early May garden walk

Spring has been different normal  this season  so the gardens are off to a rather sluggish start. Rain has been plentiful, perhaps slightly too plentiful,  but temps have been rather cool, especially at night. Low forties, and even thirties at night, makes it difficult for plants to grow well.  Tomatoes, peppers and other warm weather crops are still not  in the ground and what is in, is growing very slow with the exception of cole crops. The good side of the coolness is we should have a good crop of cabbage, peas, onions and greens of all sorts for a change.

For this video I actually wobbled around the  top  gardens for a while to catch some of the scenery and layout of the land a bit better. Pictures can only show so much of the land lay out and what we have to  work with. I was going to wander the others areas as well but there is very little growing  at this point. Hopefully spring will arrive later this week. This has  finally got to be blackberry winter we are in,  3 weeks late right on schedule. Boy, have we been spoiled the last few years!

garden updates

A quick walk through some of the gardens yesterday. Things are growing pretty well with few bugs except the squash bugs. After getting very dry for a spell,last week we had about 14 inches of rain.As you can see in the video, the weeds and grass are growing very well. Life here is busy with it just the two of us keeping up, my school work, and manthing working.

be independent

grow your food

a walk in the gardens

over the mountain and through the woods

We took a couple days this past weekend to go out and about in the local area. The video is just some of the scenery from while we were there. Pinhoti means turkey home in Creek.

the singin bowl

A couple months back Granny passed away and in proper new age fashion many of her belongings were posted in a private group on face book through photo albums. Family got to go through them and choose what they would like to have. I, of course, was drawn to this cute little 'mortar and pestle'. Once it arrived, it was quickly realized that it was not a mortar and pestle at all but a Tibetan singing bowl.

To make her sing you take the little stick and run it around the outside of the bowl where the ridges are. It is something you either like or really dislike listening to. I happen to like it while the manthing finds it quite annoying. The video is of when I took her to the woods yesterday on my walk about.

fur friends

Utana has found himself a new fur friend. Apa is a 4 month old red tick hound staying here with his human. He is plum full of energy and Utana adores him.

every once in a while...

some talented folks roll through here! After a long day filled with all sorts of craziness: some good and some not so good we ended it with a jam around the campfire. The sound isn't the greatest and doesn't do them justice.

fall in the mountains

North Georgia in the fall is like a circus for the senses. These photos have been taken over the last month around town and home. The colors were somewhat muted because it has been so dry.

fall garden walk about

around the homestead-earth bag goat shed

Finally did the video on the building of the goat shed.

wood choppin the "Friendly way"

I have mentioned in passing that we are half hippie and half hillbilly. Since the National gathering was out on the West Coast this year we have spent time watching videos from there. We ran across one this morning of an elder brother splitting wood. Measa had to try it. This was just for fun as it would be very difficult to do all our wood in this manner although it would build up some crazy muscles. Kudos to Friendly!

The first video is friendly choppin wood. There are some F bombs in there so if that offends you I do not suggest watching it. The second one is our video of Measa choppin.

outdoor kitchen renovations and eating pine bark

Ahhh, gotta love those jobs that seemingly start out small and simple and turn into a big and difficult one! Measa decided to roof the kitchen at the cabin with a more permanent covering than a tarp. Unfortunately, once he got to working on it, he found out that the old frame was in need of not just repair but complete replacement. Since manthing was off today they set about cutting logs to put up a new one. This means peeling the bark off a few trees they had cut down and it meant that we could finally try eating pine bark. Yes, I mean actual pine bark not some gourmet treat. Here is our little adventure of making our pine bark appetizers this evening. It was not half bad and is definitely edible if in need. Just remember to carve a tooth pick for the inevitable fibrous ones that get all tangled in your fangz!

a garden walk n a tubby bunny

mushrooms in the mountains

garden walk about

fastest grain mill east of the mississippi

Today the fellers took the motor off the broken down tiller and hooked it to the grain mill. I now have one speedy grinding apparatus. All they did was detach the motor from the tiller, hook it up to a board, and add a tension pulley doohickey. I was told the hardest part of the entire job was attaching the motor to the board it sits on. It works great! We do have to have the motor idled down as far as it can go without it dying out and the tension thingmajig will take a bit of tweaking and getting used to but it will do the job we need it to do with no trouble. We left the mill attached to one board and the motor to another for ease in storage and mobility but will have attachments on the table for it to mount sturdily enough to grind grains a time or two a week.

The first tweak we are likely to make is adding another pulley to slow the rotation down a bit although the grinder parts were not warm nor was the grain when we did the test run.

garden update

butterflies

I have been stuck on butterflies the last few days. Well, not really stuck on them but they have been my eye candy and models for photos. While gardening today this one was hanging around filling up on echinacea so I took a short video.

garden walk about

It is very dry here so although things are growing and doing quite well anything new planted has not sprouted and things are growing slowly. I, however, am not complaining since we have it better than most of the country right now.