Adorable Baby Bunnies & Blog Business

These cuties will give you your daily "awwww" quota for sure. These little chunkies are the only litter for the 2012 year. If I am right we have two boys and a girl. While I won't have room for both boys, the black and white little boy will definitely stay. The brown boy will most likely find a home as someone's little pet. The little brown girl will stay and make additional babies for our tiny backyard rabbitry.  

As always I have lots and lots planned for the blog but I lack the time actually do something about it! That doesn't mean though you can't stay in touch. I frequently post to our facebook page updates about what is going on behind the scenes, interesting news, photos, recipes, and things I learn. Please take a moment to "like" our page and keep in touch won't you?

Never a dull moment as Jackie and I discuss and move forward on a creative business and I get ready to apply for a twelve week market garden course to start in January. The 2013 growing season will find me at a local farmers market or two and working my way towards being a full time farmer.

Also, don't forget to follow us on Pinterest (using the links to the left). You never know what creative and beautiful things we will pin there! Thanks for following along. We really appreciate you. 

Back to Eden Film

Back to Eden Film

I first stumbled on this film back on September 21, 2011. I meant to watch it (more than the trailer I saw) and share a post about the movie. It has long been in the back of my mind and obviously I am just getting around to sharing now. Can I just say the film took my breath away, blew my mind, and built in my such a great excitement to garden I can hardly stand it?

As I have shared earlier this week; lately the chickens, rabbits, and garden seem like such a major, extra chore. I have to remind myself why I am doing this all. Why grow my own food when I could just buy it from the supermarket? Sometimes I just don't have the answers. Especially after we took some bad advice and fertilized our raised beds with un-composted rabbit manure late last fall. Apparently, the mild manure that can "just be added right to the soil" is only to be added if you feed pellets alone. We don't. We feed hay. You know... grass like the wild rabbits eat. Pellets are just a supplement. Well that means only add rabbit manure to your garden beds before composting if you have weed free hay. Funny the solid layer of grass and weeds growing like a carpet on all my old beds that we added rabbit manure directly to... lots more work. **Sigh.**

This movie changes all that for me. You know when you read and look in search of a better way to do something just knowing it is out there and it still alludes you. The answers are within this fabulous system revealed to Paul Gautschi by God and shared with the world. Now I just have to convince my husband, the muscles, and we will be in business. 

Here are the highlights that really stood out to me:

• Paul's love for God and gentle spirit are so appealing that you are just drawn in. His knowledge of scripture and application is just fantastic. I loved how the verses related so well to the action of gardening. 
• This is the perfect system. Designed by God, modeled by nature, and recreated by Paul. Amazing.
• That this "system" is being revealed now for a time of need. The ability to garden like this has always been "there" and many people have touched on or discovered many of the concepts shown but I do feel there is an element of timeliness in Paul's methods and in how it is revealed. I also feel pressured to have a food system in place for a time of need for myself, family, and strangers in need. 
• You may or may not be amazed as I was at the size, swift growing, and sweetness of the fruit/veggies. Even being said to taste like candy. In addition, the water content in the fruit of the garden is so apparent that I can't relate it to most modern food homegrown or otherwise. It was just dripping!
• No need for crop rotation (love this!), watering, weeding, fertilizing, soil testing, etc. Most of the chores of modern gardening are completely eliminated. Weeding, watering, and crop rotation are all major chores to me. Yuck! You don't have to "work" to keep up with this garden.
• I kept wondering how to create such a garden myself while watching. Either from scratch or with what I already have. About an 1 and 30 minutes into the movie you get a great demonstration of the beginnings of making a garden like Paul's. Clearly only time will make a garden as fertile as Paul's but you see the start and early success. There is also a step-by-step "how to" on the film web site.
• I love how Paul gives freely of his garden and his explanation of why he does so. Talk about beautiful. 
• The movie is a bit of a time commitment but it is so very worth it!

