A Gardener's Dilemma

Well, everything I had here that needed to be planted, either starts or seeds, is now in the ground. Here's the dilemma: I still have space!! What to do? What to do? I'm actually having quite a bit of fun thinking of what I've not grown before that might be fun to try. The space in the veggie garden is about 6' x 8' (the rectangle on the right in the picture above), so plenty of room to try a few things. There is even some room in the side flower garden and the herb garden as well.


I mostly took and included this picture so I would have a 'before' picture to refer to when things got to looking nice. It looks pretty bleak here now, frankly! The little white fence is one we got to keep the chickens out of the side flower garden, but, needless to say, it didn't work, so now it's the trellis for my peas, which actually I can see poking up above the ground today. Nice.


Here's the side garden with my new little annuals planted. You can see there is room for more. As I was planting, I noticed that, except for 6 little alyssum, there is not enough white. It is mostly pinks and purples, so I think I'll have to get some more white and probably something yellow as well. Oh darn, more things to get for the garden!


Here is the first of what I am sure will be many chicken pictures this year. I just love these dumb peckers, and they've been quite productive lately as well, with 8 or 9 eggs a day. I want to point out the little hen on the left. That's Sylvia, the one we adopted last year from the Braly's. In case they check this blog once in a while, I wanted them to know that their sweet girl is doing fine, doesn't crow or be mean to anyone else (why she needed a new home) and lays a little egg every other day or so. She has been a fun addition to our goofy, mixed flock.


This is Vasco. That is short for Vasco De Gama. She has that name because she is always curious and exploring. I'll go out to the barn and find her WAY up in the rafters just checking out every nook and cranny. Just the other day she got into our shop somehow and I found her on top of our upright freezer. She gets along well with the other chickens, but she is just as happy on her own. Today, I was sitting on the bench on our new porch, sorting through my seed packets, and she had to make sure I was doing it right. I know it sounds dorky, but I think chickens make pretty entertaining pets.


Lastly, it's embarrassing to have THIS out in our pasture, but everyone who drives by gets to see her, so I thought you should enjoy the sight as well. Daisy will be four this July (where does time go) and she is still just as sweet and willing as she's ever been. I had a harness on her several times last fall, and hope to continue with her training and maybe have her in the cart this summer some time. Of course I'll get pictures of that too!

Thanks for sticking with me during the break I took from writing this blog over the winter. I'll do my best to keep it as interesting as possible, but sometimes that's hard because, frankly, we're not that interesting! I am always open to requests as well, so feel free to write if you want to see anything. :)

Just a couple of things...

I just wanted to try and catch a picture of all the blooms on one of our apple trees. It's the same tree I have a close-up picture of above. It is so pretty and luckily the bees have been visiting, so hopefully we'll get a good crop. You can see I gave the minis a few minutes of grass. Yakki, of course, doesn't need it, but Maddie is doing really well after a hard winter and was able to enjoy some grass as well. We actually have Maddie on some human diabetes medicine (Metformin...and it's $4 a month!) and that seems to have leveled out her blood sugar enough so her feet aren't sore. Yeah!


I still have about 1/2 of the vegetable garden to plant (probably today) but I don't want to neglect the flower gardens either. Our neighbor has a big compost pile and he shares the dirt freely, so here's our side garden after putting in about two yards more dirt. I have no idea where all the old dirt went, as it was full last year, too! I'm going to stick some annuals in there today. I have to do it before I let the dumb peckers out, or I will have all kinds of 'help' before I can get the little protective fence back up.


I wanted to show you the amazing green color of this spirea in the side garden. It's too bad that the camera can never capture anything the same as your eye sees it, but I think you can get the idea here. This is one of those plants that you have just for it's color and not necessarily the blooms, although this one will have some clusters of small pink flowers later in the season.

So I'm off to the feed store later today to get some chicken scratch, oyster shell and see what else they have in the garden department that I can get in trouble with. Good thing I'm not going to the Stanwood feed store, because they have baby chicks there!!

I'm Ba-ack!

Well, after a long break, I'm back to torturing you with the mundane goings-on at our little farm here in Washington. Spring stirs great feelings of productivity in me, and not much inspires a gardener like me more than the following picture:


I am just itching to get my hands in there and tomorrow will be the day! One thing we can grow for sure is potatoes, so I've got reds that we wintered over from last year, and I was able to find some yukon gold starts that were so ellusive last year. We also had good success with bulb onions and I bought two kinds of starts of those today at the feed store, plus some new rosemary and oregano to replace those herbs that didn't winter over. I also bought two artichoke starts. What the heck, why not? In the house, more than a month ago, I started swiss chard, broccoli, bok choi and parsley. Directly into the garden I'll sow peas, lettuce, corn, beans, beets, carrots and anything else interesting I find in my seed collection left over from last year. Whoo hoo!


