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Published On: Apr 16, 2008 08:29 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Apr 16, 2008 08:29 PM
Wed - April 16, 2008
Sun - April 13, 2008
Spring is here!
I spent some time weeding and putting in a few
rows of french breakfast radishes and more scallions underneath threatening
skies today... the beets, peas, carrots, and greens are all up and growing, as
this constant rain has been great for germination, if not for getting more
actually planted. We were able to make one last egg delivery to the Bent Spoon,
and now the egg fridges are filling up in preparation for our first market day.
We have lots more planting to do, as well as tracking down a new tent, and
getting our paperwork back to the market committee.
I think it will be a good year! This time last year, half our seeds had washed away in the flooding we had, and most of our potatoes were rotting in the ground from all the standing water. We didn't plant potatoes yet this year, but there's still time - priority has been going to crops that will be ready by the middle of May. Warm weather crops will go into the beds as the earliest crops are pulled, and we'll probably plant our potatoes then. I noticed a bunch of garlic we must not have harvested growing up out of the cloves that were left in the ground...I wonder if we'll get some garlic bulbs out of the deal? All of them may just set seed, but it's worth leaving them there to see what happens. Even Lucretia is getting bigger by the day, so she may have gotten pregnant this year after all - we were pretty sure Guy didn't hit puberty in time this season... Baby goats after all! We're actually hoping for one buckling, which we'll castrate and keep as Guy's buddy. That way he can move to a new, separate pasture and we can start milking Lu for our own use. (In our experience, milk from a doe who is anywhere near a buck is .... ewwww.... - it gives goat milk a bad nam.e!) I'll miss having him right by the driveway though - he's certainly always happy to see us!
I've beens sewing, as usual. I just finished an all linen baby quilt in a modern geometric design, and these are two of my latest swaps...
The best thing about this whole swap-bot thing is the way it makes me try new techniques - for this pincushion swap I used some printable fabric that I usually use for quilt labels and used my sewing machine to do some decorative stitching in combination with a note-card to create a needle-book.
I think it will be a good year! This time last year, half our seeds had washed away in the flooding we had, and most of our potatoes were rotting in the ground from all the standing water. We didn't plant potatoes yet this year, but there's still time - priority has been going to crops that will be ready by the middle of May. Warm weather crops will go into the beds as the earliest crops are pulled, and we'll probably plant our potatoes then. I noticed a bunch of garlic we must not have harvested growing up out of the cloves that were left in the ground...I wonder if we'll get some garlic bulbs out of the deal? All of them may just set seed, but it's worth leaving them there to see what happens. Even Lucretia is getting bigger by the day, so she may have gotten pregnant this year after all - we were pretty sure Guy didn't hit puberty in time this season... Baby goats after all! We're actually hoping for one buckling, which we'll castrate and keep as Guy's buddy. That way he can move to a new, separate pasture and we can start milking Lu for our own use. (In our experience, milk from a doe who is anywhere near a buck is .... ewwww.... - it gives goat milk a bad nam.e!) I'll miss having him right by the driveway though - he's certainly always happy to see us!
I've beens sewing, as usual. I just finished an all linen baby quilt in a modern geometric design, and these are two of my latest swaps...
The best thing about this whole swap-bot thing is the way it makes me try new techniques - for this pincushion swap I used some printable fabric that I usually use for quilt labels and used my sewing machine to do some decorative stitching in combination with a note-card to create a needle-book.
Posted at 05:56 PM Read More
Sat - March 15, 2008
A Great Day for an Egg Hunt
Georgia had a great time at her first egg hunt, and is very proud of her green egg..."with CANDY inside!!!'. I'm thrilled with my mama poncho, knit by the wonderful and talented Karen. This little egg dressed as a rabbit is compliments of a Martha kit A and I couldn't resist the other day at Michael's.
Posted at 09:06 PM Read More
Thu - March 13, 2008
Small Indulgences
Not much time spent sewing this week, instead
I've been re-adjusting to the stay ay home mom life, and adding a few small
indulgences to make things even better. A new pair of slippers for the 6 am baby
feeding/quilt block sewing/toddler breakfast/wiggles watching hours. Pretty
glass head pins in the perfect shades of green and blue, now begging for a new
linen pincushion to call home. A pretty new notebook for my ever evolving list
(my antidote for mama brain). A very part time teaching job to keep my biologist
brain cells in shape. Treats for an Easter basket for a kiddo who is old enough
this year to be anticipating egg hunts and big meals with everyone she loves.
