Chicks, seeds, and Cold Frames

 I potted up my little mini soil blocks into the bigger ones. This picture is from a
 few weeks ago- this is cabbage. Napa and the left and Red Express on the right.

 We got some more chicks! 5 Rhode Island Red, 2 Buff Orpington, and 1 Red Production. Last year we had 8 chicks. One ended up being a rooster so we gave it away, then 3 got eaten by predators. Now we are down to 4 hens. Hopefully this year we can keep more of our chickens alive. We have plans to build a legit chicken run on the back portion of our garden. I will share progress on that when it happens (which I hope is soon). The boys kept asking me if we are keeping our hens from last year, and the answer was yes. They are laying lots of eggs now yay!

 I put Cam to work building me cold frames so I could set out my cabbages early.

Here's the finished frame. I'm still waiting for the row covers to come in the mail :)

 After many failed attempts, I made my first successful artisan bread. The tricky part was I only wanted to use a sourdough culture as my leavening. I also wanted to create a bread that was not just white flour. This is 50/50 white and wheat.

The garden now. We had a dusting of snow!

My overwintered kale and spinach are picking up speed growing and we are harvesting some of that.
I planted my peas last Wednesday. I could have planted earlier but somehow I always get a ton of little projects going on and I get behind.

Seeds indoors right now:
Kale, Cabbage (Acclimating these to the outdoors this week)
Broccoli
Spinach
Mache
Onions
Flowers
A few herbs

Seed Starting

Once it comes time to start my seeds, time starts moving really fast because there is a lot to do!

In mid February I started my onion seeds. I just put them in these flats and as you can see the varieties are separated by cardboard.

 I also harvested the last of my parsnips this month. It was getting to hot and they were sprouting green again on their tops.

 Dax was a good helper digging out the parsnips.

 Trees and forsythia bushes are blooming already. This one is in front of our house. I think it's a bradford pear.

The start of some of my other seeds. I got a mini soil blocker to start my seeds, then you put the mini blocks into the larger ones. The soil blocker works really well for things that don't like to be transplanted. I love my 2inch soil blocker. I'm still trying to decide if I like the mini.

Seeds 2017

Christmas #2 came to our house. Or it least it feels like that when I get my seeds in the mail!!

Since there is not much happening in the garden right now, I am carefully planning the garden- seed starting times, transplant dates, and planting dates.

Here are the seeds that I ordered for this year.

Some of these varieties I have planted before and I'm restocking, others are new to me. I save a few of my seeds, but not too many- someday I will do better at that!
Here is the list of what I'm growing this year (although they may be subject to change a bit!!) from seed or root:
All varieties are from Bakers Creek unless otherwise noted. Also all are open pollinated except the fennel.

* = new varieties I'm trying out.

Bulgarian Giant Leek*
Ho Shi Ko Bunching Onions
Dakota Tears Onion (High Mowing Organic Seeds)*
Zebrune Shallot
Southport Red Globe Onions

Siberian Kale
Curly Scotch Kale
Chinese Hilton Cabbage*
Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage
Express Red Cabbage (Peaceful Valley)*

Fennel- Precludio- this is a hybrid
Bloomsdale Long standing Spinach
Broccoli Watham 29*

Lettuce
Little Gem*
Merlot*
Crisp Mint*
Cimmaron*

Arugula
Garden Cress (Peaceful Valley)
mache*

Sweet Potato-
Beauregard
Omani Pink

Kelvendon Wonder Pea*
Sugar Snap Peas
Oregon Snow Pea

Herbs 
Thyme
Dill
Cumin
Genovese Basil
Thai Basil
Cilantro 
Lemongrass*

Radishes
Dikon*
French
Cherry Belle

Potatoes- Yukon Gold*

Tomatoes
Jersey Devil*
Amish Paste
Lucid Gem*
Black Cherry
Black Vernissage*

Peppers
California Wonder
Tam Jalepeno
Canary Bell
Red Cheese
Emerald Giant*

Carrots
Nantes
Atomic Red

Cucumber
Muncher*
Tendergreen Burpless

Watermelon
Ledmon*
Ali Baba

Cantaloupe-Hales Best

Summer squash- Lemon

Winter Squash
Buttercup*
Waltham Butternut*
Cushaw

Parsnips-hollow Crown

Sweet Corn- Who gets kissed (High Mowing Organic Seeds)*
Popcorn- Mini Blue*

Beans
Calima (for fresh eating)
Good Mother Stallard (dried)*

Ginger root

House Exterior Paint- the finished house

I realized when I updated about my garden yesterday, I had never posted pictures of the house with the painting all done.

Today I went out in the freezing cold and took these pictures. It was so cold, I didn't want to pick up anything outside before I took the pictures so please ignore that :)

 Took this picture right before painters came.

 After!! House color is Sherwin Williams - mossy oak. We had it color matched and used Benjamin Moore- Aura Exterior Paint. Our painter educated us and said, since the majority of the cost in painting is labor, you save more money in the long run if you use a quality paint which lasts longer. I totally agree- so far so good :) The trim color is Benjamin Moore White Dove.

