Balance in life

Roses in our backyard - one of many bushes that I've had to learn how to prune. This photo is from last year, but this particular bush is already sending out new shoots this spring!

My sincerest of apologies to my faithful readers. I didn't not mean to be absent from writing for so long...and particularly during this, the quiet season (on the farm). I just haven't felt very wordy the past couple of weeks and without words, blog posts are quite lacking! I suppose I could have come on an posted the occasional photo. In fact, that's what I'll do the next time my brain goes dry. For now, you'll have to be content with a bit of a recap.

Let's see... We have been focusing on getting the late winter/early spring things done. We've done some seed starting including a second wave of tomatoes (the first wave is doing very, very well!), peppers and onions...and some new things like broccoli and cauliflower. We've been faithfully pruning away at our fruit trees and my H has done a wonderful job on the grape arbors. We've also begun to do some grafting on our apple trees. I got quite a nice selection of apple wood scions from a guy I work with...and we've been grafting it to our red delicious trees when opportunity arrises (we still have quite a bit more to do). I started a small lettuce experiment in the basement (since our seeds are now starting in the greenhouse). We are putting together shelves and trying to get organized as well. Ah, and we ordered quite a few supplies to get our 'birthing kit' ready for the arrival of Sass's babies (end of March).

I've got quite a few photos of the above items, and I'll definitely get them posted in the next couple of days. I was sick with a cold last week, so I haven't been nearly as productive as I usually am. I think it's driving my husband batty - I know it's making me nuts! I did manage to get my new wheels installed on my commuter bike (my birthday present from my husband) but I've been sick since then and have not yet been able to take them out on their inaugural ride!

I've also been working on myself a little lately. In general, I am very, very self critical. In fact, I consider myself quite a bit of a self-bully, to be perfectly honest. Lately, I've somehow let my personal 'upkeep' fall off quite a bit (between gaining weight, not cycling and getting out of shape, not getting my usual summer tan, and generally not really taking very good care of myself) and with all the mini-farm work, I haven't had time to even think about it. Now that I do, I realize that not only have I not been taking very good care of myself physically, but I haven't been taking good care of my psyche either. It makes me a glum person and I don't enjoy being that way (and I'm sure others don't enjoy being around me!) Anyway, I'm working on being nicer to myself (and on getting back in shape). Happiness grows from a balanced life and it's time I remembered that there is more to mine than just making the garden grow. :-)

A Goat that Plays Turtle?

What a morning!

I got up a tad earlier than usual to make sure I was at work by 8 am. I took care of the chickens, and then fed and watered the goats. Then I grabbed my milk gallon filled with water and headed out to the greenhouse to make sure nothing was drying out. It all looked good, but I gave everything a small drink anyway. The temps in there are perfect right now. We've rigged a long outdoor extension cord to the greenhouse and have an oil-filled radiator in there set to low. It's got a thermostat on it, so it keeps the greenhouse from dipping below about 55 F. It's working well so far.

Anyway, I thinned a few tomato plants from the shelf and set them down. Then I watered everything and then left. I got almost all the way back to the house before I remembered the plants I'd clipped. I went back to get them so that I could give them to the goats while they were still fresh. I'm glad I did, otherwise I would not have still been outdoors to hear Sass. She was bleating quite loudly. When I looked, she appeared to be annoyed at Buddy. He was in one of his rambunctious moods and was butting her, presumably trying to get her to play with him. She butted him back, but when he wouldn't leave her alone, she got loud. She was running away from him and he was chasing. When she started coughing from breathing too hard, I immediately went in to break it up. While I was facing Buddy, I heard Sass jump up on the table we built for play purposes. When I turned around, she was actually lying on the ground, on her back, legs in the air. She must have jumped and fallen! She was squirming around and I assumed she was trying to get up. She's kind of large right now (being pregnant and all) and she couldn't do it herself. I helped to partially roll her over, and she managed to get up the rest of the way on her own. Then Buddy started in again! She followed me out of the gate (not something she normally does in the morning) , so I let her wander around a bit giving Buddy a chance to calm down. When I brought her back in, I calmly stood between her and Buddy until he got the picture and seemed to relax. I wasn't sure if it was ok to leave, but I had to get to work! I kept an eye on them both while I finished getting ready and everything seemed calm enough that I felt ok leaving.

Luckily, I think she's fine. I just keep thinking how awful it would be if she hurt herself either trying to jump on the table, or trying to get herself up, and no one was around to help. I think that this weekend, we are going to have to make adding additional fencing to the goat pen a priority. We need a way to separate them if necessary. We may also have to look into getting Buddy a friend that he can rough-house with...

Confused plants or is it Spring?

German Extra Hardy, Siberian and Chet's Italian Red are the varietys I planted. I picked them at random - so hopefully they are all suited to our environment!