Plotting and planning two of
these, for the kiddo and her cousin. I've made Gi a stuffed bunny
every Easter since she was born, and this will be a nice variation she can use
as a doll quilt too.
The first loaves of Irish Soda Bread are made and in the freezer - another 6 loaves and we'll be set for treat deliveries. :) We'll plant a token bed or two of peas and potatoes on Monday - I won't chance a market crop this early... that will wait till April 1st, but super early peas and new potatoes will be much appreciated around the house if the weather behaves.
The first loaves of Irish Soda Bread are made and in the freezer - another 6 loaves and we'll be set for treat deliveries. :) We'll plant a token bed or two of peas and potatoes on Monday - I won't chance a market crop this early... that will wait till April 1st, but super early peas and new potatoes will be much appreciated around the house if the weather behaves.
Posted at 11:54 PM Read More
Fri - February 15, 2008
Seed Season
Gi and I are working up the momentum to go out and run some errands... it may take a while. My immune system went on strike last Friday, so after a few days out sick with bronchitis and pink eye I took the hint and made my maternity leave official. Yesterday I felt almost human, but overdid it running around after Gi and collapsed around 2. Today I feel almost normal, and am taking it much easier.
We had a nice Valentine's Day even with the lingering sickness, E surprised me with a huge, enormous, overwhelming king size bed - a looming neccessity with a new kiddo added to the two dogs, two adults and toddler mix that we already were trying to fit onto one mattress. E didn't even notice when I left the bed last night at 3 am with preggo insomnia.... could be a good thing, could be a bad thing! One of our errands once we finally get out of the house is to go over to Sears to get a bed skirt to cover the ...interesting... black and navy blue paisley pattern of the box-spring.
I went through the linen closet yesterday and saved the nicer flat sheets and pillow-cases for quilting - I have 13 blocks done for what will probably be Gi's new quilt (the blue one is bound, washed, and awaiting a new home or a baby boy), and will probably make the log cabin variations from the Sew Mama Sew Quilt Along this weekend. It's for her toddler bed, so once I have 16-18 blocks I'll stop and start adding some khaki borders and sashing - I still have enough great red/pink batik tablecloth to use that for the binding - it should look nice. For V-Day, I made Gi the stuffed elephant from "Last Minute Patchwork Gifts" - if you want to give it a try, it's very cute and comes together quickly, BUT make sure to check the flickr group commentary - there are omissions in the assembly instructions which can drive you a bit crazy (especially at 1 AM - trust me!), but the commentary there clears up the confusion.
E and I stayed up one night this week and put in our seed orders - the bulk from Johnny's and a few heirlooms from Seed Savers. We are going to pick up our potato and onion sets as needed from the feed store - I have had some bad experiences not getting those delivered here at the correct time, and would rather just head out to pick up 5 - 10 lbs at a time on days we're planting, though we'll buy extra onion sets to store for scallions and green onions later in the season. We didn't order much seed variety - we over-ordered last year, but still spent a good hundred dollars on the stuff that we are constantly putting in the ground - rotations of beans (jade, yellow wax, royal burgundy, dragon langerie), carrots (oxheart, nantes, a new purple variety, and goldrush), radishes (cherry belle, d'avignon/french breakfast), mesclun, beets (bull's blood and an improved golden variety), peas (snow, shell, and snap)....
I have high hopes for the red zebra tomatoes we ordered from SSE - the 16 green zebra seedlings we tried last year were by far the most productive disease free variety we've ever grown, but there's only so much salsa verde we can eat, and it would be great to get the same characteristics with a nice red color for canning the surplus. We've always had great success re-homing any and all tomato volunteers that sprout up in beds reserved for that purpose, so I'm sure we'll have plenty of nice green zebras for comparison. The volunteers obviously lag a few weeks behind our earlier 'matos, but we can harvest here till the end of September, so we still have a nice long season.
Posted at 02:29 PM Read More
Sat - November 3, 2007
It's That Time of Year!
I've been hopping on the computer on and off all
morning as we run around finishing up projects for this year's halloween
bash...one more room to decorate and we should be getting close. Ghost pops are
done (white chocolate coated pears), two jello brains are chilling in the
fridge, a few batches of puff pastry bones are dusted with confectioner's sugar,
and all the halloween cupcakes are out and ready to party. On the savory side,
there will be blue corn chips with our green zebra salsa, orange popcorn, and
some dry-ice carbonated punch. I'll post pics of the festivities, as well as of
E's surprise birthday gift(s)!
tomorrow.
