Earth Day. Time for an update.

Earth day. Sounds like the perfect time to update my long neglected blog.

I’m not going to go into much detail, mostly letting the pictures speak for themselves.

The beautiful Max, taking a break from egg-laying to cruise the backyard for bugs…

Seedlings, most of which have lost their labels. I know there is ruby chard, some cucumbers and a couple types of summer squash. Oh well…I’ll just throw them in the ground somewhere and see what happens…

Cedar fence boards make EXCELLENT raised beds. Right now they only have decomposing straw in them that the chickens have enjoyed scratching and turning…

The Freedom Rangers, which we are raising for meat, are now about eight weeks old. About two more weeks and they’ll be ready for processing. I love raising these guys…

White potatoes growing in a cardboard box. Time for more mulch!

Edible flowers (violas and pansies) lining the front walk. Garlic is in the bed to the left, and gladiolus and nasturtiums are coming up next to the steps.

The front beds are coming along, though I am desperate for mulch. Between a lack of time and a lack of a truck, getting it has been a challenge. Peas are up (though possibly too late), blueberries, pomegranate and crabapple are doing great, dwarf corn and squashes went in today.

Row of red potatoes growing in leaf mold, covered with chicken wire to keep the chickens from scratching them up. I roll the wire up every evening every evening when the chickens are put to bed.

That probably covers the garden for now. Things are looking a little ratty, but that’s because my time has been taken by many, many other projects that I need to document soon.

I hope everyone is having an amazing and productive spring – I would love to hear about your projects, too!

Snowed in. Tomato pickles. Farmcar. Oyster mushrooms. Sewing.

We're home, in the middle of Snowpocalypse 2011. The city is pretty much shut down, and the city’s 10 salt/snow trucks aren't able to keep up. The roads are treacherous and I am so glad to be in our warm, comfortable home with our animals. We are some of the lucky ones.

So while we've been snowed in, I've had the opportunity to catch up on some of the projects that have been "needin' done".

Tomato pickles.

The first week of December I had set up a batch of green, unripe cherry tomatoes to ferment. It was purely an experiment after successfully fermenting sauerkraut (YUM!).

Here’s the before, with green tomatoes, several whole cloves of garlic, lots of dill seed, five whole cayenne peppers, and a brine of 4 cups water with 3 tablespoons kosher salt. I covered it with a brine-filled ziplock bag to hold the vegetables under the brine and let it sit.

After two weeks, it looked like this:

The tomatoes started turning to a duller green, but the peppers were still beautiful. It smelled strongly of garlic and dill. I tasted one tomato and thought a pepper had exploded in my mouth. It was HOT!

I was a little afraid at this point – they smelled great but were much too hot.

This past weekend, I checked them again and they were absolutely amazing. The heat had mellowed, and they now have a slightly garlic-dill tang with a bit of heat. The are luscious.

Processing fermented foods kills the wonderful microbes that are so healthy for you, as well as mushifies everything. It will keep for many months refrigerated, unprocessed, so I packed them into glass jars that’s where they went. 

Farmcar.

Farmcar finally died. I can’t complain – she had almost 220k miles on her and had treated me exceptionally well.

It was still sad when the tow truck hauled her away for donation.

We are now a one-car household…with a little two-door Honda Civic. Another great car, but will definitely be putting a crimp on my projects. I can’t fit two full size bookcases in her like I could in Farmcar. We’ll find a way to make-do.

Goodbye, Farmcar.

Oyster mushrooms.

On December 18th, I mixed some oyster mushroom sawdust spawn (from Fungi Perfecti) into used coffee grounds. I have four buckets of the stuff down in the basement as well as two small containers in the kitchen. Aside from a slight bloom of mycelium on the surface, they weren’ t appearing do much…

…until yesterday.

See all that white-ish stuff? That’s oyster mushroom mycelium. That is Good Stuff.

