Monday, May 18, 2009
Frankie's joke
Frankie's joke of the day.
I was making salad and asked Cassie to get the Grey Poupon for the salad dressing.
Frankie says "Ew who would want Grey Poupon their salad?"
Get it? Grey Poop on their salad?
Yes potty humor. Do we do potty humor, not really. But man that was a good joke.
Work Is Like Breathing
Work. A few weeks ago it was my turn in our raw milk co-op to go to the Amish. I always leave there inspired and this didn't disappoint. Now there was my new found desire to grow or at least get some birdhouse gourds this year and run a long string of them for Martins. Or my reassurance that a woodstove outside in a screened porch to not heat the house is totally doable for cooking in the Summer. There are always loads of those things. But this time was different. I was left feeling a desire to work.
It was 7 in the morning and everyone, including kids were outside planting gardens. One farm had kids the age of my oldest son outside by themselves with no adults pounding in tomato stakes in a huge garden. 3 yos carrying buckets of milk to the house. WORK. Done by everyone. Not a frown in sight. No one was spared. And then we came to the farm where in the midst of work there was smiles. Children laughing with each other. THAT was play. That was time to be together.
Work there was like breathing. Everyone does it not because they "have to" but because that's what you do. SO much gets done. More than I can possibly imagine.
I prayed about it. The Lord brought me to verses in the Bible, then days later Clay read the same passages during family devotions. And when I was on the brink, Katie posted this post. It was everything the Lord had been working in me. Everywhere I turned there it was.... idleness. The Lord convicted me wherever he could.
So tomorrow it begins. I'm finishing off the week as a no internet week. It should have started today. But uh... my flesh got in the way. But like Katie, I'll post the difference it makes in this week. And uh... no tv for me either. I wish I could say it's never a problem for me, and it usually isn't but the need to commit to it is there. But it goes beyond internet and tv. It's about idleness.
Proverbs 31:27
She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
My goal is to abolish idleness. Now that doesn't mean no rest. I'm going to attempt to quelch the idleness that takes over my days. How easy it is to be read verses in the Bible and then push them to the side. That Proverbs 31 verse has been read by me 1,000 times and I've felt the sting of that word idleness 1,000 times. But little to no change. So here it is.
I'll be posting this week even if it's just a little note. Well maybe it may be too tempting but we'll see. Hehe. I may know myself too well.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Garden Journal - Thurday May 14th, 2009
Tuesday May 12th:
Planted 4 zucchini plants (8 seeds) about 2 feet apart
Planted 4 butternut squash seeds in a hill - hoping for 2 strong seedling on hill
Planted about 12 feet of cucumbers (1/2 straight Pepino or something and 1/2 pickling cucumbers. Will look at seeds tomorrow) Planted about 8 feet of pole beans
Planted row of Romaine lettuce (ugh I should have pulled out the seeds so I could know what variety but I'm too tired now) between the 2 pole bean teepees in other bean bed
Transplanted second batch of peppers - 20 plants - sweet Italian stuffing peppers and the Hot Pepper Mix from bountiful gardens. I started those under lights this year. About 50 plants in total. I'm thrilled about it.
Garden status:
2 broccoli plants out of 12 going to flower
Other 10 plants have smaller heads slightly smaller than a baseball
1 Bok Choy out of 6 flowering. Ate it. Was amazing
Big Romaine heads ready to eat. Salad tomorrow! Maybe whole wheat pizza and salad. Sourdough pizza crust. Yeah.
Onions have unopened flowers
Straight neck yellow squash planted two weeks ago looking good. About 2 inches tall with 1 set of true leaves.
Mesclun too tall. Must eat.
Clay's garden status. All his silver queen corn is up. Compost transplanted Amish pumpkins looking way stronger than thought all with one set true leaves.
Today Thursday May 14th:
Cut 3 heads of cauliflower. Slightly smaller than store bought ones, nice slight purple color :) They were starting to open a bit so I cut them today. Sauteed with some Spring onions from the Amish, butter and fresh Thyme from the garden. Honestly the best cauliflower I've ever had. Honestly.
Boy it's been raining a lot. Raining a few times a week for 3 weeks at least. Everything in the garden going off, weeds too. Though suddenly my Spring veggies are wanting to flower. Sigh. I guess I need to eat them. Yum.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
In the Garden - April 22 2009
Radishes! See them popping their little heads out? Might pull the biggest one and eat it today for fun. They're always a little spicy for the kids but I'll make them taste it anyways. The first fruit of the season for us.