If you are a long time reader of this blog, you might remember me talking about how I was having trouble getting our rhubarb to thrive, mostly because the first year Frank kept mowing it, and the second year the chickens were merciless. But I think I finally outsmarted them all. It's not pretty, but it works, and a side benefit is that I'm getting nice long stems on these leaves, which is the part you use. I don't think, however, I'm going to harvest any this year, as I want it to finally be healthy and really get strong.


Last year a student of Frank's gave him a bunch of strawberry plants that they thinned out of their garden. I got them late and didn't have a place to put them, so I just put them in a bunch of planters and wasn't really able to deal with them until this spring, when I made this bed. I had previously taken a blue, food-grade barrel and cut it in half, drilling some drain holes in the now bottom, putting a 2x12 on each open end and used them as hay feeders in my winter pasture. Frankly, they didn't work really well for that, so I ended up buying a free-standing hay rack and now had these things laying around. You can see that I got a couple of more boards and now they're my strawberry bed! The plants are just coming up now, so they're hard to see, but I think this will work well. I placed it on the south-facing wall of my barn where it's nice and warm. You'll also see that I had to put up some netting to protect it from the usual suspects of pillaging and destruction here on the farm (the peckers!!).


Our blueberry bushes are a few years old now and they seem to be taking off pretty well this year. I was concerned about them, as we had a very hot and dry summer last year and they suffered, as they need our more typical cool and showery weather. Maybe this year we'll even get enough to put some in the freezer for pancakes over the winter!


This is not a very complimentary picture of Sandy, but she is still going strong at the age of 14 1/2. She still needs her morning walks and then she sleeps most of the day, either on our bed or outside on the porch or in the grass. It's a good life for this old farm dog. I mainly was taking a picture of another one of my favorite things here on the farm: our apple trees. The blooms are so lovely and impossible to capture the totality of them on the tree. While I was standing in the middle of the tree trying to get some pictures, I could here the comforting buzz of the bees doing their job so that we will have lots of lovely apples in the late summer for us to share with the horses and the chickens. I made and canned applesauce for the first time ever last year and am embarrassed to admit that it took me all these years to do that. It is so much better than anything you can buy in the store and practically free when you have so many of your own apples. I only made 8 or 10 pints last year...this year it'll be quarts, and hopefully 20 of them.

Well, I'm glad to be back. I hope I don't bore you, but I guess this is our life and I'm glad to share it, as simple as it may be. Happy Spring!!

The Porch is DONE!! Whoo hooo!

It is truly a joy to say that our new front porch is done and share these pictures with you. We absolutely love this porch, and marvel at its artistry and fine workmanship. Burke and Ray did a wonderful job and were a pleasure to have around for a couple of weeks as well! One thing you can't see on this picture (but can on the maker's mark picture) is that EVERY edge of EVERY board was routered to give it a smooth, finished look with no sharp edges. I hope you can come sit on this lovely porch some day and see it for yourself!


The only thing left to do, and it's a fairly big thing, is to decide how to paint and stain this beauty so that it looks like it blends with our house, yet shows as much of this beautiful cedar as possible. We have a LOT of white trim on our house, and our pergola that is about 20 feet away is white as well, so we're thinking that the bigger beams on the top and all the big posts will be white, and we'll stain the rest something fairly pale, just to protect the wood and keep it from graying as cedar does if left untreated. Burke assures us we have until spring to decide.


This is what the benches look like. I can't wait to find/make some nice cushions (with barn-red being the main color) and hang some colorful flower baskets. We will also be looking for a nice table as well as a glider as the main furnishings for this outdoor room we have added. I can see spending many lovely days out here!


Full-size, this picture is legible, but I'm not sure it is here. We asked Burke to put some kind of maker's mark on the porch and he brought the brand he uses when he builds furniture or cabinets and we found a good place for it here. We have also asked him to make us a new screen door that will match the style of the porch and that will fit and look better than the $5 plastic yard sale special that is on there now!


