A bit of fall around the farm

We had a stunningly lovely early November day here, with temperatures nearing 70 degrees! The chickens were enjoying their time in the sun and the horses, who look more like buffaloes with their shaggy winter coats, were sweating but enjoying their sunny naps as well. I was able to pick up some fall plants on sale at Lowe's and some gourds, so at least I have the table on the porch with a bit of fall decorations. Of course the hens have to check everything out, so here are a couple of my barred rocks trying to get in the picture. I just love these girls.


I noticed that I had not put up a picture of the horses for a long time! Well, everyone is doing very well. The donkeys and the pony were standing around the corner of the barn and didn't make it into the picture, but here is Bailey (standing kind of goofy) and the three minis, from left Yakki, new Shadow and Maddie. It was getting to be dinner time, so they were more focused on me more than usual while the other three were standing at the magical barn door that opens and food comes out of!


Shadow has turned out to be a great addition to our little herd. We got him to keep Yakki company because Maddie wasn't doing to well in the spring and, frankly, I didn't think she'd make it to winter. Well, she is surprising us all by doing VERY well, so now we're a bit over-horsed! Shadow is a joy, however, and he seems to get along well with everyone. He's 6 years old and a very deep chocolate color with no white except for a few stray hairs on his face that you can see below. He was quite an expensive little show pony at one point in his life, and I might actually entertain trying to show him again some day. He sure has a big personality in that little body!


The last thing I want to show you is our new 'fireplace'. I know it's cheezy and fake, but we really like it! Too bad the 'flames' and 'red embers' don't show up with the flash, because they are a pretty good imitation. It also has a heater and fan on a thermostat, but we haven't needed to use it yet. The only thing missing is the crackle, and I found a fireplace sound loop on line that I put on one night and we were laughing about that. It's amazing what technology can do for us. :)


Just a bit of a foot update: The second surgery went well and everything looks fine. I'm only 4.5 weeks since that last one so I'm still in the boot and will be until November 18th. I have been in this thing since August 11th and am ready for a break from 'clompy'!! The good/bad news is that I'm going to have the other foot done on December 15th (to take advantage of insurance benefits) so it starts all over again...just hopefully not doing it twice! Thanks for all your good wishes. Hopefully, I'll be walking on two perfect feet by early spring!

The greenhouse is open for business!

Well, today was the day to get this finished! I still needed to stain about 100 short boards that make up the shelves on these benches, but every time I went out to work on it, it was HOT in there! Who woulda thunk it?! Hahaha! So this morning's weather report called for a lot of fog this morning, so I got out there and finished the job. I wanted to get it done now as I'm going back under the knife on Friday and didn't want that hanging over my head.


One thing that is really neat is this 'sink' they sent that is used to hold soil. I have about 1 and 1/2 bags of that nice nursery mix in there. I put the rest in the area below the single bench that you can see in the following pictures. My first planting project is to take all the runners off the strawberry plants and put them into pots to sell or give away. There are probably 30 or 40 of them and there is no place for them to plant themselves by the strawberry planter they're reaching out from. I'll take a picture of that once I get it set up nice.


So when you go into the greenhouse, on the right is the single bench with the soil below it. You can see the six swiss chard plants that I have planted here. They are doing so well already. It will be neat to see if they really do grow all winter. I'm not sure what I'm going to put in the back half...maybe spinach? We don't eat much lettuce in the winter, so I'm trying to come up with other ideas.


I guess I just wanted to show a picture with everything so nice and clean and tidy, because I'm sure it will never look like this again. I have barn pictures like that as well. Now it looks...hmm....lived in, for sure! No use having these great things like a barn and a greenhouse and not use them! Thanks for looking!

A lovely early Fall day!

We've had kind of a wet and chilly September, but today is making up for it. Highs in the 70's and a nice breeze. A great day for harvesting the potatoes!


Frank was out in the garden bright and early to go on our annual potato treasure hunt. We planted four varieties this year and we were happy with the quality and quantity of each one. Here is Frank digging up some of the reds that we have planted from our own seed potatoes year after year. This is such a great tasting, long storing variety. Sure wish I could remember the name of it!


The basket above is holding one of our experimental varieties this year. It is a dark purple potato with purple flesh! I guess the big test will be to see if we can stomach eating purple potatoes. I sure hope so, because this basket full was the product of ONE purple seed potato I bought on a whim in the produce department at the food co-op in Mount Vernon. This is just an amazing rate of production!


