Tag Archives: Garden

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Flowers and Berries, Oh My!

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First, Happy Solstice weekend, everyone!  It’s been rather off-again, on-again rainy this weekend, which put a damper on our bonfire celebration, so we’ve put that off until next weekend.

We did celebrate with fresh basil pesto and basil-lime-gin cocktails, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Oona and I spent time wandering around the farm and looking at all of the plants growing in that we never knew were there before (it’s been easier to take inventory of things growing back slowly after having scraped it bare).

We found a wild rosebush (which I hope to transplant to a better spot), and lots of Brown-Eyed Susans popping up.

There’s plenty of Queen Ann’s Lace and little Daisies.  Near where we keep the hay there’s also plenty of this:

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Butterfly Weed.  It’s quite lovely, actually, and it’s a nice compliment to the Butterfly Bushes I have that have spread and volunteered in places far from were the originals were planted.  Whatever I can do to attract more pollinators is a good thing!

Then we found the berries.  Now, I knew we had a decent amount of wild blackberry bushes scattered everywhere, but I didn’t realize the full volume of what we are dealing with.  SCORES of bushes. EVERYWHERE.  We picked a good bowl-full of berries, and left many, many unripe berries on the plants to go back for later.

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Most of the plants are just starting to grow back in from where the land was cleared a few years ago and aren’t in berry yet.  This means that in a year or two we will have more berries than we can handle.  I am so looking forward to making jam and vinegar with them!  For today we simple ate the berries out of hand.

Not only that, but…

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My blueberry plant is finally producing!  Sadly, it is but one crummy little plant.  However – I bought several more blueberry plants  plants from The Arbor Day Foundation that we will plant this fall (along with 3 more apple trees, 5 cherry trees, 2 peach trees, a Damson plum, and 2 chestnut trees!).  There are also plans in the works to put in a terraced strawberry bed along the lower edge of my vegetable garden (thanks to my friend Lisa at Red Row Farm for the idea!).

I’m grateful I took the time to slow down and really take a look around at what we have to work with here.  This little homestead has served us better than we thought it would, and I’m glad we’ve decided to put more into it rather than dreaming of somewhere better.

 

 

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June Days

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It’s nearly the Summer Solstice and we are finally settling into our slower summer rhythm.  With lambing done, the flock moved out to summer pasture, and the garden more or less planted, I’ve had a chance to breathe a bit and enjoy taking in the sights and sounds of June.  I’m getting excited for a wild raspberry harvest, and thrilled to have discovered wild rose bushes growing in a few spots.

The chickens are laying well (including our new blue egg layers – thanks, Lisa! I owe you dinner!), the beans and peas are flowering.  My bee balm has finally blossomed and I made a few recipes from Marisa McLellan’s Food In Jars. (Vanilla-Rhubarb Jam and White Wine Mustard).

We have one more quiet week before theater camp starts the 23rd and life gets a bit crazy temporarily. For now I am going to enjoy my slow summer evenings with the sheep and in the garden.

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The Garden Report

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I know I’ve been woefully quiet over here.  Lambing officially ended with the birth of our last lamb last week (more on that soon! I promise!), and then I slept for days.

Since then I’ve been preoccupied with the garden, and I am very late getting it all established this year.  It’s now a mad rush to get everything into the ground right now in an effort to catch up.

We also were dealing with lambcam having been hit by lightning, causing it to be down for about a week.

On top of it all, Neve, my super – helpful shepherd apprentice, turned 11 this week.

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She’s a dynamo with the sheep and goats.  She helped deliver nearly all the lambs this year, and got to check “getting a lap-full of amniotic fluid and blood” off of her “life experiences” list. Grossness aside, she’s loved every moment of it.

But back to the garden.

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Lots of lettuce is growing out front, along with radishes, beets, carrots, peas and beans. Even the broccoli still looks to be doing great, and I’ve never had much luck with it before.

My quinoa sprouts are getting bigger by the day, and the leeks seem to be doing really well also.

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The rose bush next to the beehives looks amazing this year.  I’m sure the bees like it, too!

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This crazy jungle is actually my raspberry plant.  I got it as a small, single cane plant two years ago, and it has gone wild with growth.

