Spring Projects

Here are dads new boots.

We are putting in posts to keep out the deer from the grapes.  Later we hope to move our blueberries and raspberries into this area as well.  It did not happen in time this year.

Here are the grapes.  Three table grape transplants from the Turners and two more were added from Al's garden center.

The new years blossoms are finely here, ya.

Here is a Honeycrisp apple tree.  It was an impulse purchase, they are the best apples ever.  We put down weed fabric and a thick layer of hog fuel (wood chips) to help hold moisture and deter weeds.  The wire cages are to keep the deer from eating all the new buds off of them and rubbing on the trunks.  Those deer are why we can't have anything nice, well at least one of the reasons.  However it is about time to put in for our controlled hunts, look out!

Evan holding a post.  He had injured a finger, note the blue tape, but he could still hold a post plumb while the dirt and concrete was backfilled.

Clipping the chickens wings so they can't fly over the gate.  In our attempt to keep the chickens in their new pen we clipped one wing of all the offending birds.  Unfortunately this did not prevent them from going under the fence at one location, but we now have that remedied.

We got some pigs again.  Aren't they cute??  They were smaller than the ones we got last year.  We were not excited about the white ones, but that is what was available, and we are pretty sure they all taste the same.  But I we had read that they could potentially get sunburned and we don't want to have lather them up with Banana Boat every day.  There are plenty of shady spots in their pasture so hopefully they will take cover when needed.

Working in the garden.  Tearing things out and weeding.

Grace likes helping out side.

We added four yards of compost/topsoil mix to part of the garden and will do the same with the rest later.  With the hitch on the tractor we can tow the trailer around to the garden and back it right through the gate, which makes it easy to unload.

While dad is working the rototiller I keep getting stuck.  Big red and little red working away.

Garden 2015

Well it is that time of year again, when I start to stress/think about the garden.  We are actually ahead of schedule this year and just received our seed order from Territorial Seed Company out of Cottage Grove OR.  We like to use them, because a lot of the plants have been tested here in Oregon, so hopefully they will grow well in our area.  We also like using them because they are Non-GMO.  They do seem to be getting more Organic seeds, but I can not justify the added cost in my head.  I know how the vegetables are being grown and that no chemicals are being used, so that is good enough for us.
We usually start our planning off by going through our Seed box and cleaning it out, throwing away seed that is too old, and just inventorying what we have left.  We then make a list of what we are going to grow, or attempt to grow.  The past couple of years I have also purchased some seeds through Azure Standard.  They don't have a huge selection, but we can usually get a few things there and the prices are slightly cheaper.  Then this year we placed a small order from Territorial, and then purchased the remaining items from Als Garden Center.  There are some things that don't need to be Non-GMO, like flowers, and decorative pumpkins.  Finally we will need to pick up some seed potatoes and onion sets somewhere.  In the past we have purchased potatoes from Coastal Farm.
So, here is the list for this year, with some notes.

- Sweet Meat Squash - super yummy, thick rind that stores well, Azure.
- Butternut Squash - always a good grower. Azure.
- Buttercup Squash - we fell in love with this, last year we planted a bush, this year we are going with the vine variety.  Territorial.
- Hubbard Squash - huge squash, great for storage.  Territorial.
- Acorn Squash - got some heritage seeds from Als.
- Cinderella Pumpkin - grew these last year and saved the seeds, great for cooking and freezing.
- Decorative Mini-Pumpkin - just fun, Als.
- Pig Pumpkins - we will try and grow these outside the main garden for pig fodder.  just any old pumpkin will do, they are not picky eaters.
- Black Beauty Zucchini - we are going to attempt to grow record numbers, for us and pigs. Azure.
- Summer Dance Cucumbers - these long English cucs are delicious.  we grow them on a trellis.  Azure.
- Parsnips - will try them again this year.  Azure
- Cabbage - will try again as well, really want some big cabbage for kraut.  Azure.
- Beets - Jennie loves these, not sure why. Azure
- Sugar Snap Peas - these don't make it in the house, they are for snacking on when in the garden. Azure.
- Kentucky Blue Pole Beans - these are the ones we can each year, 100+ quarts, from two 50' rows, they taste wonderful.  Azure.
- Carrots - still perfecting these.  Azure
- Potatoes - yukon gold are good, or even small purple ones, just fun to grow.  Coastal Farm
- Tomatoes - we had so many tomatoes last year they probably re-seeded them selves since they went to waste in the garden, we love Beef Steak, or small Sungold.
- Walla Walla Onions - we are going to try these this year, probably get the onion sets from Coastal Farm.

Here is our seed box with list.

