monday's mountain musings

We have been busy around the homestead as of late. Besides  starting on the great garlic adventure we  have about doubled  garden space yet again.  We now have over 70 raised beds, the three big gardens, the greenhouse containers and plots of herbs and  flowers in various locations.  As soon as things start growing, it should be lookin quite pretty around here. 

We are hoping to make the leap into some market gardening of herbs, veggies, lotions n potions and crafty type stuff this year too.  We have a couple folks spending a good bit of time around helping us, getting things done and trying to make the leap with us.   We are hoping to  be able to make a decent go of it and  pay the few bills that we have. Finding a new  income source has become  somewhat important  since the manthing  got hurt last fall. This is something we have thought about for a long time, wanted to do, and finally have the need and want  at the same time (and  have help too).

Spring has been slow to arrive this year.  Temps have been 10 or more degrees lower than normal for a couple months now  and  nights  have remained quite cool.  Early spring crops are just beginning to grow well and summer crop plantlings are ridiculously tiny.   Tomato starts  still  have but one set of leaves, peppers are  just sprouting and tobacco is about a half inch tall.   I am sure glad we have a long growing season even with a slow start everything should still have plenty of time.  Planting of all crops began last week. Another week and the first plantings of everything but tobacco should be in the ground.

monday's mountain musings

For a change, the moon cycle and the planting season cycle correlate enough that I am trying to plant with the moon. This has meant we have been busy planting root crops. Carrots, onions, leeks, turnips and potatoes have been going in when weather and time permit. We are trying to plant taters in several different areas this year in hopes of a better crops and to eliminate the problem we had with the potato beetles last year.
Some of the beds are being amended and many of the medicinal herbs are going in as they need the time before frost to do their thing and germinate. The remaining beds will be worked up and amended as we have time. Most of the started seeds are now in the greenhouse and things are greening up nicely outside. The few cabbage that made it through the winter are heading up nicely and the peas are beginning to climb. I made three trellises for them today while out putzing about and they turned out quite nice.

Speaking of time, after this week I will have 3 months of free time before going back to school. I cannot wait to not be tied to the computer for half my waking hours unless I choose to be. I have a few projects up my sleeve that I want to work on while I am off. More pallet fun, Hoorah!!

monday's mountain musings- break is over

busy bees on New Year's Day

Happy New Year! It has been a little while since my last post but all is well around the homestead. I decided that I needed a little break from life with the exception of my darn math class for a few weeks (translated to, math moron trying to keep an A) and then decided that my winter break was going to be a break from everything except the essentials of homestead life. It was a much needed break after having such a busy spell of folks coming through over the last couple months.

Our first big dose of winter has finally arrived. Yesterday it was in the 60's and today it is 34 and VERY windy. Tonight will be the first night we get into the teens or single digits. I am going to either be really brave or really stupid and not cover any of the outdoor veggies that are growing. An old local farmer last summer told us to just leavum and they will be ok. In reality, I don't have much choice as row covers would not stay on the beds with this wind. The green house stuff will all be covered with an inside layer to keep things alive. I have about a 100 cabbage and broccoli plants in there that I thought bugs killed last fall as seedlings that have all come back to life as well as peas that are just starting to produce, greens, lettuce and asparagus seedlings.

Not much has been going on around the place in the way of improvements or changes. Manthing has been working steadily this winter (not complaining) so project time is limited for him. I have been a lazy slacker with most everything but school. Wood for next year is being cut when time permits and a clearing is being made for an eventual raised bed, hoop house. Seed catalogs are arriving so soon I will be sorting and deciding what and where stuff will be planted. Seeds will be started in a week or two for the early crops and before ya know it spring will have arrived.

monday's mountain musings

Howdy ya'll! I'm still kickin n screamin, just been a bit busy. Have I ever mentioned that I hate math? Iffin I ain't I will now just so my whole world knows that if my postings are few and far between I am likely lost in numerical neverland. Not an enjoyable place really, so, no need for jealousy. No, really, I aint jokin. The next 4 months of my life is filled with math courses and while I do very well with stuff I use all the time, stuff I don't use frustrates me. Its all good as once it is done I should never have to take another math course again!

