One thing leads to another

A somewhat limited view of our garden area before there was a garden.

Despite what I said in my 'end of rope' post from a couple of weeks ago, things are going well. I had my little breakdown and as I normally do, I dusted myself off and got back to work. We've made some nice 'sanity saving' progress since then.

First of all, we have been slowly fixing things up around the house. I realized that having a half-done home makes me antsy, so this has definitely helped. My husband has also put some of his focus into getting the outside of the house fixed up, so he's been working on painting. This will be a big project for us this coming weekend (see to do list).

Lastly, we've shifted from predominantly planting to predominantly harvesting in the garden. As evidence of this, I present the following picture story....

First, we start with what you see in the above photo - a field.

Then we build boxes and fill them with dirt and seeds. Water regularly.


Wait a few weeks to get this:

The boxes are overflowing with greens! Swiss chard, kale, spinach, lettuce, mustard greens...

Which leads to this:

Freshly harvested and washed swiss chard

Which in turn, leads to this:

Swiss chard and artichoke dip

And this:

Swiss chard and tuna salad

And through a trade with friends for their abundant cherries, this:

My first ever cherry pie!

It was delicious, but I think I can do better and a different friend has promised me some sour cherries...so I'll get a chance to try again later this month.

In the meantime, we are working towards giving away or eating as much of our harvest as we can (much to the delight or pain of our digestive systems!) so that nothing goes to waste. When all else fails, I dehydrate the item and hope to find ways of using it later on when things are less hectic.

Towards that end, this is our tenative to do list for the coming long weekend -

Garden:

Harvest as necessary

Put up bean arch and cuke trellis

Transplant the last seedlings from the greenhouse

Add mulch from goat shed

Mow lawn

House:

Finish painting the trim

Scrape the eaves in prep for painting

Pressure wash anything not already done (including the deck)

Tape plastic over all "non-blue" items

Rent sprayer and paint everything not covered!

Order house numbers

Put up dining room lighting

Animals:

Worm goats

Clean out goat shed for mulch

Set up cross-fencing

Wash milking stand

Fun:

Definitely one and maybe two bike rides

Set off fireworks on Saturday

And that's it. Not bad for a three day weekend's worth of work, right? I'm confident that we can get all this done without too much headache.

Slammed with Spring

My appologies to all my readers for my absense. It's amazing how quickly life can fly by when you are busy, no? I cannot believe that it’s been almost a month since I last posted!

I’m not going to recap all that’s happened during that time but in summary: lots of planting , a little bit of harvesting, some dehydrating, some hair cutting, some eye surgery and some biking was had by our little household. And now for the photos:

One branch of my favorite plum tree - full of plums. We are going to have a bumper crop of these babies this year!

The 'row garden' area. The mess down the left is potatoes, in the distance you can see garlic, tomatoes and where the beans are planted (the fencing/trellis in the middle). The black covers to the right are the sweet potatoes.

The grape arbors as they just start to show leaves (and a few tiny grapes) with our greenhouse at the end of the first aisle.


CD's hanging from twine to scare away birds. Garlic in the foreground, tomatoes behind. You can see how close our boxes are to the edge of the row garden, too (in the distance).

The field of boxes - mostly planted at this point. I need to add one more trellis for the cukes and plant a few random items, but these are pretty much done until mid-summer when we plant the fall items.

Garden updates and escape artists

We got the garden almost completely done. I still need to add a low edging barrier at the ends of the aisles so that the rocks stay in and don't end up in the grass. We obviously still need to do some planting as well. See all the little plants at the far end? See how everything is nicely growing? Yeah...that was yesterday. Today, it's different. Read on and you'll learn why...

This is the area of the row garden that I hoed (is that a word?) and then covered with composted manure. It's ready for planting this coming weekend.

This is where my main herb garden will go. Or at least, where my initial one will be....I may have to expand to a sunnier area eventually. We will be adding a gate at the top of the steps and a fence pretty much at the front of this photo to keep the dogs out (they are the reason there is nothing else growing here anymore!).

Our potato experiment - growing potatoes in a garbage can! (holes drilled in the bottom for drainage).

Our garlic - doing very well. I'm excited! (I didn't check to see if its still there after today's little episode. I certainly hope so!

This is the 'early' apple tree. It was the first to ripen last year and now we see why...it's in full bloom before most of the other trees have any blossoms at all. Gorgeous!

