01.30.09
A bushel of eggs
I’ve been trying to be consistant and write down how many eggs my 5 hens lay each day. The count for January 2009 is….drum roll please.
105! Wow, to me that is alot for 5 hens in the dead of winter. You go girls!
01.29.09
Random Thursday
The last supper:
Last night we had the last supper with the harvest from the summer garden. There is still lots of Elk and lettuce in the process plus some overwinter carrots and the chickens are still laying; but basically, this is it from the garden.
Clockwise from left to right after the first ‘go round’ of servings.
Elk Steaks
Roasted, Fried Red potatoes
Home canned peaches
Mixed greens + carrots
Deviled eggs
You know, it is really time consuming to cook from scratch. Of course it would have helped, time wise, if I had decided upon the dinner menu before 4:30.
It was a very good feeling to have this meal. Other than the salad dressing and beverage, everything else was either grown here or processed here.
NEXT
Following up on the above post. Now that we’ve been here basically a year (growing season wise) I have a better feeling for what and how much to plant. This year was the first year I tried a winter garden. I followed this book Four Season Harvest . This author has several books, this is the one I purchased. With very little time, sweat and energy we did pretty good. I have plans to invest a few $$, time and sweat plus hire a couple local ‘workers’ to help expand things for this year.
NEXT
What good timing. I received my Mother Earth News in the mail yesterday and it talks about growing your own food and how to cut your food budget in half. They really addressed the ‘difficult’ times we’re in and have great suggestions for those who have lost their jobs and/or homes. You can go here to check out their online magazine. Mother Earth News posts almost their complete magazine the month after it arrives on news stands. This one is a good one!
NEXT
I also am processing the last pumpkin from summer. I kept it outside hoping to avoid the dreaded rot that sometimes affects pumpkins if you bring them inside. It survived the snow
and being used briefly as a bird feeder. I decided to bring it inside earlier in January and it did fine. Last night we baked it in pans with water. It took about 2 hours to cook. This morning I scooped out the meat and processed it. Right now it is hanging in one of my late Grandmother’s kitchen towels dripping pumpkin juice. Later this afternoon I’ll make pumpkin bread with raisins and walnuts. Yum!
01.27.09
What’cha growing?
It is only January and froze last night but this is prime propagating time of year. I keep a pair of clean shears in the car and as I drive around I keep a look out for interesting native plants I can ’snip’ a few twigs from.
My Dh says “Oh no, Mom is planting sticks again”.
I know, yucky photo but I found these really neat tall covers for my planting trays. They are 8″ tall and guess what…they were local. I didn’t have to pay shipping. You know, I get so programmed to think that there is nothing local for me to purchase re. planting supplies. I forgot to look at the hydroponic store. If you can overlook all the signs that read “
We do not sell supplies for growing Marijuana; We will not discuss the growing of Marijuana; If you ask about growing Marijuana, you will be asked to leave”.
Give me a break, all those 20+ year old young men with camo pants on are buying supplies for growing lettuce? Hey dude, Yeah, I wanna grow some tomatoes…can you help me? R I G H T.
Anyway, I have 4 of these trays set up with twigs and am hoping at least 50% will make transplantable starts. Some for us and some to sell.
Leg Warmers
I’ve been spending my nights winding recycled sock yarn for leg warmers. I must say I love how the colors turn out.
Very Hippie don’t you think? Kind of goes with the hydroponic shop experience.
01.22.09
Gretchen debuts tonight
Tonight is opening night for the next play presented by the Harbor Performing Arts Center. My daughter KT has the lead roll as Gretchen, the mayor’s daughter in the play The Magical Piper of Hamblin
You can go here to read the whole blurb. She is the one in the middle.
This is the first time she had landed a lead roll and it has required her to learn some personality qwerks I prefer she forget.
Whining – we had to teach her how to whine.
Eye Rolling – she has perfected the eye rolling quite nicely
Curtsey - Well, we’re still working on this one
An angry attitude – believe me, if you knew this child, she is not angry (unless her older brother is ‘farting’ with his hands or arm pit [you gott'a love 13 year old boys]) All in all it is a fine production. The director has given her all and molded the children to perform to the best of their abiliy. I’ll let you know how tonight night goes.
01.21.09
sprouts
My lettuce has sprouted. Every morning I take the two trays outside to sit on the deck in the sunshine. So far nothing has bothered them and the sunshine does them good.
Leaf lettuce is especially easy to grow. My favorite is Red Sails. It has a beautiful red and green tint to the lettuce leaves. If it is grown outside in direct sunshine the red color intensifies.
