Tag Archives: garden

On Hold

Posted on June 21, 2013 by | Comments Off on On Hold

This week normal life has been on hold while the girls are at theater camp preparing to perform in The Princess And The Pea.  It’s a week – long camp hosted by Charlottesville’s Paramount Theater in conjunction with Missoula Children’s Theater.

Children audition for their parts on Monday (everyone who is registered gets a part), rehearse all week, and present the play on Saturday.

Since the theater is a bit of a drive and Oona’s schedule is a bit shorter than the older girls I have been in town pretty much all week and away from home.  It’s been stressful, crazy, fun and a total whirlwind.  We can’t believe that the performance is tomorrow already!

In the meantime the gardens and the house have been completely neglected.

The sheep and goats have of course not been!  In fact I had a hectic day meeting the vet back here to administer copper boluses to everyone for parasite control and then screaming back into town to pick up the kids.  The same amount of work is still going into livestock care; the hours have just shifted a bit.  Still, it will be a nice return to normal after Saturday!

06.21.13a

Hidden cache of eggs discovered in the mint.

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There’s always time to play with lambs!

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06.21.13f

Oona named the surprise new chick “Dorito”.

And now I am back off into the whirlwind.  We’ll be celebrating the Solstice on Sunday, and we can’t wait.

 

 

 


Tagged: Farm, Garden, Pets

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The Longest Week

Posted on June 17, 2013 by | Comments Off on The Longest Week

 

Hello, my poor neglected blog!

This week has been one of those “knock you down on your backside” kind of weeks, but I’m cautiously optimistic that things will be a little less crazy now.

Here is a brief rundown of the weeks’ highlights:

06.16.13a

I harvested my first bunch of radishes.  And they were yummy!  I just love the crunch they give to a big, green salad.

06.14.13b

We’ve had “escaping dog” syndrome.  He’d rather hang closer to the house during the day, and then he heads back in in the evening.  It’s a good thing we have all that barking power out there, too.  Last night we heard a chorus of coyotes off in the distance.

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My hydrangeas bloomed!

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Emily discovered a missing chicken hanging out in the honeysuckle overgrowth in my front garden.  And she wasn’t alone.  She’d apparently been secretly brooding over a cache of eggs, and one had hatched. I haven’t gotten pictures yet.  And no, we really don’t need more chickens.

06.16.13d

The entire flock got wormed.  Maddie helped me with the first half; I finished them up on my own.

06.16.13e

They’re not too pleased with me now.  The indignities of having a medicine cocktail shoved down your throat will do that, I guess.

06.16.13f

While walking out to check on everyone this evening I spotted a tiny turtle in the stream.  He darted away when I tried to get closer, but it was a brilliant moment nonetheless.  It’s rather nice spotting something wonderful in the stream instead of all the copperhead snakes that we have been finding.

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06.16.13i

Alabama still doesn’t like it when I try to take his picture.  It gets in the way of him stuffing his face with hay in his bid to become world’s fattest sheep.

Starting tomorrow the kids are in theater camp all week.  Hopefully it will be an easy week.

 


Tagged: Farm, food, Garden, Pets

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Garden 2013 Progress

Posted on May 26, 2013 by | Comments Off on Garden 2013 Progress

This year has been my most ambitious garden undertaking to date.  I have two raised beds in front full of radishes, chives, lavender, rosemary, yukon potatoes, and Adirondack blue potatoes.

I have the front garden full of garlic, arugula, two kinds of beets, two kinds of peas, pole beans, carrots, 4 different kinds of tomatoes, bell peppers, anaheim peppers, strawberries and raspberries.

The new, larger back garden has several kinds of pumpkins, butternut and acorn squash, zucchini and summer squash, two kinds of cucumbers, watermelon, two kinds of corn, blue potatoes, red potatoes, sweet potatoes, and basil.

Keeping up with the weeding has been the hardest part of it all (as is usually the case!).

05.26.13a

The blueberry patio plant I bought last year (which was “guaranteed” to fruit the first year. Ha!) is finally in fruit.

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The back garden.

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Squash sprouts!

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Sweet potato.

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Red potato.

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Pole beans.

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One of the roses I planted to encourage visitation by pollinators.

It’s so hard to be patient when everything is just starting out, but soon enough if all goes well I’ll be overwhelmed with the bounty.

Fingers crossed!


Tagged: Farm, food, Garden

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May Day!