We spent last week on the Cape for K's wedding - Gi ended up being a great flower girl, and all the cupcakes and sugar-paste leaves made it from NJ to MA without incident. K and her sisters met up with us in Salem, where we walked around all day Sunday and stayed over before driving back to Jersey. Salem, MA on Halloween weekend is crazy, but in a good way. We went to a historical reenactment of the witch trials and a ghost tour given by the historical society that night. In between we browsed through an entire city composed of halloween stores - E loved it!
We spent last week on the Cape for K's wedding - Gi ended up being a great flower girl, and all the cupcakes and sugar-paste leaves made it from NJ to MA without incident. K and her sisters met up with us in Salem, where we walked around all day Sunday and stayed over before driving back to Jersey. Salem, MA on Halloween weekend is crazy, but in a good way. We went to a historical reenactment of the witch trials and a ghost tour given by the historical society that night. In between we browsed through an entire city composed of halloween stores - E loved it!
Posted at 02:06 PM Read More
Sun - October 21, 2007
Sunday Afternoon w/ pics from the harvest festival
Waiting for this batch of peppers to blanch, then in with another load of 'em. I've never done so much canning in October but the frost has held off and the green tomatoes keep ripening, the peppers keep coming to size, and so, the canner stays on the stove. Gi and I also found a bunch of carrots that were never picked, plenty of french breakfast radishes for my mom, and a colander full of green beans, which will probably be for dinner, though I may try canning some once they've been cooked down in curry. E loves them that way, and that way he'd have some easy meals to heat up with rice in March when I'm otherwise occupied. :) I'm actually out of canning jars and lids, so I need to go by the farm store after Gi goes down for a nap to pick some up... if we do another honey harvest we'll probably need a whole other box then too. These are the sort of problems I LIKE to have.
Last night I whipped up 45 double chocolate cupcakes for the wedding cake extravaganza, and today I'll seal those up now that they are frozen and make a double batch of pumpkin spice cupcakes. Tomorrow will be vanilla, and then I should be right around 150 and can concentrate on making sure all my gum paste leaves are done. I found edible bronze and gold "shimmer" powder, which I've been looking for, last night, that'll be nice on the edges of the leaves.
Gi is up to projects of her won, which seem to include rocking her baby doll to sleep and laying out a wide variety of household objects on the hearth and putting them to bed by wrapping them up in tissues. E is off finishing the "dog cage" - putting back up the fence and putting in a larger gate, and once he's done those two are banished for the day. It's amazing the trouble they've gotten up too lately with way too much energy and nowhere to run it off.
Posted at 12:40 PM Read More
Thu - September 27, 2007
A Thursday Night in Fall
Things are *just* starting to wind down, and it's nice to see the slower pace ahead, even if it will be a few weeks. Tomorrow is our last farmer's market, and come next week we'll start selling our eggs to a local ice cream shop and selling off the oldest hens. E will need my help to get a head count - our goal is to keep this year's pullets, the old Americaunas (all the green eggs we can get!), and any others that seem to still be laying well. He'll have to clean up the barn real well first though, as my preggo self can't deal with too much eau de chicken. In the spring, once we get a good idea of demand, we'll bring our flock numbers back up with some point of lay pullets, probably a mix of brown and white layers. I've also got big plans for adding enough Khaki Campbells to sell a few dozen eggs each week, as well as some turkeys in late-summer to raise for friends and family for the holidays, but we'll see what happens to those plans once farmhand #2 arrives.
I've been drying and packing up tomatoes and herbs, and canned up another few quarts of tomato sauce. Some of our winter squash weren't situated well, and showed a poor, poor yield, but we've been eating up those butternuts since they aren't in good enough shape to keep all winter, and once the vines die we'll bring in our very nice acorn squash crop. We'll definitely grow those again, they did wonderfully. We're still harvesting string beans, a handful of late tomatoes, waiting on the beet greens to re-grow before we harvest them, and only a few days ago from the radishes all being ready. We'll pick kale all through the fall and into winter. I'm sure we'd do well if we stayed at the market through October, but with gestation and two full time jobs already in this family, we need a break.