Please buy the DVD or give a donation if you have the financial means. I am not affiliated with the film in anyway but I love how you can watch the film for free and I feel that should be rewarded. I am sure it will be a blessing and money well spent. Have you seen the film? Or if you watch it please tell me what you think about it. I would love to know what stood out to you. Did you agree with Paul on his method's?

I Grew That

Tonight was one of those moments that reaffirms why I want chickens and a garden. Trust me... I think ALOT about throwing in the towel. I am tired, worn, and it often seems like just one more chore and one more expense. I feel like right now the need for cheap food outweighs the need for truly clean, healthy, and wholesome. I do what I can with what I can afford. Then as I am quickly throwing together a cheap and last minute meal I am out of onions. Ugh! I just sent Gary to the grocery store so no chance of going back just for onions. 

Then it hits me. All the things in the garden that overwintered were growing in the warm spring weather we have been having. Fantastic, there were onions (although small) out there. Ethan was still sleeping and Wade was playing and watching "Cars", so I ran out the back door and did a hurried garden raid. My Tuna Cabonara would be on steroids tonight. Swiss Chard, onions, asparagus, and a big fat carrot (although I left the carrot out of the tuna dish). Then three homegrown chicken eggs and I felt like I was soaring. FOUR ingredients from my own yard. 

I came in feeling like a hero and a warrior. I have to fight to keep thinking of the positives of these extra chores in my life and I honestly felt rewarded for my efforts today. I guess there is good reason to scatter more seed in the ground... even if I am behind this season.

Happy Gardening.

Weekend Highlight: Gardens, Greenhouse, and Cute Toddler

Once again we had AMAZING weather on Sunday. Hard to believe it is only March 12 with such a promise of spring. It frustrates this Momma to not be able to bend over or put on shoes as we still have no baby. I kept looking around the yard and shaking my head at how far we have come and yet how much more there is to go.

One of the most wonderful surprises about yesterday was all the life found yet in the garden. So many plants made it over winter. Including a large row of carrots we planted late and have over wintered. A few more weeks and they will be perfect!

Wade loved running round the garden paths. The paths did a great job holding up to the very wet winter. All we need is a few more loads of wood chips...

He was so precious posing for me everywhere. I can't wait to garden with him this summer. Last summer he was tiny but still loved to crawl to the garden for beans and tomatoes.

Do you remember the green house (Before, Update, Update, Growing stuff, etc.)!?! Well it is looking pretty impressive finally. Of course I am disappointed we didn't grow anything in it over winter but sometimes you just have to let things go. Not everything can get done all at once. It just needs some white trim around the side winder and a gutter for a rain barrel. We spent $25.00 for roller shades in order to get some protection from the sun and right now it hides the little bit of mess that needs to be cleaned out. Looks like it has been there forever.

That is cilantro!!! I was shocked to find tons of it growing. Although it is a cool or early spring weather crop I guess I should be surprised. I can't wait to find a bunch of uses for it this early on. We actually had several herbs make it over winter in the herb bed and a rosemary plant in the green house made it as well.

That is Rainbow Swiss Chard. Looks a little beat up but there are several wonderful bright and fresh new leaves growing. Yum! I need to get some spinach seeds planted!

The winterized beds. We need some dirt!! Time to get things going. We might be able to get a jump on the growing season. Although this year we won't risk it. We will be putting up row covers for early spring to ensure the rain (or hail) doesn't damage the tender new plants. One bed even has onions I thought were lost from our early spring hail storm last year.

Check this out! This is a thermostat installed in the green house. I can set the desired temp and a blower will turn on and keep the temp down to what is set (say 80 degrees!). That should help a lot with growing in the green house this summer.

Here is the blower. I know... not impressive looking but wow does it work! Best part... the blower, thermostat and installation is "free" on a barter for a tattoo! I love my husband's skills to trade. 

What happened around your house or homestead this weekend???

Life After Kale....

