From the Fridge

Okay, not really from the fridge, nor yet from the hallway gallery. The Spawn drew these today and decided they should be in HER room. For which I can't really blame her in the least. I think they're pretty cool. Not sure I'd have had the patience to do all those pine needles when I was five.

This is several fairies with ivy leaf houses under a pine tree. She used a stencil for the ivy leaves, which is think is wonderful. That's why we have a big box of stencils.

In this picture it's raining. There are several fairies in the tall grass, which hides them from predators. Unfortunately, two of the fairies have had their wings bitten off! I suspect this last explanation of being after the fact when she realized she'd forgotten their wings. But maybe not. We've lost a couple of ducklings to predators lately, even though our grass is MUCH taller than what she's drawn here.

Too many seeds!

Ye gods, but I am turning into quite the seed hoarder! I do try to keep track of stuff so we plant everything that's about to expire, but I've still got five boxes of seeds in the fridge. Luckily it's the spare fridge and meant to be used for seeds, potatoes, the occasional batch of meat aging before going in the pot (or the freezer). If it was the main fridge, we'd have no room for food. Hmmm...I see we have a hundred and seventy some odd different varieties of potential yumminess. This may take a while.

Of random interest and so I can find my links easily, we have seeds from:

Adaptive Seeds (way too much interesting and unusual stuff)
Baker Creek (great heirloom seeds, if not necessarily the best for this region)
Botanical Interests (primarily flowers and herbs from them)
Fedco Seeds (not local, but decent stuff and excellent prices--their seed potatoes are pretty decent too and certified)
Fertile Valley Seeds (not much, but all good seed)
Horizon Herbs (fantastic medicinals)
Johnny's Selected Seeds (aimed toward the commercial grower, but good seeds and fantastic germination information on the packets)
Kitazawa Seed Company (Asian veggies, mainly)
Nichols Garden Nursery (lots of good heirlooms and OP seeds)
Sand Hill Preservation Center (more heirlooms and a good source for cover crop seed and sweet potato slips)
Seeds of Change (based out of NM, but had some stuff I needed at the time--they seem to be owned by Mars, Inc. now)
Siskiyou Seeds (fairly local, not a huge selection but all excellent for this region)
Territorial Seed Company (the biggest really local seed company--decent seed, but not my favourite any more for no particularly good reason)
Tomato Growers Supply (mostly solanums and I'm not happy with their seeds, not going to buy from them again, no matter how tempting the varieties)
Uprising Seeds (more local, organic, heirloom stuff)

Yikes! Maybe I should go plant some of those seeds now. Gonna start another round of super-early-season tomatoes (all less than 70 days) and maybe some more lettuce. Those a two things you can never have enough of. Maybe I'll go plant some more bee food too. The plan is to plant a pound of bee feed seed in patches all around the place. Should be pretty and useful at the same time. Some of 'em are even culinary/medicinal too!

Experiments

Last year was a year for experiments that did NOT work. For instance, Wall-o-Waters here become instead Wall-o-Slugs. Weed cloth becomes cover for voles. Both of those things were large disappointments. Dry gardening potatoes was only a small disappointment. It works and we do have an area we can't irrigate, but the yield is definitely smaller. I think that plot got under-limed though, which would have had an effect.

This year though, I hope will be a year for GOOD experiments. We have tapped several of our big leaf maple trees. We started too late to get a great deal of sap, but it's been enough for us to make a cup or two of syrup. Tastes just like maple syrup, even.

We're hoping we no longer have a duck deficiency. That'd help with the slug issues. I have to figure out how to keep them from stomping the smaller plants in the garden though. I'm thinking chicken wire might do the trick. Or it might not. You never can tell.

Big experiment is making soil blocks for some starts instead of using pots. I've got two of each tomato variety we're trying this year, one in a pot, one in a block. The theory is that transplant shock is less with blocks. We shall see how they do. I'm going to try direct seeding some too, which goes very much against conventional wisdom for this area. I've been told that the six week start for...well, starts, only translated to a three week gain in harvest. Might make it worthwhile to just direct seed some of the earliest varieties.

Someone has tried to convince me to do an experiment with manganese, but I think I'll wait on that one. Then again, maybe not. I'll see how I feel when it's time to plant corn. In the meantime, we'll plop some minerals and some llama poop on the garden and start a'plantin'. We're even going to put in a few asparagus plants this year, since it seems we'll be here longer than we thought.

Fun stuff

Life just goes on being lifelike, which is to say, busy. Today, for instance, Piglet and Eeyore had to be rescued from a cloud. They'd been out in the rain, gotten wet, and evaporated up to the cloud when the rain evaporated.



Here we were doing an experiment of sorts. The green layer is water with food dye. The yellowish layer is cooking oil. You then add Alka-Seltzer or some similar fizzy stuff. Hey, presto, bubbles of green water rise and fall through the oil. Further experimentation needs to be done to determine if it can be made to look like a slightly less manic lava lamp.



