Uncle Dutch Farms

This blog has moved to it's new home...

2010-10-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well I finally made the intended move - I have moved the blog to my domain at www.uncledutchfarms.com. All comments have been closed, so please update your bookmarks :)

And she's back!

2010-10-01T06:59:00.000-07:00

Well yes I know it has been just MONTHS since I posted but I have some very very good news. A lot has happened in the last few months, the most significant of which is that my husband has gotten a job which allows me to be a stay-home mom. It wasn't the job up by our property, we actually had to relocate to the Seattle area, but it is definitely a step in the right direction! We moved at the beginning of September and have been staying at my parents house until our new home is ready.

We managed to find, by the grace of God, a house that is perfect. It's about an hour's drive away, but Tommy avoids most of the rush-hour and it's right outside a town that has less than 700 people. We share some acreage with the owner of the rental who will be our neighbor. There's lots of fruit trees, cane fruits, and tons of wild foraging for mushrooms and berries. It's kind of in the "rain forest" of Washington and so I think I'll have to be on the lookout for sparkly vampires, lol ;) It's also big enough that we can have another baby next year and still have an office (and the master bedroom has one of those BIG bathtubs!).

But I am really excited to start this new endeavor. Even though we're still kind of treading water here in this house, not really unpacking our stuff (and my only cooking devices are an electric skillet and a convection microwave), I've been able to make some good headway with the girls and I am absolutely just loving the simple pleasures of being able to do laundry as it gets dirty, not as I have time and constantly being behind. My kitchen gets cleaned daily instead of twice a week. My kids are happier and the girls really are becoming a lot closer now that they spend more time together. They are learning better habits than what we had energy to enforce when I was working... and the list goes on. I'm more active and I am eating better.

And I haven't even had a chance to do much homesteady stuff! Although I did decently yesterday making a pizza crust without a recipe, bowl, or mixer. Kind of a "dump" it all on the counter and knead it together" deal. I just can't wait until I can start baking our bread again, cooking up pasta sauce and chili to can into quarts, and all the gardening potential of the new house can't be beat! Granted, I probably won't have much luck growing peppers there, but our new landlords pretty much give us carte blanche with the place as long as it makes it look nicer.

Anyway, the other half of why I hadn't been posting is just because my laptop had died and our ancient desktop is so slow it takes several minutes for webpages to load... it's mostly good for checking facebook and email and that's it. But now that I got my laptop back (thanks to the best big brother ever!) I should be able to post a lot more regularly than I ever have.

Planted tomatoes & peppers

2010-05-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

So actually before I go in to what I planted today I have to say... I have been in a conundrum. what's a girl to do when she wants to garden but will be moving in the middle of the summer?

grow in containers! :)
So what i ended up doing this afternoon was loads of back breaking work. I am exhausted! I filled tons of containers I got from my Mom and planted tomatoes and lots of peppers.

Here you can see a few of them. I can't remember what's what, but those are mostly peppers and the small one is an old dried up petunia, I'm not sure if it will live.

Here's my tomatoes. And yes I had to fill the containers, plant the maters, and then I dug holes in the beds and put the containers in. In my theorizing this will help them from getting too dried out (plus I'll mulch too) and then I can utilize my fancy shmanzy irrigation system that I put in. You can see the lines going over the maters. This way when I move, I can just pull them out.

Here is my only fully planted bed. On the far side I've got 3 different types of onions, then I have some carrots. I did have radishes but they weren't bulbing out so I pulled them and just stuck the peppers in there. All those are peppers. And way to go me for recycling - the white containers on the far right are milk jugs with the tops cut off.

And just for fun, here's one of my shady beds, you can see the peas growing in the little patch I planted. Also you can see the lone BROCCOLI which is what I thought initially was some sort of weird lettuce.

Here's my Borage that I direct seeded. I dug one of them up and put it in a container next to my strawberries and potatoes.

And here's my happily mulched strawberries and a few surviving runners in the black container. Those will go up to my parents' place.

Some more of my starts!Most of these are my melons, cucumbers and pumpkins. I don't know how many of those I will plant, but many of them will probably end up at my parents' place too. On the right there are two raspberry starts that I dug up from my friend's house. I have someone mailing me some salmonberry starts too, so we'll see if those survive!

And here is some of my other plants. Some leftover peppers & maters that I'll plant at my parents' place and you can see the grape cuttings in the back out for some sunshine.

My tropicals! They are growing like crazy.

Except my pepper vine has mites! I'm going to try smoking them out tonight and see how that goes. I'm pretty sure the mites were on it when it got here.

My vanilla orchid is growing! That green shoot at the top is brand new.

And here's one of the first citrus trees that I got - allll of that is new growth. Crazy huh! It's also setting bud for another flower... I had pulled off all the flowers when I got it because I wanted it to establish first for about 6 months but apparently it's pretty happy :)

Garden & Kids 4/25

2010-04-25T14:31:00.000-07:00

Well you know me, I like to post pics. No real news here, just some pictures from this afternoon.

Here's a volunteer, some sort of mint. I didn't grow any mint and there was none growing here when we moved here 2 years ago. There are two plants... I wonder if seeds got dropped by some birds? I'm tempted to dig it up because I know how invasive the stuff can be.

Another volunteer... some chives going to seed. These have been here for many years, I dug them out of the strawberry planter and then was not intending to save them, so I threw them upside down into the walkway of the garden and ignored them. They must have hibernated last year and then they came up this year with shining colors :)

I think it's some sort of cabbage but it also volunteered this year. Maybe a lettuce? Anybody have any idea?

Eleora digging up dirt in the garden.

Sophia playing with the play house. If you happen to notice the dirt around her mouth it's because I was mixing up some soil blocker mix and she must have thought it looked tasty because as soon as I turned my head she grabbed a handful and stuck it in her mouth. A lil dirt never killed anyone, right? lol... you should have seen her face, it was priceless.

Pictures of all my 5 trees happily in the corner. OH YEAH I FORGOT TO MENTION... lol. Silly ol me decided to go back to Home Depot yesterday to get the Bearss Lime and the Blood Orange trees. I just couldn't resist. Many people have problems with impulse buying but I tend to do the opposite and NOT buy things when I really should. These trees are such great quality and an excellent buy for $15 so I decided I'd get all 5 types that had caught my eye. They did also have 2 other kinds but not ones I was interested in, so now I have one of each tree that I had liked - Satsuma Mandarin, Navel orange, blood orange, Meyer lemon, and Bearss Lime (plus the two key limes I'm sprouting and all the other stuff).

Some kids suck their thumbs... Sophia does this. I don't know where she got it from but she holds her blanket like that all the time, it's funny :)

And that's all I got for the day! Just had to share :)

My new obsession - tropicals!

2010-04-22T22:04:00.000-07:00

Ok so here's the deal. I have this thing about the supply chain... basically, it's not infallible. Things could happen. And with our economy, who knows what could happen?

And here's practical little me saying - zomg if the food chain was interrupted how would I get MANGOS or AVOCADOS??? LEMONS AND LIMES???

This thought has been ricocheting around in my brain for about a year now so gradually I have started researching growing tropical plants. Not that I really think I'd have a big crop, but hey, if bananas or pineapples were expensive or impossible to get I think it would be nice to have them once in a while. Plus, it's just COOL to grow tropicals indoors.

So here's my little collection so far! I am very proud of each of my pieces. I don't know if I will ever get fruit or anything but it is FUN to have them, I love it.

Here's a couple that are really fun! I won't get anything out of them until someday when I have a good-size greenhouse, though, but it's still a novelty. The vine on the left is a vanilla orchid. The flowers bloom for ONE DAY only and need to be hand-pollinated in order to grow a bean. Oh yeah, and it needs like 40 feet of length in order to be mature enough to flower. That's why I need a greenhouse :)

The one on the right is Piper Nigrum AKA black pepper. Somewhat easy to grow from what I've heard but also one that needs a LOT of room to climb. It's a vine so I'll basically need to get a greenhouse with a really big looping trellis. The berries grow in little clusters. What we know as black peppercorns are actually the immature green peppercorns dried. You can also make white pepper by allowing the berries to mature and removing the outer shell. Either way, they are very potent, way moreso than the black peppercorns you can buy so I am really hoping I can try them! Something a lot of people do is just crush the green berries right off the plant and use them. Lots of experimenting potential... if I just happened to have a huge greenhouse with lots of room for this vine to roam, that is ;)

Here are two of my citrus trees. I just got them a few weeks ago when I went to Home Depot with my mom and happened to naturally sorta gravitate towards the plant section. What did I see but not only a Meyer Lemon for $14.95 but also a SATSUMA mandarin! I was having a hard time finding them, and mail-order it would be hard to beat finding 4 foot trees in such great condition for only 15 bucks! So I got the two...

... and then the other day I went back and got another - a navel orange. The last one they had, too! Isn't it beautiful? Just $15, too... a steal considering what I'd pay for a tree like that shipped to me. The first two had already put on new growth in the week they were at my house so I decided to get this one. They had a few other citrus trees but those were the main ones I wanted. I might still go back for a blood orange, though, that one looked cool, but I'm running out of room on the ONE window I can keep them by :)

And this one doesn't technically count as a tropical but I forgot to blog it earlier with my starts :) These are my grape cuttings that I got earlier this year. I got 5 Thompson Seedless, about 20 Concord, and 4 each of two different wine grapes, Chardonel and one other I can't remember.

Anyway, I completely did them wrong (the Thompson and Concord, that is) so I am not expecting much of a turnout but you can see I do have SOME! The big leaf you see is the Chardonel wine grape (thanks, Gary!) and the one right behind it right on the vermiculite is a Concord (and there's one more Concord putting out a leaf but you can't see it in this pic). I know some more of the starts are still alive so I guess we'll see what the turnout is like once it's time to plant them. I hope Papa gets his tractor ready! Hopefully we'll have quite a few to plant.

Oh and honorable mentions that don't have a photo - I currently have a pineapple that is trying really hard to grow roots and two germinated key lime seeds that I have planted. Key limes do grow true to seed so I'm hoping to get some trees, although I could just swing by Home Depot and get a 4 foot lime tree for 15 bucks! lol... I am terrible. I got a choice of $50 gift card from work when I won a drawing and what did I choose? Home Depot so I could get gardening and irrigation supplies... haha I am such a nerd. Oh well. I still have about $18 left, so I could probably go get another tree. Just no place to put it.

Oh and I also have some ginger, two pots of it but no sprouts yet, those are just recently planted.

So, not bad, right? :)

Cheep Cheep!

2010-04-22T21:46:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we had planned a trip up on Saturday to the property to go visit Grammie and Papa. As you remember, I had spent the afternoon the week before with my mom building a chicken tractor of sorts for her new chicks. She only got a few at the time and so suggested that I take the girls to the feed store that's right down the street and get some more chicks, since they were supposed to get some sexed laying pullets in.

Sophia was pretty sick the night before (I think she threw up more than 10 times in 24 hours!) and so I ended up staying home with her on Friday but then Tommy was there for part of the time too so I took Eleora to the feed store and we picked out some chicks! They were guaranteed 97% female so most likely we got no roosters in the bunch :) Eleora picked out a Barred Rock for hers (Her name is "My Black One") and I had wanted Auracanas and so I picked out one for me (Fluffy) and one for Sophia (Bolt). We also got two Buff Orpingtons (Buffy and Angel) and two Leghorns (Foghorn and Leghorn) and two Rhode Island Reds (Itchy & Scratchy). We got a heat lamp and put out a dish of water for them in a rubbermaid bin. The girl at the feed store was a doll and gave us some extra food since it was Friday and we wouldn't be getting them up to Grammie & Papas house until Saturday... so we got them a little dish of food and some shavings and they were quite comfortable.

Eleora had a blast, of course. Sophia also had lots of fun but she's such a flitterbug that she wasn't as focused... Eleora basically sat next to the chicks all afternoon and then the next morning.

On Saturday the chicks got to ride up between the two carseats in their little rubbermaid bin and so that was some nice extra entertainment for the girls. When we got there, we put them into the cage with the other chicks and they fit right in!

Sophia's investigating...

My girls and their chicks!

Eleora loves "My Black One"

This is what she did... for hours. Talk about focus!

Ahh she was finally brave enough to hold My Black One on her lap!

Look at me!

And just because it was so pitiful and cute, this is what I came home to on Thursday. Sophia had already thrown up about 5 times, so he finally just stripped her naked (since he kept changing her clothes) and laid her on him and she passed right out... I've never seen her do that. Poor thing! She woke up later and did the same thing with me for a few hours also up into about 5am Friday morning.

But by Friday night she was feeling like her saucy little self!

4" soil blocker

2010-04-22T21:10:00.001-07:00

OK so I finally got to put the 4" soil blocker that Tommy made me to the test. Best illustrated with pictures, of course.

Here's the blocker. It's an 8 inch length of 4" PVC pipe with some sort of end cap that happens to fit perfectly right inside it. There's a u-shaped bolt that forms a handle and then the nuts that it attaches to on the bottom form sort of "dibbles" for the seeds, 2 per block.

So basically I hold the cap in place, flip the blocker upside down and fill it loosely with my blocking mix.

I carefully set it onto a plastic lid that I'm using as a cover just for me to press onto. You could press onto the table directly if you wanted to.

A closer look at the bottom of the lid, you can see the two bolts that are good sized and form a good size dibble on both sides.

So here is the lid once I have flipped the blocker back on to sit on the plastic lid, I'm getting ready to press.

Time to press! The handle works great although I will say next one I make will only be 6 inches long (the tube) and I'll just fill it in place... to get a decently compacted block I had to press further than my hand could comfortably reach and so I had to use a towel and a stick to push it in all the way. I think if I made the tube shorter and just filled the whole length with mix I'd end up with the same amount of mix but not so far to press.

And here it is all compacted!

I carefully slide the tube upwards, leaving the "plunger" top in place sitting right on top of my compressed soil block.

Using a spatula, I move the block from the plastic lid to it's permanent home in my seed tray.

And then once it is in it's home I lift the top off very carefully and voila!

And here's a tray almost filled with the blocks. You can sort of see the two indentations on each side that the bolts made, they are a great size for the bigger seeds you will plant in these like melons, pumpkins, etc.

I got cucumbers and melons planted in these, and I also started some marigolds and basil in some of the 2 inch blocks.

Speaking of the 2 inch blocks, one thing I wanted to do was to make the bigger block so I could easily pot up a 2inch block into it. But I found that this design didn't work well for that. I had a 2 inch block but I couldn't seem to get the soil mix compacted enough on the sides of the block. I tried doing it in layers which worked a little bit but then it occurred to me - I'm trying to make this simple, right? It was really just too complicated to make it work so I just took the blocker for what it was, ran to the store down the street for some 18oz keg cups, and potted my tomatoes & peppers up into those. They worked perfectly and were way quicker to fill than making 4 inch soil blocks with 2inch square holes in them :)

Garden update - April 2010

2010-04-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

Well, my garden is doing QUITE well so far. Due to the warm winter and spring we have had I decided to be a little adventurous and plant some things before I am supposed to. I covered them with a row cover and it helped protect them quite nice! Mostly just that I planted my onions SUPER early and I also have planted carrots and beans which I am not supposed to plant for a few more weeks. Oh well :)

So here's some pics!
Here's my strawberries. I trimmed them all back and they are all starting to put out new leaves, although a couple of them are being slowpokes.

I've pulled the row cover back on one of the beds to let the green onions grow... those are left over from last year and they survived the winter so I am hoping for a batch of seed.

Some petunias we planted. Notice I finally have my irrigation system hooked up and being used! It's nice :)

Cute little garden helper

Can you believe she's almost two??? Oh and in the background there you can see my spring planted garlic which is ALMOST as tall as those volunteers in the last patch that got left last year.

Here's a peek underneath one of my floating covers, you can see onion seedlings poking up. They took so long to germinate I'd given up hope, but kept it covered because I planted carrots right next to them and lo & behold, both of them are coming up!

Here's a picture of my grass-invaded bed, this is where my garlic volunteers are from last year. i think when I planted them in the fall of '08 some of them just never made it past the thick layer of leaf mulch I had on them because I know I pulled up all the garlic that had come up last year but I have at least three separate plants, and then one of them is technically three plants of it's own because apparently it had a few cloves last year and each one sprouted.

And here's another shot of the spring planted garlic. On the right is a broccoli I unsuccessfully tried to overwinter.

And here's a shot of the whole garden. It's so beautiful to me :)

Anyway that's it for my garden update so far. My seedlings are doing well in my basement but that's for a different post. I don't know how much I will actually be planting in the garden this year, actually, because we might be moving in June. I plan on doing a lot of containers because there are a few types of tomatoes I need to save seed from since I planted my last ones... mostly just the Dad's Sunset and Tess' Land Race Currant tomato.

5-year plan update

2010-04-22T20:28:00.001-07:00

I've got a couple blog posts to do here tonight or in the next few days so bear with me, but I'll try and keep it somewhat topical.

The biggest most exciting thing going on is not only is my husband almost finished with school (not even 2 months left!) but he has had several interviews for a company up in Colville that is looking for a Design Engineer. He's underqualified for the position but the fact is, it's RIGHT up his alley (they mfg wood stoves), it's 20 minutes away from where we want to build our home, and unlike many of their applicants he won't be looking for something else once the economy recovers.

They did put off the hiring for a bit so we won't hear back for another couple months but I am praying hard for this... those of my readers who also pray please pray for us! This job could mean big things, not only getting up there to the property quicker (we were thinking it could take 3-5 years after he's done with school) but the income, if we kept our standard of living the same, could allow us to build a home over a period of a few years with NO MORTGAGE. Of course, that's if things were at optimum conditions but I guess I'm trying to say that it would be AMAZING if we could get up there.

As of right now, my parents are up there and I am so jealous! They have gotten their Maremma sheepdogs, and the dogs are absolute gems. They also have a wire coop full of chicks! My mom and I spent an afternoon building the coop while the girls were napping on a day I happened to have off and she was here for the day. It was a wonderful day.

Which leads me to another topic... my emotional state right now is not very stable. I feel like me working has been unsustainable for so long emotionally and so I'm starting to run short. Kinda like an oil tank (anyone heat with oil?) when you run it and run it and it starts to get low, there's all kinds of stuff at the bottom of the tank that gunks it all up. That's kinda how I feel. I could sure use some prayers to lift my spirits also... it's becoming very difficult for me to drop my kids off with someone else and then go sit at a desk all day long.

Oh I almost forgot - Potato SEEDS.

2010-04-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

I forgot to add on that last post that I'm doing an experiment :)

Last year I had gotten some heirloom seed potatoes from Ronniger. They were fingerling types, and 2 different varieties.

To my surprise, they set seed! Ever the curious one, I saved those seeds the same way I would save tomato seed and I am going to grow them this year to see what I get! Depending on who pollinated them they might just be duds but who knows, right? The potato seeds have also sprouted and so I think that will be a fun experiment for me to do this year, we'll see! I never had seen them before but according to my google searches this is a rare thing but it does happen occasionally.

Garden Update - seedlings!

2010-04-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

Oh I almost forgot! I need to do an update.

This year I had promised myself I would get a soil blocker, and so I did. I got two actually, one 2" and one .75". I also have put my wonderful designer husband to the task of making me a 4" size, which he is mostly finished crafting out of PVC pipe. The 4" size was just too expensive to buy.

Anyway, the soil blocks are great! They were really easy to make, and I am looking forward to not having containers to deal with. it sure was a lot faster this way! I filled up two trays of blocks and started them a few weeks ago. Within 12 days I had tomato and even pepper sprouts.

Last year I had started my onions indoors but they did not do well at all so I figured maybe this year I should just start them directly outside. if the seeds don't germinate then I can always buy sets... but I'm just trying to figure out the best way. So I planted them outside a few weeks ago, we'll see what happens.

I have a few volunteer garlic plants coming up in last year's patch, I think some of them just didn't quite make it up through the thick mulch and so must have hibernated. I also have a new patch of garlic I planted this spring which is coming up quite nicely. And then I also have a few scallions that overwintered just fine.

As far as seedlings, here's what I have planted:

Tomatoes:
- Great White
- Principe Borghese
- Dad's Sunset
- Tess's Land Race Currant
- Litchi

Peppers:
- Craig's grande Jalapeno
- Purple Jalapeno
- Orange Habanero
- King of the North Sweet Pepper
- Orange Bell
- Sweet red mini stuffer
- Quadrati D'Asti Giallo Sweet

I also planted Thai Yellow Egg eggplant again.

Most of the seedlings are up except the Litchi Tomato, Great White and the King of North pepper (oh, and the eggplant but I remember it taking a long time last year too). Even the habaneros sprouted in about 12 days, it was crazy. All I did was prop up the seed trays with the humidity domes so that the bulbs are almost touching the plastic dome. The tomato seedlings that came up first already have their tiny set of first leaves but they are not leggy this way. They already need to be taken out of the tray to a new one, but the others are so small that I'll need to figure out something because I can't take them all out yet.

The one thing I am very happy about is that the Dad's Sunset was our favorite tomato from last year. It was so tasty and delicious but I never got any seed saved. I thought I had ONE seed left in the packet but then it turned out I had three. And all three germinated, and they were the quickest seeds to germinate! So lucky me, I will have more of them. And you know I will be saving seed from them!

Progress? maybe. Prayers? Yes.

2010-04-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

Well here I am posting again because I have all this nervous energy.