I may have said this too many times on this blog but I am spoiled.   I am fortunate to run out to the chicken coop when I am short eggs for a recipe, to reach out my backdoor to grab herbs for suppers and to generally eat fresh and well out of my garden.   The land, the open spaces, the quiet.  Yes lots of good things to be thankful for but kale has spoiled me the most.  This often despised vegetable has worked its way into my heart and daily meals.  I find myself craving it!   Last years planting (after not putting the garden to bed the previous fall) had sprouted curly green growth in just April of this year.  Imagine having your favorite veggie at your beck and call for eight full months.  And then, on particularly hard frost night, it's gone.  This friends is what heartbreak looks like to a grower...

Sure it is sunny but all that brightness is deceiving.  It's freezing out there.  A confession?  I took this picture from my kitchen window because I didn't want to pull on a coat and shoes!  But the good news is I managed to get one last good pick before the sun came out and withered the frost covered leaves.  This is what happiness looks like...

I wish I could tell you these leafy greens are washed and resting comfortably in my crisper but they are not.  Gone already.  Cooked up and taken to a family supper.   What is a kale addict to do when she has no more free kale?  Buy it?  It's just not the same.  It feels like cheating to me.   Ah... farewell kale.  See you in April.

Living Off the Land

Just for fun... how much land do you need?

I loved this graphic and found it interesting to think about. We are no where near living off our 1/2 acre but we are slowly moving towards that. If disaster hit tomorrow? I think we would still be very unprepared although not as much as those who may live around us. I hope we could continue to get into a position to stay afloat in such a situation and perhaps help others along the way.

Visit the website for more information and to better read the details on the graphic. What are your thoughts? How much land do you need? Are you living off the land?

We Make Our Own Cough Syrup, too...

I am a big believer in food as medicine. I believe food is taken into the body and then treated as either a medicine with incredible healing powers, as a food for general energy, or as a poison that can weaken. That being said I am also into medicinal herbs and edible weeds. I have eaten dandelion in salads, tasted a edible weed that is incredibly similar to pepper (yarrow - old man's pepper), and two years ago we made our first batch of homemade cough syrup. It was a learning experience and after a couple Ohio winters our stash has dwindled and we set to make another batch.

The commercial name for elderberry syrup is sambucol and it is marketed to support the immune system. Even being in the natural foods industry, this product is never cheap. If you had to harvest the flowers and berries at the exact right time and pick the itsy bitsy berries off their delicate stems, you would definitely understand why. (I have the kids do it on the porch.) With a family of seven boosting our immune systems sounds like a great idea until you have to pay an arm and a leg for it. But if it was growing in my backyard for free and just needed a little attention, I could do that.

Granted we only use berries, sugar and water while most commercial brands of elderberry syrups also contain the actual flower, I am still happy with the results. (I am not writing this post as a recipe or a how-to but more as another way to use what you have. This is something we have studied and researched and we never eat anything we are not 100% sure of its identity.) A few warnings about elderberries. The seeds contain cyanide so you don't want to eat them raw. Elderberries also can be easily confused with other less tasty and potentially harmful berries.

Today I have 10 pints up in the cupboard and one open in the fridge. A teaspoon a day for general immune system support and a tablespoon for when our bodies are actually in battle against nasty winter sicknesses.

If you don't have this tiny fruit populating your property, elderberries are made into jams and jellies sometimes found at apple houses or farmers markets. I have not tried them as a preserve so if you do let me know if it's worth trying that next summer.

Good News Bad News

Good News:

We have lovely garden this year. Lots of new things...

Grapes trellised and producing teeny tiny grapes for the first time ever.

I think they enjoy being off the ground and not getting beat up by the lawnmower and little feet.

New raised boxes that enabled us to start more perennials and get the early cold crops in the ground before the big garden was plowed. We added 4- 4X8 beds (peas, greens, and 2 strawberries), 1 - 4X24 bed (asparagus and garlic) and a super long 2X32 bed for our blueberries to our herb and strawberry beds from two years ago. The backyard is really taking shape. A big change from the clay slip and slide it used to be.

This is my greens bed: kale, spinach and arugula.

No wimpy lettuce here, all hearty greens!

And a new north-south orientation of four foot rows for the garden.

This was taken about 10 days ago. There has been more waterfall and more growth.

