Been noticing this as well.. so many plant pots without dranage included. Great advice as always from the laidback gardener
Micro Climates and Rocks
I have been enjoying reading on my local garden group about the city micro climates and those with green houses, green lean-to or hoop covers. There have been pictures of indoor set ups and outdoor as well.
Lots of questions about just went is the soil workable and you can plant the most cold hardy seeds. I have also found I am greatly enjoying following along on a number of UK blogs and or twitter accounts. They are so far ahead of us in so many ways..
But what I adore seeing is how they use rock as both wind block and heat sink, its something we see a bit in area up from my own farm as it was settled by the Scottish and so we see many stone walls that were built in that area. Soon enough I will clean out the beds but not quite yet, I want to give that cover to the soil over the next weeks and then I will clean it out and do the annual seeding for the pretty flowers.
I was very surprised when we had a lack of rocks here on the farm when we moved here but finally when we were digging area, we hit a old rock pile, it has become the backbone of our rock garden area’s by the house. They are used in a area that has a lot of lily’s that are tiger lilies and are the edible kind only (I don’t mix them with others)
I harvest enough bulbs each spring for fresh eating that I never need to worry about them getting crowded in the bed. What I love about the big rocks is that they heat up in the early spring sun and warm the soil around them to get everything up and growing when the main gardens are still under snow.
I have other Bloody Dock Plants in the gardens they are still under snow at this time, even in this bed, there is another plant a mear five feet away that is under the shade pattern of a bush that is still dormant but this big old plant that is layered around with rocks here and there is already melted out and up and growing!
The biggest leaves are already 3 inches long and by next week, I will be able to start taking a leaf or two for kitchen use. As these are up, time to take a walk later today and see how melted out the area is with my sunchokes?
We have snow coming later today and if they are right a lot more tomorrow and the next day, and even a few really cold nights. I asked a old timer farmer this weekend what he though we would have this year for weather and growing season.. two years ago we had the drought, and then last year we had rain and floods and more floods.
He said that the maple syrup run is good and that typically that is a good sign for planting season to come in spring. We will see.
Happy Easter Round Two with photos :)
So I did get some photo’s for you today.. they are not the greatest, the lambs are not ready to come outside to the muddy, cold wind world yet (well they could but why should they?) so that means that I have very poor lighting in most of the barn and even worse in the corner jug where I needed to use the flash.
Come on, I had to use the bunny photo today 🙂
Not that you can see it but the sibling is nursing on the other side at the same time
Despite more then a dozen photo’s taken, this is the only useable baby goat photos
The sunset yesterday was lovely! Everyone have a great evening!
Posted in At the kitchen table
Tagged Baby goats, Easter Lambs, farm, lambs, Rabbit doe, Sunset
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Happy Easter “Lambs”
Happy Easter from our little farm to you and yours! I hope that regardless of your beliefs that you will enjoy time with your family and friends on this long weekend.
The past week has been busy, we finally are lambing, Toffee had our first set of twins it was a mix, one ewe and one ram.. Ram is the bigger lamb with ewe being second and smaller. Both a mix of chocolate dark brown with lots of white flashing (white head markings, white socks and white tails). They are out of the jug now and in the baby pen
Champagne had a huge single ewe lamb (which is fine as she is just two herself) and did a outstanding job in delivery, cleanup and bonding. I have my eye on her daughter. She is a bubbles granddaughter. She is the same as the twins being a rick dark brown main body color with lots of white crome They are out of the jug now and in the baby pen
Woolie has a lovely set of twin ram lambs, pure white both of them. The biggest is doing great, the youngest is a little bit weaker and its getting a extra nursing and being made sure its nursing well. I will do a weight check on the littlest one for the next couple days, they are safely jugged up and hopefully with the much smaller space, the wee one will pick up just a touch more.
We have two more ewe’s to go yet and we clearly have a missed year with spot.. no lambs from her this year.
Hubby is slowly and carefully recovering from his torn muscles and broken bones, he finds to very hard that he can hear the broken bones move back and forth.. click click and he is not happy to be on the side lines but he must take the time off and heal. He did try to go to work for one day last week but wisely decided to take the rest of the week off.
I am grateful for the warmer weather in the sense it has allowed me to get out the hoses and now I can do the watering without hauling around buckets. However the warmer weather also means that we have mud.. so much mud and I have already had one minor slip and one true fall, thankfully I am just a bit bruised up.
We enjoyed some wonderful time at a dear friends on good Friday and we having a quiet stay at home weekend otherwise with just us on the farm. We have lots to do and at the same time, I am having a bit of a quieter couple days as well.
