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.
ALL IN A DAY'S WORK.
With what we thought were to be a couple weeks to prepare beds for the strawberry and asparagus plants we'd ordered, Hannah and I were content to take our time and do things right. Slowly and carefully we had plans to plow and till spots for them, garnish them with natural amenities and have them nice and ready for these two perennial crops. When they arrived on Tuesday, however, about a week and a half earlier than we'd expected, our pace exchanged its calm for urgency. We had almost nothing ready for them yet –– and our esteemed guests were early and starving. We didn't want the plants sitting in the fridge for too long and there was an indefinite amount of rain coming––who knows when the next opportunity to get into the garden would be! So we got to work plowing and hand-tilling––as hard and insane as it sounds––and building a 16'x4' raised bed for the asparagus then filling it with soil and compost. It was a little bit of madness, or a lot of bit if you're human, but we were absolutely pleased with the results. If we worked this way all the time we would accomplish unprecedented amounts of gardening, then effectively pass away in six days. But we did it, and we're taking today off, and although the proverbial (and literal) fruits of our labor will not be seen until next season, we have confidence the strawberries and asparagus will reward us (and our shareholders) kindly!Among our other projects this week was the planting of blackberry, raspberry and black raspberry plants. Clearly, a lot of fruit has gone into the ground this week, one thing we'd really like to add and emphasize in our CSA in the coming years. (Next up on the fruit list should be blueberries!). Also, we were having a little trouble keeping our lettuce from "damping off" in the cold-frame, or dying from excessive water, so we had to go ahead and transplant them. They look happier out in the field anyway. Peas are up, potato plants are pushing through the soil, sweet potatoes are in their slip bed, onions are looking good... ladies and gentlemen, things. are. growing.- Jesse.
NOTES ON THE PUPPY.
Just in case you were wanting an update...Wendell Beary is massive. Huge. A monster. He has grown an unbelievable amount in two weeks. It is terrifying. And still, we love him more and more every day. There is nothing quite like the joy of taking care of someone (or something). It has made us so eager for our other farm animals, for the tending of sheep and of chickens, for the responsibility and accountability that it brings. It is hard not to get impatient! So in the meantime, we will just give all our love to this little Bear and make plans for his 3-month birthday party.- 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.