Last fall I planted garlic. I've never grown garlic before, so I just followed the directions and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it works. I planted three types in one bed, and then covered the bed with about 6 inches of pine needle mulch (since that's what I had in abundance at the time). The garlic bed is marked with stakes and is residing in a corner of our row garden where the sprinkler system doesn't really reach. This was intentional because at a certain point (and I have to do some reminder reading!), you have to stop watering the garlic. Hopefully that point is after June 1st, or mother nature is going to keep watering despite my need for her to stop! I was surveying the row garden area (still full of worms!) over the weekend when I noticed that the garlic is sprouting. I've heard that's normal...but it seems awfully early to me. Of course, we have all kinds of things sprouting around the property. The plum tree is budding, the roses are throwing off new shoots, and all the bulbs are just peeping up. I need to make note of where things come up so that I know where things are when I go to plant my own bulbs next fall. My guess is that these early ones are likely daffodils or crocuses (is that a word?).

Either way, I plan to get tulips in the ground for next year - so I need to map out things this spring. :-)

Building a Greenhouse

The 'site' before we'd done much of anything at all.


My husband unpacking the box that the greenhouse kit shipped in...

Here the frame is assembled and we started putting in the polycarbonate panels.

I skipped taking any photos between unpacking and getting the frame to this point because that process took us a couple of months. A part got broken, we tried to glue it, then we had to get a new one sent, etc. It was a mess. We were begining to think that we'd never get this thing built!

Here you can see the building within a building (or a garage). It was helpful to have a solid flat surface on which to work.

The greenhouse was pretty much completed while still in the garage.

The base. We leveled a spot, laid down the weed cloth and then...

staked the base frame into the ground in the corners.

Then we got a truck load of river rock gravel to cover the weed cloth.

The base with the gravel - awaiting the greenhouse.

This is the frame we built from 2x4's so that we could carry the greenhouse out to the site without dropping it (or torquing it). We set the greenhouse on top of this frame and successfully carried it to the other side of our property.

After we fitted the greenhouse over the base, my H installed all the little locking screws that hold it in place.

The finished greenhouse!! There is a vented widow on the north side of the greenhouse and the door that you see is a split door so that the top can be left open for ventilation.

We bought this shelving for organizing the basement, but for now, it works as a plant shelf. The first seedlings are already happily enjoying the sunshine.

We also put our two dwarf citrus trees flanking the doorway. One is a meyer lemon, the other a navel orange.

The corners of the greenhouse all have little downspouts so that it's easy to set up a system to collect rain water. We are going to start with 5 gallon buckets, but depending on how much rain we get, we may have to install some real rain barrels.

Sweet Potato Squares

I think I've mentioned this recipe before, but I don't believe that I've shared it. When my H and I first thought about setting up our own homestead, we signed up for an organic gardening class at a local farm in NC (Frog Pond Farm in my side bar - I would highly recommend them for relevant classes and we'd be attending if we still lived in the area!). When we were there, Libby served us these sweet potato squares. They were delicious, so we all asked for the recipe. When she emailed it to us a few days later, I saved it to my hard drive and then forgot about it.

Fast foward to Oregon. We had quite a few sweet potatoes in storage, so I thought about this recipe. I pulled it out and lo and behold - discovered that it came from the Victory Garden Cookbook. I LOVE this cookbook! I've been using it as a gardening reference as we plan what we want to grow this year and if I'd just flipped through the sweet potato section, I would have seen this same recipe.

This is a spicy, moist and delicious snack cake. I've made a few slight modifications and Libby added the ginger which I think it just perfect for this snack cake. Give it a try!!

Sweet Potato Squares
Modified from the original included in 'The Victory Garden Cookbook'

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 cup oil
1/8 cup applesauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup splenda (or just use 2/3 cup of brown sugar - I was trying to save calories)
1 egg
1 large apple - peeled and shredded
1/2 lb sweet potato - peeled and shredded
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Stir together flour, soda, salt and spices in a small bowl. Mix oil, applesauce & sugar. Beat in egg. Add vanilla, apple & sweet potato to oil/sugar mixture and mix. Add dry ingredients and mix well. Mix in nuts. Spread in a greased 8x8 square baking pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool before cutting into squares.

Delicious!!

The Pruning Continues

The three biggest fruit trees that needed pruning - 'before'.

We have been using the pruning that we need to complete as a 'fill in' when we take breaks from other chores (like building the greenhouse). So far, we have completed 7 apple trees and 1 prune tree. We still have quite a few left to get done, including all the pear trees, but it's a start.

Same three trees - 'after' and much shorter!

Here you can see the before and after of the two biggest tree projects we had. The third one (on the left) is a plum tree that we still have not yet tackled. The two apple trees had to be done right away because the area in front of the tree on the right is where our greenhouse is going to go. We wanted to get the BIG branches down before we put the greenhouse in to avoid the possiblity of a rougue branch taking out our new greenhouse. It took us more time to clean up all the branches (and it's still not done!) than it did to cut them down. The good news is that our wood pile is a bit replentished (for next year) with the big limbs we took down.

