Sun - May 11, 2008

Happy Mother's Day!

First, our independence days progress this past week...

1) Plant Something: We planted the first bush beans, our remaining golden beet seed, another round of radishes (probably the last batch for the spring), and some dragon langerie wax beans. This week I'll cover the needs-improvment part of the newest garden and plant the first tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, and put in cucumber seeds under hot kaps where I harvested scallions.

2) Harvest Something: We harvested salad mix (baby bibb lettuce, dino kale, arugala, and mizuna), cherry belle radishes, and scallions for the first farmer's market, as well as our usual eggs.

4) Store Something: I emptied and cleaned out the pantry, so now know exactly what was lurking in there, and have been steadily working through some older canned goods this week.

5) Prep Something: We moved the pigs to what will be next year's garden expansion, and have been scattering their food all over the area to encourage them to root up the sod. I ordered new kidding supplies from Hoegger's - vaccines we were out of (we do a yearly CDYT vaccine here, as well as giving kids some short acting tetanus preventative before castration and dehorning), and some supplies for the livestock first aid kit. No babies from Lu yet though. We'll clean up the garage this week and take the opportunity to clean out the milking parlor area.

6) Manage Something: Weeded and thinned the beets. Removed last year's polymulch and prepped it for planting. Mowed the rest of the pasture and dreamed about fencing in that whole area and getting sheep instead of pulling out the old ride on mower to maintain it! Someday! :)

8) Add to local food system: Sold at the first market of the season and purchased asparagus, baked goods, and a hanging basket from our "neighbors" at market.

9) Reduce Waste: Composted everything as usual, recycled all our paper, plastic and glass.

10) Learn Something: Talked to North Slope about how to use/cook our green garlic, since they had a bunch for sale this week. Figured out how to make my mitered corners even on my continuous binding for quilts.

It's been a crazy week here - E needed to trade in his truck for a four door, so that he can travel with both girls in their respective car seats, so we sold his car and found him a new-to-us one, only to find that the brake rotors were acting up when we took it out on the highway. The dealer was great though, and had it fixed within days, but still, lots of running around. My car has been faltering for months, E would say years :), and the latest round of mechanical problems were estimated to cost more then we were willing to keep throwing at it...so, TWO new to us cars now! Luckily, our neighbor has wanted to buy my old Jeep for some time so he came over and bought it yesterday. We test drove one I kinda' liked yesterday, and will continue the search on Monday. I know having safe, reliable vehicles is worth it, but oh! way too much wheeling and dealing the past few days.

Our first farmer's market went well - since it was a full three weeks early this year, traffic was a bit slow, but we definitely brought in enough to make it worth our while. Lots of people looked at and asked about my quilts, so hopefully I'll sell one or two to returning customers this month. Now to get those started pullets laying so we have 50 dozen eggs fro NEXT Saturday. C'mon girls!

Posted at 10:12 AM     Read More  

Sat - March 22, 2008

Rainy Days, Sunny Days

Life has been a bit of a roller coaster here lately, my dad's been in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer (no fun, but we're all grateful now that we know his collapse wasn't due to something less treatable and more serious like a heart attack....) He's gotten a few blood transfusions and is getting his strength back, but I think at least part of our Easter will be spent in his hospital room - he's not ready to come home yet. The wee baby, while she's thriving in all other ways, seems to have the metabolism of a hummingbird, and hasn't returned to her birth weight yet (she'll be 4 weeks old on Wednesday). This week we're mixing organic formula with some pumped milk after every nursing session in an effort to boost her calorie and fat intake and see if that helps - she has her next weigh in Monday. She took to the bottle without any problems, but there have been lots of warm baths and belly rubs since the poor kiddo now has a tendency to get all blocked up from the formula.

In between taking care of the girls and visits to the hospital there has been SOME time for creativity and farm work though. C's quilt top is almost done - I keep adding border after border so that it will fit nicely in the existing quilt hanger already up on the wall in the nursery! Early this am, Gi and I made an egg wreath for A's house since she's hosting Easter for her fam tomorrow, and yesterday A and Alex came over and we made all the ice cream cakes for her train birthday cake. It needs to be decorated, which I'll do before the party later this morning over at their house. I made a big frittata last night, which we'll serve with cold cuts for Alex's birthday party lunch as well.

I joined swap-bot this week after seeing it on several sewing blogs and just put together my first "newbie" swap package. The whole concept definitely speaks to my long, love affair with pen pals and the post office and as an added bonus pushes me in new directions with my craft and sewing projects - should be fun! I also joined etsy (as a browser only :) and have been scoping things out since I'll be listing my quilts there, as well as our beeswax and a few other farm items, as I make up merchandise for the farmer's market.

