Spring Harvest!

Our spring harvest this year was very short unfortunately. We were able to get a lot of great batches of radishes and turnips, but all the other crops seemed to bolt very early this spring. The arugula and spinach only grew about 12 inches and then sent up those dreaded flower spikes! On the bright side the chickens we fed very well this year!!

Snake steak for dinner

I had my first run in with a snake today. I should have known that it was there; the dog had been signaling that something was in the area, but I just ignored him and went back to mowing. As I was mowing a path to the garden when I almost ran it over. It scared the crap out of me! And then it went straight into my garden, of course. Armed with my shovel (always my weapon of choice!) and the dog I went after it. Once I found it and saw that it wasn’t a Rattlesnake I just shooed it out of the garden.

I kind of hope it comes back and eats what ever has been burrowing in the garden, as long as it doesn’t bring any friends along.

After all this Rosey and I were discussing snake safety and she declared that she wanted to kill it and have snake steak with pepper for dinner. Yum!

Spring has arrived!!

Spring finally is in full swing after what seemed like a short and mild winter. The fruit trees are all blooming and are once again buzzing with bees. Also all the chickens are back to laying us lots of pretty eggs.

We finally got our first blue egg from our Ameraucana hens. AppleBelle was very excited since these are the hens she will be showing at the State Fair this year.

The tulips I planted last fall are beginning to bloom; and the garlic from last fall is looking like it will have a wonderful harvest.

We have decided to only grow heirloom veggies this year and ordered all our seeds from Sand Hill Preservation Center. We also will only be growing heirloom flowers, most of which we ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Both of these companies sell seeds which are GMO-free, which is surprisingly getting harder to find. We will no longer support any companies that sell gene-altering seeds, mostly because of all of the dangers and unknowns that are associated with them. I will now climb down off my soap-box.

Garlic time!

On Sunday we planted garlic bulbs in the garden. It was just like planting any fall bulb. Twice the depth of the bulb itself, and since this is my first time growing garlic I am very excited! We planted a mix of several different varieties that we got from a local garlic farm. I’m hoping that by this time next year I will have garlic breath!

First official frost!

This week the temps have dipped down into the high 30's and a few of the more tender plants in the garden have begun to show the effects. On Monday night the temps were low enough that the plants in the garden had frost damage by morning. All the zucchini and French beans were slightly damaged. A few of the pumpkins, and tomatoes were black.

The frost didn’t affect anything up on the deck so I’m sure that this had to do with the location of the garden plot. My neighbor suggested that I cover them, but I’ve decided I’m ready for the next phase of the garden and will let nature take its course. Anyway the frost is supposed to make the Brussels sprouts taste even better! (And the fruit flies are finally GONE!)

With the rain we received yesterday and the cold temps I knew that we would get a good frosting. So I enlisted the girls to help and together we cleaned off the remaining tomatoes and peppers. Last night was the first official frost. The grass is once again covered in light white. It even crunches when you step on it.

Summer is out; Fall is in.

I’m not sure how it happened, but summer is over and fall is quickly getting underway. I had planned on blogging about the garden, chickens and kids through out the summer; but somehow at the end of the day those three had worn me out!

The kids have gotten so big, and matured so much. AppleBelle has joined Girl Scouts and is currently filling out the paper work for 4-H. She has been a big help this summer, taking on so much more responsibility (finally!). She entered several items at the County Fair and won Reserve Grand Champion for her ‘Sushi play dough’.
We decided not to enter chickens this year; she needs to work with them a lot more if she wants to win any awards. Last week we drove out to Spokane to pick up some true Ameraucana chicks (they lay blue eggs!) from a breeder we found online, Pips&Peeps. She has decided these will be the chickens she will show next year and has been handling them every day to get them ready.




