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"!

2009 Garden Catalogs are here!

I feel like I've been waiting months for these to arrive, and now they are finally here! I only ordered a few because I hate being bombarded with catalogs that I never order from. Now I know it would be best to just order them online, but with dial-up this slow it would take years to view a few pages. I've requested: Territorial Seed Co., Kitazawa Seed Co., Park Seed, Seeds of Change, Burpee, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and Sand Hill Preservation Center.





I'm trying not to go crazy this first year, because I know there will be a learning curve. With all this land I can't help but want one of very veggie that our family eats. I'm really excited about Kitazawa Seed Co., they sell a wide variety of our favorite Asian veggies.

2009 Conconully Outhouse Races

This was the first weekend that we had a chance as a family to go have some fun. And boy was this fun or at least funny! The Conconully Outhouse Races have been around for 25 years, each Outhouse is built by individual teams, and are then raced down a snow covered Main Street. Each team has 3 members, two people pushing the Outhouse and one rider has to sit on the pot! My personal favorite were the bucket races, where the two pushers had to wear buckets on their heads and rely on the rider on the pot to give them directions. I have fond memories of playing eyesy-closey at the local go-cart track, ah, the things teenagers do to have fun!

Frozen Chickens

The whole family has had to adjust to the different weather here in Washington, but the poor chickens have had it worst of all. After a few weeks of living in the basement (which I don't recommend), they were moved outside into their coop. Two days later we got our first snow. Both the girls have been troopers. Mrs. Roper has some frostbite on her crop, but she seems fine otherwise. I had to buy a water de-icer to keep the water from freezing overnight. I also had to reinforce the sides because the neighbors mutt keeps trying to get into the coop. We are still getting eggs, although if I forget to collect them in the afternoon, they freeze. I can't wait to get goats!

Grilling in the Snow

Before the move we decided to give away the grill because who grills in the snow right? But the Mr. wanted steaks, so we ran out and bought the tailgate special. The sight of a tiny grill out in the snow was hilarious. The neighbors must think we are crazy!