Things on the homestead are really slowing down now. We got some much needed rain (6 in) with depression 13 or "the storm formally known as lee." Unfortunately, it seems to have brought with it some yuck! Immediately after if stopped raining I noticed nearly all the summer plants were fading out and dying off. It isn't blight but it is definitely something. The tobacco, however, is still growing very well. I am not complaining a whole lot about the die off as it does not seem to be affecting the fruits on the plants, it has not bothered any of the fall plantings and quite frankly, it's time for summer gardens to die. I am ready for the more relaxing fall and winter garden seasons. Most of the fruit left on plants is for seed saving rather than eating with the exception of the tomatoes.

With the rain, thankfully, came some cooler temperatures which kicked the fall plantings into gear and got them growing. The cabbages are beginning to head and many of the greens are micro-green size. The cukes, beans and maters in the gh are all flowering and the peas are sending up tendrils. Lettuce is very slow to get growing this season because of the heat but hopefully they will get growing soon too.

Hopefully, now that I am a couple weeks into the new courses and the gardens dying I can get my act together and get back to posting a bit more regularly than I have been the past few weeks.

monday's mountain musings

A few observations from the homestead as of late since watering has become an every day chore just to keep things struggling along. The heat is unrelenting and rains are nonexistent. I realized that our entire life right now revolves around the gardens and there is little time for anything else. Thankfully, there are two of us around all the time and sometimes all three of us are here to split the work or nothing else would ever get done!

over 4 hours watering gardens=650 gallons of water
over 2 hours picking veggies
over 2 hours preserving veggies
1 hour planting veggies
2 hours cooking dinner, rolls and dessert
1 hour fixing driveway from fetching water everyday

monday's mountain musings

Busy, busy, busy is the word around the homestead. I cleaned the greenhouse today and 11 trays of fall seedlings were planted. Manthing worked some more on the goat shed and split some wood and Measa worked on the pathways and stairs to the terraces, did some weed eating, and then got the carport area cleaned up. The stairs to the terraces really show how steep of a hillside they are actually on. What were we thinking? At the rate he is working we will be building new beds before the end of summer just to have things to do. Ain't many people that can tire me out working consistently but he certainly can!
The gardens are coming along very well and I am still working on a big update for them. I am in my final week of yet another semester of classes and the internet here has been very wonky for the last several days so I am very flustered with things lately. Research and making videos is difficult to do when one has intermittent internet access.
Tonight I made a garlic scape carbonara for dinner. It was quite tasty, simple to make and very cheap too. Rather than post the recipe I will just give the link to where I found it. I added some summer squash and zucchini into ours and we had the last of our spring greens to go along with it.
http://sarahscucinabella.com/2009/06/29/garlic-scape-recipe-garlic-scape-carbonara/

monday's mountain musings

Finally got our help down here yesterday after a rather long delay. No matter, as it is someone that has spent a lot of time here already, knows how we roll, is not afraid to work and has some excellent organizational skills so we can make up for lost time. Manthing had today off so we were able to get some more work done on the goat shed. The outside is now completely covered with the first layer and part of the inside is as well. We are running down the homeward stretch on it so soon we will move on to other projects.
We still have had no rain here, so again this weekend, we had to water all of the gardens. As soon we get accustomed and into a pattern of watering them all the rains will start again. Of this, I am near positive. Today I took a big wooden crate type thing and turned it into a potato planter. This one has no soil what so ever and it was the fastest garden we have ever built around here. I threw some seed taters in as an experiment to see how they grow through the summer in a fairly shaded spot. I also chucked in a couple other seeds just to see if they do anything. The gardens are really starting to take off now and there are blossoms everywhere. We are harvesting zucghini, summer squash, a few beans, carrots, onions, herbs and garlic. Within a week or so we should be eating our first tomatoes and cucumbers too.
Today I am dehydrating something more than herbs for the first time this season. I have about 7 pounds of carrots in and as soon as they are dry will have more to go. The carrots have done very well this spring. Maybe it's because of the tomato plants in with them and vice versa. The tomatoes are super healthy too and instead of stalks have tree trunks on them.

