We have had a great weekend so far folks! We got some of our building money, and we have a load of rebar coming tomorrow. We have decided to go down to a 34ft diameter dome. When we staked it (40 ft dome) out we noticed that we mis-staked it and the 34ft is not that much smaller than what we had staked out..




I got my apple trees ordered, I ordered ultra mac's for Silver and double delicious for me. I love the golden and red delicious. The company I ordered from a local nursery for this state Stark Bros nursery, they offered free shipping on orders over $85. So as I ordered 2 of each the order with the free shipping was just over $100. So I saved at least $20.




We had gotten a “pay later” flower catalog, that had Dahlias (edible root) and a few herb and bee friendly plants, We have been approved on their credit plan and I have a order of quite a few flowers coming that will be planted in a few various places one being our outdoor kitchen that will make it nice there and I will have lots of butterflies, bees, and humming birds stopping by.




We have also prepaid on the track hoe for next weekend as we had rain yesterday evening and this morning it would have been a waste of time and money getting it for this weekend. My son is crossing his fingers and behaving overly well in the hopes of getting to learn how to use it. Well, a 16yr old boy should have that opportunity to learn it. He's not doing all the work however. Especially since we need to dig a ditch from the power pole out to the clearing. I'm NOT having a child no matter how old digging near the power pole.




The next pay day we are going to get the chicks ordered, I wanted to do it Friday; but we didn't get a chance to. I did get the chick food and the new light for them. We will still need some pine bedding and a cover for the brooder before they get here though.




Now for the next week we have to clear area for the track hoe to run in. Yesterday my son and Silver started on it before the rain showed up. They'll go back out today after the rain lets up and it drys up a bit. Tomorrow it'll be just me and Silver working out there.




On another note, I was thinking about the weather and I believe we are already in our “Spring pattern” for here as we are getting tons of rain. Which is normal Spring weather here. Oh, my plant starts have started sprouting. Cabbages, grains, and tomatoes; also a couple of herbs! I am very happy about that.




I hope everyone is having a good weekend!




Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

 I know it's been a while since I have been on here.. over a year really. I thought it was about time I updated here as I have regular internet now. We tried out growing luffa gourds this last year and they did grow pretty good we got about 2 full sized sponges. One of the two had better seeds in it than the other. Funny thing about it was that the one with the better seeds is one I never noticed until we took the vines down once winter started. I did learn from it that it's a plant that while you need to thin some flowers the plant itself is pretty much self caring for. It is a voracious vine though, it tried to eat our electric pole.

We had tons of tomatoes this year and we have decided that the Cherokee orange purple smudge is the best for us. I have finally discovered why you need to trim the plants and cut back flowers. I have learned that if I don't understand why “they” say to do something I won't know until I figure it out myself.

I got my Tiger's eye beans to grow better than I thought, even though I didn't try to grow them. Odd how that the one I plant for “the heck of it” grew the best? Considering I can't find the seeds though I cannot eat them this year though, I have saved them all for next years planting. The “green bean” that I grew up growing.. well, it just didn't want to grow for me at all. I think we got maybe 20 beans and I planted ½ a pound of seeds. When I was a kid I could plant 10 seeds and get 10x's that.

My eggplants didn't do much of anything, as well as my bell peppers. The Rhubarb I ordered and planted grew a bit then quit on me. I hope they come back this year, we will see.

We have gotten the space for our house and our new chicken coop cleared fully. In 2 weeks we will be starting to buy the rebar to work on the house. We built a newer type of a barrel wood stove, we made it upright; and it takes up less than half the space. There is also no wasted space inside the stove, we also have the ability to cook on the top of it.

We also made an attempt at helping a friend out. A young man,who wants to be a woman who was living homeless. We invited her to live with us in exchange for being a “farm hand” to help me out with the day-to-day chores. It did -NOT- work out. I think it partly had to do with the person's age, and the desire of them to only play video games all the time. We just recently sent her to a place where she can spend tons of time playing video games with someone else 90% of the day.




So now I am hoping to keep this site up to date as my other blogs. Lets hope I do!




Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be....

Hi folks, got some good news / bad news... so as typical the bad news first. Our net is down again (yippie) for probably a couple weeks to a month so I won't be writing blog posts for a little while. We had an overage on our last bill that we were one surprised by.. and couldn't at that time pay so this morning we found out that they cut off our entire cell service. What fun... but hey, c'est la vie.

The good news, well at least I consider it good. We have been berry picking a lot right now and I have a few gallons of black berries in my freezer right now. The plants are still producing so we are going to be picking for a while. The ones on our property are producing good as the ones on the road, granted they aren't necessarily as big as some of the ones on the road. As 2 spots on the road have water that means the plants have a constant supply and the berries are huge. We are going to look up how many black berries you need to make black berry wine and once we can get the supplies we are going to make some up. The idea is to buy a complete kit for a standard red and learn the process, then move on to making some of our own types.

Now all three sets of our zucchini have flowers on it. ...and not just the male flowers either if you notice the picture. I can't wait to see how big this one gets, and I can't wait for the lunches with them stir fried. We also have the starts of some cucumbers, they are tiny right now; but at least I saw two of them last night. You'd think with them being volunteer ones they would have started producing already, but they are not.

I have set up a teepee for our long beans and the luffa gourds. The luffa's are just starting to climb right now, and I expect that the long beans should “kick in” and put on enough growth soon so that they will be too. When we did that I also have started staking the eating tomatoes as they are growing very vigorously. I guess they like the chicken manure/perlite/oyster shell/ clay soil we gave them. Not to mention how well the dill plants that are growing just as well.