Posted at 06:42 AM     Read More  

Wed - February 20, 2008

The Countdown...

6 days left... still seems sort of surreal to have such a scheduled kiddo, but I can't wait to meet the little one. Recovering from surgery won't be a vacation, but oh! it will be so nice to be able to eat and sleep and not vomit daily again! I've been trying to slow down during this week or so of maternity leave - spent the day with A in Princeton and Gi hung out with her grandpa. I've been quilting like a mad woman, and will have Gi's new quilt ready to go in a day or two. Next up maybe a tiny, tiny comforter for her dollhouse bed and crib.

Speaking of all things dollhouse, a trip to PBK today turned up the perfect non-scary baby doll, little sister, and dog which will hopefully curb my dollhouse outfitting spree. Gi loves my old dollhouse and definitely plays with it more then I ever did, and I have been having a great time scrounging up toddler friendly dollhouse furniture (mostly plan toys and ryan's room stuff on e-bay and from the local hippie toy store) and a non-scary dollhouse family, though I think they may have outgrown their space now with two adults, four kids, and a dog. The casualty rate is quite high in their little world due to our resident, very jealous golden retriever, so it's probably good that we have a few extra dolls! Already two kids and one baby have met their untimely end in his jaws.

I've been updating blogs left and right, not that there is anything to show for it. I seem to have figured out what the problem IS with my project page and fellow creature pages, but now we need to find a way to fix it. Off to rest before Gi and E get home...I can sometimes take a cat-nap or too to make up for the very, very few hours I manage to sleep at night between the nausea, sciatica, and heartburn.

Posted at 03:12 PM     Read More  

Sat - February 2, 2008

Mon - January 21, 2008

Nesting

According to Georgia, this is how she pretends to take a bath (she takes off her shoes, socks, and pants before getting in the drawer but insists the shirt is an integral part of the whole game).

I'm enjoying the long weekend, though E is laid up with a back "thing" and I wish he felt better. I'm sending him over to the urgent care center this afternoon - at the very least they can give him some more effective pain medication while he rests up. Gi and I are hanging out and once she goes down for a nap I'll see what's going on in my sewing room. I have lots of projects in mind, and even more ideas from the copy of "Last Minute Patchwork Gifts " I finally bought the other night. I had been eying it because of the wee wonderful's elephant toy pattern, and when I saw the color wheel quilt I took the leap and bought my own copy. Lesson plans need to be done today as well, and it's driving me crazy having a whole garage-full of ikea boxes and no one to build and haul them into the house for me. :)

We went to the one in Philly yesterday after a trip to the Mutter Museum , which was a pretty amazing collection. I walked around the whole place, fascinated in my zoologist/science teacher way but all three of my companions were waiting in the lobby, green in the gills, by the time I was done. At Ikea we picked up another large expedite bookcase to see if we can consolidate the books in the library on the same wall as E's turntables and records, which are in a 2 by 8 square expedit we picked up last year when he was looking for a decent, affordable shelf for his albums. A and I have both been talking about getting the girls little poang chairs since our last trip, so this time around I bought a matching kid and adult size chair for Gi's room, since we'll probably move the glider into the nursery.

A few emergency "big sister" gifts were also picked up to stash in the closet to help deal with the toddler drama that we know will ensue when a certain someone comes home in a few weeks. "Only" one month left we meet the new kid!

Posted at 11:15 AM     Read More  

Fri - January 4, 2008

Sunny skies

It's been frigid here, but the sun has been shining every day, so I'm not complaining. While we were on break from school one of the swordtails had some babies so most were eaten by their tank-mates, but hopefully the balloon molly will wait a day or two to have hers so I can scoop most of them up on Monday. We're using a little net fry tank that hangs inside the larger tank - so far, so good. I have grand plans to put away Christmas this weekend and I'm hoping Georgia doesn't get too upset - at her age she probably figures the tree and decorations are permanent fixtures. She's been busy palying non-stop with her "new" toys, especially my old dollhouse we brought up from the basement. The furniture has undergone some survival of the fittest action, and now she has a few rooms of furniture that can stand up to her toddler ways. I'm still on the lookout for a nice sturdy wooden bathroom set and "mama's bedroom" set.

