Eye Catching Title Goes Here

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Sometimes something comes to me and sometimes nothing does. Today is a nothing day and I'm blaming the whole thing on the prednisone I am on, which seriously interfered with my weekend.

I'm trying to beat down this lupus flareup and poison ivy rash, so I began taking prednisone. Along with prednisone comes lack of sleep and nightmares. I ended up waking from sleep Sunday night with a nightmare I won't even mention because it would give you the willies. Needless to say, my adrenaline was flowing pretty well and I remained awake the rest of the night. I did get my "To Do" list posted so it wasn't a complete loss, but the whole next day I was not worth beans. LOL

Poor Michael was such a trooper the whole time he was sick. He kept working a doing as much as he could. I fought some frustration that my son has to work so hard because his father barely sends anything and is apparently hiding from being served with papers to make his give proper support. Michael is helping me work jobs nights, or weekends just to try to make ends meet, while his father is off in another state, with a girlfriend, and keeping 50,000 dollars a year for himself while sending us about 5,000. And this week, we got nothing again. But Michael never complains and he's such a young man of integrity. I am a blessed mother.

I also know that God will take care of us, somehow, when each difficult thing comes, He makes a way. We just try to work diligently, put Him first, and go about our lives with joy and gratitude.

Sunday we got up, did a few things around the place and then took off at about 9 to do an office cleaning and try to visit my parents. We had no time to go to church that morning as we'd not been able to clean on Friday due to Michael being sick.

We dropped by my parents and left some things there, they had gone to an early service and came home, so we visited. Michael is turning into quite the shutterbug and took many pictures of their place.





























My father, my son.





My mother, who has Alzheimer's, began chasing this dog away from the house with a stick. My dad would prefer to keep on good terms with it. It's a pit bull.





We are from California originally, or rather I am. My dad moved there with his family shortly after the Depression when things got too hard in MO for his family. They all migrated there. But we grew up in the country on a farm/ranch. When dad got older, he could not keep up with the work due to his neck vertebrae being fused. They sold and bought a place in town, swearing to live a life less buried in farm work.

The result is that you can take the boy out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy. They have the world's tiniest farm, on a city lot. The house still looks nice, but it works like a farm and doesn't fit in so well with the neighbors' places any longer. LOL

Here on the back lawn is one part of the garden, a netted hoop house. Dad also likes his songbirds, so he's got quite the menagerie, and they must be kept from the garden. We went out so I could show them how to harvest their cut and come again lettuce crops. He just built an outdoor sink area for the garden. Very handy.





And here is the result:














It was a nice visit, but we still had the office to clean. 12 operatories as well as the rest.












Yesterday we did a little work outdoors, but honestly I was still so messed up from the prednisone that not a lot was accomplished. I finished spraying under the last of the grapes when I'd finally had enough of our broken sprayer. We bought a 10 dollar replacement one at WalMart, which, given proper care, might last a month. LOL

We weeded and pinched runners off the strawberries. Watered and fertilized garden, the sprouts are all coming up, but struggling for nitrogen. I was going to spray fungicide on the grapes again, but we had intermittent showers between hot sun all day long, so it was not the best time. This also made BBQ for Memorial Day more of a challenge, but we got one in late.

Michael is trying to balance this fan that wobbles terribly. I've tried in the past and failed, but it sure is good to have another person here who is learning and trying new things. More and more often he figures something out that I haven't, so I appreciate his help more than I can express.





Our first radishes, tasty, sweet, delicious:




Our first Sugar Snap Peas:




Some daisies I picked from the horse pasture while down spraying for weeds and poison ivy around rocks.




And we spent time in the kitchen. YAY! I miss time in the kitchen. I hoped my parents could come for dinner, but they were not up to it. We made a few salads, some new potatoes, had delicious corn on the cob, and Michael did a great job BBQing some juicy, pepper-jack stuffed burgers. Served with banana peppers, BBQ sauce and other fine fixings. He was too full for the chocolate shakes I had planned.

When we had finished cleaning the kitchen, I took a picture of our table. I love the natural light, natural air... But it was a bit warm and muggy yesterday. Made me think of the future of turning on the cooler. It sure is nice to have a lower electric bill though.





So we played some card games, talked and laughed, until bed. And I did not have nightmares.

Now it's off to sewing class.

Faith

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Yay! We Are Finally Gaining Ground!

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Today we actually had down time. We still have a lot of work to do, no question, but it's at the point now where the work can begin to be planned, rather than dragging us around like accidentally getting caught on a bumper and trying to keep your feet underneath you at 60 mph.

