The Fall Garden is in!

The summer garden is producing well. We have been enjoying it's abundance. Today we ate tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, carrots, blackberries, peaches, and peppers from our yard. Oh, and a duck egg. One duck is a female and one is a male. Our female, Tulip, has been laying for about three weeks. During that three weeks she has only missed two days. Hooray for Tulip!


We started the fall garden last week. This is our new sourdough experiment. We made our own "seed tapes" using tissue paper with sourdough for glue. I'll have to report on how it works when we know more. So far, it made life MUCH easier. It is so much easier to "plant" carrot seeds at the kitchen table than bending over the dirt with mud caked hands. I cut out the tissue and the girls took turns marking it at every inch. Then we glued the seeds to a square of tissue (we do square foot gardening and a square was easier to seed in my mind than one inch tapes). Each square holds 100 carrot seeds. (That's a lot of carrots. So yummy.) When the "glue" was dry enough, we took the sheets out and laid them in the garden. We sprinkled some dirt and sand over them and covered them with shade cloth. Now they should grow if I don't forget to keep them watered.


I lucked out and found starts of Kale, Cabbage, Collards, Lettuce, and Mustard Greens at Walmart. I have looked around every year to find fall garden starts and nobody ever has any. I was very surprised. They look a little leggy, but I bought them anyway and planted them. Hopefully the shade cloth will help them live until cooler weather arrives. (I actually have learned to cook greens this past month, so we will eat them this year - Go me!)

We also planted peas around our peas tower. I haven't ever had any luck with fall peas before but I keep hoping that this year will be different.

New Babies

Okay, so they are not THE new baby, but they are pretty cute. We got them on Tuesday and already they have grown quite a bit.
They are Indian Runner ducklings. We won't know if we got boys or girls until they feather out. Cross your fingers for girls!

Spring has Sprung!

I was feeling really bad about living so far away from family this month. Not so much anymore.

We went to Brad and Ashton's wedding this past weekend. It was beautiful! Everything went very well and it was great to see everyone. We had a great time. However, it was very COLD and snowy.

It was very nice to come home to 50 degree weather and crocuses. I love springtime!

Maybe you guys should all move closer to me. :)

Fall Pictures of Caden

Caden is getting to be such a big boy. He loved "helping" to plant the fall garden.



Baby Yoga!

A Couple of Pictures of Colin Because I Like Him

He sure is a handsome feller ain't he?






The boy loves his fiddle. He is currently combining his loves by creating a fiddle web page. Life doesn't get any better than that!

Learning all the Time

Yesterday, Robyn was reading her book in this chair. She got out to get a drink and when she came back, Caden had climbed in and was "reading" his book just like she had been. He didn't want to let her have the chair back, but they eventually came to a compromise.





Caden is getting pretty self reliant. He was playing in the sand pile and got hungry. No problem. He knows where the good snacks are - in the blackberry patch!


He was pretty excited that Grace was shucking some corn from Robyn's garden for dinner. It's delicious.


It looked good enough to eat. He was not happy when I took it in to cook it.

Garden Pics

This is Robyn's corn. Grace is standing by it for reference purposes - see the stalks in the middle are as tall as she is now.



This is the whole veggie garden. You can see that we have a few things on the way out these days. The peas are just about done so I planted a cantaloupe under them to take their place in a few days. The broccoli and the cabbage are also about done. I am not sure what I will replace them with. Probably more carrots, beets, lettuce and such. The pumpkin is taking over Gracie's garden (the one by the slide) well as we use the salad veggies she planted. Her beets are delicious!


This is our blackberry bush - It should keep us pretty busy next month with all those berries!


This is Caden and Robyn in our "canning kitchen." After we got the sweet cherries done, we went back to the orchard for some pie cherries. We got 5 jars of pie cherries canned and then decided that the freezer was a better place for the rest. I put 13 quarts of pie cherries in the freezer. That's A LOT of cherries!
We also picked a half bushel of apricots at the orchard. We have been eating them fresh, but I might dehydrate a few of them tomorrow. I don't like to eat canned apricots - too mushy! Dehydrated ones are pretty good though.