 
Here is a picture from right before we moved in.



Here it is now...Christmas lights up still and everything ;)

 After

After

Garden Goals 2017

Today's Harvest - Parsnips

I have some lofty goals for my garden this year.  I'm so glad the setting up, digging trenches, making raised beds part is done.

This year, I got a taste of what it was like to have garden veggies spring, summer, fall, and through winter. We are just starting to have to go to the store to supplement vegetables.

Still in stock are
Winter squash- holding up well in our cold basement storage room
Sweet Potatoes
Canned pickles, jam, tomatoes
Dehydrated carrots, peppers, and zucchini
Frozen strawberries
Frozen tomatoes
Frozen Kale
Parsnips

I wasn't sure how the dehydrated stuff would taste because I'd never had rehydrated veggies but it's worked great! We use our peppers frequently in fajitas and chili.

So on to the goals part-

My goal is to grow enough vegetables to feed us year round. We eat a lot of vegetables on a daily basis so it will be challenging!

I'm working on the fruit - but there is just no way I could get close to growing all the fruit we eat with the small area we have.

Why grow all our own veggies?

After being married for a few years I started to hate shopping at the grocery store (it just so happens that we had a child around this time haha). The less time I have to spend there- the better.

Gardening is one of my things that helps me stay happy. It is really good medicine for depression for me (that and my art).

I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle for the second time. The first time I read it, it didn't quite hit me like it did recently. If you haven't read it, it is about a family who grows/buys all their food locally for 1 year.

The "fresh" out of season vegetables from the store taste disgusting to me- ie. tasteless, grainy tomatoes, cucumbers with whatever slime they put on the skin (you know what I'm talking about).

Saves money

I like to be healthy

I can grow everything organically

I finally have the space that I think I can do it.



I have loads of recipes and feel a lot more confident about being able to use whats on hand than I used to. The challenge will be how much to grow of everything. On that score, I have no clue how much we will use and how much I should put up. I think that piece of the puzzle will take a few years to shake out.

I'm hoping I can keep up with the blogging aspect so I can keep a better record of what gets ripe when, how much I harvest, what's working and whats not. Having a garden is difficult for me in some ways because nature throws at you insects, small animals, disease and the list goes on. I am a recovering perfectionist and sometimes thats hard to take. But I'll try my best to put on here good and bad- my mistakes and successes- because thats all part of the journey.

Here's to a good year of lots of home-grown food!

House Exterior Paint!

Our house is getting painted finally! A few months ago, I decided I was really sick of it and started scraping paint myself to get things prepped. Once I got to the ladder on the garage only 15 feet up I was scared and did not feel confident doing anything. I was able to convince Cam to get some quotes. And after a good quote from someone and waiting for our turn- they started last week!

Now for some before pictures:

This is a picture from last year.

 Progress!!! The garage face siding and up to the door has been painted the new house color. They did all of the front trim first. The color is Behr Mossy Oak- but was color matched in Benjamin Moore Aura Exterior. It is pricey stuff but is suppose to last longer and save more money in the long run. The trim color is Benjamin Moore- White Dove (also Aura).

We painted our shed the Mossy Oak color last year and so I knew it was the right color for the house and for my taste. It's darker and warmer than the old grey. As you can see in the picture above it is a touch more green.

Here is the side, they did the trim and primed all the bare wood. I can't wait for it to get done. Its going to look so much better.

I will update next week!

Garden Harvest

It's been awhile since I posted anything here! I have been taking pictures as we went along but never got around to publishing them...till now!

 The kids were pretty excited about the sweet potatoes. They came very early. I think I harvested them the end of August. Last year, I harvested my sweet potatoes in October. I do still have some purple sweet potatoes in the ground that aren't ready yet.

 Cruz helped me dig them out.

 He did an awesome job of not breaking them!

 So far my estimate is that we've harvested about 50lbs. I've been getting creative with my sweet potato recipes. I tried to cure them on my back porch and I'm not sure I did it right. But hopefully, they will last in my basement for a while.

 Hales best Melon. These were prolific and sweet. Much easier to tell they were ready than the watermelon.

For watermelon I grew Ali baba and an early variety. The early variety had too many small seeds and wasn't as sweet as Ali Baba. However, I got way more icebox watermelons- probably because they are small when mature. I think we got around 25 watermelon total (I really need to keep a more accurate count so I can compare year over year).

 This is a cushaw squash. I got 11 of these. This was average size!!! I got one big one that must have been close to 40 pounds.

I'm hoping these last a while in the basement too. I did already cook a few and froze them for later. They have a lighter flavor compared to butternut squash. I think I like butternut squash more, but these were super duper squash bug resistant! I made squash soup, squash cookies, squash pancakes and roasted squash so far.

 I dehydrated a bunch of peppers at the end of the season since we were all getting tired of them.