Birds were chirping this morning

Today was a balmy day in Ohio, in the 50's, which means you don't have to look to hard to find flip flops and shorts. I was on my way out to the chickens when I decided that since we have a bunch of rain on the way I maybe should get the gourds out of the garden and let them finish drying in the greenhouse.

These are some nasty gourds. I wiped a lot of the outer skin off that held all the mold and wet leaves, but they still smelled. Smelled enough that when I tossed a broken one to Mabel she thought enough of it to rub her neck in the guts that plopped out. And that means a lot, she saves the neck rubbing for the especially putrid stank. 

I'm sure that I will be shuffling these around when the seedlings are in full swing. There ended up being about 16 broken/ rotten where they lay/ I dropped on accident- gourds. And about 100 are left now in the greenhouse. I hope they all make it. There weren't too many that were all the way dry where you could hear the seeds rattling inside. There were quite a few that you could shake and tell they were full of guts and liquid.

Since it was so nice I thought I would let the ladies out early and put them back before dark. Usually I let them out about an hour before dark and they make their way back in without going too far. Well over winter they must have grown some courage because they almost sprinted to the outskirts of the yard like right now. So after a bit I had to round them up and get them back in. Mabel decided she wanted to play with one with teeth, not good. She chased her for a minute or so making her fly around until she almost turned into fresh dinner with a side of feathers, time out.

Our yard turns into a swamp in the spring slash anytime it rains. We have like a foot of dirt and then it is straight clay. I have tossed around the idea of building a moat complete with drawbridge at the driveway, we'll see about that, I want to screen in the back deck this year so that may be put on the back burner. This is the slop mess in front of the greenhouse door. 

These are my bad uggs, they used to be good ones a long time ago. The first time I wore them to get eggs and you get some chicken poo in the tread, well, it's all down hill from there. 

The Kidron auction

Saturday 9am March 6th

This is where the buggies park, the horses go into the white barn to the left. 

If you arrived in a vehicle you park at a church or school down the road and you get  taxied to the auction in this snazzy getup pulled by a big john deere tractor.

Some fantastic items up for sale.

You would think that these would go to scrap instead?

This looks like it could be fun, actually I think it already was to someone, the roll cage was a bit bent.

This little wheelbarrow seemed out of place. Not that those cement animals look like they are in the right place either!

This is where they keep the animals when they have the livestock auction.

The horses whiskers were frozen it was so cold. Who knows how far they had come from, they looked like they were ready for a break.

Good doughnuts. Even though I was wanting a french waffle....

After the auction we went to Lehmans. Its a cool place to go, Saturdays are super busy but don't try to show up on Sunday ok, they are closed. They have a lot of cool stuff. It's not an all amish made joint like you may expect. But they have a lot of things that you can't easily buy elsewhere, like things needed for putting up foods, tons of kitchen things, cheese making and different gardening type things. They have a super assortment of non electric items (duh). Lots of gift ideas too. You can order a catalog from them or go online to their site http://www.lehmans.com/

Jam and dirtbikes

So on Tuesday when I got home from work I was reading the harvest board over at GardenWeb while I ate my turkey soup. People were going on about jam and I got interested to make some. I tend to do things spur of the moment so why not some jam? So, I ran to wal-mart and got some jars and other items and made some strawberry jam! The strawberries we had picked locally last year and had them in the freezer. 

Heres the strawberries in the pot with the sugar, lemon juice and pectin. I blended up the strawberries in the food processor before cooking because I don't like chunky fruit pieces. It was like a nice strawberry smoothie, minus the rum.

After it had been boiling a bit.

In the jars now and boiling in the pot. The water almost came over the sides.

Done!

About 3 pounds of berries got me 10 jars of jam! I think it turned out super for my first time. I have some various other berries in the freezer but not enough in quantity to make all one kind, I may do a blend to use them up. I copied a recipe for chocolate raspberry jam, this sounds like something that my grandma would love, I will have to try it. Maybe a mothers day gift.

Overall this made me wish that I would have tried it sooner, it seems like such an awesome thing for gifts and such. It wasn't nearly as hard as you would think either. I may just try to do some more things like this instead of just freezing everything I put up.

Meanwhile, in the midst of canning happiness the UPS man delivered my new phone, yay! :)

I was going to use the extra money from my paycheck tomorrow to get a couple of replacement parts for my t-tape watering system and possibly a worm bin for my kitchen. Better luck next time. I had to pay a deductible to get my replacement so thats how that story ends.

Last night I started my tomatoes, eggplant and rosemary, and I took the celery out of the baggie and moved it to a flat. The amish paste toms that I picked from territorial are on backorder so I am canceling that and I picked up 2 other packets from Home Depot, aka work. I got san marzano and big mama, both paste types for sauce.

Here are the celery sprouts.

