Catching up

Wow, it's been a while.  Life sometimes gets in the way and priorities change.  So, here is an update:

I am still living at the same place.  After 5 years of trying to garden in pottery shards I have decided to truck in dirt.  This spring my garden will have 46 cubic yards of good soil made into permanent beds.  I am shooting for a garden that is 55x55 and using this book to help me get more organized.  My issues with consistence are getting much better, I have seen great improvement over the last two years.  Instead of trying to do it all, I do what I can and my motto is "Do what you don't want to do, then you can do what you want."  My kitchen is cleaner because of it!

A note about the book I am using; it is written by two people who are in a zone 6 / 5 area so if you live in Florida, it is probably not the right book for you.  I live in a zone 4 area, so I have to modify it a bit which is not a problem, but if I lived in a place with 200 or more frost free days I would go nuts trying to make this book work for me.  That said, I really like it.

Today I finished sharpening, cleaning, and oiling my garden tools.  It is too cold and windy to inspect the orchard so I will do that tomorrow.  Yesterday I ordered all of my seeds from Johnny's and I plan on getting more plants when planting time comes.  Here is my garden plan that I tweaked from another book.

sorry it is such a bad photo, I will work on it.
My to youngest are also doing a bag garden from the book so I gave one the 1 year plan and the other the second year addition.  This is a great idea for kids who do not want to spend too much time working on a garden because there is very little weeding and prep involved.

I really like this book and it is fun to use.  I purchased both of them from Amazon after checking them out at the library.

Too much work and not enough action

I have so many things to get done.  My garden is huge (about 1/4 of an acre) and it needs weeding.  I sprayed it to kill the grass and that should help, but I need to get in there and pull the broad leaf weeds.  I also need to finish burying the potatoes.  I have 1.5 rows done and 5.5 to go.  It takes me an hour to do one row!  I need to put my netting up for the beans and peas, plant more peas, put in the stakes for the tomatoes, spread mulch around, and weed the grass out of the sweet corn areas.  I can't do any of that, 3 days in a row I have been grounded from working in the garden, because we had a really heavy rain and the garden is still wet (I have heavy clay soil and it takes a while to dry out.)  That is just the garden.  There is also lawn mowing, packing up everything on the first floor because we are having the floors redone, and sorting through fleeces.  I am feeling very lazy, I don't want to do any of it.  I would rather sit here and work on my knitting.

This is my Lily.  I am using Nashua Creative focus Linen.  It is a linen and cotton blend.  I wanted this to be a little more rustic and I want it done for early fall.  This yard is rough like linen but, like linen, it will soften.

Amanda's swallowtail is coming along, but I ran out of the hand spun I was using.  I picked up some more top to spin for this at the lamb and wool festival this year and I should get to finish it up after I get through all of the fleeces.  Fleece first, spinning last.  For the non-knitting / crochet crowd.  This will look 100x more lovely once it is blocked.  All knits look better blocked, but for lace, it is pretty much a necessity.

My reworking of Wisteria has gone really well.  I will have to spin up some more yarn for it, but again, not until the fleece are all gone through.  I added quite a bit of length to this sweater and knit a medium for the bottom and a large on top and it fits really nicely.  It is comfy, not fitted, and I can hardly wait to finish it so I can wear it this winter.  It will be a hot one.  The top came from my sheep and it is so soft it is hard to believe it is wool.  No itchy feeling with this sweater.

One of the things I really like about this sweater is the hand spun.  It is more softly spun in areas and it creates a lovely texture.  It definitely is not an off-the-rack look, nor does it look like a home ec project.  I love it.  I think it is my favorite so far.  I have tried it on and every time I felt so snugly I did not want to take it off again.

I also have to fix No-No's sweater.  It will only take me a couple of days, so I am holding off for a bit, hoping I finish some of my real work first.

A garden, piglet update

First the garden: I got the squash, pumpkins, some beans, corn, collards, peppers, watermelon, onion sets, half of the onion plants, and all of the flowers in.  I am nicely burnt.  The kids helped with quite of bit of this stuff.  I still have the rest of the onion plants, some herbs, the tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, celery, turnips, parsnips, radishes....and I think that is it, to get in.  I have help coming on Monday for all of that.  I have so much out there that I had to expand the garden. 
I also decided to try the 3 sisters thing.  I planted some beans with the corn and the buttercup squash on the edge of the corn so it will grow into the corn and shield the ground from the sun and reduce weeds.
I also have to begin mulching everything so the weeds stay under control.
Some of my potatoes are up already.  I love that. 

Now for the three little piggies:  Peanut, Butter and Jelly are all doing well.  they have adjusted to life in the outdoors and love munching the grass and "rooting" around.  They also are such wonderful little piggies that I give them their grain mixed with milk.  They are so happy to be here.  I think they forgot about the over crowded, stinky barn they came from.

I was not able to work on sorting any of the fleece.  I will have to reserve some time tomorrow to go through 2 of them.  I will finish the gardening on Monday.  School is done on the 3rd so I will be able to do a lot more work outside.  Phew....

The kids took pictures

Rosebud took a picture of my "forget me nots."

and one of my prickly bushes that have great color and a name that slips my mind at the moment

little man captured the black locust trees

and a magnolia that came from a rare tree my mother bougt me years ago, it's name is "Pinky".

Rosebud got the best picture of Edith.

The little man got a great picture of the Oak tree in the front yard.

and I wish I had a better zoom on my camera so I could do our pelicans justice.

Planting time

I received a package from Johnny's. This weekend the little man and I will clean out the back of the garage, chop wood (for the wood stove to keep the seedlings warm), and pot up flowers and vegies.