Before this weekend is over, we hope to get a few more apple trees and the pear trees completed. We also still need to take on the remaining grape arbors. It's a never ending battle!

The 2009 garden begins

Seeds just starting out in the basement. You can see the heating pad used to keep the soil warm under the base.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we started seeds in the basement. My husband put together a grow light on a workbench down there, and then we decided to use a seed starting kit we'd bought and hardly used last year. We planted 3 types of tomato, 3 types of pepper, leeks, kale, celeriac and onions. We had the rows numbered and all the varieties listed in a notebook. Because we hadn't yet purchased a heating pad that didn't have an auto-shut-off, we had them sitting on the top of a space heater in my husband's office. Unfortunately, due to the small size of his office, it wasn't long before he'd knocked it over. Every single seed pod was knocked out of it's space before anything had sprouted. We put it all back and moved it to the basement, but we no longer had any idea what was what.

We still don't! Things are sprouting like mad and while we can tell a tomato plant from a pepper plant, we don't know what variety is what. We've also never grown kale, celeriac or leeks...so we aren't exactly sure what they look like as seedlings.

The first tomato transplant.

We did some transplanting last weekend nonetheless. I had saved a few small pots from last years tomatoes and pepper starts, so we filled those first. Our greenhouse isn't ready yet, so the new transplants are lining the window sill in our dinning room. It's not a south facing window (we don't have any of those), so the sooner we get the greenhouse assembled, the better. I only transplanted the largest plants, but now the ones I left behind are larger and need to be planted as well. Instead of buying more pots, I dug through all the containers I've been collecting and managed to find 12 that were suitable. I cleaned them out, punched holes in the bottom, and they are sitting on the bench downstairs awaiting transplants. We'll probably try and get those done tomorrow.

Our seedling keeping one of our citrus trees (dwarf navel orange) company in the dining room.

While we've started a few veggies and have plans to add additional fruits including blueberries and strawberries, I've never done very well with herbs. I've planted them in pots before, but I think I either underwater or overwater them and kill them. This year, I have a different set of plans. I'm still going to do invasive things like mint in a big pot, but I'm going to fence off a small section of our backyard and do a herb garden. This area is just off the deck, so it's extremely convenient. The fencing is necessary because without it, the dogs will wreck havoc on the garden.

The future location of our herb garden.

Snow, a 100-mile breakfast and birthdays...

No biking for me today - this is the view out my back door when I went out to feed the animals.

So today is my birthday. I'm getting older. For the most part, it doesn't bother me. I mean, my mom used to say that getting older was better than the alternative, right? But occasionally something will remind me that I'm not the 26 year old I think I am...that I don't have infinite time left to accomplish the things I want to accomplish, and that no matter how much biking I do, I should never, ever wear a mini-skirt again. Ha.

Anyway, this morning I'm sitting here enjoying what turns out to be a 100-mile breakfast with very little effort (good, this is becoming common place!). My eggs are from the back yard, the sausage is from a ranch down the street where they raise grass-fed beef and pork. My toast is from homemade bread using Bob's Red Mill flour which is produced just on the other side of Portland. Even my blackberry jam is from our own blackberries. There are still a few holes in this meal, though. The jam has sugar in it...and that's not locally produced. I do need to find out if you can make jam with honey. We do still plan on getting bees...so eventually we can produce our own sweeteners. I also am drinking coffee and it's Colombian. My coffee from far away places will be the last thing I give up when 'local' becomes the only option. We do the best we can, but some things are just too good to give up! ;-)

So today I am off from work. All employees at my company are being forced to use 10 days of PTO (paid time off) in the first quarter. I figured that my birthday was a good day to take off, since I was looking for reasons to choose one day over another. My plans for today are simple...some 'self-improvement' work (I can be a hippie-farmer, but I don't need to look like one!), some cleaning around the house, transplant some seedlings, bake some bread, and go for a bike ride. The bike ride is going to have to be scrapped. I awoke to snow on the ground and heavy rain predicted for this afternoon. The weather is NEVER nice on my birthday. So instead I'll make the inside of our house all cozy and clean...and wait for a nicer day to ride my bike.

I also plan to upload about a billion photos from my camera (the one above being the first one so far!) and organize my thoughts for future blog posts. I feel like I have so much to say/write about that it gets overwhelming and I just opt out. Once spring rolls around, I'm going to be overwhelmed with work again...so I need to get things in order before then. Spring...I can't wait!

Eminent return

I know that I've been very sporadic about posting over the past week (9 days, actually). While things have been happening on the little farm that are reasonably worth posting about, I've been swamped at work. I had to work late a couple of days, and while I had some time to update over the weekend, I felt the need to leave my computer in it's bag. After I left work on Friday, I did not use a computer even once until I got back to work on Monday morning. That's an extremely rare occasion for me!! At the very least, I'm using it for recipes or to look up how to do some farm task or other.