The other good thing about Red Sails is you get a huge head of leaf lettuce that doesn’t bolt easy ( a good thing since the temperature can get up to 90+ here) and the flavor is not bitter. I like my lettuce to not overpower the dressing!
After the lettuce starts get big enough I’ll transplant them into the grow tubes that hang inside the greenhouse.
My greenhouse is suffering from the winter blues. If you look down the tunnel on the left hand side you can see the hanging PVC tubes I will plant with lettuce starts. This method works great as long as the greenhouse doesn’t get too hot.
Last year I grew all my basil in these tubes and the basil did great.
Planted bottom to top on the right are:
Overwinter carrots, potatoes. leeks and romaine lettuce, cabbage. On the left will be the strawberry beds and the ‘fenced’ in area is the nursery for new plant transplants. Unfortunately the chickens got in here and dug up all the baby plants I’ve been caring for. They were starts from our previous house. I learned my lesson and I now have a shade cloth screen on the door. But the chickens were doing what chickens do, scratching and eating bugs. I cannot fault them but I sure was miffed at the destruction.
01.20.09
Feeling the importance of the day
I am a child of the 60’s. I was born in 1955 and grew up in a very small town America. I remember clearly Hippies, LDS, Kennedy, Nixon and the whole San Francisco scene. Because I grew up in a small town in central California we were not exposed much to the racial strife of the mid 60’s. You see, our town was ‘closed’. Mostly German, old country folks live there and if you were black, you would be hard pressed to find a house to live in the city limits. There was one black family who lived in the country. Can you imagine what it would be like to be the only black kids in an all white school?
When I was in 5th grade my father took a summer job in Atlanta Georgia. He worked for a company that made molds for Firestone Tires. So off we went to Big Town America. At the time I wondered why my parents drug me all around to Civil War Era battle fields, houses, museums and the such. I don’t remember them actually talking to me about segregation, slavery and the Civil War. I had no idea why were were visiting these places. Who cared if some unknown to me general lived in this house? I really didn’t care if this field of grass was a major turning point of the Civil War. As I look back I realize my parents missed many teachable moments. I wish I could go back there now and actually absorb all the history they took me to.
My parents didn’t talk about how things were different in the South. On my own I realized something wasn’t right in Georgia in the 60’s. When we went to restaurants there were signs that said ‘no blacks allowed’. There were ‘white only’ bathrooms and drinking fountains. The public lake we swam in was ‘white only’. Even a kid of 11 could see Georgia was much different than California. One very memorable weekend jaunt we made was to tour plantations. As we drove down the road I saw beautiful houses, like in Gone With The Wind. But right next to them were shanties. Run down houses with no grass, no trees and black kids in the front with no shoes. I asked my Dad why there were such bad looking houses next to the big plantation houses. I don’t remember his reply but I do remember, at that very moment, there were people in the world who saw others with darker complexions as being lesser people.
Today I sat in front of the TV and watched as our new 44th President was sworn in. It was moving to this very ‘boiled white chicken’ woman of 53 years. It brought me back to that summer in Atlanta in the mid 60’s. Seeing the faces of those in attendance with tears running down their faces, especially the older men with the Tuskegee Airman hats, was a moment I will remember. I also thought back to my Father who had the courage (or so I like to think) to take my Mother and me to Atlanta in the 60’s with race riots and general unrest on the East Coast. Without that exposure to segregation and prejudice, I may have absorbed the attitudes of my small home town.
The future of my children and grand children rest on this man’s shoulders. Things are bad and I was inspired by his speech. The man can talk a good turn, let’s hope he can move those beside him in Washington DC to make lasting changes that will once again bring America back to a place of leadership and pride.
01.15.09
Time to sow?
Planting a garden? In January? Well yes. You see the temperature has been very nice. About 70 degrees + for the past few days. There is a minor chance of rain next Tuesday.
This year I’m trying to start artichokes from seed. Yes, I know, hold your horses. Before y’all get up in arms I’m actually following the directions on the packets. Can you believe it?
First I harvested some moss from one of our trees, nestled the artichoke seeds in the moistened moss and put the wad inside a plastic bag inside the fridge for 2 weeks to trick the seeds into believing it was winter. When I took it out last week the seeds seemed to be plumper.
These sprouts were left in the moss and I found them left in the plastic bag. Hey, I guess these directions really work…go figure!
