The weekends are not long enough

I am trying to get some changes made and get the yard ready for another year of gardening.

This Saturday I tore down and hauled away the kids’ tree house.  It was built from pine and had several rotten spots that made me scared to continue letting kids play in there.  We’ll most likely put another fruit tree or 3 in that spot.  Or maybe 2 more garden beds.

I also cut down and hauled away one truckload of dead arborvitae bushes.  There will be 2 or 3 more loads of those, at least.

I have plans printed up so I can figure out how much lumber and supplies to buy to build a little shed.  I have a neat piece of glass that I’m thinking of using as the window.  It used to be a coffee table.  The shed will [most likely] go where my least productive, most shaded garden bed had been sitting, way down in the corner.  I hope to run water and power out there.

I am trying soaker hoses at the base of my tomato plants this year, which I’ll cover with a thick layer of straw. I have quite a few new varieties of tomatoes going in for testing.

Things are greening up, so I’ll be getting the camera out soon, soon…..

Hibernation over

It’s spring. Time to wake up the blog again. I need to shake the dust off.

I’ve been outside adding compost to the asparagus and cutting down last year’s dead ferns.  I’m replacing rotten garden bed frames with new wood and removing one completely to make room for a shed.  The seeds for new herbs and tomatoes have been growing under lights for a few weeks and I received an order of Gooseberry bushes from eBay.  Most of my arborvitae died after their second year of drought, so those will have to get cut down and hauled away.  $$$$$ Oh well.

I’m looking forward to post again this spring, summer and fall.  Thanks for reading!

Venison in the Freezer

One thing I have been up to is deer hunting. I tried last year and didn’t see anything. I had much better success this year and now have over 90 pounds of meat.

Sending Seeds in the Mail

I have test-sprouted (>90% germination), packaged, packed, sealed and sent your envelopes of Cabin Tomato seeds. 7 envelopes went out on Wednesday, and 6 more are going out in Thursday’s mail. I still have about 4 or 5 more remaining.

I am incredibly grateful to you growers who are willing to try growing your own Cabin tomatoes in the 2013 season. If you can, grow a plant for friend too. If you can, save seeds for the next year too.

If you don’t receive the seeds I promised you within a week from today, please contact me again. There was one pack going to Canada, so I don’t know how long that should take.

Everything is going well for Jimmy, I just haven’t had much blog motivation lately.

Thank you all!

Small-Audience “Blogging” – Cook Book Notes

I don’t trust the memory of my future self.  I learned this the hard way many times.  So I write notes to…ME…in all our cook books.  Surely I’m not the only one?

Below you can tell which pieces were fried after I figured out the missing ingredient in this recipe.  Both are fried, but the left side is more my style.

New Cats

 

Here’s something new around our house.  Our former roommate went away and did not return on a nice evening about 7 or 8 months ago.  These two kittens are–comparatively–quite a handful at the moment.

Sauercrock Sauercracked, Sauerkraut Sauercanned

My Sauerkraut was finished some time ago.  I held it in the refrigerator to SLOOOOW down the fermentation for a while, then I canned 2/3 of it.  The remaining third will be eaten the proper way…alive.

While I was scooping kraut out of my fermenting crock, I noticed some bad news:

My 4 gallon crock has developed a crack all the way through from the inside, out.  That stain is dried cabbage juice and salt.  This is disappointing, because I don’t want to spend a small fortune on a new one, but I can’t trust this one again.

This is the color I achieved this year with my mixture of purple and green cabbages.  I hate to kill the beneficial bacteria by canning it, but the kraut won’t last until next July if I don’t can some of it.

On an unrelated note, today is the first day in 8 days that I haven’t taken any headache medicine.  I have been down twice with a migraine, and it’s still up there, lurking around, threatening to come back again.