Weather

In the last 48 hours we have had a sunny 75 degree afternoon, a windy, pounding rainstorm, thunder, lightning, hail and now a frosty 28 degree morning. Spring is a capricious sprite.

Mother Nature's creatures are not easy to predict either. We recently expanded and improved the chicken coop after His Majesty Prince Eagle found his way in. (Picture and story on Patrick's blog) Now that their housing seems secure from forced entry, I have lost two chickens to a predator who seems to be reaching through the wire walls and (sorry, yuck) eating the carcasses right through the wire. I imagine it is a bobcat, based on a lack of tracks. The only other animal I think capable of such dexterity is a raccoon, but they generally leave easily-read footprints.

In all my years growing up here, I saw only one bobcat, and that was when I was far from everything, horseback riding by myself. Last month I spotted my second cat, inside the fence of the yard, only 20 feet from my parents' front door. My mouth actually fell open. She had just killed one of the geese in broad daylight. Amazing.

The weather, animal behavior, the success or failure of my vegetable plants- the unpredictable pattern of these things reminds me never to assume I know what Mother Nature has up her sleeve.

My fairy princess

Welcome Spring

Busy Days

We have been working hard on our little farm these past few days. The rain has stopped and the earth is drying. The plants are reaching up and down with green tips and hairy roots. I am now applying myself to the happy task of filling 2oo square feet of gopher and deer-proof garden beds with seeds and home-grown transplants. The boxes are constructed of huge redwood beams and galvanized wire mesh, so I expect to be using them for many years to come. They will hold onions, leeks, root vegetables, lots of greens, and many kinds of herbs. Tucked in here and there will be flowers, too, including some red peonies that I have dreamed of for years. Thank you Ruchama!! Each of the children have a little section all their own. Ellie planted flowers and chamomile for tea. Izzy will be growing peas, carrots and flowers. Aliana, ever practical, figures I will be growing enough vegetables for everyone, so she is going with nothing but showy, delightful blooms.

I also have a large sunny area that Izzy and Papa are discing in the first picture. This will be planted in corn, beans, squash, melons and potatoes. Yum. I just have to get up the nerve to use the gopher traps. Yuck.

The Dull Days of Winter

I hope and pray and finagle for rain, then it all seems to come at once. The trees and wildflowers and I really do appreciate it, but must it all blow in in February? Our already minuscule house is shrinking from all the rain. All the toys have been played with and discarded in boredom. Aliana and I have read aloud until hoarse. We have baked and consumed more brownies and muffins that I care to admit. I have spent way too much time reading about other people lives on blogs. And the mud! Bleh. But I really do thank the heavens for the rain. I really do.

Blue Rubber Bands

You know, the really thin ones that hold bunches of green onions together. And then there are the wide purple ones that arrive around bunches of broccoli.

Today, contemplating a handful of rubber bands, it occurred to me how much I value those little blue guys. I use them for all sorts of things. I am also fond of the plastic bags that hold potatoes. I use these instead of buying trash bags. I figure they're going to be thrown away anyway, I may as well use them one more time before they go. The incredibly long strings that come off new bags of animal feed get tucked away in a kitchen drawer for all kinds of wonderful projects. I buy my flour in cloth sacks and make the sacks into hankies. I can only find one brand of jam that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup, and it happens to come in beautiful jars. We fill those with homemade feta to give away.

Looking at the rubber bands this morning, a funny thought popped into my head. I wonder if I will miss the little useful bits when green onions, broccoli, and such things don't come into the kitchen packaged, but are instead gathered from the garden. If the pounds and pounds of potatoes I plant this spring grow well, I will have to find a different solution for my trash bags. We recently bought a grain mill, so as soon as we run out of store-bought flour I will start grinding my own. I imagine we have plenty of hankies for now, though. This summer I look forward to putting up enough jam to last us all year, so I'll have to buy some jars for the cheese gifts.

I don't think I'll mind. It's just funny how the mind works sometimes.

Zo, zee znailz.....

We ate 'em! First we starved them for a couple of days, then we plunked the lot in boiling water for a minute. Once out of the bath they slipped easily out of their shells. We sauteed them with homegrown garlic and butter and then...












Aliana chowed down! Isidore and Elizabeth decided not to partake, but Aliana loved them. She is a big fan of clams and mussels, and we all agreed they taste just like clams. We will be collecting more next week to make a main dish meal with pasta.

No picky eaters allowed!