E and friends have been playing lots of Wii sports, and today we rented the surgery game, which is pretty cool so far. My mom and I went through most of Gi's old clothes today and managed to pare it down to four bins, one 0-12 months, one 18-2T, one 3T, and one 4T and up. There are still a few bags downstairs, but the bulk of the sorting is done. E and my dad worked on cleaning up the garage and barn, since it's been too frigid and windy to get out there the past few weeks. I need to move out my canning supplies to some shelves E cleaned off this week, and tomorrow he'll put a final coat of paint on Gi's new dollhouse bookcase. I've always loved the one at pottery barn kids, and was able to find an unfinished wood one at the craft store right before the holiday much, much cheaper then the pbk price. She needs more room for her ever-growing book collection, and then I can put her small bookcase in the baby's room with "baby" books on it that she doesn't read anymore.

I finished our rough seed/planting list for next year and we definitely over-ordered! last spring, so we'll be using up a bunch of that seed and over-sowing to account for any loss in germination. We'll still be buying tons of root crop seeds, especially radishes: cherry belle and french breakfast or d'artignon and a load of onion sets and seed potatoes. Right now I think we'll order from Johnny's and/or Seed Saver's Exchange - both have decent bulk prices and plenty of organic seed options.

Off to relax a bit more before bed - tomorrow I'll be spending most of the day finalizing my forensic science final, as well as coming up with a study guide and answer key. All in a day's work....

Posted at 07:37 PM     Read More  

Tue - December 18, 2007

Sun - December 2, 2007

Mon - August 27, 2007

August

- the picture above was the first in what was to be a little photographic farm tour after the rains stopped, but after discovering one of the Togg kids died I didn't think it would make a very uplifting entry. Luckily, her sister is pulling through much better (they both were knocked down by a nasty, nasty GI "thing" during our week of rain.)

- Other farm deaths, these in the "how are they not extinct?!" variety - the chickens had plenty of food, E fills the gravity feeder with the EXACT SAME FOOD, they bum rush the feeder, and five minutes later two pullets have smothered to death in the pile-up. This is why we always start the season with many more chickens then we need! In better chook news, we put a solar light out in one pastured pen, and it is definitely boosting egg production. Hopefully we can iron out the rest of the kinks and get all our birds out on pasture next year, using the barn as a brooder house during the summer.

- We had quite the busy Sunday yesterday...while getting ready for meeting, we got a call about a nearby swarm. Unlike a lot of the calls we get, this was a easily accessible swarm of actual honeybees, and E was thrilled to bring them home. He has them in a nuc and will open it up so they can start foraging tonight. It's a small swarm, at a bad time of year to be swarming, so we'll feed them through the fall and maybe into the winter so they make it till next spring when they can hold their own. Then we were off to move some furniture for E's mom, and then home to get ready for North Slope's 2nd annual tomato fight. It was fun. :)

- We're taking off this week's market, to take a much needed break before school starts, but that means these next few days are a whirlwind of canning, freezing, and dehydrating all the produce we aren't bringing to market. The dehydrator is filled with tomatoes as we speak, and I plan to can some crushed tomatoes, red salsa, and maybe some salsa verde with the green zebras.

- Mike and Colleen held quite the party last night - Nomad pizza served pizza all night covered in just-picked veggies, we all brought desserts and drinks, and everyone jumped into the pool after a epic rotten tomato fight. Here are some pics...E was a competitor, but Gi and I stayed in the safe zone!



- My new sewing area is coming along, but while I work on that I'm putting together Hillary's new hand sewing critters - very fun, and I can work on them in the car (I get car sick if I even read a map, much less a book, and love that I can sew in the car!) Here's Mr. Turtle...

Posted at 01:19 PM     Read More  

Sun - July 1, 2007

Back from the Beach...

It's been a busy few weeks....

For our end of the year bbq I made a cake for each of the sciences: a dissected frog for my department (bio/zoology), a electron model of Zn for the chemistry people, and a catapult for the physics department (that's their big end of the year competition in the physics classes).

One of my best friends lost her little brother two weeks ago, and I wasn't able to be there for his memorial service, but Georgia and I headed up to Cape Cod this past week to visit with K.

E and D held down the fort, and everything seems to have survived our absence. D and his wife were able to stay till this Saturday, so we had extra hands at the farmer's market - always a good thing. I harvested carrots, new potatoes, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, snow peas, and herbs for market this week, and we're hoping that the local organic berry farm is open on the 4th of July - if so E and I can go and pick our weight in blueberries. If that works out we'll have plenty of berries for market this coming Saturday. E worked the bees while I was gone, and added two honey supers and a queen excluder. It's a little late, but better late then never. They should fill those two supers up very quickly, and we'll have honey in a few weeks. We are going to try using a wire brush to open the tops of each cell in the frames this year instead of the ancient electric knife we have - that thing scares the heck out of me, and it should go faster this way as well. This week I'll get the Togg doelings registrations in order so I can sell one or both of them this month - I think we'll keep Greta though, especially since the pasture they're on can definitely support one more goat.