monday's mountain musings

My hands are rather sore from pulling wires through woven bags and metal lath for the last few days so just a quick update from the weekend. It did not go as planned but do they ever? We did, however, get a fair bit accomplished and with another couple days we can get the goat shed completed. I will do a much bigger write up on it all but not tonight since I am absolutely starved and pretty tired. I love kids but dang they wear this ol gal out and I am always glad to see them go home n have my quiet, dramatic free life back. Be warned, every structure we have ever built looks incredibly crooked in pictures. I don't know if its illusion or perhaps I always have the camera at a slight angle and though things may be a tad out of square, they are not nearly as bad as the pictures look.

monday's mountain musings and garden update

We have had beautiful weather around these parts since the last round of storms. We are supposed to have some move in again this afternoon and tonight. Hopefully,these will not be as strong as the last ones. I have been working out in the gardens as much as possible to finish getting in the cooler weather crops. Since it has been so nice and the soil is 72 degrees, I have also planted warmer weather crops in small quantities. The long range forecast shows no frost in the next two weeks and that would bring us up to our typical last frost week. If by chance a frost does come, I can cover any fragile stuff or suffer the quarter loss in seed and replant. I really see no loss in trying to get ahead on planting. Here is a video of a walk through most of the gardens yesterday. I skipped the tater patch and most of the herb beds as I was too lazy to walk there. I was plum tuckered out after spending near 9 hours stooped over and squatting. One would think after over a month of working outside a lot again I would not get so tired and sore still, but I do. I sure ain't what I once was!!!


In other news, I am again in my final week of classes so when not in the gardens I have my nose stuck in virtual books researching for my final papers.One is on a subject of my choosing and I am enjoying doing the work even if it is rather tedious. It is on the effects of modernization in Appalachia.I have not decided if I like how research is done these days or not yet. Not having to go to a real library is nice but the online libraries are overwhelming and the whole never touching a real book thing is still rather odd to me.

monday's mountain musings-snow, water sleds, critters n snow cream

We got us another solid nine inches of snow last night. It must have come down at a pretty good clip and would have loved to watch it. Unfortunately I couldn't talk the manthing into going to bed at 2 pm yesterday and getting up at 10 last night to watch it all.

The other day when we heard of the impending storm coming in, we decided we should construct a water totin sled. After the big snow on Christmas, we learned that although it seems a silly thing to think about in GA, a sled would help greatly for hauling water from the spring. We or manthing constructed us a sled from the cover to the air conditioning unit from the fifth wheel. It is smooth and light weight so should glide over the snow, in theory. I wanted to make it more sturdy n use it as a big old sled for myself but I have been forbidden to act like I am four because of my ol broken bones. I am sure we will be testing it for its intended purpose soon and I think I can coax the small black dog into going for a ride without too much trouble.

I don't think the goats are real amused with our winter this year.


Going to make us some snow cream and a peach cobbler for this afternoon.
While in some areas I would never suggest eating the snow, in many areas I would especially after a big snow. It is fun to make for kids of all ages especially when it is something you grew up with. This is the basic recipe that I use for making it. Remember only to use fresh, clean, snow!!

1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
large bowl of snow (about a gallon)

Blend milk, sugar and vanilla. Stir in enough snow to make snow cream to an ice cream consistency. For variations try substituting condensed milk or cream for milk for a heavier flavor. Add Nestles Quik for a chocolate snow cream, or use instant cocoa mix. Add fruits for a different flavor or blend an overripe banana in the mixture. Serve immediately.

monday's mountain musings

 Had another beautiful, breezy, and chilly day today so I needed to be busy in order to keep warm. While the shack was only 58-60  at its warmest all day long, there is no way  a fire is being lit the first week of October. Besides, I still have my seed collection all over it and I am not ready to put it away for the winter yet.

 While out and about this weekend, we stopped and got a big  mess of mutsu apples to make some sauce with. Making sauce means  I need a good bit of wood for cooking them down and then canning them. Yesterday, the manthing  loaded the truck up with a nice pile of wood while I was fetching water that is now running at a very slow pace compared to what is was a bit earlier in the year. This afternoon I busted it all up so tomorrow, I can burn it all up.

