus prefer to do things primitively) I did a bit of research.

 

Potash is a major source of garden potassium. Potassium, it turns out is key in the development of root bulbs. And potassium is readily available in the ashes from our wood stove. According to the Oregon State Extension unit, not only potassium but liming agents and other micronutrients important for plant health are available in wood ash. 

 

 

Yes, you could go to the shop to buy a supplement but why not make your own WHILE heating your house? No packaging, no extra fees, no shipping, you know exactly what’s in it and, should the power go out in cold weather, you’re not cold. 

 

Anyway, if like me you have lots of nitrogen AND you live and garden in a pine forest (so have acid soil), wood ash is a must. In researching it, I learned that my apple trees would love it as well – so I’ll be applying what’s left to them,

Here are the steps I followed. We won’t know until the fall how well it worked but, frankly, it would be tough to have a worse harvest than last year!

 

 

So, the ashes came out to the garden.

 

The garden bed. Yes, it’s very long.

 

 

After that I raked it in just a little and then planted the carrot seed. I covered it with row cover (I have a hen who is pretty sure I have been planting the garden for her), turned the sprinkler on and let it all soak in. Some people have said that the ash shouldn’t touch the seeds so we’ll see how it all works. 

I did throw some on the parsnips:

 

and I didn’t see any signs of scalding but… maybe I will?

 

Here’s hoping for an abundant carrot harvest and yay for another way everything has it’s place here – even wood ash.