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It is just now starting to flower, so I am hoping for a bountiful harvest in the coming weeks.  Even so, we have discovered that our entire property is just filthy with wild black raspberries.  For the first several years we were here we thought they were just prickery weeds and pulled them out wherever we found them.  Happily, that hasn’t put even a dent in the amount of them all over.  They are currently in flower (lovely drifts of white amongst dark green leaves everywhere!), and soon we will have more berries than we can eat.  There are also plans to add a terraced bed alongside the back garden for strawberries.  If we get them into the ground this fall, we should see plenty of fruit next spring!

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The other thing taking over? Honeysuckle.  It has created a natural wall all around the front chicken yard, and when the wind blows it carries the sweetest scent.  This may be one of my favorite things right now.

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Speaking of chickens…..my awesome friend Lisa gave me two new chickens – these will lay blue eggs. We’ve named them Petal and Posy.

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Next to the back vegetable garden I’ve started a small flower garden around this lovely twig bench.  I love this spot because it’s about halfway between the house and the pasture, and on nice days you can sit and watch the sheep. It doesn’t look like much now (except that we need to get the weed whacker out!) but we’ve surrounded it with lovely white quartz rocks we’ve found all over the farm, and there are three peony bushes starting to spread along with a few dahlia plants and some alysum.  I’d like to get some lavender in there as well, but we’ll see.  The area directly behind the bench will soon be planted with cherry trees that we hope will fruit abundantly in a few years.

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In the back vegetable garden I’ve left the volunteer sunflowers where they’ve sprouted.  I think they will be nice among the squashes and corn.

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The cucumbers are sprouting!  I planted three different kinds: one large variety for eating out of hand and chopping into salads, and two pickling types.  I’ve got trellises for them this year, as well as for all of the other large vining squashes.  I don’t have a lot of square footage for them right now, but there’s plenty of room to go UP.  Everything except for the big watermelons and pumpkins will be trellised.

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Sadly, this is what all of my tomato plants look like.  They are still rather small, due to my very late start.  I may try to find some bigger plants to put in with them so we are not waiting until August to see fruit!

BUT, I at least got my basil planted at the appropriate time.  It would be a crime not to have fresh pesto this summer!

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I have planted several of these all around the gardens, along with lemon thyme and rosemary.  I’ve been reading up on what I need to do to try and keep them going through the winter so I don’t need to buy new each year.  I’d like for the lavender at least to grow and spread out a bit.

I’m pretty excited about the direction the property is going.  We are learning that there is a lot here already that is wonderful, and we are doing what we can to improve the soil and plant growth.  It’s very slow, but it’s going to be so worth it.

 

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Spring Slam

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It’s that time of spring where it’s really crunchtime.  SO much work to be accomplished before the true heat of summer hits.

It also happens to be lambing season!

Even though I am completely exhausted (We check on our ewes and lambs every two to three hours around the clock), I’ve been managing to still get a fair amount of work done.

We took delivery of hay yesterday:

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It’s gorgeous.  This picture does not even do justice to how soft and green it is.  It smells heavenly, and I imagine it tastes it as well.

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The goslings and ducks have graduated out of the brooder and into the poultry tractor so they can roam around on fresh grass.  Pretty soon they will have a big pen out back with a giant water tub to swim in.

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Wild irises are growing up around the edges of the stream (I am crazy happy for these lovely volunteers!).

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My blueberry bush is fruiting!  If I can manage it soon I will be putting in a peach tree or two as well, to compliment the three apple trees we planted last year (yes, we have many years to wait before they fruit, but it will be worth it when they do!).  I also managed to put in two basil plants, and if all goes well later this week I will add two more plus some lavender and rosemary bushes.

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Neve and I put down straw in the front garden along all of the pathways to discourage weeds, and I managed to get all of my bean poles staked and roped for the beans and peas that have sprouted.

I leveled out a spot next to the beehive for our second hive, which is going in on Tuesday (eventually I have to level out the first one as well!).  The first hive is crazy productive and I  had to add a third hive box on top since they’ve already used up the first two!

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I cannot wait for our first honey harvest!  Speaking of which, one of my new favorite things is to watch the bees returning to the hive laden with pollen:

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They are very docile bees.  I have their hive situated in my garden, and I have been spending a lot of time quite close by them weeding and working with spring plants, and they haven’t bothered with me one bit.