You see, today my husband had a second interview as a design engineer for a company out by our property. This is overwhelmingly great for a few reasons:

1. we weren't expecting his first job out of school to be up there.
2. he would make quite a bit more money than anticipated for a cad drafter, nearly doubling my current income.
3. The money he would potentially make plus the decrease in cost of living in the area would mean we could realistically put significant amounts of money aside and build a home without a mortgage. Yes, WITHOUT A MORTGAGE.
4. I could stay home. Yes, I COULD STAY HOME :)

It's interesting, I've been working towards this goal of being able to stay home with my family for so many years and it's as if the reality is potentially going to finally happen! Part of me is waiting for a shoe to drop, and for someone to jump out and say "AHHHH You thought it would be this easy, but you are going to have to work for another three years to get to stay home!!!"

I guess it's almost being afraid of success. But I am also feeling very excited at the same time. Excited at the idea of not dealing with the junk I deal with at work. Excited at the thought of being able to homeschool my kids and make macaroni necklaces with them. Excited at the thought of being able to have another baby someday and NOT have to take them to daycare, to be able to breastfeed them without losing my supply from pumping, and to be able to use my stash of cloth diapers. Thrilled at the idea of being able to teach my daughters how to grow things and why worms are one of the most incredible creatures that God created. I am ecstatic at the potential to me able to have a pleasant and happy home with a hot meal waiting for my husband when he comes home from work, and actually to have time every once in a while to fold and put away laundry after it's been washed instead of just leaving it in a pile in the basement to pick through once a day for everyone's clothes.

This may seem like simple things to you, but for someone like me who thrives in the stay-home environment to have to go out and earn a living to support the family it is a tough thing. Some people are the type that would get bored being at home... I am the type who gets bored and burned out being at work because I wish I was at home doing things I consider productive. With that said, I am forever blessed to have a husband who has worked very hard in school (even made the dean's list!) and is now working hard on finishing school up and also looking for work. It is as important to him as it is to me that I am able to stay home, and in that small little thing I have a great asset - a partner in life that has the same goal as I do in many different ways. That's a lot more uncommon than you might think.

And really, the only fears I have are the fears that all this will somehow be taken away from me. That for some reason, somehow, I will be doomed to never be able to fulfill that basic need that is for me to raise my children as a stay home mom. it seems like a simple thing, but when you have spent so much time going past so many obstacles it almost seems like it would be natural for things to "not work out."

but really, if I had to just work forever, I would probably become clinically depressed. So I don't even want to think about it. Maybe I just need to refocus and remember that SOMEDAY it will happen and I need to just keep walking along because if you keep walking, you will get there, right?

The financial state of the USA and preparing

2010-03-08T07:48:00.000-08:00

Something that I wanted to share and maybe it's just me wanting to put thoughts to paper. I work at a credit union as a lead, which means if there are any big problems with people's accounts I get to muddle it all out. Given that, and also the fact that I also trade currency on the foreign exchange market, I get a pretty good glimpse of what's happening financially. And I will tell you - the last few years have been scary. Our credit union has been repossessing a lot of BMWs and Mercedes. People have saddled themselves into $700-$1000/month car payments and are suddenly out of a job. Can you imagine? a $1000/month car payment!

I say this to say - we are in a depression. But I think about the Great Depression and it kind of scares me. Why? Because back in the Great Depression, people knew how to take a chicken and cook it. People knew how to grow food, and how to prepare meals from raw food materials like untrimmed veggies & meat. Nowdays, people don't know how to do that. You go to the supermarket, buy a box of food, and nuke it.

So what happens if that isn't there anymore? In our economy today, all grocery stores practice what is called "JIT" (Just-In-Time) warehousing. This means there are no big warehouses, and if the supply chain of trucks is interrupted for just a day or two you can see how quickly the store shelves empty. This is no big deal to those of us with pantries but there are people who never keep more than a day or two worth of food in their house... for them, what? Can you see with me how quickly this could degrade into violence?

I've been really making a commitment to myself to learn about how to store food and to learn more about putting it "by" just as a hedge against this. Yes, I know how to garden and that is a great skill because I also save my own seed and with this I will always have the ability to grow veggies but what use is that to me if we starve over the winter? I think about the earthquake in Haiti - those people were completely unprepared. Besides having a no suitable building codes and being as poverty-stricken as they were - there is NO REASON that people living in a country like that need to be unprepared. I think in their case, a helpful government as opposed to one intent on keeping it's people "under the thumb" would have made all the difference in the world. But then we think about all the other terrible disasters that can befall us and I really don't think there is any reason to be "Pollyanna" and think nothing bad will ever happen.

A lot of the people affected by Hurricane Katrina were not actually the ones with their homes destroyed. There were quite a lot of people forced to leave because there was 1. no clean water and 2. no food available. Can you imagine how much EASIER their life would have been if they had prepared for something? Even a 3 month supply of food & water would have made all the difference. Big huge snowstorms can shut off power for days. Are you prepared? I'm not. I have no effective way to heat my home without electricity. No good, huh. This year we lucked out. We had one short power outage that lasted a day and a night. The funny part is that I had some kerosene lamps I inherited from my granddad "Uncle Dutch" and I had actually bought kerosene for them. My husband and I spent the evening in relative comfort and our kids (Eleora is afraid of the dark until she falls asleep) were able to fall asleep to the soft glow of the lamps. I have some co-workers affected by the same outage and the night did not go so well for them.

So I guess this is my long rambling and all of it to say - I think we as a society need to be more prepared and to learn more skills. Who are we to be so arrogant and think that we won't need to be self-reliant?

A nice sunny weekend part 2

2010-03-08T07:14:00.000-08:00

So as far as the rest of the weekend, this is mainly the part that I wish I had pics for. Both Saturday and Sunday were absolutely beautiful, no jacket needed sunny days. You know, it's funny, I think Eleora remembers gardening with me last year because she just jumped right in helping me.

The garden beds had shrunk quite a bit (of course) and I had put a bunch of leaves on them but needed to top them with compost in the spots I was going to plant garlic and onions. Planting garlic in the spring? Yes, I know, you are supposed to plant it in the fall, but I never got around to it and I have been SO burned out from work in the last 9 months or so that I had had zero energy after I get home or on the weekends to do ANYTHING besides try and stay caught up on dishes and laundry (and even that didn't get done).

So anyway, I was shoveling compost from the pile onto the garden spot where I was going to plant my garlic and of course Eleora immediately came over and got her little mint green trowel and started helping me... it was so cute! She loved watching the "warms" wiggle around in the compost and did a great job helping me plant the garlic cloves. I'd saved a couple of the biggest and fattest bulbs from last year so hopefully we'll do OK. Some of them were already starting to sprout in the bag. I do have a few volunteers from last year, must have been some that didn't quite make it up past the compacted leaf mulch. We'll see how those go!

The compost pile itself was pretty meager... I had stopped composting last year (sniff) because the neighbor's dog just loved to dig around in it (jumping the fence, same dog that left a dead SOMETHING - I think it was a mole - in my garden bed). Said neighbor has now moved out and so I am now free to compost again!

Sunday morning I dug out my box of seeds and the girls immediately zoned in on me. Sophia just had fun shaking the packets of peas to hear them rattle, but Eleora was a pretty intent student. Then we went out afterwards and I spread some potting soil for the onion bed (had run out of compost) and she helped me by carefully placing a seed into each hole. She is a very careful gardener... it's funny because last year she wasn't too much older than Sophia but Fia is just too busy running around and climbing on stuff outside to pay attention to what I am doing :) And that is OK, it's nice for them to be independent so that Tommy and I can do our work outside in the yard.

Last year I followed the instructions for onions which say to start them 6 weeks early indoors. Unfortunately, somehow I went wrong and those starts ended up so spindly. I did NOT do well with onions last year so this year I figured, we've been having amazing weather and a very mild winter overall (only an inch or two of snow!) and so I'll plant some seeds to see what happens. If all else fails, I can just get some sets to plant out in early May.

Then of course I completed my garden plan. This year's garden is more of an experiment than anything. I have a couple different kinds of pumpkin that I want to try out, some Litchi tomatoes, and lots of other fun things. I actually did not technically complete it because I don't know which varieties I'll be planting in all but I have it mostly done. I do have a schedule I made out (I even got a planner specifically for my garden this year) and so I can already tell you that next weekend is when I get to start my tomatoes & peppers! I got a soil blocker set this year so hopefully it won't be too hard for me to master it. I hated using the cups I did last year.

I already made my seed order a few months ago but some of those seeds were for "seed bank storage" and I lost the master inventory list that I made so now I get to go through them AGAIN and then I'll know which varieties I can grow. I think we'll have fun this year though! Probably in September I'll be done working so that will give us harvest time.

I'm also currently rooting some grape starts, Concord and Thompson Seedless. Those will be planted up on our family farm up north in a few months, along with a full complement of fruit trees this fall. I've also got some hardy kiwi seeds that I'll be starting so we'll see what will come of that! OH, and I'm also trying my hand at growing pineapples. One thing I would just LOVE is to have a big greenhouse full of tropicals.

When Tommy and I finalize the design for our home up at the property one of the "musts" is an attached greenhouse/sun room where I can grow small tropicals in pots. Did you know you can grow dwarf mango and avocado trees? I must admit working in the finance industry there are certain things that make me feel we have a not-so-firm footing. Specifically, the financial state of this country makes me concerned about the potential of bringing in food from other places. Sometimes that's good (eat local!) but sometimes that might not be fun, since I absolutely love bananas, mangos, avocados, and lots of other tropicals.

So my answer to that is to grow my own! We'll see :) Really, if I had a small greenhouse I could probably do it... we just need to find a good house plan to modify. And of course to pray that Tommy gets a job up north pretty quick when he's done with school.

And so I guess that's it for this post! Haha... Just wait. I sure can't!

A nice sunny weekend! Part 1

2010-03-08T07:03:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

Well this last weekend was great! Sorry about the long absence... no promises that it won't happen again, either :) I just don't have time while I'm still working but the good news is we probably only have another 6-9 months to go before I can officially be a STAY HOME MOM and won't that be great! I'm pretending that I'm one today... my little sister got married early last week and I took the entire week off last week and also today.

I've gotten a lot of project-y things done... mostly a lot of canning and we did some gardening in the beautiful weather. Sorry, no pics - my camera is officially kaput so I'll have to wait till I get a new one. I brought home the pressure canner from my brother's house (and alas, had to give him his excalibur dehydrator... sniff) and so I got lots canned. I canned up a bunch of ground beef, chicken, seasoned pinto beans and yellow potatoes.

So far we've tried the beef and the beans and they are both winners. I never thought I'd like canned meat and I don't know how well it would go over in tacos or something but put into a casserole it was quite good. And the beans were very good, lightly seasoned with salt, pepper and a shake of cumin but the flavor was light enough you could easily flavor them in any way you choose. I just wish I had some photos to share!

I also had gotten a new wheat grinder and so I tried that out, of course. The bread rose like it was no one's business! I didn't grind the flour quite fine enough for my taste so I used about 60% whole wheat and then 40% bread flour and it was great. I made just a standard honey wheat bread although I've been doing a lot of the "artisan bread in 5 minutes a day" breads and those have been delicious as well. I think I'll have a lot of fun with this tool once I get to stay home :)

Making Sunflower Oil and Pumpkin Seed Oil

2010-01-31T15:13:00.001-08:00

I got myself a nice new Piteba oil expeller and this post will show me using to to make hand pressed pumpkin seed and sunflower oil. Here's the machine. It's imported from Holland... oddly enough this sort of tool is not easy to get a hold of here in the States. It is, though, quite reasonably priced even to pay for it to come from Holland.

Update 1/26/11 - Click here - the Piteba is now available on Amazon.com! (Opens in a new window)

Basically it consists of several different parts. the first thing you will notice is my handy cottage cheese container. That's to catch the "press cake" of leftover solids that are pressed dry of oil. The blue thing underneath is actually an oil candle with blue lamp oil. It has a neat little guide on top (which is why you can't see the flame).

This actually heats up the whole entire unit to help press out the oil, which becomes more readily available when heated up a bit. It doesn't heat a whole lot, though, which is good because I would imagine too much heat might affect the shelf life of the oil.

Then, to the right you have the collection cup, on top is my funnel for the seed, and then all the way to the right is the crank. Bored yet? OK here we move on to the fun stuff! OK actually one more boring part. This is actually more for the owner of Piteba just so he can see how I have this set up, since I'll show him this link :)

The Piteba oil expeller is actually designed to be permanently bolted onto something. The amount of power that's required to turn the crank for some seeds (with shells on, etc) would need for it to be VERY secure. Unfortunately, I have nothing at my home that I could do that with, and I don't have space for a special table just for that purpose.

So I took a piece of 2x6 lumber left over from my parents building their house and bolted it quite securely to the lumber and left space on each side. Then, I got 2 extra strong c-clamps and used them to clamp the wood-mounted press to my countertop. It actually works really well... the clamps are able to be angled so they don't interfere with the turning of the crank, and the footprint is relatively small. When I am finished and all the pieces are cleaned and oiled, I can put everything in a box and stow it away in a room in my basement. Pretty tidy!

OK anyway, now as promised, on to the fun stuff.

Here we are in action! The funnel is filled with shelled raw sunflower seeds. I actually did try this with the black oil sunflower seeds (shell-on) but I realized it was a bad idea. The black oil sunflower seeds I could get were actually intended for birdseed and so they were dirty.

Only about 25% more in cost I could get the shelled seeds for human consumption.

Pound by pound, I get more oil from the shelled seeds so it actually isn't more expensive this way. You turn the crank, which causes the seeds to press in and at the end, the press cake extrudes and the oil drips out into the catching cup at the bottom.

Here's the leftover press cake. It's pretty dry and crumbly. Since this was made with shelled seeds intended for human consumption, I could have easily made it into granola, baked it into some delicious bread, etc.

Unfortunately, I don't really have a lot of time for that so it ended up being thrown into the garden. It will either compost nicely or be some protein-rich food for the birds and squirrels. When I have chickens someday this will make excellent chicken feed. Actually, I bet the press cake from flax seeds would be great to feed laying hens for some omega-fatty-acid-enriched farm fresh eggs!

Apparently, even when you have press cake from seeds/nuts with the shells on, you can still feed them to the chickens/hogs/wildlife. At worst, you can compost it. What a great deal, huh!

Here's a bowl of the sunflower oil. It does contain some sediment and so I'll let it settle out for about 24 hours before I bottle it up.

Here you can see the oil I've been pressing from pumpkin seeds. I bought raw shelled seeds in the bulk section. They don't quite produce as much oil, as indicated by the high price, but it's one of my favorite skincare oils and so I definitely wanted to make it.

It comes out pretty cloudy... here's a pic of it after 24 hours of settling.

Cool, huh! it almost looks like it's a deep red color... but it's a trick of the light. In the bottle it looks red, but if you look at it in the pipette I used to decant it into it's final bottle, you can see it's definitely a green color with a slight reddish tinge.

And of course because we all like pics, here's a picture of the sunflower seed oil after settling. The sunflower oil didn't have quite as much sediment to settle, and also since I do plan on using it mostly in cooking I certainly didn't mind the sunflower "goop." I did this all yesterday and last night I pan-roasted some fresh asparagus and drizzled it with a few tablespoons of this fresh pressed oil. I could definitely taste the sunflower flavor... it was wonderful. I did put too much salt on the stuff but the flavor itself was tremendous, HEADS above the commercial stuff that's been sitting on the shelf for 12 months.

And here we have the final product! An ounce or so of hand pressed pumpkin seed oil for a facial oil, and about 8 ounces of sunflower oil that I can use for either skincare or cooking. A lot of people actually do use pumpkin seed oil for cooking, but I don't care for the flavor myself. Although i do like roasted seeds, so maybe if I roasted them first and then pressed them, it might taste pretty good :)

Next on my project list for my oil press - flax seed oil, and maybe even pine nut oil. YUM YUM.

Hope you enjoyed my little photo journal. I guess my summary is that hand pressed oils are definitely a lot of physical work (it was about 30 minutes of cranking to produce these oils). After some trial and error I have become more efficient and also as my oil expeller becomes more "seasoned." It definitely gives one an appreciation for the ease of which we can buy oils at the grocery store, but also an appreciation for the fresh flavors of this fresh pressed oil.

This fall I will also have a new experiment - I am growing oilseed sunflowers and naked-seeded pumpkins and so I will be pressing oils from seeds that I grew myself. Something like that gives me the warm fuzzies - a completely sustainable cycle that produces a unique product that most people can't produce themselves. :)

And thusly, I complete my review and photo blog of the Piteba oil expeller. Once again, click here to see the Piteba on Amazon.com (Opens in a new window). Have a great day!

Making cold-pressed vegetable oil with a hand-cranked expeller

2010-01-31T15:06:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! Long time no see, eh? OK well the truth of the matter is that my job basically sucks the life out of me these days, leaving me listless at the end of the day and no energy to do anything creative usually, especially not blogging. The light, however, has appeared at the end of the tunnel - Tommy is done with school in about 5 months. Woohoo!

Anyway, I got a brand new toy and been using it a bit over the last couple weeks. I've had so many people ask about it because it is sort of a unique item so I decided to go finally buy a stupid card reader for my digital camera so I could blog it, so here I am :)

As many of you know, I am on a mission to rid my life of as much dependency on society and whatnot as I can. In my case, this means getting the tools and especially acquiring the skills I would need to in order to live completely off-grid. Maybe by the time I'm 90 I'll know enough, but I doubt it. So my latest toy is the Piteba oil press. It's a hand-cranked expeller that can make vegetable oil from basically any nut or seed that has at least 25% oil. This means technically I could use it to make oil from walnuts, sunflowers, all the way to hemp seed and even cacao beans (making cocoat butter).

I'll photo blog it on my next post, but I have used it a few times and let me say that I have a new appreciation for the fact I can go to the store and buy a liter of vegetable oil for $2. I also have an especially great new appreciation for the flavor and quality of a freshly pressed oil... incredible.

Dehydrating

2009-09-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the long absence, all my faithful fans :) There was a small IE problem at work and when it was "fixed" for some reason I can't get blogger to come up, and since that was where I did most of my posting... well.

Anyway, this week I picked up an Excalibur dehydrator off craigslist. It will actually end up going to my brother but since he can't get it for a while, I'm testing it out :) I just peeled and sliced 2 lbs of carrots and stuck them in. When I was doing that, I noticed that not only is this a dehydrator but it also has a setting for rising bread AND making yogurt. What a fabulously useful tool! Someday I will get myself one as well. In the meantime, I'll use his :) He's using the canner and so in the meantime I can dry what I need to put up.

I guess I should do a garden report. I'm about ready to dig all my potatoes. So far they have been pretty prolific and quite delicious. I can't wait to try the fingerlings, which I haven't yet. I'll dig them tomorrow with Eleora. Like I thought, I didn't have much time to keep things up so I have lots of peas, beans and cucumbers going to seed. Those Richland Green Apple cukes were FABULOUS though. I will definitely be replanting them next year.

The tomatillos and tomatoes have been doing well. We had our first orange tomato (Dad's Sunset) yesterday and it was very very delicious. The first ripe tomato was one of the paste tomatoes, though (it was about a month ago). I've got tons of those guys now, and I will definitely be replanting those too (Principe Borghese). Those are the italian tomato that they usually use for sundrying so I think I could dehydrate those too, at least the ones I have on hand. Our weather this summer has been cooler - we had a really hot stretch in July for a couple weeks but since then it's mostly been in the 70s and 80s. So I'm not sure how well things will continue to perform. Our "early" tomatoes (Siletz) haven't been too early, still haven't ripened yet. I will give them another chance because that particular plant was situated in a spot that got a lot less sun than I thought it would. There's a few of those on the vine that are almost ripe.

I have one small pumpkin that I know of... I'm glad about that, one should do me just fine for the winter. I don't think I'll get any melon, only one plant survived and it doesn't seem to have set any fruit.

I harvested all my garlic aboout a month ago and it did really really well. Some of the bulbs were pretty good size, and the smallness of the rest I could definitely see when you consider how LATE I planted them last year. I saved back the best of the heads to replant this fall.

In other news, the neighbor's dog paid a visit to my garden yesterday, tore up a spot in one of my beds. I caught him in the act and then he ran away, jumped the fence. I went over to assess the damage... and there is a dead GROUNDHOG in my garden. Yuck. It's still there, I was hoping to see the neighbor but I think I'll just take Tommy's advice and just pitch it back over the fence and let him deal with it. Seems a bit, oh, snarky to me, but then again I shouldn't be responsible for disposing of an animal carcass that his dog tried to bury in my garden!

garden update

2009-07-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

Ok well I got yelled at this weekend because I haven't blogged in a long time. Truth be told, I've just been focusing on trying to go through and haven't had the time for my garden inspections and whatnot. Plus I'm working on writing a novel also and so that takes up a lot of my "write-y" time.

So the garden has gotten pretty messy. Mostly because I never got any mulch to lay between the beds. I've decided to pull up all the rotted cardboard and stuff in between the beds and just start having Tommy mow between them. At least it won't look as crazy with tall grasses and stuff.

It's almost time to pull the garlic. Yesterday I pulled a couple heads that had died back completely and I was very excited to see full-size heads :) I've pulled a couple here and there to use and they were pretty small so this was nice. This weekend I was at the property and pulled up the 3 heads of garlic that grew (from the 5 I'd planted) and they were pretty small. My mom said that our neighbors who also planted garlic ended up with fairly small heads too.

My cabbages and broccolis are growing like nuts but nothing forming on them yet. The pumpkins have blooms forming, and I think the one melon that didn't get eaten by the slugs has some on it too. I'm not sure if they need to cross-pollinate, but I hope I get at least one melon out of it :)

I've got some peppers and tomatoes forming, and a couple cute little tomatillos. Some of the onions are bulbing up nicely. My basil is slowly plugging along, not growing as fast as I'd hoped.