We have two new rabbit litters and one chicken sitting that is due to hatch this coming week if we have our timing right.. spring is here and so are the babies!
Pantry Challange 2018 – Day 13 Falling!
I did take photos of the fridge and will get them uploaded and on a different post that will be pending yet.
So hubby came down around 5 am ish to ask for help, he has slipped in the tub and fallen into side of the tub, he was certainly hurting and so off to the walk-in that sent us to the ER and two doctors later and its a cracked rib or two an or torn muscles.
Meds, pain killers and six to eight weeks of healing, with No lifting and care required. Needless to say, I have been a little busy the last few days between regular house stuff, taking over hubbies chores on the farm and reno stuff still going on.
Tonight is the first time where I have everything done and have time to sit down and get a post up to let you all know what is been going on.
I have three ewe’s that are bagged up now but still no new lambs, on the other hand the goat babies are a hoot.. they are strong, healthy and full of themselves. I will see if I can put up a wee little video of them at some point.. I have taken a few cuz.. come on baby goat bouncing!
The weather has been cold and they say its finally going to start warming up in the day times above 0, which is great. It will make things very nice in some ways but it also will slow me down in others as its starting to be the mud season. Right now I can sled down the water buckets to the big barn on the snow yet, it will be a lot harder to sled them in mud.. and I am so out of shape..
WOW, am I out of shape after x months off the hauling of water and hay/feed and such due to my lungs, I also have to wear a mask when I am working these days, but its so worth it. My body will get stronger for it, and that can only be a good thing.
Also wanted to send out a RIP note to our Boo Cat, she would have turned 14 this spring and has always been a great barn purrpot, she was fixed as a young female and was a good hunter. It’s always sad to lose one of the older ones. (this photo was taken in 2014) but its one of my favorites 🙂
Pantry Challange 2018 Day 12 Pie
Pie might seem like a odd thing on the pantry challenge but there is a reason that pies were so popular back in the day, its a way to take flour, fat, water and salt and turn it into a crust that can be used to hold pretty much anything.. its also easy enough to make a hand held pie.. This can of course be done with bread dough as well..
Its quite amazing how you can take bits of this or that, make a sauce and wrap it in dough and you have a meal. While in a ideal world you have lots of potato’s and such in the cold pantry, the truth is that at this time of the year, its getting lower and its also starting to sprout (or at least mine and what appears to be every gardener in my next of the woods that I am friends with on facebook)
I have a number of little pullets that have started laying most of them are laying the off cream eggs that show their Salmon Faverolle or Icelandic background but two appear to have a bit of americain in them as they are laying light green eggs.
I might need to encourage a few more brown egg layers in the flock in this coming season, it would appear that the youngest clutch all came from brown eggs so any pullets from it will be brown or green egg layers. The pullet eggs have so much yolk and so little white yet and they are just so cute!
It was the day of pii this week and while I might be a bit late, I did get one made in its honor..
Eggs to Date -74
Striving for Victory – The Battle for Fuel: a letter from Lily
I am really enjoying reading along with the Hip Roof Barn War Challenge.. Check it out if you have not already done so.
In March of 1942, fuel, clothing, and food were all subject to rationing and everyone who could, was called upon to help with march towards Victory. This month, we are starting to reduce our consumption of valuable fuel so that there will be more for the war effort. Here is a letter from Lily describing her war experience so far.
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Posted in Life moves on daily
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Pantry Challange 2018 Day 11 Freezer Meats
The young green onion bulbs are finally starting to sprout, but they sure took their sweet time. Hopefully the pea sprouts will be moving along faster as they come up.
I had truly hoped that by this time I would have a small spot in the front flower bed that I could put one of my spring heat covers and I had dug out some pots of soil that I made up last year and put a few extra’s in.. a couple have dormant horse radish roots, some have dormant nettle roots and two of them are winter sown with pigweed seeds..
Given they are made up with outside soil and all the natural bugs that come with it, I do not want to move them into the house. I am sure like you when it comes to spring and seed starting, you are staring with clean soil, clean pots etc.
However the snow will not stop.. We have had some melting every day at the highest temps but even with that, I have a extra foot and half of snow everywhere then I did last week and the temps are going down right now.. not up. We were to have a nice plus 3 or 4 and now they say we are going to have -13 brrr
This freezer right now is pretty empty looking at this point but it was sure full when I had done both my beef and pork for the year back in 2015 when this photo was taken.