And woohoo the potatoes are up and looking great! This is the first time we have grown potatoes and I'm glad we did because we're going to be growing A LOT of them next year. I need to do some research to figure out how many we need to grow to try and grow enough for the family for the whole year. Clay should have the open basement/root cellar ready by then to store them. But honestly I didn't have any idea what they were even going to look like when they came up. Every weed that popped up got a good going over before it was pulled :) Once they came up though, I knew them instantly. They're so big and healthy and strong and I am in love with my potato sprouts. I am. Really. They amaze me. I'll be both happy and sad to cover most of them up with dirt in a couple weeks.

Romaine lettuce, Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower and Bok Choy progress. They're just so big and shiny and growing SO fast. The broccoli side shoots are getting little knobs on them making them just look so broccoli-y. :)



Onions. Happy happy onions. We got these sets from a friend that owns a garden center. They're just so happy they make me happy.

We also have some Amish bottle onion sets coming in the mail from someone on homesteadingtoday.com I'm excited. It's just thrilling to go rare heirlooms. They should look something like this when they're done.
They're supposed to be spicy and great keepers. I just better not screw them up and better figure out how to store some for next year!
Spinach. Sigh. I don't know what happened with the spinach but it's just been Sooo slow. Germinated slow. Grew slow and even now are just little seedlings. Though they have taken off like mad in the last week. From almost nothing to two true sets of leaves in a week! But they've been in the ground for forever and forever so who knows what's up with them.

Lettuce. Honestly they're one of my favorite garden items. Not only do fresh greens out of the garden taste unbelievable but little baby lettuces are just so gorgeous to me. They're the epitome of Spring. Bright green, bright, cute, and a promise of a lovely salad.


Um.. think I overseeded my mesclun patch?