My family is amazing. The bunch of us are all weirdos, but we either don't care or don't know, depending upon the individual in question. That's really why we're homeschooling, to avoid the embarassment of sending them out into public. Just kidding. I think.

This morning Isidore was complaining because we were having fried eggs and sliced oranges for breakfast again. Ever practical (see my post from March 26) Aliana pointed out that we have lots of homegrown eggs right now, so we should enjoy them. She explained that eggs are healthy protein filled food, and that oranges help our bodies fight colds and lower cholesterol. I simply stated, for the seven hundred twenty fifth time (so maybe I'm exagerating) that I will not tolerate picky eaters in my family.

Did either of these attempts sway dear Isidore? Nope. Breakfast was eaten under threat of force.

After he managed to finish his meal without dying of boredom from eating eggs and oranges for the third time this week he scampered outside with his sisters to collect snails from the garden for tomorrow's dinner.

Yes, the child who fights over consuming two of the most common items on an american grocery list thinks it's a great idea to eat a creature not many people on this continent would even consider food.

The kids are all very involved in what we eat. They eagerly peruse the seeds catalogues just as I do. They help to plan the garden, plant the seeds and as it grows they water, weed and harvest. Some of my very favorite memories of my time with my children are in the garden. When I signed us up for the 100 foot diet challenge they cheered me on. We have been brainstorming, and realized that in the spring the snail population explodes. In years past we fed buckets of them to the chickens. This year we're going to cook them with a little garlic and butter and eat them ourselves.

Yum.

Our Plum Tree

The thing I think I will miss most about the little red house when we leave is the plum tree. It's not a very productive tree, and the fruit is tiny, but Patrick and I were married under it's branches. Then a few years later it was in full bloom on the stormy January night Elizabeth was born. Every year we have told her that it blooms as a gift for her birthday, and we have come to call it Elizabeth's tree. I mourn to leave it, but we will remember the joy we have felt under and in it's branches, picking the fruit it creates to pass on its life, making vows to entwine our lives, and bearing a new life of our own. We will try to take a cutting or plant a pit from the harvest this year. I sure hope we are successful, but even if we aren't, I will always remember Elizabeth's plum tree.

Another Omelet!?

As I considered my options for our second 100-foot meal, I was at first sort of annoyed that my ingredient list this week isn't any different than it was last week. "What am I going to write about if we just eat the same thing again? How boring. 'Look, here's another omelet. End of post'."

It occured to me only when I was photographing the meal that eating eggs again is anything but boring. It is in fact miraculous. I happen to think that eggs may well be the most beautiful thing found in mother nature. I never tire of finding a warm egg nestled in the hay in the barn. It really actually makes me feel excited and special every single time I find one. I never just rush it in the house and stick it in the egg carton in the refrigerator. No, every time I come across a newly laid egg I cradle it in my palm and marvel at how perfectly designed such a thing is, from a human or a chicken perspective.

For a hen, an egg is a way to raise a whole lot of babies at once and therefore insure that some of them will survive to make more chickens. It amazes me that an egg can wait weeks in the cold before a hen decides she has laid enough to spend a few weeks sitting on the nest. Her warmth helps the previously dormant creature inside that shell quickly grow into a perfect little chick, ready to walk and peep and eat the day it hatches.

For those of us with opposable thumbs and slightly larger brains, the egg is no less awesome. Here is a portable food storage device like no other. Eggs keep much longer than most of us think, and really don't need to be stored in as cold a place as our refrigerator. We keep them there out of habit, but a farm-fresh egg will keep in a cool place like a cellar for weeks and weeks. And for those of us who eat with the seasons, the egg is a celebration of spring. Though supermarket eggs are available 365 days a year, our hens only recently began laying again after taking a break during the short, dark days of winter. The first few eggs felt like tiny miracles! We carefully considered how to prepare them. As the days lengthened the girls gave us more eggs each day. Now we find between 6 and 8 every morning.

This morning I sauteed some of the volunteer arugula that just grows in the yard and tucked it inside the omelet, and sprinkled chives on top. I took some pictures, then Aliana and Ellie and I sat down to eat. It was delicious. It tasted just right. It sounds kind of trite, but it tasted like spring, like what we ought to be eating on a morning in march. The girls and I felt really fortunate to be eating such tasty food from our own homestead. It's not a glamorous life, but it is satisfying and fun.