I tend to get better at time management once I'm back at school, so I've had time to get back to sewing - all patterns from "Bend the rules sewing" and so far so good -even better now that a local sewing shop opened right in our little tiny downtown - all one block of it. Just in time too, since the local chain fabric store (the only one anywhere near here) shut down all its locations. Hopefully I can get by with this new shop and occasional trips to the Jo-Anne's in Princeton. Off to quilt...
Posted at 10:32 PM Read More
Wed - August 22, 2007
Dry out already!
Wish I had pics to share, but we've had nothing
but wet cold gray rain for a week now. I'm grateful we're not dealing with the
severe flooding others are, but will be thrilled when we see the sun again! We
haven't harvested since Friday due to the downpours and cloud to ground
lightning but I'm hoping to salvage a decent tomato yield tonight or tomorrow
whenever the clouds break. Once the ground is workable again we'll try for a
fall planting of peas, mesclun, and broadcast seeded kale. It's late, but still
do-able.
The weather is creating quite a bunch of grumps around this house, but I think the mood will improve once the sun comes out. Gi doesn't seem to mind the rain much, as long as I spend hours on the front porch with her. J, our next door neighbor, is bringing his baby boy home from the hospital today...I was hoping we'd get out to buy balloons, but instead I'm going to make a lasagna and some cookies to bring over tonight.
The dismal weather has allowed us to make major progress on emptying out our office/guest room which will be the new baby's room. Almost everything is moved out and set up in the office/living room- computer, sewing machine, etc. I bought some baskets with grand plans to clean out my stash and organize it by color so we'll see if that happens! Off to clean up the latest toddler mess.
The weather is creating quite a bunch of grumps around this house, but I think the mood will improve once the sun comes out. Gi doesn't seem to mind the rain much, as long as I spend hours on the front porch with her. J, our next door neighbor, is bringing his baby boy home from the hospital today...I was hoping we'd get out to buy balloons, but instead I'm going to make a lasagna and some cookies to bring over tonight.
The dismal weather has allowed us to make major progress on emptying out our office/guest room which will be the new baby's room. Almost everything is moved out and set up in the office/living room- computer, sewing machine, etc. I bought some baskets with grand plans to clean out my stash and organize it by color so we'll see if that happens! Off to clean up the latest toddler mess.
Posted at 04:55 PM Read More
Wed - July 25, 2007
While We've Been Gone.....
* Georgia Lu turned two! She was very excited
about her Elmo cupcake. :)
* Lucretia is still ever-expanding, and big enough now that I'm pretty sure she's pregnant. Her kids will be Togg-Nigerian Dwarf crosses. I can't wait to see what they look like! Unfortunately, we lost Gibby, but her two doelings are tagging alongside Lucretia, and are growing like weeds. I think we'll keep both of them since Gibby is gone.
* We started the pool project, draining all of the water into our back pond once all the chemicals had dissipated (and the water itself had become so murky and algae filled even Harri wouldn't swim in it anymore!)
* Lucretia is still ever-expanding, and big enough now that I'm pretty sure she's pregnant. Her kids will be Togg-Nigerian Dwarf crosses. I can't wait to see what they look like! Unfortunately, we lost Gibby, but her two doelings are tagging alongside Lucretia, and are growing like weeds. I think we'll keep both of them since Gibby is gone.
* We started the pool project, draining all of the water into our back pond once all the chemicals had dissipated (and the water itself had become so murky and algae filled even Harri wouldn't swim in it anymore!)
* We've explored the water-park with Aunt Amy and
cousin Alex.
* We entered our first entries for the fair: canned "purple haze" carrots, canned wax beans, a block of beeswax, and the stuffed rabbit I made Gi for Easter. We'll drop off our baked goods on Saturday.
* We entered our first entries for the fair: canned "purple haze" carrots, canned wax beans, a block of beeswax, and the stuffed rabbit I made Gi for Easter. We'll drop off our baked goods on Saturday.
* I am feeling almost human again, after quite the first few weeks of ...... pregnancy :) Our newest farmhand has been quite a challenge already, mainly because of all the blood-work and ultrasounds I've had to confirm it wasn't ectopic. I'm 8 weeks along now and starting to feel better, though my midwives are still agressively treating my hyperemesis, and the meds make me a bit drowsy. (better then throwing up every day for 9 months though!).
