Rain, Rain, Go Away.

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We've been needing rain pretty badly. We've had to water the garden and fruit trees. As a matter of fact, I knew that the only way to bring on the rain, was to give everything the good watering we'd been putting off.

So I did. And that's why within 36 hours, Sunday afternoon, when we were supposed to be enjoying a concert by friends, after we had done a couple of office cleanings, it was rained out.

It's all my fault.

See, it all started out well enough...









But the sprinkles we all tried to ignore gradually built into a steady downpour which either chased people to their cars for a ride home, or the die-hards among us managed to find shelter where ever we could.





And then there were the members who just decided to go with it and dance in the rain.





It was a good day. But a short concert - which is way better than shorted out electrical equipment!

~Faith

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Lazy Daze...

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On Thursday we celebrated the last day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread with another Shabbat, in which we attempted to enjoy the great outdoors by doing a puzzle.





Foil was to keep the pieces from falling through.





I came up with a little system for one of my favorite pastimes some years ago. I keep a lot of old puzzles and you are bound to lose pieces. So whenever I complete a puzzle, I make a mark on the cover where any missing pieces are. I'll either put an X or write "missing" right on the place where the piece is gone from.

It keeps me from endlessly looking for a piece, only to discover that it was missing all along.

It ended up being too windy, so we brought it inside and instead I washed and cut Michael's hair outside. I love to wash my hair outside with the hose. The songbirds and scenery are way better than a closed off bathroom, and cold water is better for your hair anyway. So Michael got to lay on the deck while I did his hair. He's still growing out the shaved head from December, for his friend who has cancer.

Later that night we met friends and enjoyed an evening out at a local restaurant where more of our cozy group were playing 3 sets of live music. It was really fun to go, and fun that the eatery was packed with all our church family and friends.

Nice, simple day.

~Faith

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French Drain, Planting Salad, Jamming.

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After getting school work and household chores done yesterday, we went outside to do more work on the French drain we'd begun the other day. Leah had come over and helped us dig a ditch for it. Here we've laid the pipe in to see if we've got a decent slope for correct drainage.





Original French drains did not have pipe. They were simply channels, or ditches, dug out and filled with gravel or rock. Water seeks the lowest point, so you can seriously effect the amount of water in a given area by drawing it into the rock filled ditch that gradually slopes away, and takes the water with it. A pipe is not necessary, but adds length of time before the ditch becomes filled with earth and ineffective, due to erosion. The larger your drain, the longer it will take for it to fill with silt, so balance how much you want to dig out and fill with gravel to how soon you want the ditch to stop working.

Straight PVC pipe would have been better, I discovered after already purchasing and getting this good and dirty. The reason is that should it ever get clogged, a snake, not the animal kind but the drain clearing tool, can be used in a smooth walled pipe, but not in this corrugated pipe. Also, it's a little easier to choose your slope when your pipe holds a shape, rather than conforming to the ground.

Here is how the corrugated pipe fits together. The blue lines help you line them together visually so that the holes are all on the same side. When in the trough you've dug, the holes need to be on the top side.





At this point I got distracted by another chore that had to be done yesterday, as we were expecting rain. Michael went to get some tools and I began working in the herb garden area. I always hope that in winter, no weeds will grow, but I rediscovered that not to be true. The entire beds were covered in weeds. Not for the first time, I marveled at the amount and variety of plant growth that takes place, even in the dead of winter. I again wondered why we don't just eat that instead of purchasing greens in the market.

I know for myself it's that I do not know if it is all safe. Look at a few of these choices. This first one, if I remember correctly, is something I HAVE actually tried, but I'm not sure.





























Michael cut back some of the dead growth from last year on the the taller herbs, like the basil and the fennel.





Many of my highly valued plant markers had been heaved out of the ground by the freezing and thawing of the earth all winter.





I found a new lavender plant. I have all sorts of beautiful pictures in my head about these.





Those images have not yet transferred to the actual plant bed, but I have high hopes.





A new rosemary plant.





The beds sure don't look like much right now.





And I could not resist this lemon thyme. You just push your face into the leaves and inhale... aaaaaaahhhhhh. I could not decide where to put it, so I just stuck it at the end of a row, deciding I'll move it later if I want to. I am burying my head in the sand concerning whether or not this is spreading, like regular thyme.... (Fingers in my ears, "la, la, la...")