Anyway, we actually got quite a bit accomplished. In a nutshell, we cleaned out the chicken coop and moved it, cleaned up a lot of the branches from last weekends pruning, laid out and leveled the base for our greenhouse, filled in the floor with gravel, tried to finish building the greenhouse and broke the repaired connector again, baked bread, pruned two more apple trees and one plum tree, transplanted a few seedlings into larger pots and grafted a few apple branches to our red delicious tree.

We have a new greenhouse piece on it's way to us to arrive tomorrow, so we hope to get that thing built (finally!) before next weekend. I have been taking photos all along the way, so once it's done, I'll have a full pictorial version of our efforts to share.

My plan is to return to regular blogging very shortly. Stay tuned...

Weekend of pain

These are the three trees we worked on this weekend (one is partially blocked by the ladder). The middle one is now about 1/3 it's size and the right one is even smaller. The left one still needs more work done. In the foreground, there are two small trees that both produce delicious apples that we prunned last weekend.

I'm sitting here, on the couch, making typing errors and periodically moaning in pain. It's been one hell of a weekend!

On Saturday, we tackled the pruning again. We have three trees in the far back yard that don't look like they've ever been pruned. Two are apple trees, one is a plum of some sort. None of them produced anything edible last year, so we hope that pruning will help. Additionally, two of the three trees are in close proximity to where we plan to erect the greenhouse, so cutting them back some is critical. The last thing we need is a big branch to break off and fall through the polycarbonate roof! All three of these trees are about 30-40 ft tall. We had only hand tools to take them down to a more manageable size. My H spent most of the day on a ladder or climbing through the trees with a saw in hand. I was on the ground with a long rope, ready to assist by pulling branches down or out of his way. I was also in charge of using the big clippers to cut all downed branches into manageable lengths. Near the end of the day, my H made a trip to a local discount store and purchased an electric chain saw. That made a HUGE difference and we were able to make a good dent in the clean up. We cut down so many branches that we easily had more wood on the ground than was left remaining in the trees! By Saturday evening, my wrists, my back and my shoulders were screaming in pain.

Sunday, we had plans to go for a bike ride in the morning. The weather cooperated, so we headed out around 11:30 am after doing some morning chores. I planned out a short 20 mile loop that kept us off the main roads (we rode those last weekend and the grit/gravel remaining from the December snow storms made it rough going). Unfortunately, I don't know the roads in this area all that well, so I wasn't 100% sure what types of roads we were going to be riding. Turns out, not good ones! About half our route was on dirt/gravel roads and about 1/2 of that was some serious climbing! Oops. After 4 miles of slogging up very muddy, dirt roads that probably had an average incline of about 7%, we were totally spent. We'd picked a 20 mile route because we are out of shape...a tough climb was more than we bargained for...though we did get some nice views for our effort. And the descent was paved (thank goodness - I am terrified of descents in mud!) and probably would have been fun had it been a little warmer. 40 degrees is too cold when you aren't actively pedaling!

Anyway, tonight my legs are joining my wrists, shoulders and back in the pain department. I'm glad we got so much done on those trees (we still have more to do) and I'm glad we rode - but I'm looking forward to starting the work week so that I can recover!

Finding Home

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birth place, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”

from The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham

Banana Nut Stuffed French Toast

Quite a few years ago, my mom received a CD-rom with Williams-Sonoma recipes on it as a gift. As I remember it, it was pretty cool because you could search for recipes based on the ingredients (like if you had a bunch of apples to use). Of course, these days, the internet serves the same basic purpose on a much larger scale. The problem with the internet searches is that unless you know the source of the recipe, you have no idea if it's going to be any good or not. With this Williams-Somona database - odds were, it was going to be delicious. I don't know if they still do it (I no longer receive WS catalogs), but they used to picture gourmet food with recipes in their catalog. I guess the idea was that if you needed a big roasting pan, or a special griddle, or a dutch oven, in which to cook the item, you'd be more apt to buy it if you were tempted by gorgeous food! I used to cut out the occasional recipe and I've still got them tucked away in my personal recipe cookbook for future use. I also happened to print out about 15 - 20 recipes from my mom's CD more than 10 years ago and I've been carrying them around with me from house to house. Until recently, I'd never used a single one! It was just one of these such recipes that I pulled out a couple of weekends ago to try for breakfast. I had a few bananas that were past their prime (and for picky me, that means brown spots of any kind!!) just waiting for a good opportunity to use them.

It was easy to assemble, simple to cook, and absolutely delicious to eat! The only downfall was the fact that the most important ingredient is one that pretty much cannot be local to me. If you live in the tropics, grow your own bananas and then give this a try!