 Since I knew I was going to be out near the cook top for a good while, I decided to make what I needed for tonight's dinner, heat some dish water , make sweet tea and I had to make an apple crisp on the stove top.  The crisp doesnt brown quite like it would in the oven and I  over did the oatmeal topping a bit  butI think it will still be quite tasty. I swear, there is almost no better smell  than wandering the woods and  getting a good sniff of yummy food cooking. The wind was blowing just right today so  I could smell the apples cooking way off in to the woods. Good thing we are a long way from most of civilization or I might worry about zombies  coming from miles around for vittles.

 I had a big load of laundry that I needed to get washed up today as well. With the dry conditions and a good breeze to dry with I have to take advantage of it. I try to  keep the laundry all caught up including blankets, hoodies, and other heavy things  that I sometimes let go during other seasons  when it is humid and normally rainy . This way, when the wet weather comes in  and gets stuck between the mountains  we have plenty  of clothes to go for a good spell and not worry over whether we will have enough clothes to get us through.

I worked my way through my list of chores in pretty good time and found a bit of time to beat on my drums,  fetch a salad to go with dinner, pack up the manthing's stuff and  get his  cooler supplies all ready for him for a few days  on the road. All I have left is  evening chores with the critters and feeding us  when ever he happens to roll in.

monday's mountain musings

Yeah!! It is finals week once again and I will finally be done with my Eng. Comp. class. I must say that it was the absolute, stupidest class I have ever had the joy of taking in my entire  life, and I have taken a lot of classes. Hopefully the Eng. Comp.II class that I begin next week will go a little better than this one has.

 Summer is nearly gone now, but we are still having very warm days and no rain.The nights are cool and most of the color is beginning to fade.  Most of the summer crops are done producing and have been pulled out and the remainder are going for seed saving purposes.  My tiny tom's, paprika and mystery pepper are still thinking it is July,but, I had to pull the okra out of my misery yesterday. Most of it had begun falling over and looking pretty hideous so I harvested the small pods for food and cut the large ones to dry  to mix half and half with our coffee. The goats enjoyed the leaves and stems and I now have four beds to plant for fall and winter, if I so choose.

 The fall  crops are doing very well  with the exception of my onion starts. The heat and dry was just too much and I could not justify the hauling of water more often for them. The broccoli and cabbage are growing quite nicely and even the ones that got eaten on are looking like they will pull through.  The peas are climbing their poles and are so very pretty,  they are the prettiest shade of green  I have ever seen for fall plantings. The turnips, the ones I had to reseed, well ,I believe every seed planted has now sprouted. Boy, there are a lot of turnips growing. The critters will enjoy the greens and culled plantlings, so  I am not worried about any waste.  The rest of the greens, carrots, and fall herbs are coming along quite well which is almost surprising, since it is so dry. We will be eating spinach and lettuce in a week or so.

I think this weekend the manthing and I are going on vacation to our second home. It is time for a break from  my daily world and all its trappings. I think it is  the perfect time for a little get away to the mountains . The end of another block of classes, full, harvest moon Equinox. While we will most likely not be able to celebrate on the  appropriate days, it will suffice to have a couple few days away from home.. sorta... kinda... good thing its only  200 foot away as we have the critters to tend to still. 

While much of the color is beginning to fade, there are a few things still blooming , giving us some magnificent scenery.

monday's mountain musings

 Just as soon as I thought I had most of the fall gardens planted, something got in the big  garden bed and ate  near all my baby plants. Since there are no tracks any where, I am assuming it was due to bugs as they are still around  quite bad. The plants were also a touch small but I had been spraying them  every few days and the bugs had been leaving them alone. The other night, we had to water and I did not bother spraying them, so now they are dead. Manthing is bringing me home a couple flats of broccoli and cabbage this evening and I will get them in the ground tomorrow since I do not have time to start new seeds.

The seeds that I planted last week in the upcycled bathroom garden are all coming up nicely, as are all the greens I planted a few days before them.  The peas and some green onions are all that have not sprouted as yet.