Here are some pics from our trip to the Cape - I wish we had gone for happier reasons, but I'm glad we were able to spend the time with Gi's godmother right now.

Posted at 10:08 PM     Read More  

Sun - April 15, 2007

Wet

I'm grateful that we actually have temperatures in the 40s today - if this was snow our house would be buried up to the eaves. The pastures are turning into ponds, the tree wells about to overflow, and the pastured chickens are very, very soggy. According to the news, the wind will pick up in an hour or two, so I'm hoping the power doesn't go out (the sump pump has been going 24/7 since late last night, without it, the basement will fill up with water in a second) and the temps don't drop until the chickens on pasture dry out a bit. Yesterday was, finally, a nice spring day, and we all enjoyed it. Georgia ran around in her newest fashion accessory, courtesy of her Aunt Jo (and her awe-inspiring knitting skills) :

While she napped, we spent a few hours out in the gardens. It looks like the leeks will come back, at least most of them, and with a whole season to grow they should be ok. I still have a tray I'm keeping alive in the garage, as well as some extra seed, in case I need to replace any in the rows. I don't know about our first brassica plantings - they freeze-dried out there between the wind and all the frosts - but some are re-bounding. I'm trying to be patient with them... We planted onion sets yesterday, as well as our second round of mesclun (the first one is sprouting under a row cover), our first round of radishes and broccoli rabe, and a bed full of the rest of the cabbage seedlings. I spent a small fortune on row covers, so hopefully they'll afford a bit of protection from this northeaster. The warm weather seedlings, which should have been in the ground by now in a normal year, are struggling, but I've been fertilizing them with bloodmeal, bonemeal, kelp, and some dehydrated manure and they seem to be getting a bit more color. If it looks like we can't get them in the ground by Wednesday, I'll have to transplant them into even bigger pots.

We've had about half the flock on pasture for a week now, and so far so good. A few bold hens run through the electronet, shocks and all, to free-range, but I'm slowly but surely switching them out with hens who are more likely to stay put. We'll have about 50 birds in this set-up, and once we make some market money, will make a second movable coop and order another length of electro-net. Egg production is lower then usual, but we have a few weeks till market starts, and hopefully they will have adjusted to everything by then. One project slated for today was to make real next boxes for the pastured birds, instead of the jury rigged ones currently in place, but it's pouring so hard we can't get out and in there to measure or screw in the lumber. We did catch up on all the egg washing - one advantage to being totally housebound!

Although the pattern didn't arrive till after Easter due to postal service issues, my "big footed bunny" pattern finally found its way here and I was able to whip up two for Georgia and Alexandra. I tried the dress pieces, but I made the seam allowance a bit off, and they're a little too tight. I may still sew up some short pants for Georgia's...note last year's blue bunny. It's slow, but I'm definitely improving in the sewing department! I'm going to pick up a bit more around here, and then we're going to make a nice warm pancake feast for dinner, and watch some more of the TVD "Earl" episodes that we just got form Netflix.

Posted at 05:25 PM     Read More  

Mon - March 5, 2007

Tue - January 16, 2007

Baby, It's Cold Outside

At about twenty degrees with the wind chill, winter has settled back in. We've been stoking the fireplace every night, and hopefully another few windy days will dry out the wood more - the weeks of pounding rain made even the covered wood pretty damp.

I'm up and about a bit more - tomorrow I am attempting a *short* drive, and I only took one painkiller today. My plan is to go back to work on Friday, so we'll see. E and friends pick up the wood stove on Thursday night, and on Saturday Dharma's new family pick her up - they're thrilled, and I'm going to spend some time showing them how to trim her hooves, etc. since she'll be their first goat. All the other Nigerians are sold, but won't be picked up for another few weeks.

Tonight I cut the rinds off the remaining box o'grapefruit and blanched them twice, then salted them down. I'll rinse them off tonight and tomorrow try candying them. The plan is to dip them in dark chocolate and bag them up for Valentine's Day. If I'm cooking, things must be getting a little bit back to normal :)

Posted at 11:46 PM     Read More  

Fri - January 12, 2007

Sun - December 10, 2006