This is Pepe. He's generally the instigator and likely the goat at fault for today's garden debacle.

And this is Oreo (at 4 weeks old). He probably didn't start the problem, but he definitely contributed to it.

My husband got home from a business trip today around 5 pm. He calls me at work and asks what happened to the garden. As I had just toured it this morning, I had no idea what he was talking about. I did see some evidence that our stupid cat is using the dirt as a litter box, but he usually doesn't disturb sprouted/growing plants. My H said that there were plants eaten, dug up, pulled out, etc. Small footprints in just about every box, too. I had no idea what to tell him but we were both ready to blame the cat.

I get home from work about an hour and a half later, and he says he knows what happened. Apparently, he spoke to our neighbors. I had told them that he was out of town for a few days, so when they saw our goats roaming our property, they thought something was wrong. They managed to get Sass back to the goat pen, only to find that the gate was still securely latched! We think that the kids managed to slip under the lower part of the gate and once they were out, mom had to follow along. She must have squeezed her big body out of the gate! Wherever Sass goes, Buddy has to follow - so now all 4 goats were free to roam. The only obvious damage was to the new plants in the garden. They destroyed about half our strawberries, most of the kale, some of the collards and all the celeriac leaves. They did not touch the celery (no surprise - they won't eat it when we offer it to them!) or the peas (thank goodness). The kids left footprints everywhere, so we think we'll need to resow all the seeds we planted, too. What a pain! I am glad that it happened now while we still have time to replant, though. We are super pleased that our neighbors took it upon themselves to help us out. I'm going to bake them something yummy as a thank you and take that to them with a fresh container of goat's milk this weekend.

This weekend's todo list? Neuter the kids, replant the garden, and rethink the goat gate!

Spring Gardening

I love this tree. It's some type of willow and it's just gorgeous when it blooms in the spring.

So much is blooming and growing around the farm! I'll take my camera out this evening (if it's not raining) and try to get some new photos. Spring is really a beautiful season. It's particularly exciting for us as we see things popping up that we have never seen before (this is our first spring in this house).

This weekend was a busy one. We had a goal of getting the garden done so that we could get lots of things transplanted outside. Time is running out on some of the spring veggies, so we didn't want to delay. I don't have updated pictures yet, but we got the balance of the garden boxes completed. We now have 5 boxes, comprising 200 square feet of gardening space. This 200 sf, took 120 cubic feet of soil to fill. This soil was 'made' by mixing peat moss, compost and pumice/vermiculite. To fill all the newly expanded boxes, we went and got a truckload of compost from a local nursery. Unfortunately (both for us and for our little truck), neither I nor the girl at the register, were confident enough in our calculations. For whatever reason, I was thinking that a cubic yard is equal to 9 cubic feet and so I used that to make our calculations. It wasn't until we got home that I realized that we had purchased 54 cubic feet of compost instead of the needed 18. Ooops. Now we have some compost to ammend the row garden area as well. See, I was planning ahead! ;-)

With a lot of sweat and hard labor, the soil got mixed and loaded into the boxes. The last truckload of river rock got filled into the aisles between the boxes. Part of the row garden area got hand weeded and then covered with some of the extra compost. The rest of the garden will be done as the week progresses and that huge pile of aged dairy poo sitting in our yard will eventually dwindle.

We planted brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, more spinach, mustard greens, kohlrabi, a few left over onions, kale, celery, celeriac, a few more strawberries, chinese cabbage, and more peas. Tonight I'll be starting melon, multiple types of winter squash, and pumpkins. Next week, lettuce and carrots get planted. We are also planning out the row garden area. This will house predominantly, potatoes, corn and beans...but also some tomatoes, some green beans, some lettuce or other greens (in the shade of the bean trellis) and probably some winter squash. Right now, our greenhouse is full of tomatoes, peppers and some early started melons (in pots). We also have our two dwarf citrus trees out there and they are doing really well (navel orange and meyer lemon).

I'm pretty sure that we are making a classic mistake in that there is little doubt in my mind that we are overdoing this. I know that come late summer and early fall we will be innundated with fruits and veggies. Somehow, in the dark of early spring, that is just too hard to comprehend so we over-plant. At least this year, I hope to have family visiting in the summer. They get to help us harvest AND eat our bounty! Anyone else up for a visit? I'm sure the apple harvest could use more hands (and mouths). :-)

Garden Progress

This is what our 'field of boxes' looked like last year after our initial planting.