Here you see what happens when you empty the bottle into a bowl and add some paint. It should be noted that plastic Pooh figurines get especially oily when dropped into such a bowl.



This weekend we went in search of snow. It was our first trip to Mt. Hood, which is just plain silly, given how close it is. There was indeed snow. Lots of snow. The Spawn was introduced to the delightful idea of being towed around in a sled. The only thing we didn't manage was a nice mug of hot chocolate while watching the snow fall. Next time, maybe.



Oh, and the snow DID fall. Quite heavily it fell. It was really lovely and made me soooo glad we're not at snow elevation.

GFCF pizza crust--no xanthan gum

Okay, so recipes I don't normally post, but it's a way for me to keep track of 'em, so there.

Pizza Crust

Preheat oven to 218C/425F.

In a large bowl, whisk well the following:
85g (2/3C) sorghum flour
107g (2/3C) superfine brown rice flour
120g (1C) tapioca flour
2T dry yeast
1T chia seeds, ground (that's 1T before grinding)
2t plain gelatin
1t salt
1t sugar

Warm 1 1/3C milk-oid (real milk or non-dairy milk) to 43C/110F,
to this add:
2t olive oil
2t cider vinegar

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. This will make a thick batter, NOT a dough. Using a silicon spatula (or something of the sort), spread the batter onto a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper--my pan is 30cm X 35cm/12" X 14"--or two smaller baking sheets. Here you can let the dough rise for half an hour which is the preference of the Better Half, or immediately bake it, which is the preference of the Spawn. Bake for 10 minutes, flip the crust(s) and bake for another 8-10 minutes. Take the crust out of the oven and top as you wish. We usually brush the crust with olive oil, then put on cheese and olives, this being the best way to do it according to the Spawn. Bake topped crust until cheese is all bubbly. Remove and watch in awe as the Spawn eats more than half the resulting pizza.

Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve 2011, originally uploaded by Sue_Solberg.

The tree has been decorated for some two weeks, courtesy of a certain fairy, who might otherwise be known as the Spawn. Now there are even presents under the tree. Darned near froze my toes wrapping 'em out in the garage too. But there will be happiness on the morrow for us all three. And rain. I wish as much to everyone, except for the rain.

Not for the faint of heart...

but pig skulls make some truly wonderful broth! I actually thought about posting a photo, but decided that perhaps posterity didn't really need that image. At any rate, if you take a pig skull, the usual veggies, a bit of salt and pepper, and maybe some thyme, cover it with water in a Very Large Pot, and let it simmer and simmer and simmer. Well, in a word, yum! The stuff can hold up a spoon when it's been chilled too. I'm quite happy we'll have three of the things (from our own pigs) to play with soon. It turns out you can also make things (other than head cheese) with the other parts of a pig's head. Who knew?

So yes, the farm proceedeth in a farmly way. Which is to say, exceptionally frustrating at times. The garden, after we finally got things planted, has suffered from slugs, now under control, and moles, now content to go dig up my rutabaga seedlings in the winter garden. The field mice now, they are a problem. I've read that mice find chocolate delicious but poisonous and have just scattered a bag of chocolate chips in strategic places around the garden. Places such as the broccoli plants they haven't finished devouring yet. It's too late for the sweet potatoes. Those were probably a lost cause anyway though, given the extreme cabbage yearness of it all. The Irish potatoes seem to be doing fine, after a rocky start. Slugs again.

Current livestock count--still one llama, three young sheep (soon to become meat), three extremely large pigs (also soon to become meat, after we sell the last one), seven hens and one rooster (Jersey Giant and a sorry specimen at the moment), five turkeys, and twenty-two Ancona ducks. The ducks are my personal favourite. I mean to say, they eat slugs, what's not to like? But they're also much more enjoyable to deal with than chickens. We had, for two days, twenty-five blue-foot chicks. Then some small predator had them. The shed has been hardened and we'll try again once the Better Half is back from his hike. Not blue-foots (blue-feet?) though.

The state and county finally got their heads into position and the soil remediation is actually in process. In other words, they've dug an enormous hole in the front pasture (allowing me to see lots of cool soil stuff), removed the contaminated soil and spread it all over such of the pasture not occupied by hole. Then there's the pile of clean dirt, which was a wonderful but temporary playground for the Spawn. Also a largish pile of horse manure, to be mixed into the dirty dirt. Nitrogen apparently speeds the breakdown of petrol. Plus the dirty dirt is subsoil from two to four meters down. It's going to end up being our new pasture topsoil and needs all the help it can get.

Erm. There more, I'm sure, but the hour advances and I have to be up in time to open the gate for the excavators tomorrow. And, of course, since I'm solo parenting and solo farming this week, I'm fighting a bug of some sort. Murphy.