OK, here is everything that came out of the ground today, from upper left going clockwise: the purple fleshed potatoes, red with regular flesh, red with red flesh (another experiment), another red, and the last two are Yukon Golds. While I think the reds outproduced the yukons, the yukons grew a much more uniform size and shape. I think the flavor is a bit more 'potato-y' too. This is our first year with yukons, so it'll be interesting to see how they store and if we can use some for seed next spring.


Everything seems to be ripening on its own schedule. I am finally starting to get some cherry tomatoes, and the grapes (table grape, variety Red Sussex) sure look like they have a long way to go. Hope they can ripen in these shorter and cooler days!


On to progress with my lovely new greenhouse. After the two-man crew set the greenhouse, the rest of it was all up to us. I leveled the dirt the best I could, then we covered it with landscape fabric and a few inches of gravel. The area to the right (you will see this later) is going to remain dirt so I can plant some things right in the soil (like chard, spinach, lettuces) and hopefully have some kind of harvest year 'round. Just as a side note, I am also going to try to sprout some grains for the chickens to eat during the winter.


Frank also dug out the 'patio' area in front of the greenhouse door and lined it with more landscape fabric. I didn't think the grass there was too bad, but Frank was right in pointing out that it would be a muddy mess in the rainy season. This will be so nice once the gravel and pavers are there.


Here you can see the gravel in the area in front of the door as well as all around the greenhouse. The installers recommended we back-fill gravel all around the exterior of the greenhouse and, besides the issue of helping secure it, it sure does look nice...at least until the grass grows up through it!


Here are my favorite pictures so far because they show how it's all coming together. The stained benches are in. You can see the slats that make up the benches still have to be stained and put into place. I was going to work on it today, but it's HOT in there! Hahaha! I still need to do a bit of leveling of the benches, too, but that will just take a few minutes hopefully tomorrow when it's supposed to be rainy again. It is such a wonderful feeling to be out there when the rain is tapping on the roof, yet it's warm and dry inside!


In this picture you can see the board we put into the ground to separate the gravel area from the soil area under the single bench (the benches on the other side have two levels). I found some nursery soil at a bargain-basement price (fall is a great time to buy garden stuff) so most of those bags will be emptied under there. I'll save one or two for planting stuff in pots. Or maybe I'll just go buy some more!


One veggie that I have really fallen in love with and can hardly live without is swiss chard. I've been growing it for two years now, and can hardly make a soup without it now. We also love it sauteed with garlic in olive oil, in quiches/frittatas and casseroles and just about any other thing I can think of. I made a chard tart the other day in a buttery pastry with jack cheese and it was wonderful and we ate the whole thing in one day. So anyway, the first resident in the soil below the single benches will be these great chard starts I found at Lowe's for 1/2 off the lowest priced ticket, so something like .48 cents each. I was going to plant them from seed, so these were a great find! We'll be able to start taking leaves off of these in a couple of months, which is about the time the chard in the garden will finally succumb to a hard freeze.

I just want to take a moment to publicly thank Frank for all his hard work on our little farm-ette. I'm not sure he knew what he signed on for when he married me, but he never complains and is always supportive of my vision for this wonderful place. Thanks, honey, I love and appreciate you very much! Smooch!

We got a greenhouse!

I have always wanted a greenhouse, and a couple of years ago we saw one of these displayed at the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe and almost bought it. But time went on, and I actually started collecting old sliding glass doors to cobble together one of my own. But when we went to the fair again this year, we saw it again and decided to take the plunge! The first thing to do, once we new it was coming, was to prepare the area:


Now I don't know if it was good timing or not, but since my foot surgery is only a month old, I was not able to help poor Frank with this task. Luckily, he said it wasn't too hard of a project. The dimensions of the spot are 8'6" by 12'3". The two installation guys, when they got here, leveled it quickly.


Since I wanted the greenhouse behind our garden shed and next to the garden, they were able to drive their truck right across the lawn and nearly up to the site. You can see that our greenhouse came with two double benches and two single benches that are open below so you can plant directly in the soil of the greenhouse under them. I plan to put swiss chard in SOON so we can hopefully have it all winter.


The two intstaller guys were able to manage this big bulky thing amazingly well and got it into place quite quickly. The only thing left for them to do was to drive six stakes through the about 6"-8" inside lip of the greenhouse into the ground to help with wind resistance. The main thing you're supposed to do is put down landscape fabric and then a layer of rock right up to the wall, as that weight is important to settling it in and holding it down in high winds. I did put the small end toward the prevailing winds, so it shouldn't have any trouble even in the highest winds that we can get here.


I didn't take any pictures of the inside yet because there is nothing to see. You can see from these pictures that we are having quite a gloomy day here in the northwest, but truly, it is quite bright inside the greenhouse. Nice! I left the benches out so I could stain/protect them so they would last longer with damp things setting on them and in that more humid environment.