We've had a couple harvests of a couple strawberries. They are so delicious when homegrown! Incredibly sweeter and more flavor. Eleora likes to take them from the plant when they are barely ripening, though, so it's kind of a race to see who gets them first.

Peas are producing, which is fun. I've showed Eleora what they look like so she is having fun looking through the mess of vines for the pods. The beans are coming along nicely and will probably start blooming in the near future. I still need to plant more carrots, never did the succession planting that I'd planned and so I only have 2 squares of them right now. Gave up on radishes which is fine, we burned out on them anyway :)

OH and the nasturtiums I planted, one has a bloom. The most beautiful deep rich bright red I've ever seen in a flower. I think they are called "Empress." I'll have to take a picture of that one... absolutely gorgeous. Oh, and the cucumbers also have blooms and I have a few cute little ones forming :)

Hummus

2009-07-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

Just made this yesterday and it's fantastic! I'm kinda excited to see all the new uses I'm gonna find for this stuff. Made with fresh garlic from my garden, of course.

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and liquid reserved
3 tbs tahini
3/4 cups reserved bean liquid
3 tbs lemon juice
1/2 tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp salt
pinch cumin
pinch black pepper
1/4 tsp mediterranean seasoning (I have a gyros spice mix I bought in Germany to use for this)

Throw it in a blender and blend till creamy. You can use more or less liquid from the beans to make it the consistency you like. 3/4 was what I used which is about the minimum that my blender liked, I used Tommy's magic bullet blender.

So good... great with triscuits, veggies, and I'm thinking if I made a runnier one it would make a good pizza sauce... lots of good fats and healthy protein in this stuff, especially when eaten with a whole grain cracker or pita.

And it's CHEAP!

One more year...

2009-06-16T09:45:00.001-07:00

Until Tommy is finished with school.

Sigh...

SO disappointed... they took my milk away :(

2009-06-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

Well, not fully away, but mostly. We get WIC from the state which helps us a LOT right now. We go through probably 3-4 gallons of milk a week. I was so excited last month when I posted that there is now local fresh milk in the stores from the SPOKANE'S FAMILY FARM. The stuff is fantastic, tastes great, low-heat pasteurized... I can't wait to make cheese from it.

But apparently the fact that it isn't homogenized makes it a no-go for WIC rules. So the month or so we've been drinking it, while it has been wonderful, we will now need to go back to drinking regular trucked-in storebought :(

I called the WIC office at the state, spoke with a supervisor, then I called Trish at the dairy. She was a gem and was just made aware of the situation. She is looking into it and I hope she can figure out a way to make it WIC OK. Apparently, they don't homogenize on purpose. I didn't know this before, but homogenization breaks up the nice round fat globules into teeny pointy ones that are more damaging to your heart. Think... tiny little pieces of fiberglass. Great.

Anyway, I'm gonna cross my fingers and hope that at some point, they find a way to make it work. Maybe by going kosher, they can solve that problem. We'll see. In the meantime, if we ever need to buy milk out of pocket, I know what I'll be getting! :)

Here's a reprint from a recent newspaper article about the dairy, from
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/may/20/udderly-fresh/.

“C’mon girls. C’mon,” Mike Vieira calls out his evening invitation to the ladies in black and white at Spokane’s Family Farm. “C’mon,” he repeats, walking into the pasture, “C’mon. Let’s go.” Visitors make the “girls” hesitate slightly, but they eventually oblige and line up behind the barn door for the evening milking. It’s a ritual repeated twice daily at the farm 13 miles west of Spokane where Mike and Trish Vieira bottle up to 2,000 gallons of milk each week. “This is what everyone thinks of when they think of a dairy,” Mike Vieira says.

The couple began milking cows a little over a month ago, after spending the winter retrofitting the 100-year-old barn with modern milking and pasteurizing equipment and preparing for the arrival of the Holstein cows. It’s a small operation, with just 30 animals in a state where the average dairy had 480 cows in 2007. Many of the state’s large dairy operations have more than 2,000 animals.

Mike Vieira worked as a dairyman near Othello, selling his milk to the Darigold cooperative, before coming to the Spokane area. Although he was known for being a top-quality producer, Vieira says the milk he produced was dumped together with that of the other 850 members and bottled. He longed for closer connection to the finished product.

So, the Vieiras decided to move near one of the state’s bigger cities to find a market for an old-fashioned dairy – where milk is produced and bottled on the farm and then sold nearby. The milk from Spokane’s Family Farm is no more than 72 hours from the cow and has traveled less than 20 miles by the time it lands on grocery store shelves.

“I have a lot of incentive to produce quality milk,” says Mike Vieira, who recently turned 38. “My name is right there on the label. It comes down to me.”

Spokane’s Family Farm uses low-heat pasteurization to kill the potentially harmful pathogens in the milk. It’s heated to 145 degrees and held there for 30 minutes before it is quickly cooled to prepare for bottling. Most commercial milk is pasteurized at higher temperatures (HTST) to kill the bacteria as well as other enzymes in the milk and extend the shelf life. Some milk is ultra-heat pasteurized (UHT), or heated to a temperature that kills almost all of the microorganisms and can be shelf stable if it is put in hermetically sealed packaging.

Food and Drug Administration researchers say the higher temperature pasteurization doesn’t significantly affect the nutritional value of milk. Others believe human bodies benefit from the natural enzymes that are left intact by low-temperature pasteurization. They also like the flavor better, and the remaining enzymes help with the fermentation of milk into cheese and yogurt.
The Vieiras like the taste of the milk and the “good bacteria” left behind. Although they like keeping the milk closer to its natural state, they don’t believe in selling raw milk. “It is a liability and it’s still a serious issue,” says Mike Vieira, who also worked for five years in dairy sanitation as a troubleshooter for Sunnyside Dairy Supply.

Spokane’s Family Farm doesn’t homogenize the milk, which means the cream rises to the top of the jugs. Most commercial milk has the cream separated out, and then sprayed back into the milk in a prescribed amount (1 percent, 2 percent or about 3 percent for whole milk). The cream is forced through tubes at high pressure to break up the fat so it no longer separates from the low-fat milk.

Milk from Spokane’s Family Farm averages about 3.5 percent fat. Shake the jug for creamy whole milk or, as the Vieiras suggest, store it in an iced tea dispenser with the spigot on the bottom. The milk that settles to the bottom has about 2 percent fat and the cream that rises to the top can be saved and made into butter, used for coffee or even whipped. It has about a three-week shelf life. The retail price is $4.29 per gallon. It is sold on the farm for $3.50.
Running a dairy is not easy work. Vieira wakes before 5 a.m. every day to feed the “girls” and get them ready for the 5:30 a.m. milking. Cleaning, sanitizing, bottling and other farm chores keep the couple busy until the evening milking. Most days are 18 hours long and sometimes end with the Vieiras delivering milk to stores that are running low.

“There is no pause button on these cows,” Trish Vieira says. Friends and volunteer hands on the farm like to tease them about the never-changing schedule, “They like to rib me. ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ they’ll ask,” Mike Vieira says.

The farm on Coulee Hite Road was used as a dairy until 1962. The Vieiras retrofitted it with state-of-the-art equipment, but it’s still what’s called a “flat barn.” Most dairy operations have a pit so that dairy workers are at eye level with the cows’ udders.

“You don’t have to bend over to milk cows anymore,” he says. “I still do.”
Actually, most of the time he’s squatting. For the first two weeks of operation, Vieira says he was sore from his toes to his ears.

“I’m in it because I love the cows,” he says. “It’s all I ever wanted to do. I think I started saying I wanted to be a dairy farmer about second grade.”

That was after a trip to his uncle’s dairy farm in California captured his imagination. His first job out of high school was as herdsman for a dairy. He recently told a group of veterinary students that if any of them were thinking about dairying, they needed to see a psychiatrist for at least a year. And then at the end of the year if they still want a dairy they should get a second opinion.
The Vieiras have five grown daughters in their blended family. They’ve been married for about two years and have a son, 1 1/2-year-old Kohl. There’s a playpen for him in the barn where the cows are milked, but on a recent evening he was perched atop the nightly feed ration in the wheelbarrow.

The dairy is not certified organic. The cows eat locally grown grains. Although the Vieiras wanted to reserve the right to treat a sick animal on the farm with antibiotics, they would never allow the milk to go into their tanks.

The farm is 160 acres, and they hope to eventually double the operation to 60 cows.
Mike Vieira takes pride in his contented herd, which he bought from an 80-year-old dairyman and his son. When he lets the first group of cows into the barn, they quickly assume positions in each of the milking stalls.

He quickly cleans each cow’s teats using an iodine and glycerin solution and then strips a bit of milk from each one before attaching the milking apparatus. The rhythmic sound of the machinery fills the small barn. The cows eat until the milking is complete, and the units automatically detach and are drawn back up into position for the next round.
Trish Vieira brushes the mud and dried waste from the hide of the cows while she helps with milking. She helps shoo the cows outside, and then they start over with the second group.
She walks outside while the milking and cleaning is finished. Tomorrow, they’ll start the whole process again.
“C’mon girls. C’mon.”

Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream
From Trish Vieira, Spokane Family Farm. Vieira says when she made this with additional milk from the farm instead of cream to lower the fat, no one noticed.
3 cups sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 1/4 cups Spokane’s Family Farm Milk with cream on top
5 fresh eggs, lightly beaten
5 cups whipping cream (can use whole milk for less fat)
2 tablespoons vanilla
Combine first three ingredients in saucepan. Gradually stir in the milk, cook over medium heat for approximately 15 minutes, until thickened, stirring constantly.
Gradually stir 1 cup of the hot mixture into the beaten eggs. Add to remaining hot mixture, stirring constantly. Cook for 1 minute, remove from heat, and refrigerate for 2 hours. Add whipping cream and vanilla to chilled mixture and whip with wire whisk. Freeze as directed.
For an electric home freezer, use approximately 2 cups of rock salt per batch and 1 1/2 bags of ice cubes. Vieira puts a little water into the freezer bucket (about 2 cups) to start the ice and salt melting process. Fresh fruit or chocolate cookie bits can be added to flavor the custard before freezing.
Yield: About 5 quarts

Homemade Yogurt
From Trish Vieira, Spokane’s Family Farm. This yogurt can be used in place of sour cream, she says.
1 quart whole milk
5 grams yogurt starter
Heat one quart of milk to 180 degrees and then cool down to 108 to 112 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dissolve 5 grams yogurt starter (or use unflavored yogurt) in small quantity of lukewarm milk. Then pour back into the quart of milk and mix well.
Incubate for 4 to 4 1/2 hours, or until yogurt has reached the desired firmness.
Refrigerate to stop incubation.
Fresh fruit or jam can be added to sweeten the yogurt. A yogurt appliance can be used to incubate the yogurt.
Yield: 4 cups yogurt

French Breakfast Puffs
From Trish Vieira, Spokane Family Farm. She says these are “simply divine.”
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 cup whole milk
Topping
6 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and sugar. Add egg and mix just until blended.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Stir in flour mixture alternately with 1/2 cup milk.
Fill muffin tins two-thirds full with batter and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
While the puffs are baking, melt 6 tablespoons butter and mix together sugar and cinnamon.
When puffs are baked, remove from the oven and immediately dip them in melted butter and roll in cinnamon sugar mixture.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Hot Fudge Pudding Cake with Dark Chocolate Rum Sauce
From Trish Vieira, Spokane’s Family Farm.
1 1/4 cup sugar, divided
1 cup flour
7 tablespoons cocoa, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup melted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup hot water
1/4 cup dark rum
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine ¾ cups sugar, flour, 3 tablespoons cocoa, baking powder and salt.
Blend in milk, melted butter and vanilla. Pour into an 8-by-8-inch pan.
In a small bowl, combine ½ cup sugar, brown sugar and 4 tablespoons cocoa.
Sprinkle over cake batter.
Pour hot water and dark rum over the top. Bake 35 minutes. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.
Yield: 1 (8-by-8-inch) cake

Mediterranean Farfalle with spinach and feta cheese

2009-05-26T14:48:00.001-07:00

Made this last night, I kinda threw it together to use up a costco-size container of baby spinach but it was a big hit!

1 lb sausage (we used kielbasa, but you could also even use chunks of chicken or any other meat, or even omit)
1 box (8 servings) of mini farfalle (bowtie) pasta
10 oz baby spinach
2 cans of garlic diced tomatoes
Feta Cheese (amount depends on your taste)
Olive oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Greek seasoning blend

In a skillet, cook the sausage with a little olive oil and a generous amount of the greek seasoning blend. When it has browned, add the tomatoes, some of the feta and balsamic vinegar. Cook until reduced.

In the meantime, begin the water for the pasta.

When the sauce is reduced to the right consistency (whatever you want!) turn off the heat and add the spinach. Mix the spinach into the sauce and cover until the pasta is done. When the pasta is done, toss with the sauce & spinach and top with the remainder of the feta cheese.

Milky goodness

2009-05-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

The other day I was at the grocery store and I needed to get milk. I was walking through the aisle and as I was approaching the milk section I noticed something different. A strange new brand of milk was next to my normal Darigold. As I walked closer, I started to be able to make out the words on the label.

The music swelled as the chorus sang "Hallelujah!" There it was, on the jug's label - "Spokane's Family Farm."

I was stunned in disbelief. I picked up the jug, cradled it lovingly in my arms, and inspected the label closely. Yes, my eyes had not deceived me. Something I had been looking for since I moved here - locally produced milk! I immediately filled my cart with three gallons. We do go through about 2-3 gallons of milk per week (Eleora loves milk). I've been buying 1% but all they have is whole. I'm making the switch entirely, and I'll just drink less myself to compensate for the calories.

The best part? It's not homogenized. It is pasteurized but it's cream-on-the-top whole milk and so I'm THINKING and HOPING that I will finally be able to make a decent cheese. We'll see!

Mother's Day weekend

2009-05-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

And what a weekend it was!

I did have to work a half day on Saturday so after I got off work we packed up the kids (OK after they woke up from naps) and went to the 2009 Garden Expo. I wanted to see if I could get my Mother's Day gift there and then maybe pick up a couple blueberry bushes.

They had TONS of cool stuff there. Totally not what I was looking for, though. I think next year I'll have to force my mom to come with me. There were lots of great booths with all kinds of outdoor decor, furniture made from thin saplings, antiques refinished (a FABULOUS potting shelf or two or hundred), tons of plants and veggie starts, etc. It was really fun! Except there was only one place to buy rose bushes and they were like $17 for one small stem (unique ones, though).

So afterwards we went to Big R and I picked out my rosebush :) And for those of you who think it's weird for me to get my own gift... well yeah. This is the first year we've implemented what will become our Dasko family tradition. Every year for mother's day, my dad used to get my mom a fuchsia hanging basket. I like that tradition, but wanted roses instead. T didn't have a chance to get one earlier this week and then when we decided to go to the Expo we just assumed they would be there. Apparently not. So I got a beautiful cream-colored rose with red edges. Similar to my old favorite Double Delight but a different type. I'll put it into a large container and then in a few years when we move to the property I'll plant my roses (at that point there will probably be several) in a permanent spot.

In the garden news, I planted more radishes yesterday with Eleora. She was a great help. I poked holes in the dirt, and gave her one seed at a time to drop in. We did 12 in a square around the outsides of a couple holes where I'll be putting in a tomato plant. I think we planted a total of 36. We'll be rolling in radishes soon! The 2 squares I planted a few weeks ago are coming up strong. Right next to them I have my first batch of spinach coming up. The lettuce is also coming up and the onions are really gaining strength. I do think, however, that I will be getting some starts from the nursery still. The strawberries have put on a ton of new growth.

On Friday, the girls brought home some marigolds potted in cups for Mother's Day. They went into the garden on Sunday. Eleora always talks about "Mama's special flowers" and finally she has some she can call her own! Still haven't seen any sprouts from the other herbs I've planted or my carrots.

The plant starts are still doing well. The Tomatillos are growing so fast, though, I think they are outgrowing their container. Next year I'll plant those a little later. One of them even has a bloom! I have all my starts potted in little 9 or 12oz cups (I can't remember which size). Next year I'll be doing soil blocks so I think it will be easier to keep them in the correct size.

I didn't turn my compost pile... I realized i'm gonna need another container to turn it INTO since I put the bolts on backwards (and therefore can't take the "bin" off the pile while it's standing like I should be able to). So I'm gonna see if I can get another one. It's still nice and warm and I've got lots of coffee grounds waiting to be mixed in.

Watching grass grow...

2009-05-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

This morning Tommy came in all excited and said "Hey come look! Come look! My grass is growing!"

A couple weeks ago he spent a lot of time under the spruce tree in our backyard raking up years worth of accumulated pine needles that were choking the soil. It is a pretty much bare spot that would only grow the occasional weed and we wanted it to be grass. So he raked up the needles, replanted some grass seed and raked it in with compost, manure and peat moss. He's been faithfully watering it for a week or 2 and this morning he was so excited to finally see little blades of grass. It seemed like they came out of nowhere although they were in some places an inch long, so I know they have been there for a little bit but we just didn't notice them.

When we came back inside, he remarked that now he knew what it felt like for me showing him all the new sprouts in my garden :)

And in terms of the garden, here's the latest. My radishes (2 squares) are up. I'm going to plant another 2 squares this weekend. One of my potato bins has 2 potatoes showing. Some of my onions are going strong but since I never hardened them off a lot of them have died. I think I'm going to stop by the local nursery tomorrow or whenever I have a chance and get some onion starts. I could go by seed also, since I have plenty left, but I want to get the head start that I would from starts.

My compost bin is heating up! Although I don't think the entire bin is heating up... more like just in the spots where I've been adding my kitchen scraps. I make myself a lot of crudites to take to work for snacks and so I generate quite a bit of fruit and veggie waste. Today it was the peelings and trimmings from 4 large carrots, 4 large stalks of celery, one kiwi, a half a cucumber and the tops from about 6 or 7 large strawberries and 5 radishes. Add to that a banana peel from breakfast, Eleora's leftover toast you've got a good plateful of scraps already, and that's just the morning. We do this every day.

So the other day I went to take out the day's scraps and when I was burying them I noticed HEAT! My first time ever. Of course I was excited and made Tommy come out and see. I even dug a bit around so he could feel the heat and see the steam. The whole pile is definitely not heating up, though. I did see a couple sunken spots where I'd put scraps so I think it's just those localized areas. We'll see.

I've started picking up coffee grounds from the local Starbucks. I don't particularly like their coffee or support the big business enterprise... but as lame as it is, I haven't found one locally owned coffeehouse that is willing to save grounds for their customers. On the other hand, Starbucks even has a bin inside the store where they put them, they have a system set up that makes it easy for us. I've got quite a bit on hand already and will be checking for grounds in the mornings before work, since they are on my way. This weekend I'll turn the compost pile and add all the grounds that I'm able to collect. I know my pile isn't heating up enough just because I don't quite have enough greens... so that's the easiest source for me of a large amount of greens. This morning I got at least a kitchen trash bag size full of grounds, and yesterday I got 2 5-pound coffee bags full of grounds. I'll just keep collecting through the week and by Sunday when I actually do the turning I'm sure I'll have tons. That oughta heat up the pile pretty good and give me some finished compost pretty soon. I've been cold composting since all last year but I am ready to start working on heating it up and getting the right balances. I have a garage full of bagged leaves that I got in the fall (seriously, I have about 25 bags) and so that and the coffeegrounds, veggie scraps, garden waste, etc. will probably allow me to make enough compost this summer to top off the beds this fall.

And as far as my started seeds, my cucumbers. basil and marigolds are up so far. I admit I haven't checked in about 2 days so the other plants might be up also. I've been hardening off my other plants (the wrong way, I might add... I didn't start them as slow as I could have). I plan on planting them outside in the 17th, so they have a good 2 weeks to get used to being outside before being set out. Once all the rest of the plants downstairs germinate I might just let them go outside too. The seeds I have downstairs are 3 types of cukes, marigolds, basil, million dollar melon (I thought I got Charentais but couldn't find them) and also my Jarrahdale pumpkins.

My garlic yesterday was looking a bit yellowed, kinda like Granny's, and so I was thinking I should make some cornmeal tea (that's what you used, right?) but then this morning they looked green and strong. It did rain pretty hard last night so maybe they just needed a drink. I've got most of the hoses cut for my irrigation system, I mostly just now need to put them all together and install it in the garden. That will make it a lot easier to water it. I was going to get it done this weekend but didn't have the time... and really, I figure as long as I can get it in by the time most of my plants will go in (2 weeks) I should be fine. I still have few enough plants that I can water using a watering can at this point.

Staying home...

2009-04-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Eleora brought home a note from the daycare director that her teacher was leaving because she has the opportunity to now stay home with her kids. I am really happy for her, but it also makes me melancholy.

Now that spring is here especially, it seems like every single day I wish I could just stay home with my kids and hang out with them, teach them how to do stuff outside, get my gardening done, cook decent suppers where we can all sit together around the table (more than just on the weekends), keep up on laundry, the kids can get the proper amount of sleep in their naps, and so many more reasons.

Only one more year... actually about 13 months till Tommy is done with school!

The Compost Fair!

2009-04-27T12:45:00.001-07:00

So on Saturday I went with my mom to the annual Composting Fair put on by the Spokane Master Composters. We're both very interested in becoming master composters ourselves and might do the program next year. It's not really compatible with my current schedule although I was just thinking... I bet I could trade shifts for those days. Who knows, maybe I'll even be on an earlier shift next year. It won't be until next spring anyway.