I'm always amazed what rain and sunshine can do for a garden!

And here it is yesterday... amazing, huh?

Bad News:

This self-proclaimed farm now only has one lone chicken. Sadly we lost all but one of our chickens to a wild animal. Each spring we reinforce our coop to withstand nature, be it weather or predators. It is inevitable that each season we will at some point lose the battle (and a few of our flock) but we have always won the war. Last week I was not awoken by my annoying rooster and that sent a wave of panic through me. At my coop door this is what I found.

No feathers, no struggle. So sad. The chicken yard is fenced and gated and the coop itself was locked tight for the night with all my little ones falsely safe inside. The animal jumped (?) the fence and tore open the vent to get to my sleeping flock. Only "Puppy" is left.

She was always more of a pet than livestock, following us around the yard. She survived because she refuses to roost in the coop at night but instead (and much to my frustration) prefers to stay on my front porch. A devastating set back. It is difficult any time an animal under your care perishes in a way you never intended and I don't believe I will ever get used to it. I am hoping to purchase a new batch of chicks since the weather is still nice to brood them out in the coop. This way by next spring, I will have a new fresh group of laying hens. A small flock of chickens in imperative if I want to call my place a farm. We are even tossing around the idea of raising a couple of turkeys (separately of course) specifically for our Thanksgiving table. Anyone out there raised these large birds before? It would be new to me so any advice will be welcomed. Thanks!

Backyard Lighting

Is camping out in your own backyard still camping? I hope so. Crossing that one off my "things to do this summer with the kids" list was really important to me. To make it more magical, I really wanted our tents to be encircled with lights strung onto high posts. It sounded great in my head until I had to actually dig eight 2ft deep holes for the posts. Did I mention that while gathering supplies for this project it had also started to rain? Not a light refreshing shower but sideways. I also decided that digging holes in my yard seemed quite permanent and just something else annoying to try to mow around. Since my greatest non-employable talent is making something out of nothing, I needed a plan B.

Buckets and a shovel.

I had an equally creative and equally soggy friend steady a post in a five gallon bucket while I shoveled in mud from the back of the garden. When the bucket was half full, I compacted the soil and then continued to fill to the top. The post didn't wiggle and would surely support a string of lights high above our tents. Success.

Now, is it the prettiest thing I have ever seen? No, not by day...

but by night...

it is magical. Just the touch I wanted to add to our backyard camping night. And the best part is it was free, using only what I had at home. It is a cinch to mow around, just drag the bucket a couple inches, mow and put it back. It could be as elaborate or simple as you'd like. The tents have come down but the lights stay up, always ready for a impromptu bonfire... a little wine... a little music... good times...

Gardeners Math

One neglected tea kettle found in a burn pile...

Plus one sad wiry orange mint (free with my farmers market purchase)...

Equals an adorable little something for my front porch.

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Sorry friends for our severe lack of blogging these past few weeks. The photos from the birthday party are still on my camera card just to let you know how far behind I am here. The rural blue house is coming along with projects getting checked off the list every couple days. It feels good after a long winter to get outside and get dirty. So please forgive us as we plant and tend our gardens and keep our animals to provide food for our families. As usual there are tons of ideas and thoughts buzzing around in our heads and we can't wait to pass our nonsense along to you. Thanks for you patience.

Mulching (AKA: How NOT to Spend Your Summer Weeding)

Garden? Planted...

Plants? Content...

Water? Every other day...

and weeding? Nope.

What? Really, you ask...

In my garden there is very little weeding. (I mean, come on there are so many other things I would rather be doing than weeding like alphabetizing my homeopathics or cleaning out the freezer of the-year-before-last-years remaining vegetables.) Hello free time! Yes, welcome to the wonderful world of mulching. Summer months are when plants and weeds struggle for all those good things that help make green things grow. Mulching around plants helps keep the weeds down and water in the soil. This one thing has saved me countless hours bent over in the garden.

Some people use actual wood mulch but there are other cheaper alternatives too. I've tried newspaper and cardboard but since I tried yard clippings, I'll never go back. Here's what my mulching routine looks like.