I just looked back at these pictures and chuckled at all the 'supervision' we had. Sandy's head is in the bottom of one, Katie the kitty is heading for the door and of course the donkey are always in charge of everything that happens around here. The only ones missing are the chickens, but I hadn't let them out yet. I'm sure they'll be checking it out soon enough! More later once we get the inside set up!

Mid-Summer Update

It's good to be back, sharing a bit of our lives with you through this blog. We've been traveling some this summer, but it is ill-advised to mention that on-line, so I didn't want to post anything until we were home for good, lest I should let something slip. Needless to say, we had a good time vacationing in California and also spent 9 days in Wisconsin with Frank's mom, taking daily drives and making sure to find ice cream each time we ventured out!


This has been a really weird year for our garden. Some things are doing well and some things, that did really well last year, are a total bust this year. Of course we can always grow weeds, so Frank has been diligent keeping them manageable. Good thing we don't rely on our garden to get us through the winter or it would be slim pickin's!


As usual, we seem to be able to grow potatoes well. Ordinarily we wouldn't harvest any right now, but those dumb chickens got in there and dug up a few for us so we had to get them out of the sun. Boy are they good! We planted four kinds this year...reds and yukon golds for our main eating, and some purple and red-fleshed ones for fun. Now that we've got those purple and red ones, what in the world am I going to be able to make with them that will look reasonably appetizing? You got me!


These are my new wheels! Cool color, huh? This will be my buddy for the next 8 weeks or so starting Wednesday when I have big foot surgery. It's called a knee scooter, and I will rest my knee on it and push with my good foot. I've played with it quite a bit already and it seems fairly easy to manage. Inside I'll have to use a walker at first, then crutches. My surgeon said earlier in the year that I would have to be non-weight bearing for 4-6 weeks, but he has a new procedure now that will let me bear weight from the beginning as I can stand it. I will have two bones severed then screwed into correct position, so there will be lots of bone healing, so I'm sure I'll get to enjoy some of the fun drugs he prescribed for me!


In anticipation of not being able to stand much, I decided to chop off all my hair since I couldn't stand and blow dry it every day. I'm actually really liking this cut and am thinking about keeping it like this. I need a head shot for my class home-page and this is the best I can come up with so far. I think I look slightly maniacal. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing for that purpose! Hahaha.


Lastly, we have added a new little addition to Red Pony Ranch. Meet Shadow, who is standing here to the left of Maddie. He's a sweet little boy who is fitting in just fine. With Maddie getting old, I wanted to have another gelding for Yakki to become friends with and after a few minor squabbles over who loves Maddie more, the boys are enjoying each other's company. Technically, I don't own him, but he can stay here indefinitely, which is just fine with us!


One nice thing about summer is that our little lovebird Pete can be outside on the porch most of the day and evening. This porch is on the east side of our house, so we don't put him out until there is shade, but when he does go out, he spends his day either screeching at every bird in the neighborhood or taking power naps. It's nice to be able to roll him in and out to get some fresh air. In the winter he has a spot on the west side of our house right by a window so he can look outside and get what limited sun we have.

Well, Frank just informed me that he's taking the camera to the hospital on Wednesday, so I'm expecting that there will be another blog update next week. We'll see!

Out with the old, in with the new...

This is the time of year to ready our barn to receive the hay and pelleted bedding that will get us through the winter. This is the area in our barn that holds all our hay...last year it was 300 small bales of local hay and 44 bales of teff for our sweet old Maddie. Well, our winter turned out to be quite mild compared to the previous winter, so we have quite a bit of hay left. I'm not complaining, but poor Frank had to move the old stuff out of here. Nothing worse than moving stuff twice. So now we have to pick up all those pallets, clean out the old, spidery hay that's trapped underneath and get the cobwebs out so we can stack all the new hay in here when it comes.


So this is the last 9 bales of teff as well as my first ton of pelleted bedding. I have 1.5 more tons of bedding coming yet. I am going to buy more teff this year, so I can give it to everybody, not just Maddie. My farrier and I are going to go together and bring in a truck load. I think I'll need about 8 tons.


These are the 30 or so bales of local hay that are left. We put up a temporary gate at the end of the barn, so of course Daisy has to check everything out and nibble on the bales she can reach. She'll be 4 on this Thursday. I can't believe how quickly time flies.


Frank has been working over the whole barn, sucking up cobwebs, with our trusty new shop vac. Ever since we heard that cobwebs are flammable, we made it a goal to get this done. This little vacuum from Sears is great...lightweight and great suction. I don't even want to think about how many spiders are in there!