So anyway it was really cool! It was an overcast drizzly day so we dressed a bit warmer than we have been and headed up to the Finch Arboretum. We found a fabulous front-row parking spot and went up to the displays. They were also having an arbor day festival and so there were lots of displays and people there.

The sad truth is, almost nothing they taught me was new to me. It sure was fun to go though! They had displays on what are greens & browns, how to build a pile, the different types of bins, composting with worms, making compost tea, etc. They also had a cool video that I thought was pretty informative. That's where I saw one thing I need to start doing. Actually 2 things, but I'll go over that in a bit.

My pile at home is pretty much a cold pile. I built it with kitchen waste and cardboard shreds but it was too far for the hose to really reach so it never got moist enough. I also didn't really mix anything in, I pretty much just dump the kitchen scraps on top and throw my browns on, either cardboard or now, leaves. The video showed the people actually sort of burying the scraps in the pile and just covering them up using a handheld garden cultivator, not adding any new browns or anything. I realized that it was probably a lot more efficient to do it that way and resolved to begin adding my waste that way. Also, they had pitchforks that they were mixing and turning the compost with, which I don't have.

I had a small pile of leftover manure that I'd been wanting to combine with my existing pile. At the fair they gave me a black plastic (or hard rubber?) compost bin. It's a sheet that you put together in a circle, much like my existing bin that's made of a circle of hardware cloth. So on Sunday, Tommy went to Big R for some more grass seed (I'll post on that later) and picked me up a pitchfork. After dinner we went outside and I put together the new bin (it turned out quite a bit bigger than the existing one), dumped my compost pile over and started redoing it into the big bin.

For one, it was pretty funny to watch the mice scurry out of my pile. I know birds come a lot and eat the stuff from my pile (sandwich crusts, etc) but I didn't realize how many mice had nests in it. At least one of them actually ended up in the new bin and unless it can manage to dig or chew it's way out, the holes aren't big enough so it will most likely become compost itself.

I set it up where the hose could reach, and Tommy helped me dampen everything while I forked the old compost pile (it was stinky!), the manure, and mix it together. It was fun! The manure, leaves, cardboard, and some (composted) kitchen stuff all went in together nicely. I think it's a pretty good blend, if a bit low on greens but we'll have to see. Hopefully it will heat up a bit and then I'll know it's a good pile.

The other thing I didn't realize itself was a good visual assessment of the proper mix and ratio. At the fair they actually had piles that they'd started earlier in the week and they were already heating up and in the process of being turned as we went by. It was a great way to really look and see what a good balanced pile looks like.

After we were done, we went home and had some nice hot taco soup. It was a really nice day :) I really hope I can find a way to do the master composter program next year.

Potted up today, planted strawberries

2009-04-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

Today I had a half day at work with the morning off. Although, to my unfortunate luck, I also had to have a root canal today.

So I dropped the girls off at daycare, then went to a local nursery. I got a couple small houseplant starts that I'd been looking for an 5 strawberry plants. Then I went and spent about 45 minutes at the dentist. I have a very nice dentist and it went pretty well, all things considered.

Then I came home and finished installing my new shop lights, and got everything potted up except the 2 remaining flats of peppers and broccoli. Which, by the way, are so overgrown that they are pushing the humidity domes up. There were some tomatoes that were in toilet paper rolls and also egg cartons. NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT USE EGG CARTONS. They dried out way too fast, didn't have much space for roots, and pretty much all those tomatoes are gone. I transplanted a couple that I'm hoping might make it, but I have mostly doubts. The hard part is that was all the cherry (actually currant) tomatoes. I don't think I have any that survived... we'll see. But I have a TON of paste tomatoes. The tomatillos are actually growing extremely well.

The funny part was this - the tomatoes I'd potted into TP rolls had mushrooms! Yes, real ones. I inoculated the soil mix with a bacteria/fungus mix and obviously those containers provided the right conditions for fruiting because each one had mushrooms in it. They were very cute. Until I buried them when I potted up the 'maters :)

Tomorrow I managed to be able to take half the day off as well and so I'm off at 2 tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get some more done - I really need to get going on those 2 remaining flats and also plant stuff outside! I've been delaying planting outside because I don't have irrigation in place yet. I did find a place online where I could order everything I needed shipped for about $82. This includes the kind of soaker hose with the internal emitters and pretty much everything I need. Still... $82!

Need irrigation advice!

2009-04-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

Hey all you readers out there (all 5 of you ;)!

I am trying to figure out the cheapest but effective way to set up some sort of drip irrigation for my raised beds. I'm looking online but all the DIY methods also involve lots of expensive stuff.

So... any ideas?

Pictures from the Property

2009-04-20T14:41:00.001-07:00

3 posts in one day! Oh my!

Ok actually it's really really slow at work today and my mom who is up at the property right now took some pictures and sent them to me. Specifically I asked her to send me pictures of the garlic but she sent me some others, so I thought I'd post them :)

Here's my first compost project. I actually had a whole bunch, about 30 pounds, of old rancid soap that I'd made. I wasn't going to use it, so this was my project to try and compost it. Supposedly soap will compost. As you can see, it's been spread out quite a bit. I imagine the wildlife have been picking through it a bit. I layered it lasagne-style with cardboard, rabbit manure, leaves and the soap. It's kind of an eyesore, but was fun!

Yeah yeah, just another forest picture, right? Well yeah, I guess so. But it's a pretty picture, huh! This is actually the spot (I think) where I will be clearing it out and making a meadow that will someday become a farm.

This is the view from our homesite. Isn't it beautiful? This photo was actually taken from down below at the "bench" but it shows the view the best. We'll probably top off or clear out some of those taller trees since there's plenty of woods behind us and that way it will not obstruct the view. I can't wait!

Worm Composting

2009-04-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

I think it's time to retire my worm bins. I'm horrible at maintaining them now that I have a backyard with a regular compost pile. Down in the basement, y poor worms, hardy souls that they may be, have been severely neglected.

So I think one of the to-do things on my list for this weekend will be to distribute the contents of the bins among my garden beds. The beds are filled with mulch-y food for them anyway, and I think they will do better out there. More room for them to expand in numbers, and a pretty much indefinite supply of food with all the compost, manure, shavings and leaves that fill the beds.

It's kind of a sad thing, though. Those compost bins really helped me through the time when I lived in the apartment and had no yard. I really hope and pray that I never have to live in an apartment ever again. Living with no yard to work in for me is a difficult scenario. So, it's bittersweet, but I think the only sad part is really my nostalgia kicking in. And if anything ever comes up and I need to set up a bin again I can always go grab some worms to start with from my garden beds. I'm sure by the end of the summer there will be bazillions :)

The weekend's work

2009-04-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

So we went up to the property for the day on Saturday. Actually, a partial day. Eleora threw up a couple times on the way there and I think it wasn't just carsickness, but I think she had what Sophia had earlier this week. She seemed a bit better but lethargic, practically begged to take a nap later on. We ended up just going home around 3 after she woke up. But in the meantime it was great to tromp around on the property! We went around with my dad and brothers looking at the property lines and discussing home sites. Someday soon we'll need to start actually planning instead of discussing!

My garlic is looking fabulous up there! If you remember, last fall I planted a couple cloves of garlic and mulched them with old leaves. They survived and came up quite nicely. A little shorter than my garlic here, but the winter lasts a bit longer up there than it does down here. I'd say the garlic was at least 6-8 inches tall already. You can see in the pictures that it's definitely doing well. I'm just glad deer don't eat garlic! I did plant 5 cloves and only 4 seem to have come up but that's not bad.
I also had a couple bags of really badly sprouted potatoes. Not really good for anything but planting or composting, so I took them up there and Mom will find a place and plant them. Who knows what will come from that!

So then we came home and had a nice quiet evening. Eleora was feeling better on the way home, as indicated by the near-constant "Old Petonald hadda farm, EIEIO" we heard ;) Fia slept the whole way home. Eleora was still not 100% but at least she was feeling better... though it was an early bedtime for both girls. Eleora didn't even want to read books - she asked to go to bed right away. Weird!

Sunday was a really nice day. I took Eleora to Lowe's in the morning and we got some more annuals for my brick planter, some more shop lights with bulbs, a small charcoal BBQ, a timer for the faucet outside, some grass seed to patch the spot under the spruce tree, etc. It was a nice trip for us and we had fun :) I don't usually go to the chain stores, I prefer going to the locally owned Ace or Big R but Lowe's had these bulbs for the shop lights that supposedly have the same spectrum as sunlight. Same price as regular bulbs, I think around $6.75 for 2 of them. So, we'll try those out and see how we do. I have TONS of potting up to do and STILL didn't get my seeding done.

HOWEVER, in spite of the fact I didn't get my direct seeding done, I did get something major done. I wish I could take pictures but the stupid camera... nuff said. Anyway, my biggest issue was that I didn't have dividers for the square feet on my beds. The thing is, my beds are not perfectly square footed, if that's even a term. They are 3.75'x7.5' and so a couple sections are not quite a foot wide. Because of that, I don't want to "eyeball" each section because I KNOW I'd be off. I was trying to think of the best way to get some dividers, and CHEAP.

What I decided to do was this: I measured out my increments on the beds themselves and marked them. I took my biggest drill bit (about 1/3 inch or so) and drilled holes into the beds about a half inch below the top. I then just threaded and wove my string (got a roll of polyester mason's twine at Lowe's for $1.65) through the holes. It looks neat and tidy, and the best thing - it makes it VERY inconvenient for the cat to use the beds as his LITTER BOX. I'll take a photo as soon as I can because it's VERY cool. Now I have all the beds sectioned off, and my half sections are nicely marked as well. My neighbor commented on how organized I am about this. Well... if anything in my life can be organized I guess it could be this!

Other than that, I still have tons of potting up to do but I'm really trying to be relaxed about it. The truth is we do have a pretty long season here so it isn't like NOW OR DIE. It's ok if it takes me longer. It's OK if I have to wait another week or so to plant carrots. My garden will be fine. This is my first one ever, for crying out loud! The point is to have fun with my girls and to grow good food.

I think all this beautiful weather is mellowing me out :) We also did get some more annuals - I got some white impatiens and some purple alyssum to plant in the brick planter, and then we also got some magenta and purple primroses for the side flowerbed. I think the brick planter is pretty full... it's going to be so gorgeous this summer when everything is grown up. Eleora had fun helping me water in the plants. Then we grilled brats for dinner. All in all, it was a really nice day.

Sick days

2009-04-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I ended up taking the day off work to stay home with Sophia who was sick. She's feeling much better now but the really fun part of staying home with a sick kid (especially when they sleep a lot) is doing all the domestic stuff I don't normally get to do! It's weird how much more fulfilled I am when I can spend a day doing that, rather than working, even though I really do love my job. So all in all, I have to say I really do enjoy when I'm forced to take a sick day for the kids.

So yesterday we did a little grocery shopping, and the store had some annuals there so I was able to plant some shade loving annuals in my brick planter railing that surrounds the patio. I got some alyssum, lobelia and pansies. My sweet peas are coming up very nicely.

I also was able to get laundry done, clean up the house and make a home-cooked meal. Sure was nice! I'd been lamenting to Tommy about how lately I've lost my cooking inspiration. I don't know if it's just being out of practice but even on the weekends when I'm home to cook, I go for the quick things like grilled cheese, etc. It's like I can never think of anything to cook or even anything to buy groceries to cook. So we talked about it, he refreshed me on a couple things I used to make a lot that he misses. One was my potato corn chowder, so I made that yesterday. I made it with kielbasa sausage, potatoes, corn, celery and of course garlic & onion in homemade chicken stock. It was excellent (I also bought some french bread at the store, didn't have time to make my own bread for the meal) and I'm currently eating some leftovers for lunch.

We're going to the Property on Saturday for a day trip. I've got a bunch of sprouted potatoes in the basement that are beyond use but I'll take them there, plant them, and who knows! I'm not sure if the deer will eat the potatoes but it's either that or the compost pile, so we might as well experiment and see what happens. I also am dying to check on the garlic I planted last fall. The stuff I planted here is growing like crazy. The Inchelium Red variety that I had is actually native to that area. It was found on the Colville Indian reservation, and our property is about a 10 minute drive from the city of Colville.

The weekend

2009-04-13T11:30:00.001-07:00

Well, I didn't get everything done on my list. The kids decided to conspire against us and make it a practically nap-less weekend. Even Sophia fought it. It was really weird.

So... what I did. I made some baby food, although didn't have enough for all week. I did some laundry, I got the flowerbed cleaned up (T and I decimated the blackberry bramble that was trying to take it over) and so hopefully the mums won't have disease this year since all the old growth is cut out. I tried to pull up some of the grass that has a hold of part of it but I think that's a lost cause. It's a shame the bed wasn't maintained, there's a lot of really pretty flowers in there. When we pulled out the bramble we discovered a rosebush that had died. :(

I did get all the purple broccoli potted up and a lot of the cabbage. I got a yard of compost and was able to spread it all. I got my bulb onions transplanted outside and the scallions will be OK to wait another week. Potatoes are planted. I didn't get any of my direct seeding done, though. Still have the regular Waltham broccoli and a little of the green sprouting broccoli that's trying to grow out of the flat and take over the grow rack. It's hard when they are so big because then you break half the seedlings trying to untangle them!

The worst part about it? I can't find my garden plan! I spent all this time making one that took into account shady spots, crop rotation for next year, companion planting, etc. So, I just planted some of my onions in each bed except the one I remember I wanted to put my tomatoes in. We'll see. This morning I laid out a new one and it's waiting for me to redesign it.

Anyway, this weekend was frustrating because I just couldn't seem to get stuff done. And I was going to start running again now that it's light out early enough but I slept through my alarm. I'm just so dog-tired these days. I don't know how moms with young babies are supposed to get back in shape if we're so tired from being UP ALL NIGHT with a teething baby that we can't even wake up on time. Can you tell I'm annoyed? Still need to do a lot of direct seeding and a lot of potting UP. And I realized that I really should have 2 shop lights on each rack instead of 1, especially when I have the bigger cups. So I'll probably be spending more of my allowance this weekend. There's worse things to spend it on, that's for sure :)

One thing I keep telling myself is that I don't have ROOM for all these plants so it's OK if some of the seedlings die. I have 100+ potted up plants. I do plan on selling the extras on craigslist but the thing is, people are going to want herbs and tomato plants... they aren't going to be as excited as I am about french cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, etc. So it's ok if I let some of those guys go. I still have a flat of peppers that will need transplanting in a week or 2, and a half flat of broccoli & cabbage & eggplant.

Any of you gardeners out there know exactly what I'm deeling...

Planting stuff this weekend

2009-04-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

I have a really busy weekend ahead of me!

Saturday:

Go get a truckload of compost
Get a birthday present for little Shane and easter egg dye
Make a Costco trip
spread said compost
Put together salad mix box
fill box with compost
Pot up broccoli, cabbage and rest of tomatillos
Little Shane's birthday Party (I can't remember if it's at 3 or 4)
Dye easter eggs with Wola

Sunday:

Have an easter egg hunt with Wola
Direct sow carrots, spinach, radishes, parsley, dill, cilantro, salad mix, and potatoes
Make the week's worth of baby food - broccoli this week, with cheese and garlic. Lucky Fia!
Make the week's worth of protein muffins and crudites for work lunches.
Laundry
Clean the kitchen

In other springtime notes:
I am absolutely LOVING the violets growing in the lawn. I think I'm going to dig some of them up and see if they will grow in the planter. It just seems like such a shame to have them in the lawn where they will be MOWED. I made a pretty necklace of them this morning for Wola which she promptly tore into pieces. Lol... oh well. My sweet peas are up and my garlic is going nutso. This weekend if I have time I'm going to stop by Big R and get some annuals to plant. Maybe Wola will have fun. I just hope she doesn't pull them up!

In a couple weeks, the Spokane Solid Waste is hosting a composting fair. What fun! My mom and I are going to go... they are giving out composting bins and tree seedlings. I'm excited!

Busy busy April

2009-04-06T10:47:00.001-07:00

Well it's been a doozy last couple weeks, I must say. First off, the weather is FABULOUS. Days like today make me want to take a snooze in a hammock. It's supposed to be 67 tomorrow!

But who can snooze when there's so much work to be done! I spent a lot of time in the yard today, inspecting. Wola and I had a great time yesterday exploring the yard. We discovered violets growing in the lawn, one lone dandelion (which I promptly picked and threw into the street to prevent it from seeding), lots of buds on the trees, and the garlic is coming up VERY well. Lots of maple seedlings, also... but those will be smothered when I get my wood chip mulch down (when I finally get it!). We also dug all the weeds out of the brick planter at the end of the patio, in preparation for either my strawberries or herbs. I still haven't decided what I'm going to put in there.

I potted up all the tomato seedlings and ended up with 73 total! Wow... lol. 4 different varieties and also a couple tomatillos, although I still have to finish potting the rest of those up. I will also NEED to pot up all the broccoli, onions, and cabbage next weekend. I might even try and get it done during the week at some point... some of the cabbage seedlings were falling over even before they have their first true leaves. I think because it's pretty warm there inside the grow rack, especially under a humidity dome.

I might also instead of potting up, just stick the onions right into the ground. Next weekend will be busy. I'll need to get a bunch more compost so I can plant into it especially if I want to get my onions right in, and also I'll be planting my potatoes that I just got this weekend. They are in a flat in my dining room, greening up a bit in preparation for planting. I'm also going to sow carrots, radishes, dill, chives, cilantro and parsley (both the rooted and the regular type).

Then I also have to put together my box for salad mix (it'll be real quick, just 4 - 1x6 boards screwed together in a box shape), fill it with compost and plant! That's a lot of compost. Now that I'm thinking about it, I should just go get a truckload instead of buying bags. I think I'll make some phone calls today and see - I bet it would be cheaper and I could just top off all my beds with any remainder.

And the other thing I'll need to do soon is to arrange for a day off from work so I can work in the garden, like spreading mulch and whatnot. Of course, that assumes I'm able to GET SOME MULCH.

Note to self for next year - only plant similar items in each flat! It's a pain to have a partial flat of mostly tomatoes (which are all going nuts) and eggplant (which have only germinated one so far). Also, I am DEFINITELY doing soil blocks. Transplanting from a solid flat into smaller pots, egg crates, TP tubes, etc. is a pain. Soil blocks will be a lot easier, I'm thinking. I'm going to get one of the teeny size for the initial germination and then probably a 2".

Seeds are up! Woohoo!

2009-03-31T10:54:00.000-07:00

I checked this morning and WOOWZA! The tomatoes are reaching for the sky! I see little rootlets on the peppers and onions. Everything else is officially up except I didn't see anything from the eggplant. I can't wait to get pictures!

I think, though, that the dome covers need to be changed somehow. They do a great job of keeping the moisture in, but they make it so I can't put the lights low enough. The tomatoes are a bit leggy (though they don't even have real leaves yet) and while I'm sure they will be fine, it makes me think about next time.

If I can get some sort of clear cover that's flat instead of domed, especially just for starters, then I could put the lights a lot lower. I'd just have to watch them a lot more carefully and make sure that once the sprouts get close to the top of the plastic cover that I change it, either removing it completely or replacing with a dome cover.

And I just got a ship notification that my potatoes have been shipped :) So this should be a busy next couple weeks.

Didn't plant my sweet peas :(

2009-03-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Well on Saturday when I went to go plant my sweet peas I had a sort of accident - I picked up the jar of soaked seeds, with the packet behind it, started carrying them outside... and OUCH! I got stung on my pinky. There was a WASP on the back of the seed packet.

First off, HOW was he still AROUND, much less in my HOUSE in MARCH? Needless to say, he became a FLAT SQUISHED wasp pretty quickly but my finger still hurt!

Anyway, that happened, and then I had to come back in and by the time the pain subsided it had started to rain too much for me to want to go outside. So I drained the seeds, wet a paper towel and wrapped it around them. Now maybe they will sprout but I should still be able to plant them one of these days. We'll see. I don't want to waste these ones, it's a beautiful open-pollinated blue collection and cost me $2.50 for 20 seeds. I was hoping to save seed from them. I guess even if I end up with a few of them I should be OK.

Finished super early seeds yesterday!

2009-03-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I had some time off from work which I spent getting all the remaining hardware to suspend my light fixtures (I only have 2 of the 4 up right now). I also went and got some humidity domes and then spent a nice chunk of time planting the rest of my early seeds.

So far I have a whole bunch of tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, eggplant, cabbage and onions planted. Nothing's coming up yet, though. The humidity domes will really help though because the lights sit (literally) right on top of them. They aren't nearly warm enough to melt the plastic, but they warm up the air trapped inside the dome and keep it moist & warm. I can't wait to see what my plants will look like next week! So far no germination from what I did before, although it was all long-germinating stuff like tomatoes & peppers.

I also soaked my sweet pea seeds and I'll be planting them outside today after work. Maybe I'll find some working batteries so I can take a picture! I also will need to find some shade loving annuals like pansies, etc. We'll see how the day goes by. I think I want to add a bunch of vermiculite before I plant because I know myself well enough to know I won't be faithful with watering the flower areas every day. They aren't even in a real pot or container... they are just in a slim ledge thing that was made when the low brick wall was put in around the patio. So it's not very big and will probably dry out pretty quickly. So... I guess I'm on the search for annuals that are drought-resistant and do OK in the shade, since the area is shaded most of the day.

Started seeds!

2009-03-24T10:24:00.000-07:00

One of these days I'll get new batteries that WORK for the camera and then we can start posting pics again!