We got a lot of fertilizing and cultivating done. We planted most of the last of the herb seeds I'd not gotten to yet. We also straightened up the house a little bit, knowing we'd be gone much of the day tomorrow. I really hate coming home to a messy house.

I missed showing our first lettuce harvest about 4 days ago.





It's nice but we did not notice until putting it away in the house that the leaves were covered with tiny little green gnats. If I don't figure out how to wash them out of all those delicate little green leaves, we are going to be getting protein we didn't bargain on.





I also missed relating about our mint mishap. Isn't this beautiful? We worked so hard, getting in these newest beds of various herbs....

Not so fast. Michael accidentally grabbed a MINT flat instead of a nice tame, laid back Italian herb.





Here is what was SUPPOSED to go in! LOL





So we had to dig it all out again and plant in the other. We had been trying to decide where to put these mints for a long time. But finally, we just were ready to forget about them. We recycled most of the flats and just put a few in pots to keep them contained. We have common, lemon, spear, and peppermints here.





Back to today....

The birds have been eating our strawberries. This is the first one we got, and Michael shared it with me.





A sage we put in.





And though I had a packet of lavender seeds, even freezing them, I never tried to plant them, but chickened out and bought this at WalMart.





I don't think I had shown our upper crops yet. Here is one end of our asparagus bed. Impressive, right?





Well, here's the other end. LOL Not enough care. Perhaps this fall I can give it the manure and straw it deserves.





I'm really sad that my hardy figs died back to the ground again. That means no crop again this year. I did not think it was that cold, but apparently it was. I don't like dried figs much, but I love fresh. They will produce two crops, a spring and fall, but our season is not really long enough, so if you don't have fruit producing wood ready to go in the spring, you won't get a crop. These new branches will grow figs, but when frost hits, they'll still be green, small, and unripe.





You can bury them, but it's more work than I want to do right now. Here's some new growth.





Blackberry plants; The Good -









The bad -





And the ugly. Anyone know why leaves in only a few selected spots turn vivid yellow this way? I fertilized them, but I don't think that's the problem.





And Michael's friendly lizard.





Too many posts in one day! And I've picked up poison ivy again. Bummer.

Faith

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A Day in the Spring-Rush Life

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Every spring is a bit of a rush, everything begins happening at once. This spring has been especially busy. In addition to starting the garden, we've had so many things in need of repair due to years of neglect, we also do not know what the future is going to bring for us, so we are trying to get some bigger projects done, such as building a greenhouse, to help us with our food production.

You might think this is normal for us, but we usually have more time. The key to not slaving your life away on a farm is to plan well, and do your projects in such a way as to eliminate maintenance as much as possible. I happened to marry someone who believed in just getting a job done as quickly as you can, and hang what happens later. So a lot of careful planning went kaput!

So we are scrambling trying to get things done. But as soon as the garden is completely in, the work will slow to a manageable level and we can relax a bit more, have quiet evenings and grill our dinner as we watch the sunset, and relax a lot more, especially in the heat of the day.

Until that time, we are grateful for the cooler weather we've been having. Very mild. Yesterday was mostly cloudy and in the 70's. Perfect for outdoor work. Here are some scenes...

How old is this stuff anyway? I'm trying to frugally use what we have from years ago when I was really working the land here.






Here are the T-posts we finally had time to remove for re-use in the garden. The horses are now officially OUT of the crop area. Since I was not allowed to spend money on the crops, I had moved the fence up there so at least the grass could be eaten. The place was essentially one big horse pasture. LOL






This is the one garden box we put in last year. It was intended to be short term, so we just bought some very inexpensive wood and filled it with half sawdust and half cow manure from the neighbor's barn and sawmill. It was too rich for planting last year, but has broken down nicely. We still need to plant lettuce there.






We used some leftover mix from the pile near that box, added some red clay from right next to the house. (It will not grow anything, but I figure must have GREAT mineral content.)...





I dug up a few shovels full of forest topsoil, while Michael gathered a few forks of grass cuttings and we mixed this unique concoction up for our potato boxes.









We are way behind on this project. The plants are growing very quickly and we still need to gather more wood for the sides. Finding soil is a challenge to me. It needs good soil, but good topsoil is hard to come by on this property and if I take it from somewhere, I am just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Before:




And After. With the mix being nice and light, we were able to just sprinkle shovels full over the tops, working it around the stems with our fingers. I forgot, I need to water them. They need to be good and wet.