Rosey has gone from toddler to little girl so quickly. She is singing her ABC’s and can count to twenty (after that it gets kinda funny!). She still loves to work with flashcards; she whizzed through shapes & colors so we have moved on to sight words. One of the problems with being so remote is that she has no one her age to play with. We’ve tried story time at the local Library, but have yet to find any buddies. While AppleBelle is at school we sneak into her room and play PetShops, which Rosey enjoys very much (I think it’s the sneaking in she enjoys the most!).

The chickens seemed to have multiplied. We went from 2 to 20 in less then a year. They have been very addicting. In the spring I built a incubator out of a Styrofoam ice chest. The directions were found on my favorite chicken website, BackYardChickens.com, and after a trip to HomeDepot and digging out a few parts from the garage, I have a working incubator for only 20 bucks!! After a few trials and errors (on my part) we had a 100% hatch and then the Mr. made me put it away. He just finished the chicken ark for the ten chicks we hatched out. Soooo, I guess now I can plug the incubator back in! I’m thinking of adding quail to the family, their eggs are so tiny and cute!

The Garden has become so much work. Next year I will be installing a watering system with an automatic timer so that watering wont be so time consuming. We did learn a lot this year though. Timing is everything when dealing with frosts. I should have started the corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and pumpkins a month earlier, as the first frost is creeping up on me and I’m still harvesting a ton of tomatoes. The carrots, potatoes and cabbages did wonderful. Last weekend we cleared out the root cellar and we are airing it out and checking the temp/humidity to get ready for storage. This year the chickens share a part of the garden, and one of them has realized that she can fly over the fence and get to the veggies, so we lost several cabbages and all the eggplant. Next year I hope to have a larger coop and a larger fence to keep them in their own area. All in all we had a wonderful harvest and have gained some knowledge for next year.



The fruit trees are another story. We didn’t want to spray, I was hoping that it wouldn’t be necessary. It is. I have found some organic sprays that we will try next year, and if that doesn’t work I give up. The apples and plums actually did excellent without any sprays or fertilizers. They will get a hard pruning once the leaves drop; it seems the trees I cut back hard last year did better then the ones I gave a light pruning to. The cherry tree is the one I had the hardest time with. We maybe got 10 good cherries. What the birds didn’t get the bugs did. I will be getting fake snakes for all the trees next year, as the one I used in the plum tree worked wonderfully! The deer ate their fair share of green plums and apples. We let one apple tree drop all the fruit in the hopes that they will ignore the other trees. It has worked to far, only one more apple tree to harvest! All the fruit has also attracted a bear. We have found bear scat in the orchard, and he has done some damage to the plum trees, I think he might be pretty good size. Because of this the dog will be sleeping outside until the bear goes to sleep for the winter. This has been a great trial season and I can’t wait for next year’s garden!

February Recap

February has been a busy month for us. After several more inches of snow we have finally seen our first days of rain this past weekend. I've never been so excited to see rain! Rain makes me happy for two reasons: It's not snow, and it means it's above 32 degrees! Today we had a break in the rain and I saw my first American Robins in a tree. They normally don't arrive until March so I'm crossing my fingers for an early Spring!

Since the temperatures have been so warm (I've found out this term is relative) we finally had the chance to shovel the snow off the back deck, which means my back door is no longer snowed shut!! This in turn allowed us to have our couches delivered; which is good because I'm not sure how much longer I would have been able to sit on papasan chairs!

Early this month we had the opportunity to visit a friends farm. They had just delivered four pygmy goats and the Mr. is trying to convince me that we need one. I really want milking goats though, no more useless animals please. It will be several months before they wean so we have time to decide. While at the farm the girls had a chance to get on a horse and take a few rides around the corral. They both enjoyed this very much, and now StinkerBelle is asking for a horse of her own. Good luck, I've already had to take over the feeding of her cat, which would probably be dead by now if I left her in charge.

We also celebrated two birthdays, The Mr. and Rosey both aged a year this month. Rosey had a great time dancing around to Altered Images "Happy Birthday", which repeated more times then anyone could imagine. Her favorite part of the party was all of the "baddoons"!