We started picking beans today, this is the first batch; they are in an 8 inch cake pan. So you can figure about how many we harvested this morning. I also picked some more Lamb's Quarters, with some male squash flowers for breakfast. I also harvested a couple leaves of the wintergreen to try to make some tea with it. I'll find out later how it comes out.

Well we are sitting here at the local library so we can get our podcasts and so I can post this today. A week from now we should have our first “farm hand” here, his bus is suppose to arrive at about noon then. So we'll see how that goes.

The kids leave on their trip next Saturday, my mother decided she just wants to do a half way drive both “ways”, which really will be the easiest way to do it. She's going to pick up the couple food items we wanted and bring them with her. The kids start the new school year on the 15th of August here, I'm not sure but that seems a tad early. All three of them will be going to the same school, just different parts of it.

It's funny how the thought of no internet doesn't really bother me, aside from not being able to write on my blog(s). ...and this is after watching a show on frontline last night called “digital_nation”, which was about how “connected” the world is now to the internet and how people really can't “live without” their connection to the online world(s). Even more so how people who say they are “multi-taskers”, really aren't very good at multi-tasking.I do wonder to some extent if this ability to reach any bit of information we could want at any moment of the day; with it have a bad effect of any kind? What happens to creativity when you can look up any subject and find information on it?

How would you feel if you were “unplugged” even for a day? Could you manage without your connection to the world of everything? Could you live in your own piece of the world without your escape into the “connected” world? How many people don't read actual books any more because they can get a kindle or a summary of the info? Or even just a part of the book that you find interesting somewhere online?

Now please don't mistake, I do think the internet is a good tool; but to me that is all I consider it. I've been trying to keep my kids from being so enraptured in the internet, yes they are fully capable of “surfing the web” sometimes much better than me. I have no issues with using it, but I have unfortunately seen people who get so wrapped up in the internet that they do not know how to live in the real world. ...and it can affect their families, their jobs, and even their own lives. Just something for everyone to think on...




Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed be...

This is half of my "horde" of green bush beans that I'm growing this year.  Aside from maybe 3 plants having slightly yellowed leaves everyone of them is very healthy and in flower.  I actually think they are putting out secondary flower stalks.

I am hoping to get lots of beans from them, I will try canning some.  I know I cannot eat commercial canned veggies as they make me ill, so Silver is hoping/thinking that home canned I could.   The thought is that maybe it's a preservative in them besides being too soft that is the reason for it.

I seem to have also issue(s) with over cooked ones as well so we are going to try raw packing them.  who knows maybe they will do well and I'll be able to eat them.  If I can't the kids and Silver certainly can.

Last year I had tried growing pole beans and I was sorely disappointed.  That's why I am doing bush beans this year.  I have grown "Blue Lake" bush beans for almost forever and I know they'll produce.  This year I am determined to have a good harvest from my garden.  As I said I do have my Tiger's Eye beans growing up front, we will see if I can get them to produce this year and if I can we will just go with those as they are also a dry bean.  Pinto style, which for us means chili.

This is one of the many cabbage plants I have growing, and this is one of the remaining three that I myself started.  I had started 6 of the Early Jersey Wakefield, but after some four-legged lawn mowers went through I only have maybe three of these and the red cabbages I bought.

These green ones are a tad behind my red cabbages, as the red ones have been heading for a few weeks and the greens have only been for about one week.  I am really hoping to be able to harvest them soon so we can have some cole slaw.  I love fresh cole slaw!

Oh pardon the picture quality as my camera is out of batteries and we keep forgetting to buy them so I used our phone to take these pics.

This is my volunteer squash, in flower (male flowers btw).  It has had I'd say about 8-10 flowers at this point and they have all been the "male" flowers.  I am waiting on the female ones to appears so I have a better idea as to what kind of squash it is.

Now like I said I think it's a Dark Star Zucchini, and next time I'll get a picture of those in flower as they are starting to get their flower buds now.  Which for me is a wonderful thing, I am hoping again that they produce lots of squashes for us.  

We got hooked our first year here eating for lunch a stir fry with two or more squashes in it and maybe some canned ham and a fresh herbs.  I really want to do that again, so because last year our squashes didn't do much past producing male flowers we didn't get any of those fun meals.

One other "Crop" that I am hopeful on is melons.  I love to eat melons and I have a wonderful recipe for a catulope jam that I made last year with half of a huge one that I bought.  I have some melons sprouting and .. considering I had tried some vine peach seeds, which at this point they all sprouted then withered.  I planted to see some of the melon seeds I bought last year.  I planted "Oran's melon" which is suppose to grow well in this state.

This is one of the two flowering heads on the one Elderberry that is blooming.  I do hope the other one blooms next year.  As you can see the flowers are starting to open up.  I am going to be watching this closely as I have no clue how long it takes for them to go from flower to ripe fruit.

I spent the early part of this morning doing the kids' early chores of feeding the animals (which in the summer they do).  I went out and took these pictures and I did a bit of pond digging.  Maybe I'll post some pond pictures next time.  A progression of what we have done so far.

I also checked my plants out and the Oran's melons are still very healthy, which is making me very happy.  i do hope they do well and we get melons, in some amount.  Even if we are overwhelmed by them.  I would not mind, because  if they do I'll just turn them into jam.

We've lost one of our chickens yesterday to I think a fox, and I'm wondering if maybe we've lost more than one.  As a number of days ago they had managed to get out under the fencing and there was tons of feathers all over their yard.  So after finding the dead one half pulled out of the fence and half eaten, I do wonder.

Well that's about ti for now.. I'm heading to wordpress and Blogger to put up updates there as well.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...