My goal has always been to grow organically. But it can take a lot of work. Once a pest finds you, you have to use all your wiles and all kinds of tricks to combat them. Starting from scratch in this spot, having it be such a large garden and being unprepared for them as I would have liked, I may use sprays if I can't keep them from devouring my produce. I was, at one time, going to go for organic certification of my land. But now, it's all about feeding us, not knowing what could happen.

So, I am still trying to foil the flea beetles. They have found and are beginning to eat the large eggplant after eating all 10 of my seedlings. The jar kept most of them off, one or two had gotten in there from the soil, but you can't keep your plants under glass, it was mostly just a learning experience for me on how the beetles find your plants. They are supposed to be attracted to white. These are cut up milk cartons smeared with petroleum jelly.





And the only ones you see on here are the ones I purposefully flicked there when finding the plant covered with them.





The vanishing brussel sprouts. A vole, I think. It's gotten quite a few of my plants. I was hoping the fishy smell from my fertilizer might make it go away. This is the kind of stuff that keeps you busy when you think you are going to be doing something else...





On the right, the carefully planted row of carrot seeds Michael worked on. See them? Yeah, there's a couple. LOL On the left, the packet that got knocked over.





Radish babies!





Getting shoes on for more work. We are doing a block schedule of horticulture for this semester. And math. LOL You can never stop doing math.





Michael, collecting rocks we've picked out of the garden soil to go line the chicken yard fence.





We also spent most of the morning mowing. All the area around the house, the crops, and then any areas those horses don't eat down. If we don't, the scrub trees come up and later we have to go down and chop them. It's just easier to mow everything down when it's small.

We went to plant more of our herb seedlings, but the ground was getting too hard again, so we watered and are going to plant in the morning.





We did a lot of weeding as we mowed. The blackberry row is looking OK. It still needs more manure. They are really heavy feeders. These blackberries were expensive and have not had much care over the last 5 years. One of these, properly cared for can give you 20 gallons of the biggest, sweetest blackberries you ever ate. I'm going to beat those Japanese beetles this year if it kills me.





Here are some coming up in the row. I should probably take them out.





And this one is a little spindly because it's also sharing with another heavy feeder, an asparagus plant. The birds love the bright red asparagus seeds from our bed and we find new plants at many fence posts and tree branches.





We planted over 100 grape vines, about 35 different varieties. The whole thing is a long story that I won't drag out. But they were going to be intensively pruned as I'd read about in one type of grape culturing book. So they are planted quite closely. Because of neglect, quite a few have died. That's OK because at this point I don't have the luxury of spending all that time intensively pruning. Here is one end of the vineyard...





And the other end...





Looking uphill, the vineyard sits low. We did a lot of weeding, mowing and tying up here as well. Much left to do.





Our hardy kiwi arbor. The fruits are remarkable. I hope to get some one day. LOL





It's looking a bit saggy though. I built it out of red cedar trunks harvested from this land, and purchased vinyl lath with a 2x4 top.





Blooms! But is it male or female? Only one produces fruit and needs another. I suspect another fruitless year. I need to replace the ones that died on the other side of the arbor before I get fruit, I'm guessing.





Uh-oh. Need to root out some poison ivy that has found a spot under the arbor.





Our bush cherries are filled out.





Evidence! We will get some cherries this year! As the bushes were planted in a frost pocket, we don't often get them.





Now we are just enjoying the perfect evening. It feels so great to have accomplished things that needed doing, and then enjoy the beauty we live in.

Hunting rabbits at the sinkholes...





Playing in the water...









Some of the gooseberries. Will be time to make gooseberry pie soon.





These strawberry plants only went in a couple of months ago, so they are a little small, but they are still trying to contribute to the season. Mostly everbearers, and a few June bearers.





OK - this one is going to kill itself trying!





This will be the first strawberry to eat. :)





Time for well-deserved play. It was deliciously windy all day and, as everyone knows, jumping is way more fun in the wind.





Fat and sleek horses.





I missed the gorgeous light this morning on those wildflowers. Drat!





Why is it that the volunteers spring up quickly, deep green, healthy and strong...





And the squash I labored intensely over for two months and spent money on seeds and pots for, look like they have malaria?





But don't the sugar snap peas looks amazing? They are covered with blooms. Can't wait to stand in the field and eat my veggies.





I'm going in. It's almost chore time.





Our list is getting shorter. At least until we add to it. ;) Michael came up with some ideas yesterday he wants to do as well.

Faith

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