I pulled up my 2 North Ga Roaster plants today as I was plum sick of looking at them and they were dying back  and looking ugly. All total, I got  50 squash from the two plants, most of which are 5-10 pounds. Once I worked up the bed they were in,  carrots were planted in their place.

The tobacco is about 2/3  of the way harvested with the first crop and the second crop is growing nicely. Bugs and worms are still an issue with  the tobacco as well and is  keeping me quite busy. I try and schedule big harvests for when I know manthing will be home  so that I have help in hauling and  hanging it.

The remainder of the corn is going to be iffy on being able to harvest it. Okra is producing like crazy now  and  I am near done getting our yearly amount stashed away. Once that is done it will all be allowed to grow and be dried for coffee replacement. Coffee prices are fixing to go up so  we will mix  the okra and coffee about half and half in order to cut costs  through the winter.

Besides work, school and the gardens not much else has been going on in our little world. Chickens are producing nicely and we will have plenty of eggs stored away to get us through the winter. The bunny babies are growing nicely. Monkey bunny, my breeding doe, had to be put down last week as she  fell ill with something.  I think it may have just been old age and heat that took its toll on her as she was the one I brought home from the sanctuary, so I had no idea how old she was. Now we are looking for a new doe but they seem  hard to come by in  our area. I put an ad on craig's list in hopes someone  locally has one they are willing to part with.

I can not wait til  life slows down a bit and I get some extra time to fill. I have many projects that I am wanting to work on   and  have fun with , unfortunately I know if I start them now, they will be put aside and forgotten. This summer has been long too warm and too busy.  I am quite ready for fall to come so that I have a bit of free time to do what I choose, instead of what I have to do.

OH! I almost forgot, the day after I posted the saddleback  caterpillar, I got stung twice by one (faceplants).  I was picking tomatoes and it was on a tomato that I grabbed. Both stings were on fairly tough parts of my hands so while  they  were irritated and  a bit sore for a few hours, neither  sting caused much of a reaction. Of course, being allergic to bees and home alone  with no transportation I, on the side of caution took an overdose of  pm pain relief (they are the same thing as benadryl)  and was ready for bed  two hours later. Gotta say, it was the best nights sleep I have  had in a while.

monday's mountain musings-better late than never -oops!

well, I was going to do a late MMM's post but once I had it nearly finished my fat fingers magically hit the control + key instead of the shift + key and I erased the entire thing. Needless to say,I am not very happy with said fingers and am too annoyed with myself to type it all out again.... It's ok everybody,   laugh!!!!

monday's mountain musings

Ahhh, summer is most certainly in full  swing now and we are in a hot, dry spell here  as is  much  of the country. Most out door work is getting done in the early mornings or in the evening when the  sun has gone down, while the heat of the day is spent staying cool or  something that resembles cool and comfortable anyway as there is no central air in this house  nor a  window room  air conditioner. We  use one single box fan and it works pretty well for us. I must admit that I sort of chuckle to myself when I hear people "dying  without their air conditioners." What in pray tell would they do if the electric grid was to go down in the mid summer heat?

The gardens are getting dry but seem to be doing mostly well  over all. Japanese beetles are into  a patch or two of beans but I figure so long as they stay there then they can munch all they want. The beans are formed  and grown and are just starting to dry on the vines  so in some ways are making my job easier when it comes to picking time. A couple okra plants in one area have been chewed by deer but it is only a couple plants and we have okra in many different locations this year because last season the deer ate the majority of the okra  as it was only in two locations, this year it is in 7 different places. The tomatoes have had some white fly issues but I think they are going to be ok as I have been  mixing up a potion and applying it to the plants and of course the tobacco is having its normal aphid  and bug issues but nothing too major. I do have an update coming on the gardens but the camera has been rather persnickity the last couple days and does not want to download the pictures.

We dug up the rest of the potatoes this last weekend and had a decent harvest of them. we did have something chewing on them though in the ground and large pieces were gone from many. I do not know what did this but it was obviously gnawed on. I took some pics but of course they are on the camera so  I will be doing a post on them soon. We canned up 20 quarts  of small potatoes, those that got jabbed with the pitchfork  or gnawed on and have the remainder curing for storage.