The whole recipe serves 4, but I did half a recipe for the two of us and it was plenty of food.

Ingredients:
6 eggs
1/4 cup milk
4 very ripe small bananas
1/4 cup of coarsely chopped walnuts (I used pecans since that's what I had in the pantry)
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
8 slices egg bread (I used whole wheat)
4 T unsalted butter (I used half this amount with good results)

Beat eggs until frothy and then stir in the milk. Pour into a shallow bowl or pan that is larger than the bread slices you are using.

Mash bananas into a small bowl. Mix in nuts and nutmeg. Spread it evenly over half the bread slices leaving a 1/4 inch border uncovered on all edges. Top with the remaining bread slices and press down gently to seal.

Place sandwiches in egg mixture and turn until evenly saturated on both sides.

In a pan or griddle big enough to hold all sandwiches, melt half the butter over medium heat. Add the sandwiches and fry until the underside is golden brown. Add the remaining butter (broken into pieces) to the pan and flip the sandwiches over onto the newly melted butter. Fry until golden brown.

Serve hot, dusted with confectioners sugar if you like. Excellent with warm maple syrup!

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take photos. I'm planning on making this one again in the near future. When I do, I'll take pictures!

More bread techniques for lazy people

Or maybe I should say more bread techniques for 'busy people', right? I'm certainly not lazy - I just don't have time for fancy artisan bread efforts. Until now.


I ordered this book from Amazon because I was intrigued by the title. I didn't even bother to search for reviews, or experiences or anything. I took a risk and it panned out - big time.

And of course, I was highly skeptical. I mean, everyone and their brother told me how easy it was to make yogurt and we all know how that turned out for me, right? I even managed to screw up the supposedly super easy NYTimes version of the 'no-knead bread'. So an entire book (and as it turns out, an entire internet worth of people) going on and on about how easy this bread making process was, just didn't sway me. I know that I'm fully capable of screwing it up, so I reserved judgement.

I also took another stupid risk. I attempted my first loaf when we had company coming for dinner. Our friends were bringing lasagna and salad, so I figured that the perfect accompaniment would be home baked crusty bread. Thank the maker that it worked or I was in for some major excuse making!

Basically, you mix flour, water, yeast and salt in a big storage container. You let it rise for 2 hours (I put it in the oven with only the light bulb on since my house is so cold). Then you put the container in the fridge. When it's time to make bread, you cut off a piece of dough, shape the loaf (which takes all of 30 seconds), let it sit for 40 minutes and then bake it. Voila! You think I'm kidding...but I'm not. My bread turned out looking exactly like the cover and it was yummy. Tender but crusty crust, fully cooked but not the least bit dry interior. And the best part is that I have enough dough in my fridge (well, in my case, in the garage as the fridge is too full of eggs right now!) for 3 more loaves!

We ate the loaf with dinner on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, I grabbed another hunk of dough, shaped it, and baked it and it was even better the next day. Apparently, this bread gets better with age - more sourdough like. You can keep the dough in the fridge for up to 14 days, too. Amazing!

There are other recipes in the book that are a variation on this one including baguettes, seasoned loaves, sweet breads and cinnamon rolls. I can't wait to try my next batch!

Baking Bread - the lazy way!

About to begin - bread making ingredients prepped and ready to go!

This is how *I* make bread using my bread machine to assist me. There are about a billion other ways, but this is my simple way. It's easy, it requires little effort on my part (good when you've got a full time job!), and it produces a nice bread that allows us to stop buying bread at the store. It's also very cheap...particulary if you can buy the flour in bulk.

First I gather the ingredients. For this basic loaf, I need yeast (in the black container), bread flour, salt, oil, warm water and oats. I also need a bowl to hold everything will I pre-heat the container with hot water.

'Bowl' of the bread machine filled with hot tap water to pre-heat it.

Because our house is so cold (from a yeast's point of view), I have had to make a few modifications to get the bread to rise in a timely manner. I start with pre-heating the mixing bowl. This is the insert to my bread machine and I fill it with hot water and let it sit while I measure out all the ingredients.

Dough being kneaded by the bread machine.

Then I dump everything into the container. If I'm using a timer (which I don't do very often), then I'll make sure that the flour and oats keep the yeast away from the water. I don't use the timer right now because by the time the dough would start mixing, my container would have cooled off and so would both the water and our house. It just doesn't work well for me in the winter.

I use the oven on its lowest setting to do the second rise if our wood stove is not in use.

I don't like the shape of the loaf I get from using the breadmachine to bake, so I use the knead/rise setting on my machine. This way, it does all the work AND it keeps the dough reasonably warm for the first rise. Then I take the dough out, shape it as necessary, cover it with a clean towel and set it in the oven or next to the wood stove (if it's in use) for an hour or so for the bread to do the second rise.