On Sunday Wola and I had fun planting seeds. I planted 2 flats of peppers, some tomatoes, tomatillo, and some eggplant. Wola got a bag of pumpkin seeds and she had a great time planting them and mixing them in with the dirt. We put them under our lights, covered with saran wrap to trap in the moisture and here we go :) Nothing's happened yet, of course. Hopefully this weekend I'll get the rest of my early planting done - broccoli, cabbage, cukes, etc. I might wait a bit for the cukes though since I won't be setting anything out until the end of May. I'll also be doing some herbs, melons and squash soon.

I kinda wanted to do lunar planting but the way things are working out is that I am able to plant when I am able to plant. Maybe next year I can coordinate with the phases and whatnot. Apparently the gravitational pull of the moon makes a difference when you are planting. Next year I am buying a farmer's almanac. In fact, Mom if you are reading this, a farmer's almanac would be a GREAT Christmas present, this way I can plan it all out before I start anything. Next year I'm hoping to start my peppers quite a bit earlier.

I need to get pictures of my grow setup posted - it's so sweet! It's huge powder-coated steel shelf unit, 4 feet wide. So far I have 2 shop lights hung, I still need to get chains and bulbs for the other 2. I've curtained the whole thing with mylar space blankets to reflect the light from the shop lights and to keep in the heat. Peppers especially like it warm for germination and since it's not particularly warm in the basement it's been working pretty well, especially with the saran wrap on top of the soil to trap in the heat and moisture. I think I'll get some humidity domes to help them along but the plastic wrap will do in a pinch until I can get some of those.

I have a garlic sprout! I'm so proud of it. It's the only one up so far, but I did dig a little under the mulch and the others are coming up slowly. The neighbor's dog apparently did a little digging in my garden beds this winter looking for mice that I think nested in the mulch but I don't think he disturbed any of the garlic. I'm not going to be a happy camper if he digs up my plants after I plant them... my neighbor is a very nice guy though and so I'm sure he would be nice about it if I had to ask him to keep his dog in the yard.

That's all for today!

More work on the seed starting...

2009-03-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

I've REALLY got to get this going! Big R hasn't gotten the fluroescent tubes back into stock yet so next weekend I'll have to go get some at Ace Hardware.

Yesterday Wola and I went downstairs into the basement to mix up our seed starting medium. Tommy lugged the (soaked) bale of peat, the 2 bags of compost and my vermiculite downstairs so we could work on it right away. I had a rubbermaid bin that I was going to use for the mix... so I cut open the bale of peat and we started scooping!

Saturday we'd made a trip to Target and I found some cool kids gardening stuff! I ended up getting Wola the cutest little cow print mud boots. The boots have eyes and they even have little tails in the back. I also got her a kid-size little red trowel.

So anyway, we scooped peat moss from the bale into the bin using our trowels. We filled the bin about a quarter full of the peat moss, making a "mig meth (big mess)" in the process. Then I dumped half a bag of compost and the little bag of vermiculite in. Then I added in the mycelium inoculant and also the bacterial inoculant I'd gotten from Gardens Alive. Mixed it all together with our trowels (Eleora had fun trying to put the mix back into the peat bale, but I tried to make sure most of the mix stayed in the bin), added a little water to moisten it a bit more.

Then we decided that we were "all deerty" enough so we went upstairs and cleaned up a bit. Now we have our mix prepped and moistened, I'm sure the bacteria and whatnot are growing away. I'll start planting next weekend, hopefully, provided I can get my light bulbs on time.

My grow rack

2009-02-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

Well we've got things going underway now. I bought a nice sturdy rack at Costco for under $70. It's got 5 shelves and is super heavy, made from powder-coated steel. THe assembly was actually pretty simple. I realized that I could theoretically fit 2 shop lights on each rack if I wanted to. I have 4 right now, I might double them up and see how it does.

Tommy picked me up 8 plastic flats and 5 space blankets. I'm going to wrap the space blankets around the rack, leaving a "curtain" at the front that I can open and close at will. This will reflect the light and also trap in the heat. We've situated it pretty close to the furnace and so I'm hoping that the trapped warmth will eliminate the need for any warming mats in order to germinate my tomatoes and especially peppers.

Other than that, I've got my seed order and my seed starting ingredients. And I got a nice pretty green wheelbarrow to mix it all in, though I might just end up using plastic bins in the basement since I think that would be easier. I bought a bunch of peat moss, some vermiculite, and a couple bags of organic compost. I also have my mycogrow mycelium inoculant, and some different inoculant from Gardens Alive. I'm also planning on separating out my earthworm castings from my worm bins and using all of that. I've got some bags of dry, shredded leaves in the garage that I'll mix in as well. I'm trying to find a source of a larger amount of vermiculite but I'll have to settle for the small bag I got at Lowe's. I'm hoping that when the nurseries open up in a few weeks that I'll be able to buy larger quantities of vermiculite. Or maybe when Big R opens their lawn & garden shop for the season... I'll have to call them and see when that will be.

Other than that, I need to keep folding my newspaper pots!

Growing for Market

2009-02-06T10:31:00.000-08:00

I got my first Growing for Market magazine yesterday! It came with a cool book with lots of ideas of how to increase your income for market year-round. I haven't looked at it yet, carefully set it aside for tonight. Tommy (hopefully) will be going out tonight to see a friend and so that leaves me with my magazine and a hot cup of tea :)

I keep thinking that soon I'm going to actually start working on my business plan. I think I might want to keep track of everything I put into the garden, even though it's going to be mostly for home use, but that's where everything will come from. Even just a one or two page plan at this point I think will help me stay organized and focused. I have so many ideas and they are just all over the place, so it would be good to get them all down on paper and think up some sort of timeframe.

Phoenix Oyster Mushrooms

2009-02-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

My mom and I decided to cultivate some edible mushrooms up on our property. The acreage has been selectively logged and so there are all these piles of wastewood all over. We'll try and use as much firewood as we can from them, but there is so much fallen dead wood that it would take forever. So I thought it would be fun to do mushrooms!

I just ordered some spawn for the Phoenix Oyster mushroom. The logs are mostly conifer types, and those do well on the softwoods. I ordered from Fungi.com and I also decided to get a couple ounces of their MycoGrow to mix in with my seed starting mix this year.

Here's the description from the website:

This member of the Tree Oyster family thrives on conifer stumps and logs, especially spruces and fir; after incubating the logs may be partially buried, vertically-oriented, to conserve water during fruiting. This species enjoys warm climates, producing large, white-beige mushrooms.

The cool thing about Oyster mushrooms is that they are very difficult to ship, therefore any locally produced mushrooms would fetch a premium price. We won't be selling any for a while, but it will be a good option for us when the time comes if we're able to grow them. We also might try Chicken Of The Woods. I'd love to grow shiitakes but they need oak trees and I have none.

more ordering and Wola cuteness

2009-02-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

This morning I used the $25 off $25 GardensAlive coupon my mom got me. I got a floating row cover, long enough to cover 3 of my beds, some organic houseplant fertilizer (for my plants at work) and some soil inoculant. I'm sure my soil in the beds is fine, with all the compost, manure, leaves, etc, that's in there (and I plan on moving my worms into the garden beds when it warms up a bit also) but for the started plants I wanted to get some mycorrhizae into the starter mix. I hope this will work!

This morning when we were going out to the truck Wola was walking on the hard packed snow in the yard like she always does. When I came to get her she said "Careful, don't fall down and get owies!" She's so cute when she copies us... :)

Garden planning for 2009

2009-02-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

So I've started to formulate my plan for what I am going to plant. I even have a little sketch on graph paper of what plants go in which place in my garden. I'm doing square foot gardening combined with intensive planting, companion planting and sheet composting. I have roughly 165 square feet to plant.

I am going to order all my seeds except potatoes from Baker Creek this year. Potatoes I'll probably get from Seed Saver's Exchange. I like Baker Creek a lot - they have a good selection but not too much that overwhelms me. Since I want to be a market gardener, I want to try out some varieties that I think will be good for markets. I was, though, having problems restraining myself... I had to pare down the order quite a bit. I'm sure every other gardener reading this will understand! But besides the selection, I like them because they are committed to not selling any genetically modified seed - it's all untreated, open pollinated and heirlooms. In addition, they even do GMO testing on all their seeds that are more subsceptible to GMO contamination. Corn is a big one - corn pollen can travel for miles on the wind... and unfortunately, if the corn you have been saving seed from for years becomes contaminated by GMO pollen from a farmer who is miles and miles away, you are all the sudden liable and could be sued by Monsanto for copyright infringement. I know it sounds nuts... but sadly enough it has happened and put more than one small farmer out of business.

So I decided that I'm just going to buy seeds this year and I'm going to build a grow rack for my basement to start all my long-season plants like peppers, tomatoes, melons, etc. Considering the fact that I'll only use one or two of each, and I'll end up with about 20-30 seeds, I'm going to plant ALL of them and sell the extras on craigslist. I do plan on selling plant starts as a part of my business plan in the long run anyway. I thought about buying a soil blocker but I think I'm just going to fold newspaper pots origami-style and sell them in those. They decompose in the soil and are free!

I'm not sure what I'm going to use for my soil mix - I know I'll use compost, worm castings, leaf mold, mycorrhizae inoculant, and then maybe soil-less starting mix and throw it all together. I'll build my rack out of some costco wire shelving and it should fit 8 flats for 1 shelf. So we'll see how that goes!

So far, here's my plant list:
Blue Lake Bush Beans
Purple Sprouting Broccoli
regular head broccoli
Amarillo Carrot (Yellow)
Cosmic Purple Carrot
Snow White Carrot
Shin Kuroda Carrot (orange baby type)
Richmond Green Apple Cucumber
Snow's Fancy Pickling Cucumber
Rocky Top Salad Mix
Million Dollar Melon (green fleshed)
Charentais Melon (orange fleshed)
Flat of Italy onion
Australian Brown onion
Crimson Forest Scallion (red)
Oregon Sugar Pod Peas
Purple Jalapeno
Quadrato bell pepper (yellow)
Mini Red Stuffer peppers
White Hailstone Radish
Early Globe Radish
Chinese Red Meat Radish
Purple Plum Radish
Bloomsdale Spinach
Jarrahdale Pumpkin (pie type)
Dad's Sunset tomato (orange)
Principe Borghese tomato (red paste type)
Siletz tomato (early red type)
Land Race Currant Tomato (tiny cherry type)
Tomatillo Verde
Genovese Basil
Oregano
Flatleaf Parsley
Parsley Root
Chives
Borage
Slow-bold Cilantro
Orange Hawaii Marigold
Empress of India Nasturtium
Blue Reflections Sweet Pea

Phew! That's a lot of seeds! That's the order I plan, I'll actually place it later and we'll see what I end up getting, since I'm sure some of these will be out of stock.

Meatball Stroganoff

2009-01-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

I'm just blogging this since I threw it together tonight and it turned out really good.

1 large onion, chopped
2 lbs mushrooms, sliced
cooking wine
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 can beef broth
italian style meatballs
10 oz or so of sauerkraut
1 box rotini pasta

Saute the onion in butter until it begins to be translucent, then add the mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms are browning. Deglaze with wine (I used white but red might be better), add soup and broth. Mix until well incorporated. Add meatballs (as many as you prefer) and sauerkraut. Heat to boiling and then turn down the heat to simmer for about 10 minutes (or as long as it takes to cook the pasta).

Cook the pasta until it's al dente, then mix it in with the sauce. This was about a double recipe so I'd have leftovers to take to work for lunch this week. I think this would translate well to the crockpot.

It'll be nice when I can use my own mushroom soup, beef broth, sauerkraut, etc. For now, it's sure nice to have the shortcuts to use.

Spin Farming

2009-01-22T14:23:00.000-08:00

I've been hearing a lot about this new concept called Spin Farming lately. It's really new and so is pretty introductory but was supposed to be revolutionary, focusing on teaching methods for urban market farming.

I decided to buy myself the spin guides. It cost over $80, and truth be told is not something I would consider worth the money. However, there are some really great concepts to be had in the guides. I wonder if the price puts people off from buying their guides? The best part has been once you make a purchase you are then allowed to be a member of their google email group which has been a plethora of great information.

A lot of it is general concepts, except they structure it really well and basically have a "template" for people to follow. I've heard it being referred to as a farming "franchise." The concepts are great - use what land you have in your yard, rent, borrow, barter for other people's spots. People farm little plots as much as 500 square feet, as long as they have enough of them. 2 foot wide rows, heavy mulching, minimal tilling. No chemicals. The best part is that you farm in the city, so it's a lot easier to transport and sell your produce - and you don't need a lot of space, just a half acre or so, usually made up of garden plots in different back yards.

I like the concepts. I am, truthfully, pretty attached to my wood-sided raised beds. I'm not sure yet how this will translate since I do eventually plan on market gardening on a large enough scale to support us. I don't think I'll be able to afford cedar sided raised beds for all of that... I'm also not going to till, being a fan of sheet mulching instead. I figure, throw down the mulch and let the worms till it in!

OK so I know this post doesn't have much structure, but it's been so long since I posted and I'm just trying to get over the fact that I don't have a picture to post. Dumb, I know... but it feels like it's a naked post without a picture!

We got 3 feet of snow last month. It was crazy! My garden beds looked like white marshmallows sitting on a blanket of, well, marshmallow. I took pictures... I'll get them uploaded someday. The worst part was not getting to the compost pile. Compostable waste building up on the back porch with everything else was NOT easy to live with. But at least it was so cold it didn't smell, right? :)

It's been melting now and it's interesting because I can see the beds and I had heaped up leaves on them pretty good and now the level is at least a few inches below the tops of the beds. I imagine by springtime it'll be down to about 6 inches, and I estimate I piled the leaves about 15 inches high.

I'll be making a seed order pretty soon, just have to pick out my varieties. I also decided that this year we'll inoculate some logs up at the property with phoenix oyster mushroom spore. They grow well on conifers and, well, we got PILES of old conifer logs from when the property was selectively logged. We'll see how it goes. It'll take about a year from when we inoculate the logs before they start producing, but this is a long term plan anyway. Oyster mushrooms sell from $6-10/lb in the stores and do not ship well, so are generally hard to find. Sounds like a boon to me! I like the idea of growing mushrooms since they aren't as much WORK.

Also, I had another idea - I wanted to grow shiitake mushrooms but no oak trees to grow them on. I know a lot of residential homes in the area have oak trees so I was thinking if I contact tree trimming places I might be able to get any oak trimmings/tops/chips they end up with, and those would grow mushrooms just fine. In fact, if I offer them cash for oak, maybe they might be real good about it... who knows. Though, I STILL haven't gotten my load of wood chips for the mulch (I'm thinking at this point, I'm NOT going to get them) so I'm not sure if it would work or not but would be a good idea. At $10/lb for shiitakes, I think it would be worthwhile to offer $30 for a ground up oak tree, especially if they would otherwise have to PAY to get rid of it.

long time no write!

2008-11-17T11:13:00.000-08:00

I sorta knew this would happen, though. I get so busy with work, keeping up with housework and kids, and also doing projects here and there. I think it's hard because I don't blog because I don't have PICTURES because who wants to read a boring old blog with no pictures???

Well, I do take them sometimes but then the time it takes to upload them and get them arranged... I just end up not blogging at all. So today I'm going to blog about my recent stuff with NO pictures just because I don't have them yet.

The biggest news is that we got a truck! It's so nice, I've had it less than a week and have already been hauling lots of stuff (mostly leaves ;)

Let's see... the garden is coming along nicely. I have 17 bags of leaves in the garage for the summertime compost pile and about 1 1/2 truckloads of shredded leaves that were delivered in a pile next to my manure. I still never got my chipped wood mulch from the landscaping company but you know... I have SO MANY leaves I think leaves & compost & household waste will actually be enough. I've just done a few layers of leaves/manure/leaves/manure and they are about halfway full. I also have a fair amount of kitchen waste and chopped up pumpkins in there, too. Yesterday I went for a morning run and one of the houses on my route had some bagged leaves so when I was done I went back with the truck and STOLE them from the curb! THey were really wet and full of water and when I opened them they were already fermenty-smelling which is GOOD for my purposes because it'll get the beds going pretty good.

Craigslist is great! I picked up a truckload of bagged leaves yesterday and a couple weeks ago had someone delivery 2 truckloads of loose leaves and I didn't even have to do the hard work! It's been great.

We did make a cheese a couple weeks ago - first attempt at a farmhouse cheddar. I think the milk we get here has been treated somehow because it just didn't form a very good curd. I still managed to press it into a cheese but there was so much whey in the cheese still so it took about a week & half to dry out enough to form a rind and right now I'm fighting a battle with mold. I think the rind is now dry enough that it won't mold but we'll have to see. It'll be about 2 or 3 more weeks until we break it open. In the meantime I'll be making more cheese next weekend probably... didn't get any made this weekend but I have this coming Friday off so maybe I can get more done this coming weekend if it's 3 days.

Last weekend (or was it 2 weeks ago? I don't know!) I pureed my pumpkins. Baked them in the oven until soft, scooped out the seeds and threw them away, then scooped out the pulp and used my kitchenaid food mill to process it. I think I'll just use a regular food processor next time - the lack of "waste" material made it so there was pulp extruded out the back where the waste normally goes so either next time I'll wash the skin before I bake it and throw that in with it or just use a food processor. All in all I got about 8 cups which is 4 recipes' worth. Not nearly enough! I'm glad I'm starting to grow my own... this year I can save seed from the biggest/best sugar pumpkin and so hopefully in a couple years will end up with bigger sugar pumpkins. Oh, and in case you were wondering - I cooked the pumpkins with the seeds IN because we don't eat them, so of course they get composted... and if you cook them first, they don't SPROUT. I wanted to be able to throw the waste into the garden beds but didn't want to have little pumpkin seedlings sprouting up everywhere. Plus they are super easy to scoop out once the pumpkin is cooked and soft.

On Friday Tommy brought home a big box of windfall apples from a friend - they are all bruised and small but I thought I could at least use them for applesauce. We don't really eat a lot of applesauce but I know Eleora likes it so I figured I'd make some and could can them in pints instead of quarts. Again I used my kitchenaid food mill and this time it worked GREAT! I was so happy because for one thing, the apples were free (though I did add some honeycrisp in there that I'd had on hand in the basement, maybe 1/4 of the apples) and so I didn't feel bad about wasting parts or throwing away entire apples that were bad. After all, when you compost, there's no waste, right?

So I made 12 pints of applesauce, using about 2 big mixing bowls worth of apples (they were all very small) and a bag of cranberries. Some of the cranberries I left out and put them into the finished applesauce for an interesting look but most of them I cooked & pureed along with the apples. I spiced it up, using lots of fresh & dried ginger and molasses, and it turned out really really excellent! Even Tommy thought it was really good and he is not really a fan of applesauce normally. I didn't add any sugar and so it wasn't overly sweet but the molasses gave it good depth and went well with the ginger and cranberries. So now Tommy can take a couple jars of it to his classmate (and classmate's parents) who gave him the apples in the first place :) How's that for a trade? And the Kitchenaid food mill... I gotta thank my sister Sarah for turning me on to that thing because it made it SOOOOO easy. And of course all the leavings got put into my garden beds and covered up with leaves.

Other than that, not a whole lot is going on. I need to make granola tonight because I have to have it on hand. I'm up to exercising 6 days a week now, running/walking 3 days and strength training 3. Mondays are my day off :) I'm really enjoying the time early in the morning, especially when I go running outside because it's so crisp and still in the mornings. Anyway, what with exercising, running after toddlers, cooking, working, and nursing (which burns the equivalent of about 40 minues of jogging) I'm finding it difficult to eat enough calories so granola is perfect since it's very nutritious, natural, and calorie-dense with a good proportion of carbs to fat to protein. And I've lost 13 lbs so far - in about a month.

Another cool thing... many people won't understand except those who have the same compulsive need to bake as I do. I love baking... but my husband doesn't really eat "treats." So I don't bake very much, not nearly as much as I want to, because I end up eating it all myself! But I just took over birthday duty at work from a co-worker. She's been bringing in cupcakes for people's birthdays for a really long time and mentioned to me that she's burning out on it. I happily told her I would take on the duty so this is cool because I can pretty much make whatever I want. Not just cupcakes... but pound cakes, cinnamon rolls, etc. All kinds of stuff. This is great! It's about 1-2 birthdays a month and so I think that'll get it out of my system and I won't have to eat anything beyond one serving.

Anyway, that's pretty much what's been going on these days. Someday I'll post more pictures :) At least I'm still writing for now!

Making granola!

2008-11-04T14:30:00.001-08:00

So I decided to make granola the other day... found a recipe online, modified it a bit (of course!) and voila! Fantastic! I think my oven runs hot because it's pretty dark so next time I'll cut the baking time a bit but wow... what a great tasting breakfast, also great in my yogurt and it keeps me filled up for a long long time. Great quick energy for me to grab before my walks in the morning.

Here's the recipe as I made it:

Cranberry Pistachio Vanilla granola
2 c thick rolled oats
1/2 c slivered almonds
1/2 c pumpkin seeds (raw)
1/2 c chopped pistachios
1/4 c hulled sesame seeds
1/2 c raw sunflower seeds
1/4 c wheat germ
1 c cranberries
1/4 c oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 c honey

I threw the almonds and pumpkin seeds in a bowl
Chopped up my pistachios,

Added the wheat germ,

... Sesame seeds,

... and sunflower seeds.

I poured in my oats,

Mixed it up

All mixed!

Now the liquids - oil goes in a cup. Measure the oil separately in a larger measure and swirl it around to coat the sides.