I haven’t gotten to the back garden yet, but that will be squash and tomatoes, and the growing season for them is longer than for the spring crops out front, so I still have a little bit of wiggle room.  When I am not quite so cranky and tired I will get out there and get that started (hopefully within in the next 4 or 5 days).

In the meantime, the best part of our days (and nights) is cooing over (and snuggling) all the little cuties we’ve been blessed with so far.

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I can’t think of a cuter reason to be so tired!  Six lambs, roughly 9 pregnant ewes left.  Let’s get this done!

 

 

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Of Birds and Bees

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First of all, happy May!!!  And happy first day without rain in way too long!!!

To celebrate this first day of a (hopefully) warmer and (hopefully) drier month, I was able to get out and take pictures to share with all of you.

First up is the tiny bird’s nest I discovered in the small garden cabinet I keep on the front porch.  I went out to fetch some lambing supplies and the mama bird swooped out of the nest, nearly hitting my face.  I know there are eggs in there, and I occasionally see her leaving and returning.

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Fortunately she put her nest on the top shelf of the cabinet, which itself is in a fairly out-of-the-way place.  Since our baby bunnies hopped from their nest and out into the world (on Easter, no less!), it will be nice to see tiny baby birds soon.

In other, rather more exciting news……we have honeybees!

My friend Amy raises honeybees, and she contacted me on Monday to let me know she had a swarm, if I’d like to collect it. It was in a rather nice cluster on a branch of her peach tree.  I grabbed one box of my empty hive and dashed over.

Of course, I totally forgot I had my friend Erin’s beesuit here, so I went with a bee veil and gloves, along with a thick flannel shirt.

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I stood under the swarm with my hive box while Amy shook the tree branch downward (normally you could cut the branch and lower it onto your box, but this was a big, main branch of the tree).

I was instantly covered with what felt like thousands and thousands of bees, and they were heavy altogether.  And I only got stung once, through my shirt, which as it turns out, was not thick enough.  Lesson learned.

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I carefully lowered the box and we watched the bees form a steady line into it, meaning we had caught the queen with the initial shake.  At dusk the bees were all in and the box was covered and taped up for the ride home!

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Welcome home, bees!

I had a hard time finding/making a level spot in the front garden for them, and at some point I will have to make some adjustments to get it a bit more level, but for now they seem pretty happy.  And BUSY!

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There was very little activity outside the hive the last three days because of the pouring rain, but today when I went out to open the hive and check, they were extremely active.  More bees than I could count were returning into the hive, their back ends heavy with orange pollen.  Inside, there was an astounding amount of comb built, and it looked like they were starting to fill some of the comb cells.

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Sorry for the less-than-stellar pictures.  It’s hard working a camera through a bee suit, while holding a frame in one hand.

I fed them quite a bit of sugar syrup while the weather was bad, since they weren’t leaving the hive, but it seems they are finding their way now.

Next week we are waiting on delivery of a second hive and my friend Louise will drive down from Northern Virginia to deliver a second colony.

I am crazy excited for all of the pollinators we will have for the gardens this summer!

 

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Unexpected Garden Guests

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Today the weather was beautiful, and we decided to take our learning outside.

As in, I needed to take advantage of the weather and get some gardening done, and I needed some slave labor to help.

The girls pulled weeds and collected rocks while I got out the hoe and pulled up all the grass and weed cover from the garden beds.  I was working along at a pretty good clip, dragging the top layer of weeds and their roots out of the ground, keeping a steady pace so i wouldn’t think about how tired I was getting.

At one point in the back corner of the front garden I noticed a small amount of fuzz fly up at me, but figured it was either partially composted wool bits or some of the fuzzier chicken feathers.

Then I struck down again, and a HUGE clump of the ground came out with the hoe, flinging lots more fuzz, and prompting a loud squeaking, crying noise from the clump.

In that same instant, I saw what I thought was a mouse laying there, squirming about, and I yelped. No, I am not afraid of mice, but I was taken by surprise and had already been edge worried about those huge monster-sized furry spiders that live in the ground out there.

The girls came running, and by that time I realized that the little creature had longer ears than a mouse, and no tail.

All of that fuzz was rabbit fur, and that clump was a nest of babies; a FLUFFLE of bunnies, if you will.

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The clump.  The outside is composed of leaves, hay, and leaves.  The inner part is all rabbit fur.