Last weekend we also purchase two small grape plants and liberated three mature plants from Jennie's parents to put in our yard.  We look forward to some yummy table grapes if we can keep the deer away.  We also are going to plant some nut trees this year.  We have an almond, walnut, and two filberts to get in the ground.  And in a moment of weakness I bought a Honeycrisp apple tree, because everyone knows they are the best.

Here are the kids in the grape holes, not fox holes.

Garlic Braids

So, this last year I purchased see garlic and planted it right at the end of November.  It grew really well through the winter and we mulched around it with some straw after doing some weeding.  In early July it seemed to be starting to die and turn brown so we dug it up.  I have always thought that braided garlic would be a neat way to store it and be decorative as well.  We ran across a tutorial on one of our favorite blogs.

Jennie actually did the braiding while I stood by for support.

We ended up hanging them in our kitchen and look forward to snipping off the bulbs for some homegrown garlic.

Supposedly it is really healthy for you especially during the winter cold season.  One time I even tried eating a clove whole when I was starting to come down with something.  I had heard raw garlic was even better than cooked.  Well I would NOT recommend it!!  My stomach did not care for the raw garlic and I felt bad for at least a day.

Garlic

We purchased some seed garlic from Azure Standard a month or so ago, to be planted in our garden.  We have grown small amounts before, but never actually planted at the proper time.  We had a small raised bed in the garden that Evan and I cleaned up and rototilled.  We amended the soil with some good garden soil from the store.  We broke the bulbs into the individual cloves and then planted them all.

Behind Evan you can see chickens, they were sent out of the garden before we mulched over the garlic with fresh straw.  When the chickens see fresh straw they get all excited to scratch through it and would probably dig up all the garlic.

I am hoping that it grows well enough that we can braid some for storage.

Speaking of digging, in preparation for our cow shelter we had two small stumps to remove, so one Saturday morning the boys each got assigned a stump and they went to work digging them up and chopping the roots off.  I had work to do on the fence and checked on them periodically.  Once they got them pretty well dug up and severed we hooked a chain to the tractor and pulled them out.

Summer Garden Update

Here are a few pictures of the garden from the last month or two.

In the picture below the long bushy row is our potatoes, both Yukon Gold and some blue ones.

In the cages are some bell pepper starts, and the little row on the right are tomato starts, that we got cheap as it was kind of late in the season for starts.

We planted a 50' row of sweet peas, but only about a 12' section grew, but we enjoyed what the Lord did provide.

Below are our zucchini just starting to grow, and we are now overrun with them.  We had numerous volunteer plants come up as well, and one of those is the largest plant we have.

Below is Lily in front of a volunteer, that is not even getting watered it is going crazy!

We planted a 15'x15' patch of sweet corn and only had 6-7 plants come up, and they were swallowed up by weeds as I counted it a lost cause with so few plants.  Last year they grew pretty well, but in a different spot.

Here is one of our first bell peppers.  We may only get a dozen or so.  We really would like to have a bunch of plants so that we could cut them up and freeze them to be used later.  Maybe next year we will get our seeds started early enough.

This is a tomato on Ethan's plant.  He is always looking for the big Beef Steak tomatoes.

Our blueberry bushes did pretty well this year, we could probably use another 15-20 bushes.  We still ended up going to a u-pick to stock up for the year.   Now I just need to learn how to prune the bushes.  If you know how, stop on by!

NOT OUR GARDEN

THIS IS WHAT I PRAY OUR GARDEN WILL LOOK LIKE SOMEDAY

This is the garden of my dad's cousin, and it is gorgeous.  He sent us home with a huge handful of chard.

So, currently we are eating romaine lettuce from our garden and it seems to be doing well.  We still have some turnips growing, a couple of sunflowers, some sweet meat squash, and possibly some acorn.  Our tomatoes are starting to turn from green to orange, and our green beans are climbing.  The slicing cucumbers are climbing their trellis, which is very exciting and we had one the other day, it was delicious.

While on vacation a deer blew through our fencing.  My first trip through the garden when we got back I noticed that the green beans appeared to have been nipped off about 4' up, and then I noticed our raspberry canes were just stalks with all the leaves gone.  Then I found the massive hole in the fencing.  Our fencing is a 4' high metal fence with the deer netting taking it up to about 7', and so far this has worked pretty well.  Although the deer netting is so fine sometimes I wonder if they can see it.  Ethan asked "why do they call it deer fencing if they can jump through it??"  Good question!  Another reason they were able to take advantage of our garden was that the motion sprinkler "Scarecrow" battery was dead.

Zucchini overtaking our kitchen island.

Hash browns.  Some of the potatoes were sliced by the shovel and would not store well, so we cooked them and then shredded them to be frozen and used as hash browns later.  No that is not mold, that is our blue/purple potatoes.