Posted at 01:09 PM Read More
Sun - July 8, 2007
Changes are afoot!
Luckily, all of the good variety. Lots of rain
this past week, but everything is coming along nicely out in the gardens. For
market this week, we harvested carrots, the last of the spring potatoes, snow
peas, the first of the peppers and patty-pan squash, swiss chard and herbs. With
the potato and carrot beds gone, there is a ton of earth begging to be filled
in, which will happen this week. There's a few more rows of winter squash to get
in, some more plantings of beans, more cukes if I can find where I put those
seeds!, and the second rounds of beets and carrots, which should germinate fine
if we keep them well watered. Currently, I'm happiest about our success with
peppers, a crop that I almost gave up on for good last year. Putting the
seedlings in as early as possible helped, but I think the landscape fabric made
a HUGE difference. I also think the frost-inflicted pruning they received early
in the season may have led them to branch out more and set more fruit. We're
harvesting 10-15 peppers, at least, from each monster plant. We're selling them
as green bells, since our weather in the fall is so unpredictable you never know
how many you'll actually get to red-ripe stage.
Tonight I put up some veggies - blanched and froze a few servings of swiss chard and collards, dehydrated more herbs ( I love my "new" dehydrator!), and canned five pints of carrots. Going into my second season of canning low-acid foods, I'm much more comfortable with my pressure canner, and don't mind "firing it up" for small batches of veggies. I've started plotting and planning my entries for the county fair - E may be able to enter his honey if we harvest soon, and I'm planning on entering some canned goods, a decorated cake, bread, rolls, maybe cookies too.
Tomorrow I head over to town hall to wrangle some info out of them - we made the decision to get rid of our pool, easier said then done! A pool was never on our list of things we wanted in a house (safety issues, cost, maintenance, environmental impact of all those chemicals!) but it came along with this wonderful farm so we tried to get the hang of it these past two years. As of today, we've done nothing but work on it - neither of us has been swimming yet! It's an inground vinyl pool, which is easier to remove then a concrete one, but it may still be pricey. Our next door neighbor owns an excavation and grading company, so hopefully he'll take on the job after-hours/weekends. The amount of work really depends on how much of the pool - sides, rebar, etc. the town requires be removed. We shall see. I'm excited to see the transformation though - we're going to make that area all grass, and Gi will have a great time. With six acres, you'd think we'd have plenty of room for her to run and play, but the lay of our land and the busy county road make our fenced in backyard area the only really safe play space she has when she's not by our side - and as of now, she can't use it since it's all pool. I'll be posting plenty of before and after pics!
Tonight I put up some veggies - blanched and froze a few servings of swiss chard and collards, dehydrated more herbs ( I love my "new" dehydrator!), and canned five pints of carrots. Going into my second season of canning low-acid foods, I'm much more comfortable with my pressure canner, and don't mind "firing it up" for small batches of veggies. I've started plotting and planning my entries for the county fair - E may be able to enter his honey if we harvest soon, and I'm planning on entering some canned goods, a decorated cake, bread, rolls, maybe cookies too.
Tomorrow I head over to town hall to wrangle some info out of them - we made the decision to get rid of our pool, easier said then done! A pool was never on our list of things we wanted in a house (safety issues, cost, maintenance, environmental impact of all those chemicals!) but it came along with this wonderful farm so we tried to get the hang of it these past two years. As of today, we've done nothing but work on it - neither of us has been swimming yet! It's an inground vinyl pool, which is easier to remove then a concrete one, but it may still be pricey. Our next door neighbor owns an excavation and grading company, so hopefully he'll take on the job after-hours/weekends. The amount of work really depends on how much of the pool - sides, rebar, etc. the town requires be removed. We shall see. I'm excited to see the transformation though - we're going to make that area all grass, and Gi will have a great time. With six acres, you'd think we'd have plenty of room for her to run and play, but the lay of our land and the busy county road make our fenced in backyard area the only really safe play space she has when she's not by our side - and as of now, she can't use it since it's all pool. I'll be posting plenty of before and after pics!
Posted at 11:36 PM Read More
Sun - February 18, 2007
Chipping Our way out....
We are all very grateful here that the local
ice storm missed us by, literally, a mile. My folks went a cold few days without
power, but are up and running again now. Today was the first day we braved that
area, and it looks like a hurricane went through - mountains of limbs everywhere
and the pastures are skating rinks. We have snow that has since turned to ice,
but it melts a bit every day, so hopefully things will be less treacherous next
week.