Measure honey in the oil-coated measuring cup and pour it in

Add vanilla
Warm up the mixture in the microwave so it gets thin

Pouring on to the dry mix. The fact that I heated it up helps the liquid absorb into the dry mix.

All mixed!

Closeup of the texture

In the oven on a baking sheet with sides (sides are important!)
And the finished granola! I think my oven was hot since it got VERY dark.

Adding the cranberries. You add dried fruit after it's been toasted otherwise they get all brown and hard.

All mixed!

Closeup of the granola... yum! It comes out of the oven pretty moist but it crisps up well after it cools.

I enjoyed my granola all week long in the mornings with milk and also in my yogurt at work. I'm going to make more today because I ran out yesterday. It's a good dense food for me to eat - I have trouble eating enough calories some days especially when I exercise a lot (nursing burns like 500 calories!) so its good for me to have on hand.

Halloween!

2008-11-01T15:43:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been gone for AGES! Our internet was down for a while and I've been busy busy busy this week. So I'll do a couple posts this weekend, probably :)

We've been sick here at our house so not a whole lot exciting has happened during the week. Last weekend we carved our pumpkins. Wola wasn't super excited about the pumpkin, she thought it was "Yucky Gross" but she did try and help a little with scooping them! So Tommy carved her a skull (surprise surprise!).

I ended up doing Eric Draven with a crow on his shoulder, and Tommy freehanded the Misfits skull. His pumpkin didn't turn out well for the picture but it looked really cool, you can sorta see a glow through the part where he peeled off the skin and it just looked really eerie.

Then, this week, we had a pumpkin carving contest at work and my team decided to do our boss's face. I ended up doing the design from a photo of him, and it turned out really well. We won the contest, of course :)

And then after all that, we got home too late last night to even have any trick or treaters. So now we have candy in the freezer... lol. One of the casualties of my late shift but hopefully next year I'll be on a better schedule.

Wola helping Tommy with her "ponkin"

Tommy's Misfits skull
Eric Draven with the crow on his shoulder (You know, the movie "The Crow")
Wola's skull

Here's the pattern I did for the carving of my boss' face. I wish I had a picture of it lit up but no candles left!Wola had a harvest party at daycare so she's pretty worn out. She was a skeleton this year :)
Sophia is a ladybug :) You can't see them but there's these cute little antennae attached to the hat.

Finished planting my garlic!

2008-10-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

So I got it all done. A bit late in the season perhaps, but at least it's planted. I bought a half pound each of Music Pink and Inchelium Red.

My dilemma was that my beds are not filled yet, I plan on filling them sheet-compost-style over the fall and winter but my garlic needed to go in immediately. So... in a divine inspiration (thanks to the people at GardenWeb who got my wheels turning) I decided what to do.

I took cardboard boxes and arranged them on the east end of the garden bed.

I put a shovelful of aged horse manure with sawdust in the bottom of each box.

Then we filled them all with bagged garden soil. Eleora is SUCH a good helper :)

Then I arranged each box with the garlic on top, approximately 4 inches apart

Dug in the garlic and covered them up

Topped with a thiiiick blanket of shredded leaves

And voila! Garlic beds. Since it's so late in the season and the garden beds are, of course, raised, I thought it might be a good idea to put the manure on the bottom. My hope is that while it decomposes (since it is now moist) it will generate enough heat to keep the garlic from getting too cold until it's established. I didn't put very much in each box since I was worried about it burning the garlic. Since the potting soil was probably close to 10 inches deep I'm sure the garlic won't get burned... so we'll see how that experiment goes.

The other experiment was planting in the cardboard boxes themselves. I figure, the sides will keep the soil walled in for now until I'm able to fill the rest of the bed and then they will decompose over time once surrounded by the soil on all sides. I tried to put leaves stuffed in the sides to insulate a bit more but also to hasten decomposition by providing organic material on the other side of the cardboard. I'm also going to pile up more leaves on the west side inside the bed to provide more insulation until I can get the bed filled.

Time will tell :)

Adventures in Sourdoughland

2008-10-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

So, this weekend I made my sourdough bread. Bear with me, it had been a while... the old apartment I lived in killed everything. I couldn't keep a starter there, and even my plants died within weeks of moving there. This is the first time I've made bread since we moved to this house.

Look, the sponge is nice and bubbly. Very active and ready to go. What I'm going to make today is an eyeball half-sorta version of the no-knead bread method. I'm just going to eyeball the amounts and I'll bake it in the style of the no-knead recipe in my homemade La Cloche styler bread baker.

Friday night I started the bread. I put a cup of whole rye flour into the bowl.

I added a cup of water to the sponge and stirred it in until it was thoroughly mixed.

I poured in the liquidy sponge and mixed it all well with a rubber spatula.
Then I added a cup of white bread flour and a cup of whole wheat flour.

You can see it's a pretty wet sticky dough. Not one you could knead with your hands! I left the dough as is and stuck it into the fridge overnight. In the morning, I took it out about 10am and let it sit to get to room temperature and watched it until it was risen to double.

Then, I turned it out on a WELL floured board. With WELL floured hands, I patted it out into a flat semi-rectangle. With the help of my spatula, I folded the dough over onto itself a couple times, flouring well as I went along.

Here you can see my rising "basket" which is actually just an old clean birdseye diaper on top of a small stockpot. I don't use flour on the diaper, but actually I use wheat bran. If you use flour, the extreme hydration in the dough soaks through it in no time and sticks to the cloth. You want it to not stick... wheat bran is ideal for this. Rice flour also works well.

I plopped the dough in, folded side down (smooth side up). I also sprinkled more wheat bran around the edges since as the dough rises, it will stick to the cloth unless you have something there to prevent it.
So then I realized that I hadn't added SALT. Bread is pretty tasteless without salt, even tasty flavorful sourdough rye! So I plopped it back out onto the board and tried to get as much of the wheat bran as I could off.

I patted it out, and threw on about a teaspoon of salt. Now comes the fun part - kneading it in! lol....

With lots of flour and frustration I managed to knead the bread, or rather, fold it in passably.

This way I could at least take pictures of the folding process, which I forgot to do before. First, you flatten out the dough and fold over the top third into the middle.

Then, you fold the bottom third into the middle also.

Then, you fold over one side onto the other...

And voila! Folded dough.

So I put it back into my proofing "basket" and covered it with a plastic bag to keep in the moisture while it rises.

After it had finished rising I promptly realized that I forgot to keep part of the culture out for continuing my starter! So I oh-so-carefully grabbed some from the top, trying to not deflate it. You can see how well it had risen.

I mixed it with some more flour and water in a pint canning jar. Here you can see my cool top - a coffee filter lets out the carbon dioxide that the bacteria emit so the jar doesn't explode.
So then I took the top off my bread baker and tried to oh-so-gently tilt the dough onto the bottom. It didn't work very well, I made TOO much dough for the size baker I made, and so half of it hung over. When it did that, I couldn't put the top back on so I baked it like that. 450 degrees and I didn't time it... sorry! :)

Here it is, out of the oven!

And cut. It's got a nice dense and somewhat sticky crumb like the rye I love. Flavor is great, though I shoulda put in more salt. Didn't rise much, but that could have been due to the overhandling of it and also the fact that such a high percentage of it is rye. Rye flour on it's own doesn't rise well, so you always want to add wheat flour and if you have it, vital wheat gluten, to help it rise better.

But it was sure tasty! :)

Cheese update!

2008-10-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

Alrighty... so many of you remember I made my first hard cheese about 3 weeks ago. It was supposed to be a provolone, though I couldn't get it to stretch and finally gave up on that part. You can see the original post on when I made it here.

We decided to cut into it yesterday. Wowee! That was a tangy sharp cheese! Tommy was absolutely in heaven. He loved it, and wants me to make more - he said it tasted like the goatcheese his grandmother used to feed him when he was a kid. That's actually a pretty good compliment because he has said many times he wished he could have that cheese again and never had one that was like it. It was a bit too stout for me, and I think it was so stout because of the type of lipase enzymes I used (KA). Tommy just really loves strong flavored food. I bet he'd love it if I put garlic in it next time

The flavor was really good, it was a very dry and hard texture. I think I lost a lot of butterfat in the whey because I remember it was pretty milky, and the cheese didn't taste like it had as much fat in it as I'd expect for being made from whole milk. The flavor itself was cool because you took a bite and it tasted pretty good and then exploded in your mouth with flavor! I know that sounds cheesy (ooo, pun not intended lol) but it really was how it felt to me. I liked it, though it was too strong for me to eat but Tommy gobbled it up. I now have a pot that will accomondate 2 gallons of milk and I have a cheese press so I think I'll try the same cheese pressed next time. It looked like if I aged it a bit more it could be a passable sub for parmesan, though with WAY more flavor. We'll see!

I think my next one will be a farmhouse cheddar, though. Tommy now wants me to let him know next time I make cheese so he can watch the process. Who knows, this might be something we could both get in to :) But I'll do my best to keep him in this cheese, I hope it turns out as good next time I try to make it. So, without further ado, more pictures :)

The unveiling of the cheese :) This wasn't pressed, all I did was hang it. It ended up a pretty weird texture on the outside, very "brainy" looking. I think I'll press the next one just lightly to see how that goes.

The final product. You can kinda see just how dry it is - and it was only aged for 3 weeks. I think it was because of the lack of humidity in my basement - though it turned out pretty darn good!

Happy cheese-loving husband :)

Making Sourdough starter, step by step

2008-10-24T10:31:00.000-07:00

Sourdough is a wonderful thing. I think sourdough bread is one of the best things in life. Especially a good hearty sourdough rye, toasted with butter... yum.

Making starter is interesting because depending on what flour you use to make it, you will get different "yeasts." Some of the most flavorful starters are made with rye flour because of the microorganisms that life on rye, versus wheat. Many bakers who keep their own starters started all of them with rye, and then turned them into a whole wheat or white wheat starter by feeding it with the chosen flour.

So naturally, I begin my starter with rye, as close to the berry as possible. I got some pumpernickel rye flour from Barry Farm, and that's what I'm using. Many people make a starter more fluid, I prefer to use a 1-1 by volume ratio. It isn't exact, and if you are going to REALLY get into it and measure hydration and whatnot, you will want to use weight, not volume, since volume can really vary. I really only go by volume because I don't have a good scale, I'm lazy, and I've gotten to the point where I bake my bread by "feel" and not so much by measurements.

Day 1
So to begin, I've got a glass bail jar with a rubber seal. You want to be able to release the pressure at some point, since a buildup of the carbon dioxide gases can cause a sealed container to shatter. You can use pretty much anything for this, though I wouldn't advise a metal container. Even a gladware container would be fine. I used to use just a regular quart-size canning jar, but you can use anything.

I start with a tablespoon of flour and a tablespoon of water.

It's important to use purified water when making your starter. Chlorine in tapwater can quite easily kill the microorganisms that we're trying to feed here.

So I mix them together with a plastic spoon, and I've set it into a warm spot for the day. Easy peasy!

Day 2
I'm feeding the starter with another tablespoon each of purified water and flour. The flour I'm using is a certified organic pumpernickel rye. I'm not usually big on "certified organic" but in this case I choose organic to increase my chances of getting a successful starter, since they use less chemicals in organic (and yes, the FDA does allow some chemicals in certified organic). Slightly off the subject, but I'd take Certified Naturally Grown over Certified Organic any day. Once we let the beaurocrats and their sticky fingers get involved in things, they tend to get a bit messy. But anyway...

I pulled the jar out and I was amazed to see microbial activity already! That's pretty unusual, generally it takes a couple days to start really seeing stuff happen. I bet it's because of the flour I used. I tried to get a good picture but I'm not sure how well it comes through (though you can click on the picture to the left for a larger picture and I bet you can see what I mean). When I mixed it yesterday I pushed all the starter to one side with my spoon so that if the "action" showed up, it would be easier for me to see. It shows up as tiny bubbles against the glass - that's carbon dioxide that has been emitted by the bacteria that we are trying to grow.

As the starter becomes more and more concentrated and powerful, those bubbles will grow bigger and also will have more of them. Basically, what we're seeing here is the beginnings of leavening action - the bacteria, or yeasts, feeding off the flour to produce the carbon dioxide.

This is looking very promising! So anyway I added my other tablespoon of water and flour and put it back into its warm little hidey-hole. It has about the same consistency as oatmeal (though I know oatmeal varies, too...). One more observation - when I pulled the starter out today, it had a bit of condensation on the top of the jar. That means that it was warmer than average room temperature.

Considering that I had so much culture growth, I think the spot I chose is a perfect one. It's on a small table right above a heating duct... I don't keep my house super warm and so it's probably in one of the few "good" spots. Other good spots are usually on top of refrigerators, in a sunny window, or any other place that keeps a nice warm temperature somewhat regularly. They will grow in less then optimum temperatures, but obviously much more slowly and I tend to avoid this when I'm beginning a new starter, because I don't want to give OTHER bacteria a chance to set in (or mold... yuck!)

Day 3
Fed the starter with 2 tablespoons each of water and flour. Generally, the rule is that you double the amount of starter each time. Obviously it would get to be a lot, so tomorrow I'll measure out 1/4 cup of the starter and double that. Not much activity today - no pictures, since none came out. I seem to remember something about sourdough starters that started off strong and then petered out and came back after a while. I think it has something to do with the type of bacteria that are growing - the initial activity is from one sort, but then they create an inhospitable environment for themselves by the alcohol (or something) that is a byproduct of their fermentation. I think, though, that it creates a more hospitable environment for the GOOD bacteria that we're trying to grow. But, I don't really even know... I can't seem to find the right keywords to google it. Also, though, it's been pretty cold and we weren't home all day yesterday so it didn't have much heat to grow with, either.

Day 4
Measured out 1/4 cup each of flour, water, and starter into a new quart canning jar. I'll rotate jars, it's easier to measure that way. It's smelling good, a bit sour, but still not much activity. I'm pretty sure at this point that it's the bacteria thing I was talking about before. I didn't take any pictures again since there's not much to report.

Day 5
OK, activity has resumed. No picture because my camera was out of batteries this morning and I was in too much of a hurry to find the other set. But it looks quite a bit like day 2's photo, except more in volume. When I stirred it, the volume decreased so there was quite a bit of bubble "action" going on there (to quote Rachael Ray). So I added 1/2 cup each of flour and purified water and left for work. I bet I'll be baking bread in the next couple days :)

Day 6

This morning the starter has risen quite a bit and is foamy on top. I tried to get a picture but couldn't get a good one, so here's what you got! I measured 1/2 cup of starter into a clean jar and added 1/2 cup more flour and water. I think I'll be baking bread this weekend.

Day 7

This morning looks the same as yesterday except way bigger. The bubbles that I can see look more like the bubbles inside a loaf of baked bread. I bet I could probably use it as is but I'll keep feeding it and then probably start the bread tomorrow evening. It's a good idea to proof bread a long time at colder temps, especially sourdough, to really develop the flavor. Some people don't like sourdough too "sour" but we love it like that. There's also a layer of foam on top like yesterday, which is weird, I don't remember seeing that ever before. Fed it again with 1/2 cup flour & water to 1/2 cup starter.

The temps in our house have been pretty cold this week since we are now gone all day and the heater is off when we aren't home and at night... so really, the heater is only on for about an hour in the morning and then from 5-10-ish at night. I'm sure this would have developed quicker if we'd had a warmer house... it's generally a good idea to begin your starter in the summertime when the heat can help the bacteria grow. But oh well, right? :)

Day 8

OK I'm going to bake bread tonight! This morning the starter was ready to use - the way you know this is if it rises to twice it's volume and then sinks back down, that's when you know it's strong enough.

So I left the entire amount and fed it with 1 cup each of flour and water. At this point I've mostly gone through my pound of pumpernickel rye. I do have another pound and also some King Arthur rye so that's what I'll use tonight, with a little whole wheat and white bread flour. So anyway, this doubled it's volume and so I put it into a gladware container. Tommy is home today so the house will be warmer, so I bet it will rise quite a bit and the quart size jar wouldn't accomondate that much. Basically, at this point, I'm beginning the sponge. I'll let it ferment all day and then when it's time to start the dough for real, I'll separate out a half cup of starter and use that to continue the starter and the rest will be used for making my bread dough. I'll put that process in a separate post, though.

So there we have it! Sourdough starter deluxe. I will tell you, though, if I'd fed it every 12 hours it would have been done a lot quicker, probably. However, I am lazy, and so I'm OK with it taking a bit more time.

Wii!

2008-10-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

So last week we bought a Wii and a Wii Fit. I'd been wanting one for a while but we didn't have the cash for it so when the IRS graciously decided to finally give us our tax refund and stimulus (don't ask... long story) we went out and got one! My sister has one and I think it's really fun, and the Fit looked cool. We've both really enjoyed it in different aspects, and one of the things I really like is starting my morning with some stuff to get my blood going just a little bit.

There's pros and cons to it. Fact is, I'm pretty overweight and while I'm motivated to lose weight, I am limited by the fact that I'm nursing Sophia. When you are nursing you don't want to go *too* gung-ho on weight loss because you could lose your milk supply, which I don't want. Before I got pregnant, I was working out on my lunch breaks and I was making good, steady progress. Of course, now I'm pretty much back to where I started from except I no longer live at the apartment complex with a workout room.

Therefore, I need something I can do at home while the kids are asleep (so even going walking or jogging would be out anyway). The Wii Fit has been great so far - I've been able to stay motivated, get up and do some yoga and step aerobics. Is it the most wonderful powerful workout ever? Of course not. Is it great for a working mom of 2 who has limited time available? Absolutely! I've been losing weight steadily since I started about a week & half ago. I've also been focusing on eating better (of course). One of the good things is that Tommy also wants to focus on his fitness - his old job was physically intense and kept him in pretty good shape but of course now he's not doing that anymore. He has a bowflex he's been using which is working well for him, but he's also seriously on board with the better food type stuff.

I cook from scratch mostly when I can. though with working and whatnot it gets complicated. In any case, I'm very happy with it. It's a nice way to start my morning, is fun enough that I haven't been unmotivated (except yesterday when I slept in because Eleora decided at 4:30 am that she was done sleeping for the night and I fought her on it until 7am). The yoga is surprisingly do-able and I like the step aerobics, though I wish I could do it at a faster pace.

What I REALLY like about it is that I can see my weight loss on a graph all done up for me and it tracks everything. Since I generally just do my weigh-ins at 7am in the morning, it's pretty consistent as far as fluctuations are concerned and so I know the results I'm getting are pretty accurate. Of course, I am keeping in mind that just nursing burns about 2-300 calories per day anyway so I'm sure that's helping, but I never had much luck with the nursing helping my weight loss by itself. I just unlocked the boxing exercise today and I'm hoping that will be something that I can do. The boxing game on the regular Wii Sports is VERY aerobic and had my arms sore for days.

So all in all, I really like it and it was a great investment. Very worthwhile. Basically, you get what you put into it. There's lots of ways to cheat and pretend you worked hard when you didn't. For me, I figure, I'm just cheating myself and so if I'm feeling lazy or tired that particular day, then I'll just do easier exercises.

Coffee grounds again!

2008-10-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

Good news - I'll get to collect the grounds from work! I'll need to go get a container. I have a 3lb coffee can at home that's empty and I might cover it but I think I might want to get something bigger that I can put garbage liners or even paper grocery bags in. That way I don't have to rinse it out and it won't get stinky over the weekend. I am one of the last folks out of here so I don't think it'll be a problem to keep it up. This will be great for my compost pile and also the lawn! Coffee gounds can be bagged up and kept in the garage all winter and spread on the lawn in the spring, though I imagine it would be a bit stinky. I might just try to compost them all... but it depends on how much it ends up being. I'm really glad I got this all hooked up since I haven't found an actual coffeeshop that will save them for me yet.

So that's good news! Work is going well and I'm getting right back into the swing of things. The bad part is that it's being a difficult adjustment for all of us as far as the daycare thing. The girls are a little more volatile... Eleora is acting even MORE terrible 2, and Sophia yesterday spent a good 30 minutes just crying hysterically before I could get her calmed down enough to eat and go to sleep. This isn't going to be easy. I think I'll start a monthly countdown... lol. If Tommy finishes his program in May of 2010, I'd say by July or so I should be done. He does have a job waiting for him already at his old employer (they were so sad to see him go that they are going to create a drafting position for him, isn't that awesome!) so I don't have to worry about him finding a job. So, that's 21 months away.

So... 21 months and counting. :)

Coffee grounds

2008-10-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

Well, my first day back at work went pretty well. OK the time at work, that is. The time dropping off the girls, not so good. But I'll survive. The photo is of my backyard... the leaves are really beginning to turn color. Not a whole lot of drop yet, though. Not enough to make it worthwhile to bring out the leaf mulcher, though I did buy an extension cord for it the other day so I'll be ready when the time comes.

The good news is that while I was gone from work, they have really begun a more concerted effort to become more green as a company. They had already begun doing that while I was there, but now even more so - they even started a company forum on how to be more "green."

What does this mean? Well, we throw out TONS of used coffee grounds every morning. There's a lot of people in my office who drink coffee. I've asked a couple times about being able to collect the grounds and take them home for my compost but I never really got a good response. I think now might be a good time to ask again.

If any of my dear readers happen to work in an office where coffee is being served I'd probably recommend seeing if you can set up a collection bin. I know my mom used to take the grounds home when she worked in an office - they are a fantastic source of a "green" for composting. I remember when we lived in Colorado, they used to say the soil was so alkaline that you couldn't put enough UCG (Used Coffee Grounds) into it. Worms love them, lawns love them, compost piles and veggie gardens love them.