Posted on May 1, 2013 by | Comments Off on May Day!

It’s finally May!  Hopefully this means soon my tomatoes seedlings can be transplanted outside.  We’ve still been getting temps dipping into the 40′s at night and I am rather restless for that nonsense to stop!

It also means that all of the local hay people are just about out of their stock of last year’s hay and are soon going to be making their first cuttings.  Now that Paul’s splurged on a tractor, we decided we could stock up on a big load of hay at the cheaper prices.

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As you can see, we made out pretty well!

05.01.13b

Oona and Neve ran around begging us to make a giant hay maze for them.

All I know is, there’s nothing like seeing a solid store of feed for your animals to get you through for awhile.  I am going to be thrilled come winter when I don’t have to move giant wheel-barrow loads of hay out to the pasture by hand!

Tractors, as it turns out (duh) are a wonderful thing.  I’m wishing we bought one sooner.  After digging out the front garden last year it was absolute heaven to have the tractor do all the work this year digging up the giant squash garden out back.

The other wonderful thing right now is LILACS!  Every year my lilac bush gets just a bit bigger (making me wish I had planted dozens more with it!) and I spend time smelling the blooms and wishing I had enough to cut big bunches to bring inside like we used to when I was growing up.

05.01.13c

Looks like I am not the only one who likes lilacs!!!!

 


Tagged: Farm, Garden

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Sum Total

Posted on April 26, 2013 by | Comments Off on Sum Total

This:

04.26.13b

Is the sum total of my knitting for the month.

Two measly rows.

To be fair, it’s been an insanely busy month.  I am starting to realize that April seems to be THE busiest month of the farm year.  Between babies being born, shearing being done and garden work going on, it’s exhausting.

Plus, Susan is moving, and we’ve been helping her take things to the landfill and storage as needed.  It’s been a fun and hectic month, but it leaves little down time.  In the evenings, when I would normally be knitting, Oona has decided that snuggles on my lap are essential.

I can hardly complain about that.

The good news is that by next week the majority of the garden prep and planting will be done, everyone will be settled, and things will calm down a bit. Then that yarn and I are going to spend some quality time together.


Tagged: Garden, Knitting

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Well……

Posted on April 20, 2013 by | Comments Off on Well……

Some week, huh?

Luckily I’ve had plenty to distract me and keep me busy so I wouldn’t sit around and worry about friends and relatives in Boston.

Paul did some tractoring in the area out back where the squash garden will be put in.

04.19.13a

It will more or less double the garden space we already have, and this way the squash can spread all it likes and it won’t overtake the tomatoes and peppers like last year.

We also did tails, tags and testes this week.

We dock our lambs’ tails to avoid the potential for fly strike.  Although we can do it ourselves, we prefer to let the vet take care of it.  It’s done with the use of a very tight rubber band that disrupts blood flow to the tail.  It’s uncomfortable for them, but not super painful.  After a while the tail simply “dries up” and falls off.  We do the testicles of our boy lambs and goats the same way.  The vet gives them some pain killer at the time the banding is done, and after an hour or so they don’t seem to remember that the bands are there at all, and they are back to playing and eating normally.

Ear tags were done this week at the same time.

04.19.13b

Darby.  Lord I love that little lamb.

04.19.13c

Doesn’t he look spiffy with his new tag?

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We also had a lovely visit from my friend Theresa who came down from  New Jersey with her little ones.

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04.19.13f

We played with lambs and the kids had a blast.

We are so fortunate to have wonderful friends and beautiful weather and adorable babies!

 


Tagged: Farm, Garden, Pets

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Weekend in Pictures

Posted on April 14, 2013 by | Comments Off on Weekend in Pictures

04.14.13a

04.14.13b

04.14.13c

04.14.13d

04.14.13e

04.14.13f

04.14.13g


Tagged: Farm, Garden, Pets

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Trying To Craft

Posted on April 10, 2013 by | Comments Off on Trying To Craft

Some people say I have too many irons in the fire.

Other people say “jack of all trades, master of none”.

I disagree with both.

True, I have waaaaaaay too much going on for most normal, rational people.  Especially now that it is spring and I am working on getting gardens in, dealing with new lambs and kids, raising new ducks, clearing out brush, managing four homeschoolers and reorganizing much of the house.  It makes it pretty difficult to find time to knit or sew; never mind learn how to use my spinning wheel or loom.