Empty teepees. I learned something about peas this year. They don't like being too wet. They really need to be started EARLY. I screwed up both of those things and ended up with 3 tiny horrible pea seedlings. Well they're gone now and the ground is reworked and covered with compost for pole beans.
Clay if you're reading this... I NEED those extra teepees you promised to make me. It took the kids and I hours and hours to gather the right sticks and make these LOL!Tomatoes. The first batch IN. I planted them all yesterday. I have maybe 5 more plants to buy but it wasn't in my budget. This was a horrible year for my attempt at growing tomato seedlings. I researched and bought loads of amazing heirloom tomato seeds. The problem? I planted them in Miracle Grow Organic soil from Walmart. Never again. Turns out I found a thread this year at homesteadingtoday that others had the exact same problem as I did - stunted seedlings turning dark purple and dying. I lost ALL my starts. Everything else I had was grown in other medium (peppers, eggplant, huckleberries) and they're all huge and green and healthy. Sigh. So I bought plants. And turns out there's not loads of heirloom starts available around here - that I've found anyways. So we've got Brandywines, Mortgage Lifters, three kinds of cherry tomatoes - Super Sweet 100, yellow cherry and Sweet Grape, Burpee Red I think, Goliath bush and... well whatever I buy next will be something early. Clay asked me if I got early tomatoes last night and I realized I didn't, so that's next.
Those are just a few of the tomatoes. I planted 18 plants in total.It randomly got really cold last night though and I had to go outside first thing and check on them. Phew.
Now the question is... should I plant my peppers tomorrow? It's only a few days past the frost date and I know you're supposed to wait two weeks BUT we're going to have 7 straight days of 79-80 degree weather!! So that makes 1 solid 10 days past the last frost. Yeah I'm planting those bad boys. If it gets cold I'll just have to freak out and protect them. Hmm... egglants too? I think I'm talking myself into it. I'll show those next week when they're settled.
That to do today? Hmmm.. how cold is it going to get tonight? Off to check.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Storing Information
Look I'm not nearly as much of a "the sky is falling" type gal but I do feel a slight pressure more than I ever have to start preparing myself. For what I don't know. Maybe the Lord has some plan for us I don't know about yet (okay of course He does lol). Maybe the world WILL fall apart. Maybe we'll just keep plugging along day after day towards our goals and I'll need the information. Maybe one day we'll turn off the internet. Maybe the power will go out for 3 weeks in a bad storm. Who knows? AND of course I find it really hard to manage all the links in bookmarks and whatnots. Nevermind the anguish when you go to a site that had somethin special and BAM it's gone. Sigh Robyn. hehe. Or Candy when she stopped one day. Yay she's back. Or any of the other gazillion sites that left me hanging. All I know is I am starting to print off some of the great tidbits of information I've been gleaning off the internet and putting them in a big binder.
Like THIS:
http://www.scienceprojectideas.co.uk/make-rubber-band-from-dandelion.html
Yeah you can make rubber bands and waterproof fabric with dandelions. That rocks. And WHY haven't I heard this before?
I do have lots of really amazing books that have soo much information in them. I am so thankful to live in a time where amazing books are so plentiful. And I have some books I really still want like the Ball Blue Book and Root Cellaring.
But I'm going to start making myself a running list of what I want to print off. Things like:
Dandelion latex coolness.
Making lye (and drying it!!) from wood ash
Soap recipes
All sorts of gardening info
Rendering fat
Making baskets from local weeks and barks
Darning socks
Pattern Drafting info that is starting over at mrssurvival.com forums
Natural medicines
Medical info on farm animals
All sorts of plans for things like the rockin giant homemade dehydrator I just printed off or milking stands or homemade brooders, etc.
Preperation lists (love the 100 first things to go in an emergency list I'll post that soon)
And a million more things I need to figure out.
And there's something about printed information. I read all day long about winter gardening but when I sat and read Elliot Coleman's book it just clicked. Something about having it in my HAND helps me.
So I encourage you to get some of your valuable information off your computer and into your hand. Or at least I'm encouraging myself.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Who needs flowers? - Take 2
So I eventually figured we weren't getting it. Then late Friday night I made some little comment followed sweetly and jokingly by "you non woodstove getting husband hehe" He just smiled and said "who said I'm a non woodstove getting husband?" "WHAT?!!!!!!" replies his astonished wife. "I WAS going to surprise you but I'm going to get it early tomorrow morning". "I LOVE YOU!!" I squealed as I covered him with kisses.
And the next morning the alarm went off at 5 AM (on Saturday no less) and a few hours later he returned with this beauty. (ignore the fact that I had to piece two photos together and didn't feel like working on it to make it look right)

It's in pretty great condition. Very little rust, no cracks, nice white finish still. It does need a little TLC from me. I'll be getting rid of all the rust I can, either oiling it or stove blacking it (still need to research that), etc. We're not so sure about the water resevoir since it's just an open box with nothing else and there's a space under the water resevoir I need to figure out the purpose of. Clay's going to get the metal shop guys to build him a new insert for the hot water that perhaps I can lift out or.. well we haven't figured that out yet.
My hubby and son had fun because they said it was a really nice lady they brought it from. My son was more excited though about seeing all her geese and animals and whatnot but he's 9. She was happy it was going to a family that would actually use it and love it. And we will. All winter long we plan on using it. And for the summer... well my son's next job is hauling rock over to where together the kids and I will be building an outdoor grill. I'd LOVE to build an outdoor oven but one step at a time. I'll start pictures of the outdoor grill this week as we get started.
Anyways, the wood cookstove. I'm in LOVE with it. Well and my husband too. And my son who went with him.