Anyone who has donkeys will tell you that they are much more interested in what people are doing than horses are, and I find that to be very true. The horses will check in then move on to other things, while the donkeys will hang around and supervise during the whole project. I just love these sweet sweet girls. That's Daisy (the daughter) on the left and Lily on the right. Daisy ended up being a couple of inches taller than her mom, and Lily is a bit more spotted, but for most people they are difficult to tell apart at first glance. They're in the diet field right now as Lily got a little bit sore feet this spring, so we're waiting for the grass to get less sweet and our lower pasture mowed before they can have full run of the property again.


I keep taking pictures of dear Sandy as we will never be sure when it's going to be the last one. She is 14 years 7 months old, and still doing quite well. No health issues other than a bit of deafness and some old-age creakiness that we treat with some Rimadyl. She does have big trouble with fireworks (and thunder and guns) so we got smart and gave her a bit of Ace (tranquilizer) this weekend and she slept through all of it. Whew!

Well, the garden update is that it's been really hit or miss. Swiss chard and lettuce are doing great, as are the peas. I have tried green beans for three years now and still am not successful with them for one reason or another. Potatoes and onions seem to be coming along fine. Corn had to be replanted and is still pretty small, so it'll be interesting to see if we get any by late summer. The few tomato plants I'm trying this year (determinate instead of indeterminate) seem to be healthy and strong, but I'm not seeing any tomatoes yet as it's just been too cold. Hopefully that will change soon! Talk to you again soon!

Taming the Raspberry Bed

Two years ago we (Frank!) dug out about a 20 foot long strip, removing the sod, to make a bed for some raspberry canes I wanted to plant. It looked lovely and the raspberries grew nicely. Well, fast-forward to now and you can barely even see them in the picture above as they are being overwhelmed by the grass that is now growing and trying to choke them out!


We cut into the sod and put some heavy black edging around the whole area. We couldn't dig out the sod without hurting the plants, so my friend Ange suggested putting down a heavy layer of newspaper before mulching to try to kill the grass. It sounded like a good idea to us, so that's what we did. We also put two 4x4's at each end so we can string some wire and give them the support they need as they get taller. Don't miss sweet Frank in this picture who is always so willing to provide the muscle and labor needed to work on all the projects I come up with!


After we put the paper down around all those raspberry stems, we covered it with a thick layer of pine mulch. I know it looks just like dirt here, but it was pouring rain during this whole project and we also wet it down to make it as heavy as possible on that newspaper, so it looks more like mud than the dark red pine shreds that it really is. So not only did we hopefully deal with the problem of the grass, but hopefully the raspberries are happier and the solution looks nice too!


Totally unrelated to this topic: I caught this picture of my four barred rock hens hanging out on our porch the other day (you can also see Sophie on the railing above) and thought they looked way too comfortable. They have the whole farm to explore, yet this is where they want to hang out! Frankly, though, these are such nice hens...much friendlier than my other chickens (other than Sophie and Sylvia) and just a pleasure to have around. In the beginning I got a couple of quite a few different breeds, and I always keep coming back to the barred rocks as being my favorites.

Well, I'm off to Oregon for a week, so the soonest I'll have another post is next weekend. I hope you are enjoying your spring and getting at least some sunshine. It's been way too rainy here and we're ready for it!

Memorial Day Update

We have had the 6th rainiest May on record, and most of that came in the last two weeks! So needless to say we haven't been able to spend any time out on our beautiful new porch. I did, however, find some flower baskets that I have been wanting to hang on this porch since before it was even built. I also found a couple of planters in the 'damaged' rack at Lowes, but I thought they still looked pretty good and snatched them up for 1/2 price. We have also been seeing a lot of hummingbirds, so I hung a couple of hummingbird feeders and we instantly started seeing them lapping up the nectar. I am still shopping for just the right glider and also some nice cushions and our lovely new living space will be complete!


Our garden is coming along fine, with some some successes and failures to report. The plants that like cool weather are doing fine...like the peas, potatoes, onions, swiss chard and bok choy. In fact, we will need to eat the last of the bok choy this week as it is beginning to bolt already. The warm weather loving crops are not faring well, especially the ones that needed warm soil to germinate. I need to replant some carrots, corn, beets and basil, plus think of what I want to plant in place of the bok choy. Frank spent several hours out there today in the rain doing some much needed weeding, and since it looked so nice I had to take a picture. The still-weedy patch on the left is where the corn is, and the ones that came up are too fragile to tolerate much weeding nearby until they grow a bit more. I'm hoping for a non-rainy day soon so I can get out there and get my hands dirty again!


