COLD EASTER WEEKEND.
Happy belated Easter! We hope your weekend was filled with family and friends and happiness (and maybe some chocolate). Our weekend brought some actual SPRING-like temperatures! After what has been about a month of smooth sailing in the garden, it was our first real “bump” in the road….a hard frost on Saturday morning. We were prepared, however, and covered all our delicate plants and the cold frames with a patchwork of sheets and comforters. We survived, but this week is full of more frost advisories. Another Goodwill-sheet-shopping-trip it is.This weekend was also the opening day of the Boyle County Farmer’s Market. We stopped by, thinking that this might be a good spot for us to set up our little stand and have our Danville CSA drop offs. It was the loveliest of markets, and we met so many people that I hope to someday call friends. Maybe because we don’t really know anyone in Danville yet and I am feeling deprived of any social contact, but I was overflowing with excitement to talk to everyone we met. Each farmer and vendor was nothing but kind, offering advice and tips and words of wisdom to some young whippersnappers. It was wonderful, and we brought Wendell along with us...so we were by far the most popular people there. Next to the market, we were happy to stumble upon an FFA farm equipment and small livestock auction. It was incredibly difficult not to buy every chick, duck, goat, and miniature pony that we saw. But as much as we lusted after every little creature, we knew we were not prepared to take care of them yet. We still live in the enormous Warrenwood, and have no hen house, duck yard, or goat pen ready.SO….we promptly got to work building our chicken coop! There is another auction in a few weeks, and we decided we want to be ready this time. Of course, we are completely throwing it together with random bits we find around the farm, but it is already filled with a lot of love, hopes, and excitement for our girls. In related news, the rennovation of our little house is nearing completion, so we hope to very soon be moving in, with one rather large puppy and perhaps a flock of backyard birds.- Hannah.
EASTER, NATURALLY.
As seen in the previous post, Jesse and I are taking today off. So, we decided to dye some Easter eggs! We wanted to try a more natural approach, as we are a very Anti-Food Coloring (it is gross...plus I am allergic, so we are enemies). For the how-to, you can find endless resources online (especially Pinterest these days), but I used instructions from the first issue of taproot magazine. It is the most lovely and wonderful of all magazines, full of inspiration for homesteaders, homemakers, homeschoolers, and the like. Amanda Soule of SouleMama is the editor, and I have a major lady crush on her. Anyway, the magazine suggests many different ideas for dyes: beets, tumeric, onion skins, blueberries, cranberries, coffee grinds, etc. I used curry and paprika as well. For each color, use one quart of cold water, two tablespoons of white vinegar, and a small amount of whatever you want to use for color.
Bring the mixture to a boil and let it simmer for twenty minutes. Add the eggs and let simmer for another half an hour. Remove the eggs with a slotted spoon to let them dry on a paper towel.
I personally love the way the eggs look, very soft and earthy. But if you wanted to achieve a bright color, I would suggest making a heavily concentrated mixture. Blueberries and curry worked great, coffee was alright, the paprika was bleh. It was fun experimenting, though...switching the eggs from one bath to another while they cooked to try to create new colors.
Do you have any tips for dying eggs? What spices or foods do you use for color? I am eager to keep trying, playing with different ingredients...but I'm not sure how many hard boiled eggs we are prepared to eat this week!
- Hannah.
SCRAPPY.
It's impossible to attempt an accurate account of everything we've done in the past few days, because now that the season is here, we're never not doing something new. Mulching, planting, soil-block making, constructing, fencing––the tasks add up quickly. That's how farming goes, though. It's a diverse collection of thousands of different projects in hopes that all our hard work, sweat, tears and yes, occasionally blood, coalesce in bushels of good, healthy food. UPS should use farming as an example of logistics instead of that horrible Christian Laetner shot. Luck is the opposite of logistics, UPS.Anywho, our young tomato seedlings were getting large enough to need bigger digs, but the 4" soil block makers are not cheap, begging us to construct our own. The results took the form of a small plastic pot, a 2"/2" piece of wood and a screw––all scrapped (thus free!). Soil-block making is a little like building a sand castle where you stuff the plastic container with soil and dump it out as an identical mold. To be perfectly honest with you, however, we were both a little surprised at how well our homemade version of a soil-block maker actually worked. Having got our first round of tomatoes re-potted, we were now faced with the task of finding room for them––they were four inches taller, four inches wider and there were twenty-seven of them––that's not including the heirlooms we've yet to do. It eventually became apparent we needed to construct another box. With our new collection of scrapped windows and scrapped wood, we endeavored to build something a little deeper than the original box, and it would be hard now to hide my pride for the resulting structure!––even if it is a little wonky, we adore it.But that only grazes the surface of our activity. Luckily, they say pictures are worth a thousand words so I'll just let the pictures tell you about our mulching, our garden and the new reel mower (non-electric) I talked Hannah into! Take it away, pictures...- Jesse.
THE COLD FRAME SOLUTION.
Since we have to start building a greenhouse again, and since we don't really have TIME to start building a greenhouse again...Jesse and I have settled on a temporary fix. The main reason for having a greenhouse this early in the season is to get our seeds started. The heat and light help the little seeds to survive these few more weeks of cold weather, giving them a jump-start before they move to the garden. We decided not to rush and throw together a flimsy greenhouse, and so we are simply building some basic hot boxes, or cold frames, or whatever you want to call them. Some seed-starters. Using several old doors and other materials found all around the farm, Jesse put one together yesterday. I think it will work very nicely! And in the meantime, we can take our time building the greenhouse of our dreams (THIS one, please).
Also, my husband is becoming quite the handyman, because he also finished Wendell's doghouse. He looks so little and lonely sleeping in there now, but one day (soon) he will barely fit in there! Terrifying, I know.
- Hannah.