Gumbalina is fixin to be 5 months old next week  and is getting  to be a big girl, 13.5 pounds and 24 inches long at her last check up in mid June. She is trying to crawl around now although she doesn't do a real good job of it. I its more like a really bad headstand  from what I have seen of her. She has found out that her feet fit nicely in to her mouth and every picture I have seen of her in the last week or two has her stuffing them into her face.

monday's mountain musings

Wow! Where does time go? I swear I need just four more hours of day during the summer months, we can subtract it from the day length during winter time can't we?

The gardens are coming along splendidly with the exception of my ginormous zucchini plant that got broke off due to weight and then got a cut worm in it. Tobacco is finally starting to grow well but as per usual is having its bug issues. Everything else is blooming and growing baby veggies.

The last few days have been extremely warm for these here mtns of Georgia. Getting up and out to tend gardens until the sun gets over the mountain and then we do short stints with multiple breaks through out the remainder of the day. A couple more days of extreme warmth and we will be back to more normal temps. I can not really complain. After all the rain we had, the very warm sunny days has really kicked melons, okra and peppers into full growing gear.

This week we should be having a bit of company for a day or few. A net friends son is stopping by for a bit of R&R in the mtns on his leave from the giant sand box overseas. Hopefully he can chillax n unwind a bit before making his journey to visit everyone out west. It will be nice to have some company for a while.

Our first day lilies bloomed today and as usual are beautiful. Did you know that every part of some of the species of day lily are considered edible? Nutrition wise they are high in vitamin c and are quite high in protein content. They are also  known to be used medicinally through out history and in Eastern medicine but research  and information is limited. While some parts are better than others, very few people know that they are edible at all. I was introduced to eating them several years ago by a dear sister and since her initial introduction of them to me, I have used them several ways. I like to walk around nibbling on the bud just before they open and I enjoy them in a salad or stir fries too. The roots or tuber is edible as well as the flowers and leaves. As per usual use caution when trying them the first few times in case of allergic reaction or tummy upset. For some nice recipes using day lilies go here. There are several other sites with recipes as well  just do a search.
Not all species of day lilies are edible be sure you know  what species you are eating before doing so.

monday's mountain musings

I know...I have said this before but I am saying it again and this time I mean it, I think. After tomorrow we will be done planting until fall crops need starting. That should give us a near one month break before we need to be getting  broccoli and cabbage seeds going for a mid august planting in the gardens. Break is not really the proper term as  things will be ripening in larger  amounts here very shortly, keeping up with weeds is always a chore and with any luck tobacco will be needing its daily worm plucking sessions but   that aint my job cuz those buggers are just gross so I let manthing tend them nasty buggers and I tend the  tomato patch. This way we keep the tobacco off and away from the tomatoes to prevent mosaic.

The gardens are really starting to take off now. I love watching everything fill out, grow and start producing,  the scenery around here changes so quickly it is almost hard to keep up with. Our early corn is starting to tassle, tomatoes are forming,  cucumbers,  some melons, squash of all sorts are flowering and beans climbing everywhere.  I ripped out the tomatoes and cukes in the GH as they  had a mildew or somethimg starting on them and I was not going to take any chances. So I planted some butter beans, new cukes, melons and okra in there  to take their place. I also have beans and okra growing on the balcony to see how they do up there. A full update on the gardens will  come on a rainy day this week. The picture above is one of my direct seed tomatoes that  I put in the hot tub. It is about 8 inches tall already and only a few weeks old.  I am starting to think direct seeding them may be a time saving solution for a good portion of our future tomatoes  as some of our rogue tomatoes are near two foot tall and flowering just behind the ones we spent time seeding, transplanting and then planting.

Tomorrow we are planting more tobacco and direct sowing some for an experiment. We have several rogue plants that self sowed  from last year and they seem to be doing much better than the transplants this year. We have one more round of transplants to go in but instead of giving us more plants we seem to just be replacing ones that are dying off. Some winter type squash will be inter planted with the tobacco as will some pumpkins.