This is what they looked like as I began the long, tiring process of moving them this spring. You can see how the grass was a problem at the edges - it spilled over into the boxes pretty badly as well.

This is what they look like now - about 75% of the way completed. The first three boxes have all been planted (peas, spinach and strawberries).

Last year, we planted 8 square foot gardening boxes and about 1/3 of our row garden area. This year, that's changing. We didn't plant as much as we wanted to last year because we got into the house late in the growing season, and really ran out of time to plant and still hope to get harvest before winter. Mid-July is waaaayyyy too late to be planting when you live this far north (cold winters or not - you run out of daylight before the plants mature!).

We also had a real problem with keeping the grass in the pathways between the boxes under control (despite my planning the aisles the width of two lawn mower passes). The aisles were too wide as well, creating a lot of wasted space. This year, I planned out how I wanted them to be arranged and the best way to make the move (it's not easy since they have only weedcloth on the bottoms) before tackling the task. We also liked how the base of our greenhouse turned out so well that we decided that we wanted to use river rock in the walkways. This will allow water to still soak into the ground, but it will discourage the grass and make foot travel to the boxes easy.

We still need a couple of loads of rock and to mix up some more soil before we are complete, but it's coming along nicely. I also will need to reinstall the trellises, but that's quick and easy. They are currently all stored in our shed and installing them means only to insert 1/2 inch rebar into the ground in the right locations and then to drop the trellis over the rebar (the trellises use 1/2 inch electrical conduit for their frames).

This area is parallel to our row garden area in which we've only planted potatoes and garlic so far. The row garden area will also house some beans, corn, some winter squash, and the quinoa. We may also duplicate some of the other items we have set up for the boxes just to see which items do best in which location. I purposely wanted these boxes to be in the same general area as the row garden because depending on what the future holds, we may eventually want to fence them both in to keep the chickens out (currently the chickens only free-range in the goat area to keep them safe from the neighbors dogs). Luckily (knock on wood), we don't have a deer problem like so many of our neighbors do. We think that the 8 foot buffalo fence that surrounds us on two sides and the 6 ft privacy fence on the third side really discourages them. Four dogs in our two acres (between ours and our neighbors) and a road where nighttime speeds exceed 70 mph - and we are pretty well protected from deer as long as there are other more easily ravaged gardens to keep them happy. ;-)

Spring planting continues

My favorite plum tree - blooming already!

Spring is HERE! We have baby goats, flowering trees...and planted seeds as proof. I had so many little updates after all our hard work last weekend that I decided to do one big 'picture post' to cover them.

So last weekend we got a lot done around the homestead. I was off Thurs & Fri and between those two days and a weekend with only a little rain, we were able to be very productive. First off, we finally got those codling moths out into the apple trees. I still need to make a few more, but we are pretty well covered now.

Codling moth traps hanging in our apple trees.

Then we set about using the rope hand-held chain saw that I ordered to remove a few high branches. Our neighbor to the south lives on a very, overgrown piece of land. The trees are super tall and a couple of them had HUGE branches that hung over and shaded one of our apple trees. We wanted to cut them down, but they were so high, they were well out of reach of our ladder. Even a ladder combined with a chainsaw on a pole might not have been enough. So I searched online and found the nifty little tool we used. http://www.cspoutdoors.com/higlimropcha.html

While I've seen lots of people complaining about this tool, it worked great for us. One branch split before we'd sawed all the way through, but it was not 100% heathy to begin with...the other branch worked great. One of us sawed while the other pulled on a rope tied further out on the branch to keep it from falling directly onto the apple tree. I can't wait to see how this tree produces now that it'll get some sun!

The tree we were trying to help is circled in blue...and the branches we cut in red. If you click on the photo - you can see it larger.

Then we went to work in the garden. With the hay I cleaned out of the goat shed, we mulched the berry brambles.

With some extra compost we had, we 'fed' the grape vines.



Then I moved one of the square foot gardening boxes. I have created a plan to move almost all of them eventually. I want to move them closer together, add another row, and then put down mulch or gravel on the walkways inbetween. Having to mow that grass is a pain and I was annoyed at how much grass started growing in the boxes. I think we'll be better off getting rid of a lot of it. Anyway, I planted in the one box that will remain where it is and then I moved one more box so that I could plant there as well. I planted 5 different kinds of peas (snap peas, snow peas and peas that you shell) and three different kinds of spinach in the boxes. I also left space to plant more next week so that we stagger the harvest a bit.