That large 5lb bag in the back is snap peas. We have a lot of shelling to do. Last year we tried a sweet shelling pea because they have more peas per pod, but they were not anywhere near as sweet as the snap peas we have grown in the past, so back to the snap peas. 5 lbs will plant about 400', but not all at once. I will stagger the planting by about 2 weeks 3-4 different times so I can get the shelling done. I will have help this year which should be lots of fun.

Some Pigs

Since I posted last we have had a lot happen. Our sheep were sheared and we are in the process of skirting our last 2 fleece. We skirted and shipped out all of our white merino fleece. There was a lot of illness. I lost feeling in my pinky and ring finger for a few months, my pinky is still numb. My mom and her husband both had heart issues, one of them major, and the other somewhat serious. So, sorry I have not kept up here.

One Thing we did accomplish was a home for our pigs. We get rejects from the hog "factories" about once a year and this year we wanted to give them a better home. So we set to building an enclosure that we hoped would contain them.


We chose this location for a few reasons: it gets a lot of shade so the pigs will not get sunburned, it is shaded by oak trees and pigs love acorns, it does not get a lot of grass so it will not take valuable pasture from the sheep, and it is not going to stink up the house or yard (not that they are really al that stinky when they are outside.)

We had to dig a lot of holes for the posts and then tamp them in carefully. We also put a line of barbed wire about 1" from the ground to discourage them from digging under the fence. Dear liked to give them a large mud puddle (it is sunscrean for them and keeps the flies off of them).

But, a nice storm, like we had yesterday, turns the whole thing into a mud puddle. It will be dry in a day, so the pigs better have their fun now. They loved the storm.

We throw them apples, cabbages, tomatoes, weeds from the garden, and watermelons. They love it all. We only have 2 weeds that are dangerous for pigs and we all know what they look like. The pigs are pretty happy and dirty, but at least they are muddy dirty, not poopy dirty.

Asparagus

Asparagus is my favorite vegetable. Fresh, pickled, canned, or frozen, it is always my favorite choice.

There are a few things to keep in mind when preparing this vegi. First, in order to have the best you have to grow it or buy it from a local farmer who hand picks it. Asparagus should always be hand picked. When you snap it, it breaks at the woody point. Store-bought asparagus is most often cut by machine under the soil. Because of this people recommend pealing the ends or cutting them, but even that is not good enough. The best method is to break it off. The problem with doing this on store bought asparagus is it is very expensive and you can lose as much as 2/3 of the stem because they did not pick it properly. It is very easy to grow asparagus and the roots are inexpensive if purchased from a place like Indiana Berry Company. The other thing to keep in mind when cooking asparagus is that the base and the tips cook at different rates, so an asparagus pot is the best method to cook it. Asparagus should be cooked until it turns that beautiful bright green and is al dente.

I have seen famous chefs say to pick the thin asparagus because it is more tender....wrong wrong wrong!!! Do they even eat the stuff? Asparagus should not be picked if it is thinner than a pencil and it is most tasty when it is nice and meaty. The moderately thick asparagus is the best (another reason not to get it in the store, store asparagus all seems to be on the thin side). Asparagus should also have a very tight and smooth head. You should not see any "sprouting" of the head.

I grow 2 different kinds of asparagus, purple and green. Purple asparagus has a higher sugar content and is better raw than green asparagus. It cooks up green and does not taste a whole lot different from plain old green asparagus.

This photo shows a huge asparagus spear (it is more than 1" in diameter) and another spear that is a little too thin and starting to sprout.
About 10 minutes of picking yielded me this:

How do they get white asparagus? White asparagus is just normal asparagus that is kept from light. Occasionally we get a spear that was hidden under the leaves and is white, but, I find white asparagus to be a little bitter.

Asparagus also grow wild in a lot of places. Look for tall fern like plants on the sides of the road, make note of where they are and then in May go back to the spot. If it is along the ditch of a person's home, ask permission to pick it. I have had people wander 30 feet into my property to pick my wild asparagus and I would prefer they asked. I have my own plantings and do not need the wild stuff, but I like to be asked.

I will most likely eat all of that asparagus and can some for eating this winter.

Lots of stuff going on

The retirement scarf is done and being blocked. It is 100% alpaca handspun. The pattern is a K2P2 rib with a 12 stitch cable.
Last fall I purchased these lunchroom tray carts at a school auction with the idea of using them as growing shelves. They are working great, I am very pleased.

Pickled Peppers

Amber's Merinos picked a peck of peppers to pickle promptly.

Harvest

We have been canning for the past month and there is so much more to go. So far we have Apple Sauce galore, Pickled Watermelon Rind (yuck! but Dear loves it), Rhubarb Strawberry Preserves (from our rhubarb and strawberries), Strawberry Preserves, Hot and Spicy Pickled Asparagus (I love this stuff), Peaches, Spaghetti Sauce, Dried Apples, and Dried Tomatoes. I still have more spaghetti sauce to do, I have to make salsa, can whole tomatoes, more apples sauce and apple pies and dried apples, make chili, more watermelon rind, and I am sure I will find something else. I did not get to the pears in time. Maybe next year. Then I get to start in on making pans and pans of lasagna. I forgot about all of the Zucchini Bread we made too and we will be able to make about 3-4 more loaves.

Having all of that food ready is a huge help. You may think I have loads of time to cook meals every day, but with MNVA, I have many days that I can barely get into the kitchen to clean.

The Garden / Weed Patch

The hard way to make hay (this is Dear):


Me using the brush hog (much easier):

Gotta spread all that manure (Chicken, pig, sheep, and llama)

The birdies are having fun finding crickets