PS



My sour dough corn bread was a success. I cooked it in the dutch oven just to see if I could. I could. This corn bread was more cake like than my usual, not sure which I like better.

I also cooked some regular bread in the dutch oven and it worked fabulously as well. Hooray!

Quick update

1 weekend + 700 miles = visiting with lots of family.
Grandma's bounce house is always a hit with the kids.
The bows Aunt Katie made are AWESOME. I have incredibly talented sisters! (Not to mention incredibly beautiful daughters - they definitely take after their aunts.)


Caden turned 1 = Happy Birthday, baby boy!


Van's fixed. 1 rock chuck = $1700 worth of damage!


Sour dough experiments = complete success! Go me!


Jeremy + Shannon = a new aunt for us in August! Go Jeremy!


Last year's jam = 1 jar left + 26 new from this year's crop. Talk about good planning!

3rd week of June = National Old Time Fiddler's Contest. Colin, Robyn, and Grace played with the Jr. Jammers as entertainment during the evening contest last Tuesday. Fun Stuff!

Views from the Kitchen

As the mother of all these children, I spend excessive amounts of time in my kitchen dirtying dishes and then cleaning those dishes. I thought I'd let you into my life to check out the view from where I stand. It's a beautiful sight.

Spring Time!

I love spring time! This year is even better than last year - the kids are actually getting helpful! Fabulous!
The kids each have their own gardens this year. Colin planted strawberries and celery. Robyn planted corn and beans. And Grace planted every seed packet she could get a hold of. At least we squared her garden before she started planting so it is a little bit organized. She has a few squares of onions, some of carrots, some of radishes, a pumpkin, some beets, and several squares of lettuce. She has a LOT of thinning to do, but planting sure was fun! Randy is growing the tomatoes and peppers this year and I am growing broccoli, cabbage, peas, cucumbers, sunflowers, herbs, and potatoes.
The trees are doing well. We have tons of almonds, peaches, nectarines, plums, and a few cherries, apples, and pears. The grapes are growing like crazy and the strawberries are looking good. Hopefully the raspberries grow berries this year. I think I over fertilized them last year so all we got was leaves.

Planting peas

We got the peas planted this week. Caden was very helpful. :) He thinks garden dirt is delicious!

Fairy Garden

We built a fairy garden this weekend. So Fun!


Here is a decent article on how to build a fairy garden. We added horticultural charcoal to the bottom of the saucer to keep the soil sweet. I don't think this article talks about that.

Here's a link to fairy accessories. We bought ours at a local greenhouse. It wouldn't be hard to build some fairy accessories, if one had time and skills. Maybe next time. :)

Here is another view of the garden.

Happy Spring!

Colin took this picture in our front yard this morning.

We are loving Spring! Here are some pictures of the spring gardens. Weeding is on the list for tomorrow! We are currently harvesting radishes, lettuce, parsley, cilantro, chives, and a few other herbs. We have garlic, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, potatoes, cilantro, parsley, sage, thyme, catnip, lemon balm, chives, and radishes growing in the gardens now. And probably a few things I can't remember right off the top of my head. The fruit trees and the berries are looking pretty good. Robyn told me yesterday that she found blossoms on the strawberries. I can't wait for fresh berries!! It is very nice to be harvesting food again. I love that, even if it is pretty limited right now.

This is part of the veggie garden. The white stuff is frost cloth - it is awesome!! I only have two pieces so only the peas garden and the center garden have been covered - there is a big difference in the plants in those two over the plants that haven't been covered.
A lot of the "weeds" in the path are lettuce and cilantro - Grace helped a lot with the planting. We will have a yummy salad for lunch tomorrow after we get the weeding done.



This is the herb garden. We tried to make it look like a wagon wheel because the pioneer women used to put an old wagon wheel down to plant their herbs in so the men folk would know that those plants were the herbs and wouldn't walk in them or let the horses eat them. Not that any of that is relevant to our back yard, but it was fun anyway.