We knew it wouldn't take long, but unfortunately the chickens are enjoying the new porch as well. I try to shoo them off as soon as I see them, but alas they have left their calling cards a few times already. Good thing they started laying eggs again so at least they have one redeeming quality. Actually, these two girls are my new ones from this summer and are the last two that have yet to start laying. We are up to getting 3 or 4 eggs a day now, which is plenty for our needs. Hopefully we'll be able to start giving them away again after the holidays.


Believe it or not, even on December 5th there are still things to be harvested here on Red Pony Ranch. This picture shows everything I got out of the garden today, except for the day's eggs which, of course, I got out of the hen house. Still in the garden are beets, carrots, leeks, parsley and more swiss chard. This is my first year growing chard and I have to say I love that stuff. It's wonderful in soups and egg dishes and also makes a lovely fresh side dish when sauteed in a bit of garlic and olive oil. This time I made a cheese/broccoli/chard soup. Here's the picture below. This is before I added more milk and the cheese. I just wanted to capture those lovely colors. We love soup all winter and especially like it when it's mostly from our own garden.


Well, we sure hope you are having a wonderful beginning to your holiday season. As of today we are totally done putting up all the outdoor lights and decorations, and the tree is up inside and lighted but not yet decorated. I'll tackle that tomorrow. I did get my nice nativity set up and now baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the wise men, the shepherds and the stable animals are nestled sweetly in the boughs cut off the bottom of the Christmas tree. We had a wonderful sermon at church today about believing in the unbelievable. I hope you believe in the real Christmas!

The Day After Thanksgiving

This exact same day last year was documented in this blog, and I went back to refresh my memory. I saw pictures of us putting up our Christmas lights and decorations in shirtsleeves! The good news is that today we are rain-free and in the high 40's...perfect for some chores around the farm and continuing work on the deck!


Frank actually ran the mower a bit, chopping down the longer grass that I didn't get with the riding mower when I did the last mowing of the season on November 3rd. Our cool season grasses really perked up after a long, warm summer (by our standards). We also cleaned out our flower and herb beds, cleaned the chicken coop and Frank knocked down some scotch broom (a local pain-in-the-butt weed) in our lower pasture and picked out a new spot for this winter's barn-cleanings. We have been using the compost from the barn, about a wheelbarrow-full a day, to add organic material to the sandy soil in our lower pasture. The areas that we did the previous years grow such nice lush grass now.


Work is continuing on our lovely porch. Frank says the porch is way better quality than the house it's attached to and I don't disagree. These guys are such artists. I am sure we will be spending many hours enjoying this porch with a good book or friends.


We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with our neighbors and friends, but we miss the leftovers, so today I am making a few of our favorite parts that we want to have around a pick on for the rest of the weekend! I hope you had a wonderful time with family and friends, and ate lots of good things! I know we sure did!

Porch Progress

In spite of a week of mostly sideways rain, our intrepid builders have managed to build what we can tell is going to be a beautiful front porch. These guys truly are artists and have incredible attention to detail. There is a lot more coming, like the decking, rails and benches, but seeing it thus far is very exciting.


Since the main windows for our living room are within this porch, we went with a polycarbonate/lexan roof material that lets in the maximum amount of light. The stuff we bought is used in greenhouses and does not yellow. The biggest selling point for me was that our builder (Burke) used it on a project at his house and still recommends it! It will be lovely sitting out there even when it might be raining or drizzly.


Just take a look at the details here. (Those small boards spanning each corner are not permanent.) This porch is truly a work of art. I am so thankful we found Burke and his assistant Ray. Speaking of them, here they are in a candid moment, with Burke on the left and Ray sitting on the deck:


I took this shot not only to capture the progress on the porch, but to tease them later about all the ladders they were using. At one point they had SIX ladders of various sizes and they were running up and down them like monkeys. These guys really know what they're doing...in more ways than one!

I look forward to continuing to chronicle the building of this lovely porch. Now that the roof is on, hopefully the guys will be able to not get as wet in our blustery and rainy fall weather.

November Randomness

Well, it took me long enough! Sorry about that, but the wind kind of went out of my sails during 'the great chicken sickness'. Luckily, and with a lot of hard work and skulking around a dark coop at night mugging chickens to squirt antibiotics down their gullets, we managed to save most of them. We lost four total, and came darn close on a few others. We got down to 10 of our original chickens, 3 of which are banties, so our laying capacity was sorely diminished, and they're still not laying. They need to gain more weight and finish moulting; the new girls are not old enough to be of any help in the laying department yet. One of the new barred rocks turned out to be a rooster (now named Roopert) and if he continues to be nice to the hens, he can stay and sire next year's new chicks. So 'the great chicken sickness' is over and we are on to enjoying my favorite season: FALL.