This has been yet another of my experiments, and so far it looks like its going to work. I’m hoping to see some actual fruiting take place soon – no idea how soon, anywhere from days to another two weeks. Keep your fingers crossed!

Shower curtain.

It doesn’t take much to make a big improvement, especially in a small room.

I’d found a duvet cover at a Goodwill that I frequent and absolutely fell in love with the print. From it, I made a shower curtain for both the master and hall bathrooms. The hall bath is in sore need of repair – its going to be a massive project. But in the meantime, a pretty shower curtain made a huge difference.

Before:

 

After:

There have been some other things going on, a new crocheted hat and scarf for example, but I’ll save you from those.

Are you working on any projects? How are you spending your winter?

Love to you all!

Home.Farm’s true beginnings!

So, today was a big day for us here on the HomeFarm. I can’t quite explain what was so special about today…maybe loading the FarmCar up with HomeFarm’s first bales of straw…maybe the finishing of a never-ending table-building project…I just don’t know.

Doesn’t matter, really – all that’s important is that it *felt* like a big day for us!

Here she is, the famous FarmCar, loaded with five bales of straw fresh from the Standard Feed & Seed Store in Atlanta. As you can probably imagine, after unloading her FarmCar is completely head to toe in straw remnants. I haven’t had time to vacuum her out yet – that’s a job for another day.

Two bales are now in the bed seen on the right of this photo. They will stay baled, but I will be piling the tops with composted manure and watering them for two weeks. After two weeks, the straw will have heated up and cooled down (hopefully) and something, probably greens, will be planted on top.

The beautiful thing about this method is that the bales will continue to degrade and compost, and next year I will have some beautiful stuff to spread in this box.

As for the rest of the bales, they will be going toward making some new beds. More on that tomorrow!

Catching up from the holidays…

It has been an absolutely wonderful past couple of weeks, even with Mother Nature trying to throw us for a little loop.  I won’t go into the details, but here are some highlights…

I got the sweater pillows sent off to my sister’s for their Christmas presents.  The purple one turned out great – I had a quick inspiration on how to decorate it, and I’m very pleased with the result:

Our tree looked lovely even if it was a little bare. Our ornaments have been lacking the last few years, but a little trip to Target yesterday took care of that for next year.  It was still a beautiful sight…

Godfrey had to be in the middle of it all, of course…

Jason roasted a duck and vegetables for dinner – it was his first duck and it was *delicious*.  I am so lucky! 

He loved his present – much to the terror of the dog!

I simply have to include this picture of a parsnip from the garden.  We didn’t thin them enough, I guess, because in my stepfather’s words, “That isn’t a parsnip, it’s a housing development!”  And a slightly crude one, at that! 

Well, I’ve got about two week left of winter vacation before I start  my last semester of classes.  And believe me, I am very eager to take advantage of every moment.

Today is all about getting my home picked up, some sort of project, though I have no idea which one, and some studying in preparation for classes. 

I love my life.

Thanksgiving. Bird Watching. Bread Baking. Sewing. Snow. Cookie Making.

It’s been quite a couple of weeks around here, what with finals and the beginning of the holidays…
But my second to last semester is finished, and I can spend the next month being creative, and dangit I’m jumping in head first!
My husband and I celebrated our fourth anniversary the day before Thanksgiving and I was thrilled to have him up here for an entire week.  It’s hard living in separate cities, but it’s only six or seven more months and I’ll be able to move down there…
My sister and her family came to visit for a week during Thanksgiving and we had such an amazing time.  They are a beautiful, incredible family and I am so proud that they are part of ours.
For Jason’s and my anniversary, which is always the day before Thanksgiving (whatever day that falls on), we had a wonderful dinner – yes, we like any excuse to eat!