On the bright side, I got the best Valentine's Day gift ever - a day off! And, proving the point that great minds think alike, Gi and I baked E this sour cream chocolate chip cake (she picked out the sprinkles from the cabinet :) and E showed up bearing a heart shaped "ultimate chocolate" chocolate cake from Weg's. There is no such thing as too much cake, or too much chocolate, so we're all good!
On the bright side, I got the best Valentine's Day gift ever - a day off! And, proving the point that great minds think alike, Gi and I baked E this sour cream chocolate chip cake (she picked out the sprinkles from the cabinet :) and E showed up bearing a heart shaped "ultimate chocolate" chocolate cake from Weg's. There is no such thing as too much cake, or too much chocolate, so we're all good!
:
We had another festivity-filled weekend here, with
a baby shower/poker tournament. It was good all around - A got lots of gorgeous
girlie stuff, I proudly presented her with the endless flowered baby quilt, and
E won the poker tournament. We just came back form E's parents, where he watched
most of the Daytona 500 (and finally figured out that's why our neighbor E has
so many people over), and we stopped on the way home for some Coldstone....Gi
approved of E's choice: Candyland (vanilla ice cream with snickers and a whole
bunch of other candy smashed into it)
Farm chores in the below 0 temperatures are wearing on us, but spring will be here soon enough. We'll start seeds in a week or two...I err on the side of starting things too early and they wind up getting leggy or being planted out before they really should be, so we're holding off this year. March 1st we'll start the brassicas and plant them out under some sort of protection - row covers or hot caps - on April 1st, along with sowing peas and other frost hardy seeds. We'll hold off on the radish plantings till 30 days before our first market, since we don't want to worry about holding those once they mature. I'll start warm weather transplants (tomatoes and peppers this year - we're skipping eggplant) in mid March and start hardening them off to plant in late April.
We were able to re-full the automatic waterer today in the few hours that everything remained above freezing, and we're been pushing on with our beet pulp experimentation, though I stopped giving it to the goats since most of them don't want anything to do with it. If Lucretia doesn't come back into heat, we'll be taking them in for ultrasounds and once we've confirmed their pregnancies start drying them off (we are using US so we don't stop milking just to wind up with a dry, open doe). The big excitement at the feed store this week was a quartet of baby.....emus! Someone must have hatched out a mess of them and realized they had a few too many... Giant ratites aren't my cup of tea, but apparently there's been so much interest they are raffling them off, lol. I didn't bring my camera the day I went by to check them out, but here's a googled image to give you an idea....
I'm excavating my office tonight - E moved some things around to make room for his usb record player in here, and a mess rapidly ensued. Now that my sewing table is clear, I'll be moving the buttons on E's peacoat and then piecing a new baby quilt, this one for a baby boy on the way...I'm thinking about a map-type thing. I'll keep you posted...
Posted at 08:18 PM Read More
Wed - December 27, 2006
Holiday Vacation!
We had a great Christmas - Christmas Eve Georgia fell asleep before anyone even arrived, but luckily she got a second wind and made it through dinner, dessert, and 7:30 church services. We have made a tradition of going to a 300 year old nearby church every holiday - our particular Quaker meeting doesn't have any arrangements for hymns like some others, and we prefer for our holidays, at least, to be full of song. The callaloo soup was the hit of Christmas Eve dinner, so I'll be making that again soon.
I love the ostrich egg E found for me, and he was very happy once he figured out from the clues that I had ordered him a package of new Russian bees and two new queens so he can re-queen the old hive that is a bit ornery. Georgia was showered with wonderful toys and books from all her relatives, and had been busy with those every since. My mom had one of her art students paint a lovely portrait of Gi which she gave to us on Christmas Eve. She has a portrait our neighbor drew of my brother and I when we were young, so it's nice to continue that tradition.
Yesterday we moved around furniture and re-arranged the bedroom. New year, new room - sort of :) Today we'll make a trip to the recycling center to get rid of all the mixed paper and cardboard from Christmas (at least there's not much that isn't recyclable, even though the pile of discarded "Stuff" is daunting) and Gibby is in heat today, so she has a date at a nearby farm I'll be chaperoning later. Lucretia was in heat on Christmas Day, and I didn't want to bother M and her family on the holiday, so she'll go to be bred in about three weeks when she comes into heat again. The seed catalogs have been filling the mailbox, so I'll be digging into those later to, revising my current plans for the next growing season. We usually order from Johnny's, and then a few rarer varieties from places like Cook's Garden and Pinetree seeds.