I've contacted a couple espresso drive thrus around here but none of them seem very inclined to keep a separate trash can for the UCGs so they can be composted. Why? It isn't very difficult! I worked at a great espresso drive-thru in Colorado and we saved all of our grounds... and they always got taken by our customers. There's one more place I want to go to, a smaller place but the only place around here that makes a decent frozen coffee (from scratch) instead of the same-ol granita mix that everyone else uses. In my thinking, since they put more effort into the coffee and making it quality, they might be more willing to separate their grounds (if they don't already)... the other places kinda give me the "give us your money cookie cutter" vibe. Who knows. Plus the owner is a really nice eastern european lady and europeans generally know the value of compost. We'll see! Hopefully I'll get out that way this weekend.

Trip up to the property

2008-10-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we went for a day trip up to the property. My parents and my sister both have trailers up there and were camping, but I didn't want to stay since it would get cold and T had a lot of homework to finish. Eleora had a blast up there! I took a bunch of pictures of the place so that you could see the future place. The parcel I chose is more wooded, and so I'll be doing a lot of clearing out, but it's absolutely perfect.

Here we are on our property! Sophia was asleep when we took the picture, so she isn't in it. Isn't it a beautiful view? I can't wait to look out my kitchen window and see that! So basically, to reiterate... my parents bought this 120 acre piece of land and each of us siblings has chosen a parcel and we will buy it from them and build on it. Most of us are planning on living there full-time at some point except the youngest, she's still not sure. It's a gorgeous spot, and the beauty is that we each liked a different piece and so there was no arguing about which spot. Each of us will have 20 acres and so plenty of space around us but we'll still be close by each other.

This all came about because when I was young, we lived out in the semi-country on a little acreage. There were several houses all grouped together, my cousins in one. I remember that time so well, and I had such a wonderful life when we lived there... catching tadpoles, eating peas from the garden, playing in the mud, swinging on the rope swing, running around with the dog, you name it. I wanted that life for my children! As we all began to discuss things we realized that all of us siblings wanted the same thing for our kids. So we decided that we would all move up there, giving each other enough space to do their own thing, but being close enough that our kids could grow up together. It's important to me that my kids grow up in the country, and I'm excited for the day that we can move up there. If we're lucky, we might be able to get up there in about 5 years or so.

The northwest view
This is a flat "bench" area that is right north of the homesite. The homesite overlooks the valley, but right below is a longish flat area that will be perfect for greenhouses or maybe an orchard someday.

This is the southwest view of the place You can see the bench down below a bit - it's the lighter, un-shaded area before the trees start.Looking back down the driveway
The southwest view
This is the campsite that will someday be the homesite.

I brought up a couple cloves of my garlic to plant. The soil up there is fantastic! We'll see what happens.

Here's me with my little helper planting the garlicShe's bringing leaves over to the garlic to mulch it. Isn't she cute?
And the mulched pile. I planted the garlic all within about a square foot (5 cloves) and then I stuck the stick up to mark the spot. With the leaf mulch it ended up looking like a shallow grave... :)

This is actually directly south of where our home will be located - at the highest point on the bluff.
Partly cleared area - this will all be a part of my growing space someday. Right by the second tree on the left is where I planted my garlic.
Our new wheels! It's a Honda CR-V, we just got it on Friday. It sure is nice to drive a vehicle that isn't all rickety and feeling like it will fall apart any minute! Thank you, Granddad!
Eleora loved the swing - the men put in a playground for the kids since we have so many young kids in our family. It's a really great thing for them when we are all camping up there!
She also had fun in the dirt

Here's Eleora planting wildflower seeds with her Grammie :) Oh, and Snick the dog...

This is actually a photo of what will be my brother's parcel, but it was a cool picture so I wanted to include it.
And here's the pasture - the closest part will be my brother's and then further along will be my parents' part - the parcels run parallel to each other.

So there you have it! It'll be nice to take pictures in the springtime - all the grass is brown and dying right now but the place is so gorgeous in the springtime - everything greens right up and there's so many flowers everywhere!

Back to work...

2008-10-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

My time has come. My maternity leave is officially up and I go back to work today. The next couple years of my life are probably going to be very busy, and so I probably won't post as much during the week. I'll try, though! The tradeoff is that after Tommy finishes with school, I can quit my job and be a full-time stay home mom. I think about that day... probably every single day.

This last weekend was great - we went up to the property on Saturday for a day trip and I planted a few cloves of garlic just to see what would happen :) I'll post pictures later, of course. The area is so beautiful, every time I go up there I am so refreshed by it and then there's a definite melancholy when we have to leave. Eleora had a fantastic time and I think she'll really enjoy camping next year. We didn't do a lot of it this year since it is pretty hot during the summer and I was pregnant. We went back in may but she wasn't super stable on her feet yet and kept tripping on the underbrush. This time, she was a fully stable, running toddler. Don't they grow SO FAST?!?!

And the coffee photo... well, yesterday I went to Costco and they had EGGNOG and I just love eggnog in my coffee. So, it's a bittersweet day.

Taking my 8-week old baby to daycare later will not be fun. Sorry about my mood... I'm not feeling very happy right now. Don't get me wrong - I actually enjoy my job. If I didn't have kids I'd probably love going to work every day but I really just feel like I should be at home with the girls. Tommy going to school is a big deal and it will change a lot of things for us and will be what enables me to stay home with the kids... but that isn't making it any easier to gather up blankets, bottles, diapers, and whatnot to bring with the kids, hand them off to someone else and say "here, take their whole day." I'll probably get about 1 1/2 hours per day with Eleora - I get off work so late that she goes to bed 30 minutes after I get home.

Sorry, I'm being emo - I'll stop now.

Sourdough bread

2008-10-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, we lived for several years in Nuernberg, Germany. We were missionaries and my dad did a lot of work with local churches in addition to making trips out to the poverty-stricken eastern european countries. It was a very formative time in my life in many ways.

One of the things I'll always think is ironic about that time is that I spent my time there longing to come back to the States and when I was back here at age 11, I longed to go back to Germany. We did that with the food, too - when we were there, we missed peanut butter, chocolate chips, and soft white bread. But then when I came back to the U.S., one of the things I missed the most was the good, solid German cooking, especially German bread. I went back for a visit several years ago, and one of the best things I brought back (besides chocolate) was bread that had been baked fresh the morning I left. They actually had a bakery IN the airport!

German rye bread is definitely something to be cherished. I spent many years trying to perfect it, and last year I finally did. It's a simple sourdough rye, with wheat flour and salt. I remember when I first baked it for my mom, she took a piece and ran it upstairs and made my dad (who was still asleep) eat it. He wasn't too impressed with the being woken up part, but everyone agreed it tasted pretty authentic.

Unfortunately, I moved into an apartment where something seemed to be wrong with the air, and my starter went bad, along with any other starters I tried to make. Even my plants died in that apartment. I was so busy that I stopped baking bread and began to buy it instead.

In July, we moved into this house and I've been meaning to start again. I hate to say it, but I can't really remember what I did to make that bread taste authentic, but I decided to start again. I bought some organic whole rye flour and also pumpernickel rye from Barry Farm, and began a starter this morning. There was a perfect crock for it in one of the boxes of canning jars I recently acquired - not safe for canning in, but perfect for sourdough. I'll keep a picture log and in a week or so when the starter is ready, I'll post the progression photos along with instructions.

As I try and remember, I think part of my success involved my attempts at no-knead bread. No-knead bread is basically where you mix yeast with salt and flour, mix in some water to form a slack, shaggy dough, and let it sit for 24 hours or so. You bake it in a La Cloche, dutch oven, or even a lidded casserole pan.

I made a homemade baking pot from a upside-down terra-cotta flower pot (I got the idea from somewhere on the internet, it isn't mine... can't remember where though). What this does is trap the steam inside while the bread is baking, which makes for an amazing crust. When I tried the regular No-Knead recipe, I found it too bland for my taste but when I made a sourdough version, it was amazing. So, after a furlough, I'm excited to try again :)

If you are more interested in the no-knead technique, here's a fantastic website that is very educational on the method with videos and everything - Breadtopia.

Garden update

2008-10-15T13:34:00.001-07:00

Here's my dear little Wola modeling my potato bin. All I did really today was put a third panel on the back side of the 2 bins, and I built my third one. I've pretty much decided to just do 18" deep bins, I'll plant the potatoes at 6" and then hill them another 12" and see what happens. Each bin is 2.5' square so that should give me almost 19 square feet of growing space.

According to square foot gardening rules, I can plant one potato plant per square foot. I'll probably end up with 5 plants per box, for a total of 15 plants. I think that'll give them plenty of room.

So here you can see the complete garden. I still need to finish putting cardboard under all the beds but my wood chip mulch is taking it's sweet time so no rush on that. I've got almost 160 square feet of growing space there! This will be really fun to plan out, I think. I'll probably have to wait until the spring so I can watch sun patterns better. Also, my neighbor offered to let me use his pruning saw if I want to cut out some of the branches of the tree that shade the north part of the garden, so I might take him up on that offer. I won't prune too much, just a little bit to open up more sunshine.

Here's the sides of my third potato bin ,all laid out on the brick of my patio and waiting to be drilled & screwed together, assembly-line style. They go together really quickly. I decided to add the back panel on the other bins (and this one I made with a back panel) so that when it came time to add on the top row, part of it would already be done. I like to make things easy for myself and I figure it's probably a lot easier to do it now than it will be once they have plants in them.

The other reason is that 2 of the potato bins are right next to the brick wall of the patio (you can see it pretty well in the picture) and so I figure I won't be able to reach that wall to get the side in securely, so if I put it in now would be better. I don't want to make them 3 panels high all the way around just yet, mainly because I'm going to plant 6" deep and I don't want the sides to shade the plants too much while they are little.

Eleora looooooves her pumpkin. She carried it around all afternoon and even gave it kisses and hugs. lol

Kielbasa

2008-10-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

We looooove kielbasa around here (it goes great with fried potatoes!). I used to get big packages of it at Costco for pretty cheap but they stopped carrying it. I was just looking around the web to see if it would be easy to make it. Any tips? I already have a meat grinder attachment for my kitchenaid and so I think the only equipment I'd still need is a smoker. If I end up making a lot of it (I will EVENTUALLY but not for a few years) I might need a sausage stuffer... but that's probably not going to happen soon.

But a smoker, maybe. We do have a fireplace, is it possible to use those as a smoker? lol... I'm such a duct tape person ;)

Now the gears in my head are beginning to grind... sometimes I wish I didn't have so many projects I want to do! I think it all stems from me wanting to master many of the old-world skills. Soapmaking I have down - been doing that for about 10 years. Cooking and baking bread, check. Right now it's cheese and canning that I'm working on, but now sausage is entering the picture... oh my! lol. Also, homebrewing is on the horizon at some point.

Can you imagine... a fine meal of german sausage (from your own pigs) and potatoes & kraut (from your garden) and an ice cold homebrew (from your homegrown hops). That's the life I envision.

Canned potatoes - the verdict

2008-10-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

So I made dinner tonight with the canned potatoes. One of our favorites - pan-fried potatoes with a fried egg and sour cream. They turned out great! Not even nearly as mushy as I thought - even though they were sort of disintegrating in the jar, they really were still pretty firm. Most of the disintegration was the peel separating from the flesh. I'll definitely go back and get more potatoes - they were really easy to can and they fried up really nicely in no time. The flavor was pretty good, though they were pretty bland yet salty at the same time. The recipe called for a teaspoon of salt per quart but I think I'll cut that in half the next time.

I think I'll also experiment by putting some minced garlic in with the potatoes next time as well. If the salt could permeate the potatoes that well (some of them were quite salty) I bet adding garlic couldn't hurt. What I did as per the instruction was to put 1 tsp of salt in the bottom of the jar and then fill with potatoes, boiling water, and then the lid and seal and can. But, I wonder since just a few of them were quite saltier than the others if it might be better to add the salt later - I wonder if some of the salt stayed at the bottom of the jar trapped by those bottom potatoes, and then when I canned it, the salt permeated more into those bottom potatoes? I think more research is in order. ;)

In any case, it was a raving success! I think I would even consider them a "convenience food."

Manure & canning jars

2008-10-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

So yesterday after we finished at the pumpkin patch, I borrowed my sister's truck and went up and got a load of manure to put on the garden. There is a guy north of here with a horse farm who will give you free manure and he'll even load it himself with his tractor!

I, of course, just HAD to unload it myself. It was great fun! Some of you might wonder why I don't make my husband do things like unloading manure or building me garden beds... so I guess I should mention how much I love doing projects like that. I know it sounds odd, but if I let him build my garden beds or unload my manure, it would take some of the fun out of my project for me. With that said, he has been a big help in lots of ways, mostly though, just in tolerating me and my hare-brained schemes ;) Oh yeah, and he washed the truck afterwards for me :)

So anyway I just put the manure into a pile. I want to get the wood chip mulch in first and they haven't delivered it yet. I think I'll call again today and see what the delay is, since it was a week ago today that I asked for it. They might have not had any jobs in the area, but that seems odd just because the corporate office is just a few miles away.

Oh, and I also picked up some canning jars from a lady in Spokane via craigslist. She gave me 2 new flats of jars (pints and quarts) and also about 6 quarts and 6 jelly jars. Oh, and a jar lifter and funnel. I gave her $13 for it, it was all the cash I had left and boy it was a great deal! What a sweetheart she was! The other day I went to a garage sale and the lady had 18 pint jars in a box. They were really dirty, with mouse poop even, so she gave them to me for $2. I soaked them in bleachwater to get the crud off, and then ran them through the super hot sanitizing cycle on my dishwasher. So now I have plenty of jars! Especially pints. I might have to buy some quarts, though now I have about 18 of them so that might last me a bit. I'm hoping to get some grapes so I can try the method of making juice where you just put 1 1/2 cups of fruit in the jar, top it off with sugar and water, and can it. Wait 3 months and it turns into fruit juice :) We'll see, though.

Pumpkin Patch

2008-10-13T08:55:00.001-07:00

We had quite a day yesterday! In the morning we headed up with my sister and her bunch to the pumpkin patch. We have a great local grower's association about 30 minutes north of here. It's basically just a huge area with different farmers, and the association advertises for them and whatnot. It's called Green Bluff. We go up there in the summer for all sorts of u-pick fruit and also pumpkins in October. The farm we go to for pumpkins has a huge cannon they shoot pumpkins out of. They also do fun stuff for the kids... this year there was a big straw pile to roll in, a straw maze, chickens, donkeys and horses to pet. Last year they had pony rides, but not this year.

Eleora had a great time just running around and getting dirty. They had all kinds of old vehicles and farm machinery just set up for playing on or taking pictures, etc. She tried to pet the chickens, petted the donkey (Eeyore)
...was only semi-afraid of the straw maze, and had a great time in the pumpkin patch itself. She mostly liked to pick up handfuls of dirt and throw it around.

We also got a family picture, since my brother-in-law is a fantastic photographer, and of course I'll post that when I get it. It'll be one with ME in it! I'm usually the person with the camera so you don't see me in many of the pictures.

The pumpkins were excellent this year. Last year there were a lot of them that had already started to rot but this year there were so many great ones to choose from! I got 8 pie pumpkins to process into puree to freeze for pies and pumpkin bread. Mostly pumpkin bread, though... I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin pie but I adore pumpkin bread! We also got a couple for carving. I think Eleora will really have fun carving pumpkins... especially the part where she gets to squish her fingers through the pumpkin guts... hehe.

I also picked up 2 pints of local honey while I was up there - I love buying directly from the growers. I think it's so important to buy our food as close to the source as possible to eliminate the corporate middlemen. Farmers in this country get a fraction of each dollar we spend on their food, and so the closer to them that we can buy it, I think is better. I am actually transitioning our family to local eating... I don't think I can do 100% just yet but I've been focusing on buying local produce. One of the grocery stores nearby stocks a lot of locally grown produce. I wasn't able to put up enough of it to get us through the winter so I'll probably end up doing most of our transition in the spring.

We also would like to put a side of beef in the freezer but we don't have the space for it, or the money (since we literally have no income right now until I go back to work next week). I'm hoping by this time next year to be pretty much transitioned. We do live within wheat country, so I think that's definitely possible. With 2 small children and me working full-time (Tommy has a really high workload with school and also part-time work) we are too busy to really be able to fully transition but I'd like to do MOSTLY local. And then when he's done with school and I can quit my job and stay home with the kids... watch out! I'll be a preserving, gardening maniac ;)

Cinnamon rolls & Eleora's 2nd birthday

2008-10-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Oh man, and boy does she ever ACT her age! lol. We had a really great time. My sister and her family came over on Saturday night and we had pizza. Eleora got lots of new books, hat and gloves, and a cool new easel chalkboard. She had a really fun time having her cousins over - there are 4 of them and we don't usually have them here, we generally go to their house but I think it was fun for her to have them here on her turf :)

Eleora never has particularly liked cake so I decided to make cinnamon rolls instead. They turned out fabulously - one of my tricks is to use bread flour, not regular all-purpose flour. Also, when making the filling, I melt the butter and mix it with cinnamon and brown sugar. I also add milk sometimes and then thicken it back up with more cinnamon and brown sugar. This makes a filling that you can spread on the dough with a spatula and it stays put. Another trick is to pour milk (or eggnog during the holidays) over the unbaked rolls right before you put them into the oven. It makes them bake up super soft and gooey. Here's my recipe:

1 cup warm milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup melted butter
4 1/2 cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbs yeast

Proof the yeast in the warm milk and a bit of the sugar until frothy. Add the eggs, beaten, and the butter. In a mixer bowl, combine the flour, salt, and remaining sugar. Make a well in the center and add the liquid ingredients. Knead with the mixer well until the dough is smooth and elastic. Let it rise until double, then punch it down. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes or so, and then turn out on a floured cutting board or counter. Roll it out into a large rectangle and spread with the filling. Roll them up and cut them into 12 rolls. Place into a greased 9x13 pan and let them rise again. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-30 minutes depending on your oven and if you poured milk over them before baking. Cool a bit, then spread with frosting and enjoy your decadent treat!

Filling:
1/3 cup melted butter
3 Tbs cinnamon
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
Mix well and spread on dough. Measurements are approximate - I generally just add a good splosh of milk and then mix in more cinnamon & sugar until it's a nice spreadable consistency, not too thin or thick.

Icing:
1 8oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
Blend the cream cheese in a mixer by itself until soft and creamy. Add the butter and mix well. Once well combined, add the sugar, vanilla and salt, mixing well. Spread over rolls :)

She's having lots of help from Tyler, her "Helpy Helper" when it comes to presents ;) He also enthusiastically declared it the "BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!!" :)

Her new books, thanks to Grammy

She sure likes to read!

And coloring is her other favorite. Tommy is great at picking out presents for her.

Canning potatoes - Experiment # 1

2008-10-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

So on Saturday afternoon I canned potatoes! I got a great deal on some nice clean small Yukon Golds the other day and I bought 15 lbs of them for canning. One of our favorite meals is fried potatoes with kielbasa sausage and some sort of veggie, usually broccoli. When I go back to work next week, it'll be Tommy's job to feed the kids and make dinner. Since he isn't really much of a cook I generally try to have easy stuff on hand for him to throw together. I had the great idea of cutting up potatoes and canning them and then all he'd have to do is drain them, throw in the sausage and veggies and voila - dinner!

One of my most despised kitchen jobs is scrubbing potatoes. That's one of the reasons I'm going to grow mine in straw or some sort of mulch next year - I just really hate getting potatoes that are covered in dirt to scrub off. The potatoes I bought for canning were actually pretty clean (and to my delight, all pretty small). However, I still didn't want to take chances and I needed to clean them myself, right? Well, forever searching for an innovative way to make my life easier I thought about THIS:

I did some googling and turns out the Washington State Potato people actually say it's fine to clean potatoes in a soapless dishwasher. Who knew? :) In any case, it made my life much simpler. I wouldn't do it except for canning because the cycle heated up the potatoes a bit which would really reduce their shelf life I imagine, but for this purpose it was great. I wasn't planning on skinning them so it went really quickly.

I basically just cut them up and threw them in quart jars with a tsp of flaked canning salt and covered with boiling water. You are supposed to process them at 10 lbs for 40 minutes... I think I had too much pressure. I couldn't seem to get the burner on the right temperature and so I ended up overprocessing them a bit. I only made 8 quarts since that's all the jars I had at the time, but since then I've gotten more jars. I still have a few pounds left, and actually I might go pick up more potatoes since they were so easy to can. So I'll try it again... the ones I have now are sort of disintegrated. I'm sure they will be great for mashed potatoes or whatnot, just not the frying potatoes that I wanted.

Of course, I'll update when I do those as well.

Kitchen Experiment #1 - Italian Egg Rolls

2008-10-10T21:34:00.000-07:00

For a couple months now, I've been having this idea for a food in my head. Italian spring rolls. In my head, they are crispy egg roll wraps, filled with a ricotta cheese mixture, fresh tomatoes and basil, and broccoli. So tonight, I decided to make an attempt.

First, I made my cheese. It turned out to be more like cottage cheese but it worked anyway. Fresh cheese is so wonderful! Oh, and today I figured out that one of my stockpots can handle 2 gallons of milk which means I can do bigger batches... and that's also great because Costco sells their milk in 2 gallon boxes... but I digress.

Then, I made the wraps. I have a pasta rolling machine so I figured I could just do them myself pretty easily.
I took 3 eggs, 1 cup of semolina flour, and a half cup of regular all-purpose flour and mixed them up in my kitchenaid. I ended up adding a bit more flour.