In other news...
The drive way is now fixed back to proper condition. we were very lucky that the folks   doing the work for us were as slow as they were and could be here  the day after we called them. On a sad note the ol feller flat out told me that next time we called he would likely be out of business. It was pretty sad seeing a big,  burley ol Vietnam vet  that has been in business for himself all his life  dam near cry and tell me he  doesn't know if he can make it once he loses the last truck in his business. As we talked about  our situation, gardens, the oil spoil and economy in general he told me  of how he had no electricity until the age of 15 and his grand parents that has raised him had  raised nearly all  their food. I  just looked at him n told him he would be fine and to look at gardening as his new full time job with  hauling gravel as a hobby.

School is going along pretty well. Next week is the  half way point of my first block of classes already. If  it continues on at this pace I will be finished before I  know it.

monday's mountain musings

Our rains the other day did quite the driveway damage. When I called the gravel hauler this morning I explained to him that we were stuck in and no one could get in until we had some work done to the driveway. He kindly said he would get in touch with the driveway fixer upper feller and asked if someone would be home today. I laughed n said ayup we are stuck in and he replied oh ya ain't kiddin huh? Made for a good laugh on an other wise craptacular day. The good thing is that the fixer upper feller is slow enough in work that he can get started on it tomorrow. A big chunk to be putting out but hopefully it will get the driveway back into decent shape for a good while.

The gardens are coming along rather nicely and I will be harvesting cabbage to make kraut with tomorrow. The peas are near played out as is the broccoli. I do not think i am going to grow broccoli in the spring any more it just does no do that well and take a fair bit of space.

I am working on a garden update but thought I would put a pic up of my stick garden. It is actually a flower garden that I threw a bunch of extra beans from last year in to and to my surprise they are coming along quite nicely. Today I went and picked small branches from a down tree and poked them in the ground. I quite like the look myself and hope the beans continue growing. If i could knit or had a bunch of string I would wrap the branches and make them real cool.

Caught a picture of one of our little hummingbirds today at the feeder. Boy they are tough to capture because they are so quick and tiny. In the end I got a half decent pic and am happy, more than happy since my camera is one of the cheapest models there is out there .

mondays mountain musings

Brrr, the nights are still so cool round these parts. Absolutely gorgeous days in the low 70s but nights still routinely below 40. I  must keep reminding my self that it is only the 12th of April, I guess because of the nice weather I  keep thinking it should be warmer nights. Then again when the warmer nights do get here I will most assuredly complain about that as well. I am a farmer, always have been n always will be so will always complain about the weather, its like a second job.

I have now kicked all  plants but the tobacco babies  and the indoor tomato out to the balcony to live  a while. If I can figure out how to get big momma mater out there she will also be set out there. This way if it gets too cold at night  I can slide them all back inside  without too much hassle.  Speaking of big momma mater, I will take cuttings from her this week and begin rooting them for transplant to the gardens.

On my garden walk about yesterday I noticed that  all but one plant of my taters are now up. Even my   experimental tiny  pieces that I cut from good potatoes are up and  honestly I am quite amazed. Those tiny pieces were shriveled down to all but nothing by the time I actually got them in the ground.It will be interesting to see how well they grow and produce. If this works, I will never  do potatoes like we have been taught to again as it is a giant waste of money on many levels. My taters I planted way back when  in the GH are also up now. I thought my little vole/ mouse had stolen them and presumed they were dead but I noticed them the other day while harvesting collards and they are about 4 inches tall.

The onions n peas are really starting to look pretty  in their growing beds or at least I think they are. I absolutely love seeing plants come alive and change my scenery  on a daily basis. Each day I walk out there something is a bit different and the more it greens up and starts producing the more I enjoy it.  We built the peas  a little tower to  climb on yesterday.  They are not a climbing variety and only grow to about 34 inches but I would like to keep them off the ground if I can as it makes my life much easier  for picking veg later on.. Trying to reach down into a bed that is on a hill can be dangerous work especially when you are like me n wobbly already. One good roll and I would be a 1/4 mile away.