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There were quite a lot of them crammed in there, and they all sought the heat of each other’s bodies as we cooed over them.

Emily informed us that rabbits do indeed build nests in the ground this way, and that if you find one you are supposed to gently put it back and leave it be.  The mother will be back at some point for them.

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So that is what we did, despite protests from the younger girls that we should keep them forever.

Either way, I am not thrilled about having rabbits in the garden, but leaving them seemed to be the only option I could live with.  I’ll worry about keeping the vegetables safe later.

 

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Seed Season!

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Look what arrived in the mail yesterday!

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We order all of our seeds from Baker Creek – they sell only heirloom varieties.  This means no GMO’s, and no ties to Monsanto. For the last few years I have been studiously avoiding any and all seeds from companies that you would generally find in places like Target or Lowes, as these are almost guaranteed to be connected somehow to them.  The only thing I cheat a bit with are herbs – I tend to buy herb plants at Lowes since we don’t have a lot of other options.

I am now officially impatient for spring (which means we’ll get one last huge snowstorm to close out the winter, right?).

Some years by this time I’ve had my earliest spring seeds already in the ground, but this year has been colder and snowier (there were still patches of mounded snow on the ground as of yesterday).  I’m feeling pretty confident, though, that soon – very soon – I’ll be putting these first seeds in:

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Here’s hoping for a fruitful and easy year of growing!

 

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Lose An Hour, Gain An Hour?

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As everyone knows, we sprang forward this weekend.  And it hurt.  But, that’s what happens when you’re still awake at two a.m., socializing and playing Settlers of Catan with friends (it’s quite possible we didn’t get to bed until around 5 this morning…….but if that were true I definitely wouldn’t admit it!).

The morning end of this change is not great; it means it’s a bit darker in the mornings for awhile.

On the evening end, though, it feels like we’ve won more weekend.  We can push back evening feeding an hour or two, making the overnight stretch between feedings shorter.

Despite our lack of a full night’s sleep, Paul found inspiration and energy to get outside and do some yard work (which is very, very sorely needed right now!), and Oona kept him busy playing with her in between chores.  Having the gift of  a very warm day certainly helped.

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Tevye, the rooster.

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Orzo and the other dogs were enjoying the sun and warmth as well.  He is turning out to be the same kind of perpetual happy that defines his half-sister, Sabine.

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We even spied some daffodil bulbs starting to push up!  I got some ranunculus bulbs to plant in there this spring, and I submitted my order to Baker Creek for our gardens this spring.  We’re due for a decent gardening season, right???

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Last year’s lambs have gotten big! Rosamund back there is almost as big as Cosmo now.

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Darby.

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Hopefully spring sticks around for awhile and summer doesn’t push in too soon or strong.

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Making Way For Winter

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We took advantage of the three day weekend to get some winterizing and cleaning done.

Paul worked on painting the deck while I got the pantry and kitchen cabinets cleaned out and organized.

The fence surrounding the small paddock got a coat of black paint, and I dug up all the sweet potatoes.

It was the worst, most pathetic harvest ever.

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I am a failure as a potato farmer.  Out of 30 plants, this is all there was.  Most were undersized; a lot had some sort of pest damage in them.  I think a combination of crappy soil and the rainiest season this side of the Amazon had parts to play, but it’s hard not to feel completely inept when faced with the outcome of your hard work and investment.  All I know is, thank goodness we can still hunt and gather at Trader Joe’s, because if I had to feed my family from the gardens, we’d starve.  The pigs, on the other hand, were thrilled with the treat of broken and damaged sweet potatoes.

After bemoaning my lack of luscious tubers I cleaned out one chicken coop, treated for lice and mites, and put in fresh bedding.

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They seemed to appreciate it.

It’ll be filthy again by mid-week.

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Meanwhile the indoor animals are honing their napping all day skills.  Generally in whatever sunny spot they can find, though a quiet bedroom is always a sure bet, too.

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With the time change I’ve been getting up much earlier than I had been; it’s so much brighter in the mornings now!  It’s becoming a favorite ritual to be up before anyone else and out in the frosty air to feed and check on everyone outside before heading back into a still, quiet house for a cup of coffee.  I even change back into my pajamas and no one even knows I’ve been out when they come down later, rubbing sleep from their eyes.  I think we’d all like to join the cats and indoor dogs and curl up for the season.