But I think having many varied interests and projects can be a really good thing.  For one, I am never, ever bored.  Not ever.  There is always something that can be done, and always something that can be learned.  I can also generally find something to talk about with new people.

It does, however, make it challenging to find the time to do some of the things I enjoy.  Often by the time I’ve taken care of all the things that need my attention I am too tired for the things I want to do.

But it’s okay, because soon school will be done for the summer and the gardens will not need such intensive care during the day (in fact once the heat hits for real I’ll be doing outside chores early in the morning and late in the evening).  The animals will be in need of more attention, but nothing that I can’t knit in between.

So I have plenty of projects lined up waiting for this magical time of less things to worry over.

04.10.13a

This lovely Joel Dewberry fabric is waiting to be an A-line skirt for me.  I have a bunch of projects waiting to sew, actually, but right now this one is my favorite.

And just what does one do when one’s best friend is a star in the yarn and fiber world?

04.10.13b

You horde all the yarn she makes. (My craft room is looking better now that I’ve got this unit for all my yarn and fabric!)

Oh sure, I get plenty of free samples of her yarn.  The problem is, once you’ve held and petted the yarn it becomes imperative to get your hands on as much of it as humanly possible.  I’ve spent plenty of time trolling WEBS and buying out quantities of JMF yarn whenever I can.

SO there are plenty of yarn projects lined up.

The one I am tackling first is this lovely Honeybee Stole pattern with some luscious yellow Findley.

04.10.13c

Such a fun, light, summery project and I CANNOT WAIT to get started on it!  I have a flowy white sundress it will look perfect with.  Also, this yellow Findley just cried out for it!

I am hoping to cast on tonight – barring a thousand distractions.  It is lace, afterall, and as I have said many a time before, lace knitting and children  JUST. DON’T. MIX.


Tagged: Farm, Garden, Homeschooling, Knitting, Sewing

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2013 Balcony Garden

Posted on April 8, 2013 by | Comments Off on 2013 Balcony Garden

The balcony garden is officially started. Not everything is planted yet, nor do we even have all of our seeds or seedlings, but we got the balcony fully de-winterized this weekend and a bunch of stuff planted. It’s only a matter of time before we are resting cool behind our food-bearing wall-o-green ™.

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First, the peas I planted a few weeks have finally started to come up. I swear they have grown three inches since Saturday. (You’ll also notice that we are using Hefty bags instead of Earthbox approved mulch covers. As much as I love my Earthboxes, I am not paying $15 a mulch cover for every planting when a garbage bag and duct tape serves the same purpose. We used this method last year as well.)

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These are summer seedlings, and will likely live inside another month before they get Earthboxed.

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Our herbs so far are basil, mint (for Athrun), and sage. Has anyone ever had luck with oregano? It has never grown enough for me to do much with. What are your favorite herbs to grow?

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Ducks!

Posted on April 4, 2013 by | Comments Off on Ducks!

Susan came over on April 1st bearing a box – and not just any box.

I think in fact her words were “Happy April Fools! I brought you ducks!”

04.04.13a

Six of these little cuties are residing in a makeshift brooder in one of our chicken coops.  We don’t know the breed(s) or gender(s), but they’re ducks, so does it really matter?

04.04.13b

They have a nice heat lamp to keep them warm since it hasn’t exactly warmed up yet the way it did last year at this point.  We’re excited for them to feather out so we can let them swim!

Meanwhile the chickens are giving us sure signs of spring: they’re laying eggs again.  Lots of eggs.  I am about to be overloaded again.  I am not complaining about that, though.  I’d rather be overloaded than otherwise; I actually had to buy eggs this winter.  Free – range organic eggs are not cheap, let me tell you, and I won’t have extra money to buy expensive eggs for awhile because of this:

04.04.13c

We got a tractor.

There was just no getting around it anymore – we need a tractor.  Our road out to the pasture is usually too muddy for hay delivery, and there’s no way to move an 800 pound bale of hay without a good sized tractor.

Not to mention that we need to FINISH the pasture.

This weekend we are going to focus on penning in a portion for the animals to stay in while we remove the rest of the tree stumps from the field (again, tractor required) and get some grass growing.

04.04.13d

I also need to focus on getting the new squash bed tilled and ready for planting in a few weeks.  I’m actually thinking I may borrow Susan’s pigs for a few weeks to dig it up and fertilize it for me.

Things are getting exciting around here!


Tagged: Farm, Garden, Pets, Seasons

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