I sprayed the paper towel with water really well before trying to pick the seedlings off of it. I think that helped the roots not break as easily.

Here they are planted up in seed mix, I will use potting soil when I plant up from the flats.

Here are the baggies. I used coffee filters this time instead, I read they work better, don't fall apart as easily. I had some on hand so why not.

The final selections on tomatoes this year are- San marzano, big mama, brandywine, peacevine cherry, zebra cherry, yellow pear, japanese trifele black, persimmon, tiger-like and old german. All are organic or heirloom except for the big mamas. 

Last year one of my favorites was the trifele black, they are so pretty and unusual and the taste is pretty terrific. The only other one that I had last year also was the yellow pear, I like the mellow flavor and the color in salads, also great to take to work for a snack. Even if people think you are strange for snacking on -gasp!- veggies. I have planted pretty much all different varieties for the last 3 years now, I am getting it down to what will work best for me. I want a good blend for sauce and also good ones for salsa and just snacking. I am a tomato lover. 

So this is what I have been doing the last few days, I am going to move the alliums out to the greenhouse tonight I think, if I can open up a spot for Franke to get in and out without leaving the door propped open. That lets out all the heat. And for my husband, he is working on his dirt bike so he can ride it on the street to work and such. What was that?.....Where is he working on it you ask? 

In the kitchen of course! 

The last day of February

I have missed posting on here the last few days because my phone/camera was stolen from my work on Friday (good times :). I use it as main camera as it's 8 megapixels, I do have my previous camera and thats what I used to take some pictures today. I haven't started anything new but I do have updates on what is growing.

These are the leeks. They are taking off!

Next up are the onions. The yellows have sprouted a lot more than the reds, i'm not sure why though. I planted all of the seeds that I got so I will just have to see what happens with those reds.

Here is the sage.

Check out the celery, its sprouted and i'm pretty happy with that so far. I have read a lot about celery and it seems so finicky that I almost thought it wouldn't even sprout for me. 

Heres a funny thing, I made up some chicken treats. I mix up some oatmeal and other stuff with some no sugar added applesauce and warm it up as a treat. Usually I leave it in the bowl but I forget it then the bowl gets totally gross so I put piles on the ground instead. Problem was that snow was covering the ground and they will not walk on it! I'm not sure if it's because they can't see it right or if it looks like water to them, or they just don't like it, I don't know, if you do let me know.

So here they are on the outskirts teetering on edge of the concrete pad and the runway, wanting to eat it so badly!

My funny girl was the brave one and she hopped down first, now the others still wanted to but weren't so sure.

Now everyone was in but one, look at her, she just couldn't make the leap!

All in now! The treats didn't last long.

Meanwhile inside the coup, someone was practicing their mothering skills.

When I was ready to leave they had all came back in to see if I was handing out anything in there. Only a fresh bowl of water, no more goodies.

And for fun I will show you a couple screen shots of the document I have made up to keep track of all the plants this year. I put in all the plants, made it so that I can direct link to the webpage that I bought it from for more info, date sowed all that fun stuff.

Then heres a shot of the calendar that I did up so I could just see what I have do do ahead of time easily instead of guessing each week or figuring it out each week. I like my structure.

Tomorrow I am going to make some more small newspaper pots so I can plant up those celery. Will update then!

Newspaper herb pots

Tonight I finally made some of the newspaper sprout pots that I have been reading about. Here are the supplies that I used.

I read in various places how to fold the paper and to me it seemed like the end result would be way to thick for the roots to grow through. So I cut the paper in fours and they are sturdy enough and not too thick at the same time, heres how I cut the paper.

So I took one piece and folded it in half, wrapped it around the container (I used a smaller one for now, I will use the soup can for the next size up). I left a bit hang over the end to fold over to create the bottom of the pot. You leave an open space on the bottom for drainage and so the roots can get out a bit too. The one in my picture is too closed!

I put the pots in a flat and pulled the paper towel sprouts out of the bag. This is my sage. I used a toothpick to make a small hole in the seed mix and carefully picked a sprout off the paper towel and stuck it in the hole. I put two in each pot. 

Here is the finished flat of sage seedlings.

As I was working on this project Molly was 'telling' me she didn't feel so well. I had scraped some plaque off her teeth a few hours ago so it may be that her mouth hurt. So I fed her some turkey vegetable and noodle soup to fill up her tum. Any time Mo's is feeling sick or I can hear her tum rumbling I fix her right up with some soup. Crisis averted, she sat next to me while I worked and eventually napped a bit.

I think I am going to sprout more of my seeds in this baggie method. It seems so much easier to just keep a little baggie nice and warm rather than a whole flat of dirt. It also seemed like they sprouted rather quickly. So as I start more of the other veggies and herbs it will be interesting to see if they all work as well.