I'm working on finishing my third sock monster this morning, and then will move on to finishing a quilt that I took a break from. Pics to follow, of course! Enjoy the holiday break!
Posted at 11:09 AM Read More
Tue - October 31, 2006
Back with Pictures :)
The only trick or treating Georgia did this Halloween was dressing up in her costume (Curious George of course) and riding around the supermarket while we went grocery shopping, but at 1 and a half, she's not really up to door to door travel. The Halloween party was a blast as usual.... we added sack races to the games - cold, but fun - and added a panel of judges to award a "best apple bobbing award". We bought some dollar store trophies and I made "Camp Livers Gore Arm" t-shirts using iron-on transfer paper. Gi spent the night at her grandparents since last Halloween's festivities were a bit much for her, and E and I dressed as Camp Livers Gore Arm camp counselors, both killed in horrific accidents of course. E died of a rock climbing mishap, and I was full of arrows from a bad day at the archery range. Several friends took pics so I'll post them when they're up.
On the menu this year was a jello brain, bloody popcorn, "meathead" - a skull covered in cold cuts, cat litter cake - uuggghhhhh, punch with floating eyes, creep cakes, eyeball deviled eggs, and brain dip in a hollowed out cauliflower. Sarah was the victor in the donut eating contest, while she duked it out with Jay in the apple bobbing, though Jay ultimately won "best bobber". Jeff S. won the first annual sack race, and next year, if the weather cooperates, we'll make it much longer. It was hard enough getting everyone to come out in the gale force winds for the short course this year though!
In farm news, we're harvesting honey this week, and E hooked up our new sleeve hitch to the tractor, so we'll try our hand at plowing up one of the gardens. If it works out, we'll plant garlic in the plowed over patch. We've decreased the amount of light in the hen house, so hopefully they'll eat less as well as laying less. :) We also are slowly gaining Lucretia's trust - tonight, though it may have just been luck, we didn't have to chase her into their night pasture, and then when I went to put on her leash she didn't run away from me. Progress!
Here are some pics from North Carolina - Georgia's outfit is from Delhi, brought back by Dave's sister Sarah when she was studying abroad... the rest of the set is here, thanks Ramone!
Posted at 09:59 PM Read More
Sun - October 15, 2006
Projects, Projects everywhere....
psssst, Flora's for sale :)
Over the past week, aside from getting sick and slowly recovering from said sickness :)...
- the pig's charger broke and they "escaped" - walked around a few feet away from their enclosure :) - but E managed to get it working again.
- several nights of heavy frost have killed off everything but the kale, brussel sprouts, swiss chard, and some radishes and lettuce...we'll have to harvest a salad or two before the mesclun gives up the ghost.
- we cordoned off the small entrance to the pasture with some welded wire and a livestock gate to make our own goat git-mo.... all difficult goats can be held there for any reason, without cause given, for unlimited amounts of time. It's making our lives a lot easier already, especially in the mornings when we need to get to work. The cats have also recently discovered the joys of milking - I now have two constant companions the second I snap on either goat's lead.
- Our super secret project for Dave's wedding is progressing nicely...some paint and a bit more construction and it will be finished.
- We found a dairy goat sitter - FINALLY. I've felt SO much less stress now that we have someone to milk the goats for us when we go away!
- We had a great time this weekend celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving with some friends from Ottawa - we made a hard goat cheese with oven dried cherry tomatoes and basil, along with a soft fresh one, braised some kale and brussel sprouts from the garden, and brought a tray of our ever-abundant radishes.
- We snagged a sleeve hitch for our utility tractor off of e-bay and got an amazing deal on a plow...though we're still on the lookout for a discing attachment, we'll be plowing up some of the fall gardens and planting our garlic in the next week or two.
- Someone dumped a little pet rabbit at our neighbor's and since we have an empty hutch, she's residing here at the moment. She's actually pretty sweet, but we're looking for a permanent home for her. Georgia isn't really old enough to appreciate her own pet just yet. Why do people abandon their pets the minute they see the countryside turn farm-y? Argh.
OK, off - being laid up for a few days threw us all off schedule!
Posted at 10:26 PM Read More