I often use a honey wheat bread recipe to make dinner rolls this way. I let the bread machine do the kneading and first rist and then I just shape the dough into balls, place them on a baking sheet to rise, and then bake them (this is what is pictured above). Then I freeze the rolls and reheat them in the toaster right before dinner.

Oatmeal bread after the second rise awaiting baking.

After the dough has risen suffiicently, then the bread goes in the oven to bake.

Oatmeal bread after baking...man...it smells divine!

A fully baked loaf will sound hollow if you thump the bottom of it (out of the pan). If it's not done, it's fine to put it back into the pan and continue baking. I've done this many times as I am slowly learning to adapt my bread machine recipes to oven baking.

Oatmeal bread after slicing.

Then I slice it with a serated blade and stick it in a plastic bag. If I'm going to freeze it, it's much easier to pre-slice the whole loaf.

Baking your own bread is super simple, super cheap and super delicious (most of the time)! Lucky for us, flops don't go to waste. As I'm trying to learn what works best in my cold kitchen, I have screwed up a few loaves here and there. Failed bread luckily makes awesome goat treats! They just love it and since we have no more apples or things to give them as treats, home-made bread mistakes are just the ticket!

I recently acquired two awesome bread making books. One I've pretty much finished reading and I can't wait for some free time to try some of the recipes. All of the recipes are a more traditional method (hand kneading), but it's definitely something I hope to have more time for in the future. The second book just arrived last night, so I haven't had a chance to even open it yet. I've also tried the infamous 'no knead' bread from the NY times article. It turned out fairly well...but again, my cold house makes rising a bit of an issue. I'm going to give it another shot this spring. As I branch out in my bread making adventures, I'll be sure to keep my blog up to date. Maybe if I'm consistent enough, you'll be able to smell the bread baking across the internet! ;-)

The pruning begins...

Loganberries - as they looked last summer just prior to being fully ripe.

We have about 20 different fruit trees, two types of berries (both thornless!), and about 4 different varieties of grapes on our property. We are also going to be adding blueberries as well.

While we got more apples, pears, berries and grapes than we knew what to do with this past year, there were some things that could use massive improvement. First of all, many of the grapes didn't mature well and they were extremely difficult to pick. The same could be said of the blackberries and and our loganberries had a lousy harvest. The apples were plentiful, but many were smaller than they should have been. We saw a small plum harvest, but no cherries at all. To improve all of the above, we need to prune (and spray...but that's a different entry!).

Pruning is best done in the winter with the trees are basically dormant. This is true for the fruit trees, the berry brambles and the grape vines. The previous owners used to take really good care of their garden, but in the year before we bought the place, they had some illness in the family and ended up neglecting things in the yard. They also had the house on the market for over a year, so they were probably trying to keep things 'picture perfect' and pruning can be messy. All of this led to some very overgrown things and this winter, we are working to remedy that...

Anyway, this weekend I worked on the berry brambles while my H tackled the grape vines. For the grapes, he first cut a path behind the last trellis and in front of the buffalo fence. You can actually walk back there now (previously an impossibility). He had to cut massive amounts of wild blackberry canes coming over the buffalo fence. Then he had to tame the out of control grape vines working their way back over the fence from our yard. The two were so intertwined that it was hard to tell where one finished and the other began, particularly in the summer! Then he started on one of the trellises (we have three). He straightened it, added and removed wire, and secured it. Then he started pruning so that we can better train the grape vines. We figure that it'll take a few years before we get them in order, so we felt justified in really cutting back some of them. It's such a huge job that he was only able to finish one row (besides cutting the path). The other two rows will have to wait for the next rain-free weekend.

Berry brambles - "before". The left are predominantly blackberries and the right are the loganberries.

For the berry brambles, we have two rows spaced about 4 ft apart. They are oddly assorted in terms of variety. One row is half logan berries and half some other un-identified plant (we need to wait for it to bloom to figure it out). The second row is predominantly thornless blackberries with one logan berry plant on one end. The photo above is how it all looked when I started. There were at least three years worth of canes on the blackberries as it was not pruned last year at all. In the middle of the summer, my H dug into it and tried to cut out all the thorned blackberry canes he could (these are wild and grow everywhere around here). Wild blackberries are actually considered a nuisance weed here and we do our best to keep them under control. Anyway, thanks to his hard work last summer, I only had a few of the painful variety to dig out of the mess.

I basically started by cutting out all thorny branches and anything thornless that had given us fruit last year. All the branches that had leaves but no fruit yet are the branches that will give us fruit this coming year (they give fruit on their second year). I also had to cut away a lot of dead grass and a few other types of plants that had flourished under the protection of the blackberries. Then I set about restringing all the wire. I did three rows of wire between each t-post (and I had to reposition a few posts, too) and pulled them as tight as I could. Then I carefully worked each remaining cane into the trellis taking care not to break them. I tried to spread them out as best I could. This will allow the sun to better reach all the berries and make them all much easier to pick. I think this might also make them much more visible and accessable to the birds, so we do have bird netting set aside should that be needed next summer. All in all, it was a LOT of work, but I feel really good about having it done. All I have left to do is to spread some compost at the base and then mulch on top of it to keep the grass at bay.