Today’s topic is freezer meats, aka what most people consider “fresh meat” but as we will at some point get to me bringing fresh meat from the farm.. I do not consider it fresh.. its freezer meat but it is raw meat.
Hubby pulled out a package of beef for me to use, which was a good hint that maybe I had been using to much canned meats. Fair enough, there is a difference in taste and texture with canned meats. Plus I made hamburger steaks with BBQ sauce.. very yum.
Do you keep a goodly amount of meat in the freezer? or are you more of the can the meat and keep the freezers for veggies or fruit? I know enough folks that pretty much only have meat in the freezer and can or dry the veggies and fruits or I know a couple ladies that are totally the other way round.. all their meat is processed in some way and its nothing but a veggie feast in their freezers.
I am normally a mix.. I put away fruit and veggies in the one freezer though the harvest season but I slowly process or use it up and by the time butcher season comes around, its used as a meat freezer most of the winter.
My freezers at the moment are both getting lower just based on the time of the year and will get even more so with the challenge.
How are your freezers looking.. still full and going strong or starting to show the time of year as well? Even if you are seasonally buy a quarter or half a beef or pork, its interesting to see it reflected in what is in the freezers at this time.
Pantry Challange 2018 Day 10 Jello
Yesterday we talked about Pudding (haha or should I say on Day 9) Today we are going to talk about Jello
Its a total follow up to the same idea but its even cheaper to stock as it goes on better sales, comes in more flavours and its ok on its own but its outstanding as a extender. The same amount of fruit in a bowl will serve one maybe.. but used in a jello can jump to four servings for sure.
It turns out that between the fact that my hard fruits have been flower frost killed for the past two years, leaving me pretty much only soft fruit to put up, combined with a reno year last year that lead to very little canning compared to a normal year, along with poor price sales on canned fruit in the stores.
Hubby adores his rhubarb fruits and applesauce for work and that has been outstanding in terms of being a staple for his work lunches for the last year, which means its getting low.. thankfully fresh rhubarb season will start again in April-May. We still have a good supply of canned pineapple
But otherwise, unless I want to use dried, I am far lower on fruit then I expected I would be.. however I happen to have lots of fruit jams in my cold storage. This means I have sweet burst of fruit flavour.
You do not want to eat jam as a fruit, but it can be used in a number of ways in the menu planning. I consider this lack of canned fruits to be my first big “pantry gap” find and I will need to step up my fruit put up this year. I will not just be needing to can for a year, I need to plan for canning for a min of a 18 months worth of fruit putting up.
How is your fruit in your pantry looking? Do you have lots still after your winters of eating? Have you been effected by weather in terms of your growing patterns or results in production? Have you also noticed that the sales on canned fruit has become fewer and further between?
Pantry Challange 2018 Day 9 Pudding!
Dang I need stop writing double post days but life is busy and I am get tired. I am loving the work that is getting done. I truly am.
So first and foremost Wow.. have we had snow! not just a bit of snow.. six inches here and five inches here and another six inches and another 8 here.. wow! go march, just let that lion roar Baby!!! SNOW on..
However the temps are nice enough, 0 to plus 3 for daytime highs and very mild lows minus 3 to minus 5 ish so its been great indoor and outdoor working temps that’s for sure.
The Green onions didn’t seem to care at all that there was very little sun, just grey sky’s.. they have grown really well this week and I am looking forward to doing some trimming of them for fresh toppings on a couple of dishes.
So today lets talk about pudding.. There is a reason that you will see a lot of pudding recipes in the older cookbooks, in the wartime books, in the dirty 30’s cookbooks. Its a way to provide a dessert or more depending on how you use it.
Its something that lots of people clearly buy in little cups per what I see if the store. I keep a good supply of both the instant and cooked box’s that go on sale at the store. I also keep a good number of big box’s of custard powder and I keep the basic’s for homemade pudding making as well.. or tapioca pudding traditional or made with Sheep Milk Tapioca
When you have fresh milk coming in the house from the barn and you have eggs, you have custard and that is a great thing to have in the house. But not everyone is going to have that, however keeping a good supply of puddings in your pantry is a great idea for all.
Pick the flavours your family will like and watch for the sales. Puddings can be fancied up with just a touch of canned fruit on top, or even a dollop of jam. It can be made into pudding pie with canned or frozen fruit used on top in a thin layer.
Do you stock puddings or custards in your pantry, with either a dairy animal on the farm, or dried or canned milk if its not instant kind?
Egg Count to date -64
Just another Day on the Farm 