The gutter garden is  sprouting nicely and so long as I  give it one  coffee  canister of water daily it stays moist enough to do well. I would really like to find a few more lengths  of gutter and make a wall of them  on the chicken run. Not only would it look  pretty  but it would block some of the summer sun from the chicken run  and I think the chooks would like it too, I know if I lived in there I would appreciate it.

                                               I found this  volunteer squash   too!

All of the over wintered plantings have now bolted.  When I notice them starting to  bolt, I generally take one more good harvest from the plant, remove as much greenery as I can  and allow the plant to concentrate on  making  seed. I do not know if it helps in any way but it doesn't seem to harm and I can usually get a meal or two out of the picking and critters get nice treats. I also top all  of my onions while they grow, leaving only about 4 inches of green above ground.   I generally cut them down two  or three times and then let them grow out until harvest time.  Again I do not know if it helps the onion to produce larger bulbs or not but I get a whole lot of green onions to dehydrate and use for the remainder of the year and still get my large onions.

We opened the living room area back up yesterday. I am thinking I will leave the shack arranged as is for now and use the LR as a project, craft, drying , seed saving, storage room and maybe make a window garden in the glass door area. We do not need the space in there to live in and it does make a handy "go to" room for all things homesteading.  Today however is being spent cleaning my winter messes up in there and organizing it. It should take me near all day, yuck!

A photo I enjoyed capturing yesterday. I think I followed this feller around for a good half hour before he landed where I could get a decent picture and for a  long enough time that I could fumble with the camera and snap this.

monday's mountain musings

Another craptacular day here in the not so sunny south, it is ok though after yesterdays excitement I needed a day of relative boredom.  Not that yesterday was extremely exciting  by any stretch of the imagination but we lead such a laid back, non stress ridden life that we sometimes forget that  shit happens  and sometimes we ourselves are the cause of the  mess.Thus was the case with life around the homestead yesterday.

Somehow in our chores the night before  last the gate to the goats pasture was not hooked proper. Needless to say  when we went to do chores  yesterday morning I saw one of the goats up behind the pasture fence. I also noticed that Tiny Tom the last of our goat kids that was born and also the frailest had gone missing. When something is out of the ordinary my heart always skips a beat or six.

I saw the doe out so we called her, opened the gate and she came trotting right down to get back in  albeit with a large patch of hair missing from her hind thigh area. It is a large patch too, from her hip  area down to her elbow on her hind leg, she must have  really squeezed to get out the tiny opening  where the gate wasn't  hooked tight. Other than the hair missing she looked and acted just fine and went right to tending Bo her baby.

Tiny Tom on the other hand was still MIA so I set about searching for the sorry little beast.  I wandered up and behind the goat shed and found him huddled, weak and  not in very good shape. Why or how he got up there is beyond me. I scooped him up and took him in  to his mother who wanted nothing to do with  him and he was having trouble standing so off to the shack he came with me. I made him a bottle and he wouldn't drink, within  seconds he could no longer stand and within minutes  he was dead. It was as quick as that. I don't know if he had an underlying condition or not, he was very very small and had been a whiny little cuss since his birth. I thought about doing a necropsy  on him but I  don't have much experience in  baby goat post-mortem examinations  so decided against it. Any who,  he is now buried in the (15 yrs from now) compost pit  and  we have learned  one of those harsh life lessons of remembering if you open it be sure to close it. We were actually very lucky that was all that happened  through our careless oops.

In other news, the cabbage  and broccoli  survived our brutal winds, rain and hail that we have been having the last few days. I cringe every time the weather  gets a bit wicked, after last years gardening misfortunes I am weary of what this year brings while trying to remain optimistic about it. The good news is after today the weather is supposed to be nice the remainder of the week and be in the mid 70s  so we better rest up today while we can  as the rest of the week will be busy.

 I have started a face book "frugal homesteads" group. There is a lot that I do not post on here yet find important  or interesting and like to share them but don't want the blog to become a bunch of links. I also made it so we can have  discussions on  various topics  yet not in a typical forum format.   If anyone is interested come and join  us there.