Berry brambles - "after"... Hard to see in this photo since so many canes have no leaves, but they are woven around the wire trellis. I still need to add compost and mulch.

Next opportunity we have, we'll finish up the grapes and get the trees done (apples, pears, cherry & plum). The trees will be a team job. I should also mention that we took a few clippings from our neighbors who have this apple tree that produces absolutely delicious apples (for both eating and baking). We are going to graft those branches on to one of our red delicious trees (we have two). We figure we'll do it on those particular trees for a number of reasons. 1) we have way more red delicious apples than we'll ever need and they aren't good for anything but eating and drying 2) those trees did really well last year, so they are clearly nice strong healthy trees and 3) the red delicious apples are the most distinctive apple (throughout it's life cycle), so it'll be really easy to tell the new variety from the old red delicious apples. Neither of us have grafted fruit trees before, so wish us luck! I'll definitely report back on our progress...

Worms, worms, everywhere!

Row garden area (with the coop sitting on part of it). All sections of it are now covered with well-watered cardboard.

I never thought I'd be so excited about worms! To a small gardener, they are signs of good things happening.

First of all, as displayed (half completed) in the above photo, we have our row garden area covered with cardboard. Basically, most of our veggie garden this past year was done using the square foot gardening method. We will continue to use this method for some plants, but since we have a good sized, previously tilled area set aside by the previous owners for a row garden, we are going to use that this year as well. Last summer, we did a few rows of corn and one of potatoes, but that's about it. This year, our plans are much bigger. We won't be using traditional rows so much as 'patches' but we will be planting in rows within those patches. To prep the soil, we did two things. One the left, we covered the area tilled last year with black plastic. This was to kill all weed seeds with heat. We have left it there all winter primarily due to laziness, but partially to keep the weeds at bay. We have so much water, that pleny of moisture is still getting under the plastic, so we should be good to plant this spring. This area was not planted at all this past season.

The rest of the area has been picked clean and pooped on by the chickens, and then covered with either rotting leaves or used hay from the goat shed. On top of this, we then layed out cardboard and weighed it down. We chose cardboard for 2 reasons. 1. It will block the sun and not allow weeds to grow, but it will still allow water/moisture and air to get into the soil so that the 'mulch' layer will decompose. and 2. we had tons of it from the move...so it was free. ;-) Last weekend, we were peaking under the sections that have been there for a month or more and not only is all the mulch nicely decomposing, but the area is crawling with worms and other creepy crawlies! Yay! Busy, inhabited soil is healthy soil. We can't wait to see what we can produce this year! The plan is to pull up the cardboard, let the best pieces dry for future use, and toss the rest into the compost pile. We don't want to leave it where it is when we plant, or it will disturb the nitrogen balance in the soil.

The second population of worms that I'm happy about are our own doing. About a month ago, my H ordered a small herd/flock/mass/pride/pack (what do you call a group of worms?!) of worms so that we could start our own vermicomposting. Basically, this is using worms to eat garbage and then using their castings (poo) as fertilizer. Worm castings looks like the richest, most beautiful soil you've ever seen...so it's not gross and yucky at all. Plus, a well-managed worm bin won't smell at all, so it's totally suitable to small spaces (even apartments!). When H first got the worms, he just put them in a bucket with some bedding (moistened shredded paper) and some food cast-offs. This past weekend, we decided to improve their home and when we dug under the cover paper - they were already going to work on what we had left for them!

Anyway, we started with two rubber/plastic bins. We put two plastic tubs in the bottom bin to keep the top bin from seating all the way down.

Then we drilled holes in the top bin. Drain holes in the bottom and air holes around the lower part of the sides as pictured here...


We then put down a layer of shredded paper (lightly moistened with water) on the bottom and them spread out the 'garbage' and worms from the previous bucket. You can see a couple of the worms surrounded by starter soil and castings in this photo:


Then we covered all the 'garbage' with more shredded paper, moistened it, and put the cover on the bin to keep out light. The whole contraption is sitting in my husband's office (the warmest room in the house at about 65 to 70 degrees).

This is the worm bedding in the bottom of the two bins. The photo of the completed worm bin turned out blurry - but it looks an awful lot like this one only a bit more 'full'. ;-)

So, all we have to do now is to keep feeding the worms our bio-waste and keep them moist and happy. We'll be able to 'harvest' the castings when we are ready to start our next round of seeds and all summer long to use in 'compost tea' or for supplementing the soil in the garden.

Another busy weekend

Eggs - in all colors!

Once again, I'm posting only occasionally. I appologize to anyone who is truly reading here and I'll try to do better. I do have about 10 posts started or outlined that I just haven't had time to write, so one day, you'll probably be innundated!