Something we did differently with the potatoes this year, is that we did not water them at all.  We did mound dirt on the one long row, and put some straw around them, but that is it, and they seem to have grown pretty well.  Potatoes are not one of those huge cost savers, by growing your own, but they are fairly easy, and fun.  The kids have been working off and on all week to dig them up.

Veggie Garden & Chicken Herding

I feel we are little late on the garden this year, but we will see.  Currently we have the following planted from seed:
- Sunflowers
- Mammoth Mangel Beets (you may remember these from last year)
- Turnips
- Zucchini
- Sweet Meat squash
- Green Beans
- Sweet Peas (just starting to produce)
- Slicing Cucumbers
- Pickling Cucumbers
- Romaine Lettuce
- Butterball Lettuce

Currently up and growing are some green onions in the raised box at the bottom of the picture and a little over a row of Yukon Gold and some purple potatoes.

In the box to the right against our garden shed is Mia's Flower garden.

We should have started our tomatoes and sweet bell peppers a month ago, so they are still in our house by the window sill.

Much to our surprise earlier this year we found some Hood Strawberry plants that the deer had eaten down to the ground.  They are now thriving in pots on our deck and we are trying to place small pots under the runners to get them to produce more little plants.  At some point it would be great to get them back in the garden.

Here is Ethan watering them this morning.

We still need to get the Pie pumpkins, acorn and butternut squash and sweet corn planted.  We got some work done on the watering system, which is a mixture of soaker hoses and drip irrigation.  Getting it set up is very time consuming as the layout changes each year, but I am not big on just a broadcast sprinkler as I don't want to water paths etc, just to have weeds grow in them.  We are using more straw as mulch this year, but unfortunately after the kids got some laid out in paths the chickens got in and scratched around in it making a mess of the paths, we have since blocked their entrance portal.   

Chicken Herding & Sleeping Quarters

Now that Lily is more stable on our uneven ground she has taken to helping the kids put the chickens away  in the evening.  We typically put our arms out and try and herd them towards the chicken house.  Here is Lily trying her hand at it.

She did pretty good but I had to tell her if one got past her to go back and get that one.

The youngsters, live on the right side of our coop as you enter the door.  In the picture below you can see the nursery at the bottom left corner, and then we moved them into the pen on the right.  This use to house our ducks, and for ducks you just needed a short wall, hence it was only 3' high.  I added some chicken wire across to make it taller, but now that the chicks are getting larger they just fly over in the evenings when they are looking for a nesting spot.  Or as you can see, about 5 of them just nest in the bend of the chicken wire like it is a hammock.  

Even higher up, just below the ceiling these two were roosting.

At some point we need to put them together, and I don't think there will be too many issues since they have been able to see each other and get acquainted for so long.  I am just leery about letting the younger birds free range as they are smaller still, and could possibly get picked off by a hawk.

The rest of May!

Memorial Day weekend included a trip to visit Great-Grandma Johnson and Ikea.  Hopefully we did not wear her out too much, the kids were pretty subdued.

Mia relaxing, we were almost through the whole store, the kids were real troopers, it is quite a walk!

Mr. Nonchalant.

Ethan stopped by this patio display to ponder things.

The other weekend the kids and I built this little outdoor run for the chicks, so they could get some sun and mingle indirectly with the older ladies outside.

We reused the existing gate, and tied it in so we have a way to get into it.  Evan usually has to take the broom and use it to encourage them to go in for the evening, and then we lock them in.  

Here they are up close, getting big!

Saturday morning included a run to get some more straw.  The chickens love fresh straw and this one would not even let us get it out of the trailer before she checked it out.

We only got 10 bails as I was worried about our little mini-van getting the load back up the hill.  We bought the straw from the same guy that we got it from 2 years ago, good thing I saved his number.  He is a wealth of information, and has connections with the local farming community.  I asked him if I could just call him with random questions as we were newbies at it, and he said "Sure", he might regret that.

We do want to try and use some of the straw for mulching the garden to help hold in moisture and prevent weeds, so I will more than likely be going back for more.

Catching Up

March happenings and pictures. . . . .

Lily helping, but enjoying the eating better!!!

We planted 8 new blueberry plants.

Our blueberry patch. A total of 20 plants. 

We found another surprise down at the bottom of our property, hidden under over grown blackberry bushes. A trailer full of all sorts of chemicals. Gallons and Gallons of them. Dave tried to pull it out with the tractor but the bottom was so rotten that the barrels fell through. So they rigged a bottom to support the containers with branches. It worked. 

And Dave was finally able to bring it up the hill of our property and to a place where we can load it into the other trailer to haul it off and dispose of it all. Yuck!!!!

We also got 18 new chicks at the end of March to add to our 9 laying hens. We are having so much fun with them.