I planted the plump seeds in cells and guess what? They sprouted 5 days later. Now it looks like I’ll have 120 artichoke plants. Oops! According to the packet only 50% of the sprouted seeds will be viable. That makes 60 plants.
I’ll share with my friend and, hopefully, we’ll be eating artichokes this fall.
Today I planted Iceburg Lettuce and Red Sails lettuce seeds. Also some early peppers. Just for kicks I planted a flat of Glacier tomato seeds. These are fast, only 60 days to mature in ideal conditions. I figure if I can get them sprouted, keep the cats out of them and transplant them in the greenhouse in April I may have tomatoes by August!
01.09.09
What did you do today?
The day started out fine. Kids to school, Dr. appt. for surgery date (February 19th) then all heck broke loose.
You see we have a land owner tag for the Elk hunt. Yup, an elk was shot today and wouldn’t you know, it was shot and rolled all the way down into the canyon.
What was I thinking? Sure I could walk down there. After all the Dh, and two friends were down there butchering, sure, I can make it too.
Walking/sliding/falling down the hill wasn’t the hard part. After all gravity helped. The hard part was walking up. It took the us 45 minutes to climb out of the canyon. And the DH had 50 lbs of meat on his back.
At the end, while catching our breath and trying to not pass out, we saw a beautiful rainbow. If you look closely the DH is standing on the right hand side, taking a break.
I’ve never had elk but I understand it is pretty good! At least we’ll add another option to the freezer. Fresh caught salmon, elk and veggies from the garden. Makes me hungry. Of course first I would have to get my legs to work again to walk to the kitchen!
01.05.09
BBC America
We’ve become addicted to BBC America. Since the programs we watch are in reruns for the season we’ve been channel surfing and found two quality interesting shows to watch. This one we stumbled upon last week. You are what you eat. I’ve found out by watching BBC America that the British are not squeamish to discuss (pardon the mention) Poo. In this program they investigate what the family is eating and do medical tests (read analyzing your [again pardon the mention] Poo.) My youngest has gotten into this show and now asks whenever I offer a snack, Is it healthy? What have I created?
The next is How Clean is Your House. Besides being really gross, which the soon to be 14 year old loves, it makes me feel really good. My house is no where near what they deal with. It appears in most casts well meaning friends of the victim participant actually turn them in to the show. These two gals arrive at the door and do a walk through making all kinds of discoveries. It is really disgusting. I thought this was just a British obsession but they spent time in America and visited homes here too!
So sometime if you have a minute, or 30, drop by BBC America and catch either of these two shows. Just be sure you’re not eating while watching.
01.03.09
A Happy New Year? It’s about time!
I sure hope it will be a Happy New Year. I am so done with the last one. Don’t get me wrong, there were many good things that happened last year. 
The best was the birth of my grand daughter. The V’s came to visit over New Years (I actually totally forgot it was New Years!). We taught the little darling how to use her ‘hammer’ and pound on a bowl. This provided us with much entertainment!
After all, I do have to keep up with her other Grandmother. She taught her how to untie shoe laces.
I think my ’skill’ will be much more irritating.
The weather has been, well, interesting. The saying up here in the Pacific Northwest is…If you don’t like the weather, just wait 10 minutes. Rain, sleet, hail, sun, snow and fog. I’ve seen all in the last 24 hours.
All this rain has contributed to an abundance of fungi. A few years ago I took a Mushroom ID class from our local Jr. College. All I learned is to never pick and eat wild mushrooms. Now the oldest DS is very into the wild harvest of mushrooms. So for Christmas I purchase him two mushroom ID books. I figure if he blows out his liver from eating something he shouldn’t, at least I’ll have the peace of mind I did all I could to prevent it!
Back to the premise that I am ready to turn the calendar page. Hopefully we see a better financial picture this year.
About a year ago I blogged about this feeling of impending doom. A bit melodramatic I know but that is what I felt. So I’m enjoying looking through all those seed catalogs and getting my garden plan ready. Even though there is no way my Dh could lose his job, I feel it is a necessity to cut back and start saving “just in case”.
I used to be an advocate of the program to ‘Plant a Row for the Hungry’. Now I’m advocating for everyone to grow a portion (no matter how small) of their own food. Lettuce can be grown in a pot on a sunny window. Potatoes can be grown inside a bag of potting soil. By growing some of your own food, you will gain a sense of accomplishment and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be spurred to plan a bigger garden next year.
With this new year I’m going to start a category on this blog for my garden. I’ll probably post weekly with updates and maybe it’ll encourage you to do the same.
Get out those seed catalogs and get planning!