Until then, let me post a quick run-down on the things we did this weekend.

First of all, we started Saturday with a trip to HD to pick up some supplies. We had four main things on our list for the weekend and three of them required some inputs. First of all, we wanted to get some seed started with grow lights in the basement. Secondly, we wanted to insulate the hot water pipes in the house. Thirdly, we wanted to take down and store away all our Christmas decorations (finally!) and lastly, we wanted to get a new rain shelter built for the goats.

The first item was pipe insulation. We purchased ~70 ft of foam insulation. One major advantage to a single-story older home with a basement is that everything is easy access. All of the electrical, heating and water pipes all run along the ceiling of our basement which is below the floorboards of our house. The hot water heater and the oil furnace are both also in the basement and easy (relatively) to access. So to insulate all the hot water pipes, all we had to do was run hot water in the various locations to determine which pipe held hot water (by touch) and the wrap them with this foam. We'd thought about using some more home-made type of insluation, but we don't know enough about that stuff to avoid setting fires or something. We figured we'd be better off using something designed specifically for that purpose. Now, when we shower, we aren't losing a bunch of the heat off the pipes in the basement and it's saving us energy! (I'll take photos tonight)

Secondly, we wanted to get some seed started. It's a bit too early to prep for outside planting, but now that we have a greenhouse to work with, we wanted to do some experimenting. My H did some online reading about setting up a grow light using the old flourescent lamps we had in our basement. He rewired one, hung it about 18 inches above the work bench, and plugged it into a timer that will be set to simulate a summer day's worth of light. We'd bought a seed starting kit last year when we were in the apartment, but never attended it very well and killed everything we tried to grow. So my H pulled that out and cleaned it up to try again this year. He planted leeks, onions, kale, celeriac and multiple types of peppers and tomatoes. Then he set the bin on top of a heating pad set on low to keep the soil warm. We were all excited about the progress until we noticed that the heating pad had shut off. Damn thing has an auto-shut-off! Great for fire prevention...not great for seed germination. Now we need to locate one that doesn't have this lovely safety feature. Anyone have an old heating pad they don't want? ;-)

Next, I took it upon myself to build some additional shelter for our goats. When it rains, they basically spend the entire day standing in their little goat shed. Buddy doesn't like to get wet and while Sass doesn't seem to mind it, she'd rather stay dry if she can. I saw an idea for this shelter online and decided that it would not only suit our rainy day needs, but it will help us with kidding this year. It's a Quonset hut made with cattle panels and a tarp. For less than $100, I built the shelter in the picture with materials that all will have multiple uses once we no longer need the shelter. This was a perfect solution for us because we needed something temporary. Our plans are to build a real stable/small barn next summer when there is less rain and when we have more cash. With kids on the way, we needed something for this spring because our current goat shed is too small. We will also need a way to keep the new kids separate from Sass at night, so this should work. The shelter stands in the southeast corner of our paddock and it faces west. (Winter rain comes from the south here, so souther facing shelters are not a good idea!) Our plan is to use additional cattle panels and t-posts to fence in the area surrounding the shelter as we head into March. Sasafras will then be contained in this area as she approaches her due date so that the kids are born into a fairly clean/mud-free environment. Then Sass and the kids will be kept in this pen for the first few days so that they can bond. Additionally, the kids will go into this area each night so that Sass will get a good night's sleep and (more importantly) so that we can milk her in the morning for our use. Then they will spend the day together. We will not bottle feed the kids as we don't feel that is 'natural'...and who has the time for that, anyway?! The hut turned out really well and outside from a sore back and triceps, I was no worse for the wear!

First: the t-posts get placed and sunk into the ground (note to self: do all fencing in the winter when the ground is MUCH softer than it is in the arid summer!)

Second: the first cattle panel gets put in place (these are 16' by 50")

Third: the second panel goes into place - this was not as easy as it looks!

Fourth: the panels get attached using zip ties.

Fifth: the tarp goes on and gets zip-tied to the panels

Lastly: the finished product!

Directions: http://goatseeker.com/guides/quonset-hut-goat-shelters

Lastly, I packed up all the Christmas decorations we'd put up this year. Because I chose to donate or sell all the decorations we didn't use, packing everything up was pretty simple. Now it's all safely tucked away in the basement for next year. We also moved the chicken coop again, trimmed the goat's hooves, put up blinds in our bedroom and our bathroom finally (that's the advantage to country living...no neigbors to look in our windows!) and I baked another loaf of bread and some rolls to throw in the freezer. We also did some re-arranging of our worm bin. I don't think that I've posted about it before, but my husband began our vermicomposting a few weeks ago in a big bucket. This past weekend, we changed our bin a little and I'll have a seperate post about that...so stay tuned.

All in all, we had a nicely productive weekend!