One of the best things to do in fall is bake and start making big pots of soup again. One recipe I don't make often, but that we love, is Runzas. First, you make a recipe of home made white bread and let it rise. Then you divide it into balls bigger than golf balls but smaller than tennis balls. You can see them below:


The filling is very simple. Browned hamburger and onions, then add a whole head of chopped cabbage, and some salt and pepper. I also added some beef base (like bullion) to give it a little more beefy flavor as well. Get this all cooked down, and if it's watery, strain it. Then you put a scoop of this filling in a rolled out little ball, and fold it over to make a half-circle pocket.


I bake them at 350 degrees until they look done..maybe 20-25 minutes. YUM! I actually got more than 20 of these things, this was just the first batch that came out of the oven. My brother's family takes these out hunting, as they're good pocket food.



I would say that our garden was successful overall this year. Our big harvests were potatoes, onions, carrots, some corn (18 bags in the freezer plus what we ate fresh), basil, beets and crops that turned out to be a pleasant addition this year: broccoli and swiss chard. They are STILL producing even now in mid-November. Here is a picture of the broccoli still coming on from just a couple of days ago. I should have gotten one of the chard too, because the bright colors are just stunning. There are a few leaves in the next picture getting ready to go into the soup!


It is such a pleasure to be able to pull together a big pot of soup almost entirely from our garden. Here you can see carrots, onions, potatoes, swiss chard and the bag of corn I got out of the freezer. The meat was some back strap venison from our good neighbor, Larry. The only store bought ingredients were celery and barley, and salt and pepper, too. I made a couple of loaves of home made multi-grain bread and we had lovely warm soup and bread to our heart's content on these rainy and chilly fall days.


I decided to buy a big dutch oven this year and I am really enjoying it. Previously, I just had an aluminum stock pot that was too thin on the bottom and it burned easily and didn't hold the heat like this enameled cast iron one does. I can't believe it took me so long to get one! The only problem is finding a place for it when I'm not using it. It's pretty big, but it's also a very pretty red, so I'd like to leave it out, but it still hasn't found a home yet. Hopefully I'll keep it busy this fall, so it won't be unused often!


Frank and I are loving our on-line teaching jobs, as well as the bit of extra income it is bringing in. We are paying down our bills, but we have also started tackling a list of three big projects we wish to accomplish. On the list is: a new front porch, a wooden fence around our upper pasture, and new cabinets in the kitchen. We finally have enough for the porch, and another good neighbor is a wonderful builder, and he was willing to take on this project!! Yeah! Here is Sandy, the faithful farm dog, watching over the lumber that was delivered.


We have been in this house four years this past August. It's hard to believe that time has flown by so quickly. One thing that always bothered me was the 'temporary' front porch we had all that time, so I was not unhappy to see it finally GONE! I put the porch on Freecycle (an email group of people in a geographical region whose sole purpose is to give stuff away) and a nice young couple from a nearby town came to get it with plans to turn the deck of it into a floor for a new shed. It's wonderful to see things recycled rather than put into the landfill or burned when someone might have a good use for it.


So far, the progress of the porch has been mostly in the planning and the purchasing of materials, but just a day or so ago the footings were poured. This is the first time we can really visualize its size and how it is going to change the look of our house for the better. It is roughly 15 wide and sticks out 12 feet; enough room for a small table and chairs and a glider. I will make sure to take pictures and update on the progress. Our builder got the swine flu right after he started, so we've got a little down time before they start back up again on Monday. I saw him today and he's feeling better, and that's the most important thing. We have two other entrances to our house, so there is no hurry to finish this one, although I am really looking forward to putting up Christmas lights on it this year!



So that's a quick update of the things that are going on around here. All the horses and donkeys are fuzzy and happy in the chilly fall weather. They are coming into the barn every night now and are enjoying their cozy stalls and lots of local grass hay. We're noticing that Bailey is a little creakier this winter as he gets close to 20 years old, and we're supplementing him for that, but time does march on for all of us, doesn't it?

I hope to write again before Thanksgiving, but if I don't, we want to wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving time with friends and family, reflecting on the rich blessings we all have and enjoy. God bless!