Then I turned the dough out onto a cutting board...

... and kneaded it a bit until it was smooth.

I flattened the dough ball out and cut it into smaller pieces that would be easy for the pasta machine to handle. I ran them all though the machine... sorry, no pics for that one since I was by myself :)

But here's a picture of my pasta rolling machine!

So now I have several long sheets of pasta.

Since I won't be using them yet, I decided to keep them from drying out by sandwiching them in sheets of plastic wrap (yes, it's purple... hehe). Lesson # 1 - oil the plastic next time... the dough stuck to it pretty well.

Next on the menu - sausage. I didn't have any Italian sausage, so I used some beer brats that I had in the freezer. I defrosted them and slipped them out of their casings.

Frying the bratwurst in a pan, trying to break it up well. I love sausage but it's so hard to break up in little pieces like we like it. As I'm breaking it up, I notice that it was actually a jalapeno cheddar bratwurst that was mislabeled... oh well :)

In the meantime, I've chopped one head of broccoli.

Also two tomatoes get chopped...

And some wilted expensive grocery store "fresh" basil (oh... how I can't WAIT for my own garden!)

Once the sausage was browned, I added the broccoli and covered it so it could cook a bit, also throwing in some garlic, dried oregano, salt & pepper. While that was cooking, I mixed the tomatoes and basil in with the ricotta cheese that I'd already made (see previous post).

I decided to throw in some shredded cheese that I already had. I'd rather use mozzarella, but I didn't have any and haven't had luck making it yet... so I used a cheddar jack combo.

Then I added the browned sausage and broccoli and mixed it all up. Next time I'd add more salt and pepper... and more fresh basil! I love fresh basil... it has such a great flavor that doesn't come through after it's dried.

So here comes the fun part - wrapping it all up :) Oh, and I broke my cutting board :( I think I wasn't supposed to wash it in the dishwasher... lol. Oops!

I have a wrapper out flat, with some filling in the center. I moisten the top and bottom edges...

... and then fold in the sides.

Moisten the tops of the folded in edges...

... and verrrry carefully roll up the roll.

Here's where I made a BIG mistake. I placed the finished rolls on an ungreased plate. Looked nice... but when I went to cook them, they all stuck! They got unsealed, it was a complete disaster... which made the rolls pretty greasy on the inside.

I ended up spraying the plastic wrap I'd been using with some nonstick spray and laid the rolls on it after I pried them off the plate with a knife.

Here they are cooking in the oil, I put about a half inch or so of cooking oil in a pan and fried the rolls on medium-high heat.

And here are the finished rolls.

The verdict? Not bad. They all got eaten :) Even Eleora had a couple bites of hers.

Mistake #1 - don't make regular pasta for egg roll wraps. It was completely different and turned into more of a "bready" wrap. Next time, either buy pre-made wraps at the store or make real ones. I thought they were just pasta sheets but I was wrong :)

Mistake #2 - not the right kind of cheeses. I'd add mozzarella and parmesan for sure.

Mistake #3 - not enough fresh basil.

Mistake #4 - Ricotta wasn't as smooth as I'd like... figure out what I'm doing wrong there. It was certainly not bad for my first attempt, though :)

And I had about 3 times as much filling as I needed. The rest of it is hanging out in our fridge waiting for me to go buy some real egg roll wraps to try out.

So there we go - dinner for tonight. The filling was really good, though. Just needed a bit more salt, but great fresh flavors. I keep thinking how great it will be when I can make something like this with sausage from our own pigs, cheese from local cows, and fresh tomatoes, broccoli and basil from our garden. Yum!

And tomorrow... I'm canning potatoes (hopefully)!

Whole milk Ricotta cheese

2008-10-10T15:56:00.000-07:00

So today I want to try something that's been floating around in my brain for a couple weeks now. It's an Italian type of food and I need to make some Ricotta cheese for it. So, here's me making Ricotta :)

We went to Costco earlier and I bought a couple gallons of their whole milk. I poured one gallon into my cheese pot, and then dissolved 1 tsp each of citric acid and cheese salt in 1/2 cup of water. I added it to the milk in the pot, and then heated to 185 degrees F.

The citric acid makes it curdle, and the salt of course seasons it. When the curds separate, you simply strain the ricotta out, saving the whey for the garden or whatnot.

Here's a cool photo of my straining apparatus :) I have a big huge cone-shaped colander I found at a thrift store, lined with an old bleached muslin cloth diaper. Birdseye diapers are great for straining cheese.

Here's the milk mixed with the citric acid and salt. It's on the burner and starting to warm up.

It's starting to warm a bit, frothing at the edges and looking a little thicker now.

OK it's done! Heated to 200 degrees actually (the baby had to nurse, so I ended up getting it a little warmer than I planned). Once it reaches that certain point in temperature, it all curdles into, well, curds! :)

Poured into my strainer contraption

And hanging to drip!

I let it drip for about 30 minutes and then unmolded it.

Here I've broken it up a bit in a bowl. It looks more like cottage cheese than ricotta.

I've broken it up more, stirred a bit, and added milk for extra creaminess.

So there you have it! I then used this cheese to make dinner tonight, which will be in a separate post. :) It made about 2 pounds of cheese, and my total cost was probably about $2.48. Not bad, eh?

Super easy refried beans

2008-10-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

Super Easy Refried Beans
1 onion, peeled and halved
3 cups dry pinto beans, rinsed
1/2 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin, optional
9 cups water

Throw it all into a slow cooker and cook on high for 8 hours or on low overnight.

When the beans are cooked soft, remove as much liquid as you can from the pot. You can strain them (reserving the liquid) or what I just do is "skim" the liquid with a ladle. No need to get all of it, just most of it.

Using a potato masher, mash the beans right in the pot. The onion will be cooked soft and will mash right along with the beans. Add additional reserved liquid if needed. You can also add lard or butter, milk, etc. for extra creaminess.

I modified this recipe from one here just reducing the salt mostly and increasing the black pepper. Omit the jalapeno if you don't want any spice. If you don't have a jalapeno and you want spice, you can use cayenne pepper or chili powder.

We go through beans a lot since Tommy is a huge burrito fan. I make 2 batches of this in a row and freeze the extras for quick bean burrito dinners. I haven't calculated the cost, but I imagine it's only pennies... cheap! And these will make your house smell AWESOME while they are cooking, too.

So busy!

2008-10-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

The only time I really have available to post is during naptime or in the evenings... we've been so busy the last couple days during those precious times that I haven't been able to post! Not a whole lot going on the garden front, though I did buy 15 lbs of Yukon Gold potatoes to can. I might get it done today but probably not until after this weekend or maybe Saturday if I'm lucky. Oh, I made refried beans the other day, 2 batches actually. Homemade refried beans are super easy, I'll probably post the recipe with photos later. And they are GOOD and CHEAP!

It's Eleora's birthday next Tuesday but we're having a party on Saturday. Tomorrow Tommy and I have to take turns going to the DMV to get our licenses changed so we can register to vote in WA. I know, lame.. we've lived here over a year. But we want to make sure we can vote! Saturday is Eleora's party, and then on Sunday we'll go to the pumpkin patch and get pumpkins, and maybe some apples to process. We don't eat much applesauce, but it's good baby food and Eleora does like it, so I'll make some. Sarah and I want to make apple pie filling. I ordered some can-jel from Barry Farms but I don't think it'll be here on time, they didn't charge my card until Tuesday and so I doubt I'll have it on time, but we'll see.

Otherwise, things are chugging along like normal. I'm just enjoying this time I have left of my maternity leave before I have to go back to work in a week & half :(

Just waiting...

2008-10-07T12:50:00.000-07:00

The colors of the leaves are beginning to turn. Across the street, my neighbor already has quite a few leaves fallen onto his lawn. I think I'll tell him he can give them to me instead of taking them to the trash. If I have energy I might even go over there with the leaf vacuum once there's enough accumulated and just shred them all myself. It'll be good exercise.

So I've called the tree trimming company and they will come by with a couple yards of tree mulch when they are in the area. I can't imagine it will take very long, since the main office is about 2 miles from here. Sarah (my sister) said we could use their truck to haul the manure so I'm waiting to hear back from the manure guy on that. It's up north a bit, but we're already going up that way on Sunday with my sister and her family to pick pumpkins. I can't wait to get sugar pumpkins processed - pumpkin bread is one of my absolute favorite things of the season.

Today I didn't do much outside, it's REALLY windy out! Nice and sunny, but only in the 50's. Eleora and I went outside for a bit, I took inventory of the cedar boards I have left and decided I could do one more potato box is I only build them 2 feet high. I guess I should figure out if I'll get a better yield if I have 2 boxes that are 3 or 4 feet high, vs. 3 boxes that are 2 feet high.

On the bottom right you can see one of the potato boxes. They are 2.5' square, and 1 foot high right now. Basically, I'll fill them to 6 inches deep, plant my potatoes, and then fill them with straw, leaf mold, or whatever mulch I have on hand as the plant grows up. The basic idea is that you continue to pile up more and more, forcing the plant to continue to grow taller... and more space between the actual root and the plant means more potato growing space. We'll see how it works. My plan is to take the remaining boards that I have and screw them into a square so I can just set them on top. They will stay in place because of those wooden stakes, and I'll probably have to add more, but we'll see how it goes. So I am not sure how I should do it. I suppose that since I'm a novice at growing potatoes, the more potato plants I have the better luck, right? So I could make another potato box and then have 3 of them. I'll have to research it a bit.

I feel strangely on edge with no pressing project. Weird!

Anyway so we got a little bit of the area cleaned up, we did get rain last night so the cardboard is nice and soggy, waiting for the tree mulch :) Eleora and I took the rest of the boards and put them into the garage since I probably won't need them until springtime. (except what I needed to make one more box, just in case). She's such a great helper! Sometimes, at least ;)

In Celebration

2008-10-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

The photo is the first smile I've caught on camera... she's smiling a lot lately. Yesterday morning, Sophia woke up with a super stuffy nose. She thought she couldn't breathe, and panicked, and of course it got way worse when her mean ol' mom pounced on her with saline nose spray and a bulb syringe. So after the traumatic awakening, combined with the fact she'd wet through her diaper I thought I'd take a bath WITH her and cuddle there.

She loved it! And there was an interesting side effect. Her morning nap was long. I mean... looooooong. I finally woke her up at 1 to nurse because I needed to! Tommy suggested it might have been because of the bath so I decided to try it again. Last night at bedtime I ran another bath and we cuddled and played together. But it backfired! She did NOT want to go to sleep, she wanted to be social. In fact I don't think I went to bed until about 11:30! It was horrible. I'm normally out by 10, she's asleep for the night usually by 9. But she kept waking up and kept waking up...

Anyway, when I finally did go to bed I nursed her one more time before I put her into her bed and then went to sleep. AND DIDNT WAKE UP UNTIL 6:30!!!! That means she slept for almost 7 hours straight! WOOHOO... baby sleeps through the night!

I felt strangely rested and was trying to figure out why when I realized that she hadn't woken up to nurse! She woke up at 7 like she usually does to nurse and went back to sleep and has been sleeping since. Isn't that nuts?

So I think we'll do a bath again tonight :) Only maybe a little earlier so if she wants to hang out afterwards, I don't end up going to bed at 12! Maybe I'll start feeling rested more often ;)

The garden progress report

2008-10-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

The garden is underway! Last night I spent a lot of time pulling off tape from all the accumulated boxes in the basement. I stacked them up out on the porch and this morning after Sophia went down for her nap, Wola and I went outside to work in the garden :)

I was hoping to have enough boxes to do the walkways but that's a no-go so at this point I just focused on the beds and then we can do cardboard for the walkways later. It isn't quite as important for them, anyway.

So we laid out the cardboard on top of the weeds and grass, and then I put the beds on top. It's supposed to be pretty rainy this week and so I wanted to get this done so the cardboard would get nice and wet before I put anything on top of it. Tomorrow I'll call a tree trimming company and arrange for a truckload of wood chip mulch to be delivered, that'll be the first layer in my beds (to hold down the cardboard) and also it'll be what I put in the walkways. I might just focus on the beds and pile up the leftovers instead of spreading it in the walkways, or I might use what cardboard I have and spread it on that part. The chipped wood is free, so if I need to get a second load that's no problemo. Tree trimming companies are a great source for chipped wood mulch - they have to pay to dump it, so they are generally more than happy to deliver it to anyone who wants it. I probably have enough cardboard for half of the walkways, though I found a bunch more in the garage so I could have more than I thought. We'll see how far I get.

On Craigslist today there was an ad for someone offering free manure, they can even load it for you. Now I just gotta find someone to let me borrow their truck :) We really will need to get one... the plan is this spring, I'll get my annual bonus and with our tax return we should have enough to get a decent truck with cash.

But anyway, enough with the yakking... here's the pics!

I didn't take out the camera with me initially so this isn't QUITE the beginning, but at least I took some pictures :) You can see Eleora in the back being super helpful by throwing handfuls of dirt into the bed ;)

Here she is doing a balancing act on the beams that Tommy pulled out of the ground yesterday

I must have done the math wrong when I planned out the area. It just looked like there was not enough room between the beds. it was supposed to be three feet but looked closer to 1 1/2 feet between the beds.

So I changed the layout and I think I like it better. More spacious and roomy between the beds, and I think there will be more area with better sun. This garden area was all that the landlord would allow me to use, and it's pretty shady so full sun will be a commodity this summer. Good thing we like broccoli, because it doesn't need full sun!

I tore up some paper grocery bags I'd been saving to "patch" in spots on the cardboard where there were holes and other spots that the weeds could go through. I weighed one spot down with a brick, and you see here Eleora is going after the brick to put it back where it "belongs" which is on top of the beams in the back where I put it this morning. Oh toddlers... everything has to be in it's "spot."

So there you have it! Now the garden is ready for layers! Hopefully I'll have more progress to report later this week :)

Who is Uncle Dutch?

2008-10-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

Uncle Dutch was actually my Grandfather. Otto "Dutch" Noetzelman was born in 1921 in Kearney, Nebraska. His parents, Rudolph and Anna Noetzelmann, were German immigrants who had settled on a farm (N Lazy A) in Lewellen, Nebraska. The youngest of nine children, Otto was 21 years younger than his oldest sibling, Ed.

Granddad left the farm in 1940 and went out into the world. He married a beautiful woman, Jeanne, and together they had two children, one of whom is my father, Jim. Otto served in the Navy as a pilot and retired with the rank of Commander in 1967. He lived a full life and I loved him very much. He passed away in April of this year, and I miss him. Most of his nieces and nephews called him "Uncle Dutch," and so have I named my farm.

A few years ago, I came across a property listing for acreage in NE WA. I was mostly just "window shopping," since I was nowhere near being able to buy property at the time, not to mention I lived in Colorado at the time. The property listing was so beautiful that I emailed it to my mother, who also likes to "window shop" properties.

Oddly enough, my parents ended up buying that acreage. Each of my three siblings have come behind the venture and we all want to have our own part in what has now become the "new" N Lazy A Ranch. In a few years, Tommy & I will buy 20 of the 120 acres they purchased and we will end up living on that property. One of my dreams is to be able to support our family through sustainable agriculture. The parcel of land we have picked out is beautiful, the soil is rich and dark, and it is perfect for what I had in mind. I may just do market gardening, or we may do a CSA. Tommy may be involved, or he may work full-time. But one thing I did know, I was going to have a mini-farm.

I decided to name my farm after Granddad not only because I loved him very much but also because the legacy of the original N Lazy A farm came from him, and while he never went back in to farming, I will never forget the tomatoes he grew in his yard when I was a small child. He was a big impact to my life and I wanted to remember him in my own way. N Lazy A will be the overall name for the property, but Uncle Dutch Farms will be the name for my farm within N Lazy A.

Of course, more pictures are good, right? Here are some pictures of the original N Lazy A.

hay!

The farmhouse

Granddad with the pigs

Granddad in the veggies at age 2

Current Projects

2008-10-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

I've got a couple projects going right now. Actually one is ongoing and the other I did yesterday. I make homemade pizza probably once a week. I have this great pizza stone I got from my mom and with it's help I've been able to churn out gourmet pizzeria-style pizzas on a weekly basis, much to the joy and delight of my husband. I generally make up a sauce fresh, especially if we want to have a white garlic sauce on our pizza (which is fairly often). However, I did buy a canned pizza sauce a while back and we ran out which made me think... gee, I'm a pretty good cook, why shouldn't I just make up my own sauce and can it into jars?

Bingo :)
So yesterday on our trip to Costco I bought a giant can of tomato sauce and made up some pizza sauce. I ended up making it pretty spicy, more heat that I'd normally like, which is great for Tommy (he loves spicy hot things) but that's OK, I usually prefer ranch dressing or even just olive oil for my pizza. It went pretty well, though added to the MESS in my kitchen (that I have yet to clean up this morning).

My other project is CHEEEEESE. I've been interested in making cheese for quite some time. In fact, a few years ago I made some but forgot about it back in the fridge and it dried out and crumbled. My mom got me Ricki Carrol's cheesemaking book for Christmas last year and of course I devoured it but it did take me this long to start. I'm pretty methodical and like to do lots of research and have my ducks in a row before I learn a new skill (for the most part).

I have already made mozzarella a couple times, and made Ricotta with the leftover whey (though still haven't gotten much from that, but I'll get there :). The other day I found out the Provolone is basically just mozzarella with sharp lipase enzymes added (gives it the distinctive flavor) and so I decided to make up a batch.

So of course I don't have pictures of the process but I took a couple photos yesterday. I don't know if it will be a true provolone since I never got the mozzarella to "stretch" like it's supposed to. I suspect too little citric acid in the recipe, I used a different one this time. In any case, I soaked it in a saltwater brine for about 22 hours. It looks kinda like a BRAIN, huh? heh. After that I rubbed it with olive oil and wrapped in cheesecloth.

Then I drew up the corners, tied them up with a pretty pink shoelace, and hung the whole mess down in my creepy basement. It's too warm in the main house to cure cheese, the basement is the right temperature though not the right humidity, but I'm sure it'll be fine. Edible, at least ;)

Looks kinda like one of those ghost thingies people hang in their yards for halloween, huh! :)

My next projects for cheese will probably be either a farmhouse cheddar or maybe a gouda. I'd also like to build a cold smoker (from a cardboard box) so I can smoke my cheeses. Tommy is a big cheese fan so I hope to be able to get really gourmet with them. I can only picture the smoked jalapeno cheddars I can make for him as my garden starts producing.

I don't have access to a source of raw or fresh milk (unless I want to pay $10/gallon, yech). But I just found out that Costco doesn't use hormones in their milk (rbst) and it's a lot cheaper than grocery store milk so I'll try using that next time.

The beginning!

2008-10-03T20:43:00.001-07:00

So it begins. I finally finished building my garden boxes the other day and also got my starter garlic in the mail. I bought a half pound of Inchelium Red and Music Pink. I'll probably be buying other types as we go along but I plan on saving bulbs from the results of this planting and thus continuing these lines. Hence, the beginning.

I ordered sort of late in the season and so there's no particular reason why I got the Music Pink aside from that it was a hardneck (I want to try both), it was available and one of the cheaper options.

Inchelium Red was one variety I was set on growing. In my quest for local food I discovered that this garlic is one of the best tasting garlics, and was discovered here in WA on the Colville Indian Reservation. That's actually really close to where Uncle Dutch Farms will end up being - the acreage is in Addy, WA. It is a softneck and I think I'd rather grow hardneck but then again, I'm a complete novice and so I don't even really know what I'll prefer.

So now I have to figure out what to put in my garden beds so I can plant this garlic in the next couple weeks. I finished the boxes but was planning on filling them gradually, lasagne-gardening-style, with leaves, manure, compost, wood chip mulch, etc. So we'll see what I come up with. I might do just garden soil from the local nursery but I balk at paying for it and not to mention I'd probably have to fill an entire large bed with it, so I guess we'll have to see how it turns out.

Just today, Tommy tore out some beams that were buried in the ground in my garden area. So now, I just gotta get my wood chip mulch for the first layer... I already have plenty of cardboard in our basement. I'll lay down cardboard over the entire area I plan on using, then will put my beds in place and layer on some wood chip mulch... and wet it down really well. This will kill the weeds underneath and give me some nice pathways. Here's the future garden area:

And here's my garden boxes that I built all by myself :) OK with some "help" from Eleora, that is ;)

The Family

2008-10-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

I'm testing the embedding of photos. This is Eleora, she'll be 2 in a couple weeks. She's pretty goofy sometimes :)

And this is Sophia... she's 6 weeks old today. Not very goofy although she makes really weird baby noises... sometimes in the middle of the night Tommy and I both wake up to them and we just sit there and laugh at her ;)

And this is Tommy and I, 4 1/2 years ago. We had fun that day :)

I'm not a good blogger...

2008-10-03T15:24:00.001-07:00

I was never much good at journaling, either. So forgive me if the posts come sporadically. I just wanted to get THAT out of the way asap :) I do want to track my progress for my own sake, so hopefully I'll be good like many of the fabulous blogs I read and post lots of pictures and interesting narratives of my projects.

Knowing me, though, they will probably come months apart... heh.

Welcome!

2008-10-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

Greetings, and welcome to the beginnings of Uncle Dutch Farms!

This will begin as a somewhat sporadic progress report of my gardening and homesteady type projects and of course Uncle Dutch happenings, and hopefully will evolve into something I can keep track of over the years as the farm continues to grow. After all, I don't even live on the land yet!

"Yet" is the important word there. :)