Then we moved on to a ready made salad garden. I thought about all the effort we put into growing stuff from seed last year that did not amount to much, then I looked at the packs of 9 Red Sails lettuce for $3.50 and decided it was worth it. So we prepped a spot in the herb beds with hand tools, as our vegetable garden area is not ready for planting. We still plan on growing later plants from seed, but this will give us an early crop.





Moss intrigues me. But it was hand dug into the soil.





And we planted them in rows of three, about a foot apart.





And added in some Arugula, flat-leafed parsley, and curly-leafed parsley at the end.





And there is our early salad garden. So cool to have a head start on the weeds!





Back to the French drain. Michael was cleaning out the debris and spider webs from the pipe that had been laying outside since last summer.





We ran some water to check our slope.





It was pretty good, except at the end where I was dreading having a trench running across the entry of the greenhouse. But we had to dig it out. We can fill it will gravel, but this will always be a problem without spending a lot of money. The lesser of two evils if I do not want to struggle with a muddy floor inside the greenhouse during rain.





The landscape fabric we must wrap around the pipe to slow the entry of earth into the holes as it gradually sifts through the gravel over the years. We cut the 50 foot roll in half, long ways, to save money.





And then we had to tie the fabric with twine to hold it around the pipe, as it barely fit at that point. Once the gravel is on top, the decomposition of the twine won't matter.





And that's where we had to leave off and get ready to take Michael in early for worship music practice before our Bible study.









After our study, almost all the young people brought out instruments and jammed for an hour. Some are cut off out of the photo here. This is always fun and great practice.





Today, more French drain work and, I'm hoping, getting some grass seed in the ground.

~Faith

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No wonder!

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I wonder why I am so exhausted and run down lately, and I come here and see that I've not even posted in 6 weeks.

Now I'm wondering... All those emails from my friends that are still, yes STILL, sitting in my inbox - has it been 6 weeks for them as well? Good grief!

I truly have not forgotten any of you. The last couple of months has been so busy, mostly with homeschooling, that everything else has been on the back burner.

I've not done anything farmish, up until yesterday. And that's another reason I've not blogged. This isn't supposed to be a blog about our homeschooling or our running around like crazy, so I've been waiting until we had something going on around here that would be more helpful to those looking to be self-sufficient.

But as many of you have become actual friends and I feel like the worst friend ever for not being able to keep up with online friendships lately, I will post a few things we've been doing.

One reason we got busier is that, under threat of jail, my husband finally began putting child support into my bank account. He absolutely held out til the last minute, and a warrant was issued before he 'somehow managed' to find the money. So we got to put Michael back into swimming, and in the gymnastics he'd been absent from for over a year.

He's lost quite a bit of flexibility, but will get that back eventually. It's taken 6 weeks, but he's back to the skill level in tumbling he left off in. This was from his first class back. He can jump a lot higher now.









We've been getting a lot of rain and snow, all winter. This is usually a field, not a lake.





Michael enjoys being able to help serve by playing music for worship.





Michael has been participating in a men's group weekly. We ladies use the opportunity for several hours to get together and do various things. We often practice our knitting, which I am proud to say I have been learning and getting faster at! We watched the Olympics, and on this night we made chapsticks.













We made some parallets for Michael to practice at home. They cost about 30 dollars. We could have made some much more inexpensively, but we wanted them to be taller and stronger so he could do more on them.

It's built from simple PVC, reinforced with wooden dowel rods, as PVC can splinter when it breaks, we didn't want to take any chances.

















We are working on a floor horse, or a pommel trainer now. We'll have to borrow someone's jigsaw to finish it.





We had a knitting party on Purim. I wanted to try some Hamantaschen, but had no time to pull it together. I read a cheat recipe online that said you could use sugar cookie dough in a pinch.

Don't believe it.

It was fun rolling, cutting out, and filling them. Traditionally they have jelly and poppy seed filling. I also used chocolate because..... well, why would you NOT use chocolate?









Here they are, all pinched up into triangles.





And here they are, doing exactly what I suspected they were going to do.





I don't have to tell you all that it snowed. A lot. Seemed like I saw more snow this year than any year in my life.





Just this week we enjoyed our first school morning out of doors!









That's a few highlights of our non-farming stuff for the last couple of months. We have begun working outside this week. Yay! Next post is about farm stuff!

Seriously behind on just about everything,

~Faith

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