Step 1: I catch yard clippings in my push mower.

Step 2: Fill my nearby wheelbarrow with clippings, about 6 bags.

Step 3: Push full load of clipping to your garden plot and spread a generous layer (think wood mulch, about 2-3 inches) around plants, but not too close. I leave a two inch radius around the stems free from the grass clippings.

Step 4: Nothing! Just water and pull an occasional renegade weed.

This is what my mulching looks like immediately after... it starts green and poofy.

a day later... losing some of that color and height.

and a week later. Completely brown and flat.

See how the clipping form a thick layer. I would compare it to a grass mat. Keeps light out but still lets water in and keeps it there. I wish I had a picture of last years garden later in the season. The only weeds we were fighting were on the walking paths that we hadn't mulched. Also, my grass clipping are NEVER grass. More like weed clippings. And yet mulching my garden plants with them doesn't just give me more weeds. I know, amazing!

What other tricks do you use to keep weeds down in your garden?

A Success...

It worked!

My rotten soybeans sprouted. Just a handful so far but I'm hopeful of my second (intentional) sprouting of cannelini beans and great northern beans, and maybe some more soybeans.

The birthday boys are headed off to a breakfast and movie with their grandparents and the rest of us are spending the cooler morning hours getting some of the plants in our garden. The plan is to have the entire plot planted by next weekend. And after that...

0ur new sandbox

... we are heading to the beach!

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The party? Oh, it was a HUGE success also. I will be putting together a post with lots of pictures for you to see this week. Thanks for all the hopeful comments about getting prepared for it. I think I'm still dizzy from such lack of sleep, but boy was it worth it.

Oops turned Agricultural Experiment

I accidentally left soybeans soak way too long and by the time I found them they were sprouting. This is not what you want for making soy milk. I drained the water off and this is what I saw.

It reminded me a bit of potato eyes growing those creepy white arms and legs. Bummer. Then I remembered an article Lauren sent me about using store bought dried beans to plant and grow instead of seed stock. Lauren and I fill each other's inboxes daily with interesting articles and links to pretty things and this one stuck in my mind (definitely not pretty but on the interesting side). I remember skimming it and then filling it away in my mind as a must try. Little did I know that it would come in handy so soon. Even though it was raining I headed outside to do a trial plot. Please do not allow this one occurrence of immediate action fool you into thinking I'm incredibly ambitious. Nope, I'm only half dedication to growing my own food and half convinced that if I didn't plant right away the stinky beans would end up in the compost and I cannot waste anything. The guilt from throwing out a cup of moldy beans would surely send me into a guilt spiral. Okay, so maybe not that bad... anyway...

I had about a foot in my greens bed between kale and spinach that made a ideal place to try three rows of edamame.

The article said to plant them one inch apart possibly two in a hole, just to make sure something comes up since sprouting and planting is just a good idea not really a guarantee. But since it was raining, I rushed and ran a trowel through the soil and sprinkled a heavy layer of sprouted beans.

Guess you can see that my planting style is a lot like my cooking style, really no measurements and no fear of absolute failure. I also planted some by my peas, not wanting any beans to go to waste in case this experiment actually pans out.

I'm really hoping this style of planting works. It is so much cheaper to buy dried beans at the store instead of ordering the seed stock alternative. The price of edemame seed is crazy per ounce (I think I paid $2.29) and I got my organic soybeans for $0.99/lb. Oh, pretty pretty please work because I'm dying to have some of these dried beans growing in my garden this year.

Cannelini beans are the stuff that traditional Italian meals are made of. These were expired at the store so they were FREE! I think I feel round 2 of bean seed sprouting happening very soon.

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Also so very exciting news from the new raised beds...

I am dedicating these beds to called my kitchen garden. They will be growing the things that can be planted early (greens and peas) or are perennial (asparagus, herbs and strawberries). These plants grow fast and will be included in meals several times daily. So instead of heading out the the big garden and wandering through row after row of vines and late season crops all of these will be right out my kitchen door.