We bought our blueberry plants in the spring of 2008. Last year we were happy that they just took the transplanting and winter well, and they produced enough blueberries for about three batches of pancakes. This year I am amazed and so thankful that each of the four plants is just loaded with berries. I picked each plant specifically so that its berries would ripen at different times so hopefully we'll have fresh berries all summer and maybe even some to put in the freezer as well.

School is winding down and I'm heading to my Mom's next week to be with her after a bit of surgery. We've got trips planned in June and July to California and Wisconsin, respectively. Then, in early August I am having foot surgery that will necessitate me being totally off that foot for 4 weeks, so this should be an interesting summer! I'll do my best to keep the blog updated so that my faithful readers can follow our adventures!

First Harvest!

It's not even June yet and there are things to be harvested in our garden! Yeah! You can see in the picture above our bok choy getting ready to bolt already! So two of these plants ended up in a stir-fry tonight with beef, celery, onions, carrots and mushrooms. There is just something so rewarding about eating things you have grown yourself! We might actually have to eat all this bok choy in the next couple of weeks and plant another crop. I do notice that they bolt really quickly, so it kind of forces you to eat them while young. I also notice that this part of the garden still needs to be weeded. Oh well, it's a never ending job!


There are also radishes to be eating now too, as you can see in this picture. I decided to try growing a variety of radishes called 'icicle' that is shaped more like a carrot than the round, red kind. They taste the same though! Frank was kind of bewildered when he found these radishes drying in the dish rack after I washed them. OH well!

Thanks for reading this first of many more reports of things we've harvested and eaten from the garden! It's amazing I still have faithful readers after all these mundane and boring posts. I'm glad you're hanging in there. :)

Finally Done!

Well, a normal spring in the northwest has conspired against us in our efforts to finish painting the deck. We prevailed, however, and the last coat of stain was completed just in time to dry enough that another spring rain didn't do any damage. Here is Frank doing the last steps. Notice the little white fence at the foot of the stairs. Now this certainly couldn't and wouldn't stop any chicken, but it was enough to stop people (namely US) from forgetting that we couldn't step on the deck for a couple of days.


I took these pictures at 6:30 pm, so the light isn't that great, but you get the idea. I'm sure there will be many more pictures to come of us enjoying this lovely addition to our home. We have yet to add a couple of nice hanging flower baskets, as well as cushions for the bench and a glider. Also, we'd like to hang a hummingbird feeder, as they seem to be all around this spring.


We're off tonight to watch the finale of LOST at a friend's house. I made fresh strawberry crepes to bring. YUM. I can hardly wait for the good company and the good food! See you later!

No Chickens in the House!!

A little background information first: We have a sliding glass door/screen that we leave open on nice days so that the cats and dog can go in and out on their own, instead of making us be their personal doormen every 5 minutes. Generally, this works out well. See the elusive Jake above, hunkering on the corner of the little porch out there, surveying his land and ever alert for something he can kill. (Luckily, chickens, even little ones, are not on his menu.)

So last night Frank and I are enjoying our new porch for the first time by sitting at our new table and playing a game of Settlers of Catan. Then came some tapping from inside the house. First tenative, then more insistent. What the heck? Well, we look toward the tapping and see something so incongruous that it took a while for it to even register...it was Sylvia!! She was in our living room, walking back and forth on the sills of the windows to our new porch!


So, with my faithful blog readers ever in mind, I ran in and was able to snap off this one picture before territorial Katie the yellow kitty decided that she didn't think a chicken should be in the house either and thus commenced the cat/chicken rodeo. Too bad I didn't get any pictures of that but I was more concerned about keeping them apart than capturing the moment! Needless to say, Sylvia was happy to go out the front door that Frank so graciously held open for her. And to answer the question that I know all of you are thinking: No, she didn't poop in the house. Whew!

Painting the New Porch - Day 2

Well, today was LONG with painting but the rewards were great. Frank finished the tedious job of painting the inside of the roof while I did the white posts. Once Frank was done with the roof, he moved on to doing all the white on the higher horizontal wood that I couldn't reach. It's 6:10pm now, and he says he's got a half-hour more to go tonight. We started at 8:30 this morning, so that's a full day of painting...WHEW!


We are done with painting for this weekend. We need to put another coat of white stain on the wood that Frank painted today, and we also need to wash all the horizontal surfaces (benches, railing, deck floor and stairs) prior to staining them. We don't have time to wash it tonight, and since it needs at least overnight to dry, it'll just have to be done next weekend (hopefully!). That's OK, we have neglected the lawn so there is mowing to be done! There's always something!