For Thanksgiving, Mom and Suvetta put out the good linen and dishes, we all pitched in with the cooking, and it was absolutely lovely…

The other day, just as the weather was turning, the birds came out in full force.  I throw seed on the ground just outside my french doors so I can get a close look (and to entertain Godfrey), so I planted my butt on the floor with the camera and tried to get some shots.  None came out terribly well – I need a better camera for that – but I thought these were rather pretty:
Red Bellied Woodpecker…

Tufted Titmice…

Black Capped Chickadee…

There are two things that I’m really excited about now – one, I am back in the studio sewing.  No pictures of current projects, but I’ll tell you that I’m working on a fitting block dress.  I’ll explain more when I post pictures.
The other thing is that I’m back in the kitchen.  Yesterday I started a loaf of sandwich bread using Michael Ruhlman’s recipe from his blog.  Mom baked it last night, and I’m about to tear into it for lunch. Reviews to come!

Then today after I came home from work I made chocolate chip cookie dough which will rest in the fridge for a day or two before being baked.  I also made some spritz cookies with the cookie press – now I just need to glaze them…

I also have cut-out cookie dough in the fridge and will probably bake those tomorrow. Yes, it’s cookie time – we’re getting ready to make our gift baskets.  What a great excuse, huh? 
I almost forgot something huge – an extremely generous coworker and avid deer hunter gave me an entire deer, skinned, gutted and moderately butchered.  It was unbelievable!  Beautiful, beautiful meat that Mom and I spent several hours finishing and vacuum sealing. We made a roast that night which Mom and Bill didn’t care for, but I absolutely *loved*.  It was incredibly mild, but I guess they don’t like venison at all.  No problem – Jason and I will enjoy it, and we won’t have to buy any red meat for at least a year.  Now *that’s* the way to do it.
To top everything off, I woke up to snow this morning – a beautiful white blanket of snow…

Anyway, aside from my stress over finals, it’s been a lovely couple of weeks. 
Now on to our regularly scheduled program…

Garden clean-up

Our garden is slowly getting put to bed for the winter and we made another big dent in it today.  Mom rode around in the mower and mulched all the leaves that have coated the grounds and I continued to clean out and layer the beds.

First, a pile of composted goat poop from our three goats.  Beautiful stuff.  Then a layer of half-composted chicken poop from a local poultry grower.  Finally, a thick layer of finely chopped leaves…

We are also attempting to overwinter our artichoke plant by burying it under a big pile of mulched leaves.  We’ll see how it works out – I’d love it if the plant would survive!

This morning  I also got another bucket of parsley cut.  Mom said she wanted parsley, so I grew her parsley!  We’ve had three or four cuttings from what I planted, and I’m hoping to get one more before winter really hits and kills it.  We’ve got enough dried for a couple of years, I think…

I’m not sure what else I’ll get accomplished today since I have to do some studying and I’ve got to be up early (4:30am!) for a 24-hour shift tomorrow.  It’s been a good, productive day, though!  I’m on a roll…

(Listening to: "The Root Of All Evil" by Abney Park)

Plant tags/markers out of soda cans!

I only have a short time today, so I decided that a quick and dirty project would be just the thing.

Some time ago I saw this great idea for plant markers made out of soda cans.  Last year I made several and they were adorable.  Unlike the ones in that link, I made them larger, punched a hole in the top, then attached them to think wire that I curled and made into stakes.  They truly were wonderful – I wish I had pictures of them!

So I’ve been collecting soda cans (I don’t drink soda often) and today I started prepping them. 

So here’s Godfrey watching over my preparations. I have a boatload of aluminum cans, all washed. I’d already taken the tops off of several some time ago, but you can see the can opener there waiting for the rest. 

Once the tops are off, then I cut off the curved edge on top and on the bottom, leaving me with a flat sheet of aluminum. Be sure you use kitchen shears to cut that metal – it will dull a regular pair of scissors before you know it!

Here’s as far as the prep work got today.  There are a few sample finished tags there, but that’s all that will be done until we get started with our spring garden and I know what we’ll be planting.

And look what I just found!  This person is using scrapbooking craft punches to fancy things up a bit.  I love this idea and will certainly be using it!

It’s the little things in life!