The boxes in the middle of the move. Only the one in the foreground has changed so far - it moved to the left to make room for another box next to it.

The box where I have spinach and peas planted. The 4 squares that look a little drier than the others is where I'll plant more spinach next week.

Rick set about planting our potatoes. We did two garbage cans full of them (which I will post more about later) and one long row in the row garden area. Rick dug that row last weekend (while the ground was wet and reasonably soft). He then planted multiple types of potatoes (Yukon golds, russets, red, etc). We even planted a few potatoes that we'd grown last year (as an experiment). We did it differently (and in a different area) than last year. Instead of planting them in the ground and mounding dirt on top of them, he dug a trench, losened the bottom soil and then planted them in it. Then, as they grow, we'll cover them with the soil we dug out of the trench. I can't wait to see how it all works!

Rick planting potatoes in his beautifully dug trench.

The full trench - after all the potatoes have been planted. Sweet potatoes will go elsewhere (it's too early for them).

Lastly, we spent a little time taking stock of all that is growing in our greenhouse. This coming weekend, I'll be planting more tomatoes (starts) and a few other things to supplement what we've already got going. Our tomatoes from the first planting are doing really, really well. I hope we can get them into the ground before they start fruiting!!

Our mish-mash of plantings. Every time I see this shelf, I think 'a rag-tag fugitive fleet' from the introduction to the original Battlestar Galatica. I don't watch the new verision - I wonder if they use the same line?

Our first tomato seedlings - now almost full plants. How cool is that?

Lastly, just because they are so darn cute...another goat baby photo. This is Sass taking care of Oreo and ...wait for it... Pepe (after Pepe Le Pew). Both boys are getting playful and curious already. I forsee a full time job of keeping track of those guys in our near future!

The greenhouse - such as it is

Our little 'greenhouse'

I'm almost embarassed to post this as it's so pathetically ugly...but whatever. We don't have a true greenhouse. I really should add it to my side bar (perhaps I will before anyone even reads this!), but our plans do include buying a kit and building one ourselves. It won't be big...we certainly don't need big. But it would be nice to have a real one with vents, and doors and such.

In the meantime, I wanted to try something so that we could see how growing in the winter would work in our climate. I got this idea from the Square Foot Gardening book and I modified it a little to suit my needs. This is one of our garden boxes with a temporary greenhouse installed over it. I made sure that both ends opened so that I could reach all the plants easily enough.

The inside where you can see the duct tape, the top bar and how the ends go into the soil.

This is how it went:

1) remove all dead debris from boxes (including acorns...where did they come from??)
2) bend 2 10ft 1/2 inch PVC pipes in arches over the ends and stick them in the dirt
3) cut a 4 ft piece of pipe to be the top crossbar for stability and screw it in place
4) cover the ends with 3mil plastic, securing it with duct tape to avoid cutting/tearing it
5) cover the rest of it with the same plastic and secure the base with 4ft leftover 'grid' boards and nails
6) spend a week trying to decide how to best secure the top plastic to the end pieces
7) find plastic spring loaded clamps at ACE and use those to secure the plastic in place
8) mix compost into each square prior to planting to add more nutrients
9) plant!

Here it is all closed up. You can see the plastic clamps holding the plastic to the pipe.

We have mostly leafy greens planted. I did add a couple of onions, leeks, and one broccoli plant, but I have no illusions that those will actually work with our temps the way they are now. It does get to 60 during the day still, but with not much sun, I think the soil is too cold to sprout most things. Hopefully the lettuces, spinach, kale and chard will work, though. Again, late planting...I need to break this lousy habit!

I got word this evening that my visa was approved and that my passport is on its way back to me right now. I should receive it tomorrow which means that I am all set to depart for China on Saturday. I'll be vising Dongguan and Zhongshan, neither of which are tourist destinations. That's probably a good thing since I'll barely have any time outside of when I'm working to see anything anyway. I am flying into Hong Kong and supposedly staying at a really nice hotel, but I'll only be there for one night and probably won't get to see too much. It's an awful long way to go for 3 days. If I had my way, we'd not be wasting the money, the time or the crazy amounts of fuel to go there just to schmooze (essentially). But, when it's important to my boss..it has to be important to me.

I may or may not have internet access - so this may be my last post for awhile. I return next Thursday and once I've recovered from what is sure to be severe jet lag, I'll be back to posting. Until then "Zai Jain"!