Victory Garden

Planting and caring for the garden this year is a little tricky. We will be living on the mountain by the end of the summer, perhaps even sooner, so I am planting things up there this spring. I’ve run into a bit of trouble because I'm not up there every day to plant and because watering is not as easy as turning on the hose anymore. Up there I have to find a way to get the water from the spring that's halfway down the hill to the thirsty plants at the top.


Right now the way I accomplish this is to use a plastic barrel to haul the water up in the back of the truck and park slightly higher than the garden. I connect a hose to the barrel. What I hope to be doing by next year is using the strength of my darling mule, Dina, instead of the truck. She is eager to work; I just need to find more time to train her to drive. That, too, will be easier when we are living there full time.


The opportunity for the kids to grow up smack dab in the middle of nowhere sets my soul at ease in a way I thought would never happen, but the chance to feed my family also thrills me. In a few years we will probably be close to self-sufficient. I’ve been working on this goal all the years we’ve been in the little red house, but now I have acres to work with! Each year we set aside some money to spend on edible plants and necessary tools. Last year we added 12 fruit trees to the yard. I have moved them to the mountain, and most of them seem to be in good shape. This year I ordered lots and lots of seeds so that I can have enough for this year and the next in case my seed-saving attempts don’t go well. I am saving the extra in tightly sealed jars in the refrigerator. In each jar I have a silica packet to keep them dry. I’ll put them to the fridge at the shop after we move up to the land of no electricity.


Up on the mountain I am planting lots of different edible perennials. I’ve already put in hazelnuts, huckleberries, strawberries, rhubarb, and wintergreen. On the way are seaberry, honeyberry, fig, red and golden raspberries, elderberry, kiwi, wolfberry, and a green tea plant.
Most of what I ordered this year came from Territorial Seed Company in Oregon. They come highly recommended for their care with seed trials and seed storage. I am using two books written by the former owner of the company, Steve Solomon. One is called Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, the other is Gardening When it Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times. I like the first book because the climate he writes about is like mine, not like most gardening books whose authors assume you actually have a summer and a winter. I just have a wet season and a dry season. The latter title has very good advice about growing vegetables with little or no irrigation.

Ostara

We had a lovely little celebration. It began with chocolate bunnies for breakfast and ended with egg-salad sandwiches for dinner. Each of the kids received a plant for the garden and some art supplies. Isidore went right to work on the workbook the Easter bunny left him.

Isidore and Aliana melted my heart by sharing with Elizabeth as they found eggs in the yard , and even leaving some easy-to-find ones for her. When they returned to the house they divided them up equally. Did I mention how much I love my kids?

Using natural materials for egg dyes worked wonderfully. Aliana and I both voted to use them from now on. Clean up was easier and the leftovers were a lovely thank you gift for the hens.

The bright yellow/orange eggs were dyed in a bath of yellow onion skins and turmeric. The brownish-purple marbled effect was made with grape juice. We used raw eggs and hard-boiled them right in the dye bath. I didn't get a picture of the gorgeous purple we got by just rubbing cut beets on cooked eggs. We had no success with the red cabbage to make teal. Next time we will cook some eggs first and then soak them overnight in the cabbage water.

First 100 foot diet meal

We didn't have our customary special Friday night meal last night, so our first 100% homegrown meal was breakfast. An omelet was the natural choice.

Our ingredients were eggs from our faithful hens, homemade feta cheese, and some chives snipped from the garden. We also made a nice pot of homegrown chamomile tea. It was simple and wonderful. We had a bright, sunny morning meal before we all headed off to work.

Under the teapot there you can see the table runner that my genius sister (we dropped the in-law part awhile ago) Francine made. She is the crazy quilting queen. She creates one-of-a-kind pieces for sale, if you are interested.

Spring magic

Most mornings at least one of the kids comes out help me with the chores. I milk and feed the goats while Aliana cares for her rabbits. Taking care of the chickens, though, usually falls to the earliest riser of the day. Heading out to the yard in the morning sun we all enjoy seeing the girls come flapping, hopping and running to eat their morning ration of cracked corn and kitchen scraps. As the days have lengthened the chance to do chicken duty has become a more and more powerful incentive to get out of bed. This is because the hens have a very good clock in their little chicken brains, and as we enjoy more and more daylight they lay more and more eggs. Another part of their bird instinct tells them to hide those eggs. So our dear girls lay their eggs all over the place!

This is where the children come in. After the girls have settled down for breakfast the kids take their baskets and have an egg hunt.

Yep, every morning. We have nice, neat little nesting boxes that we built, but the hens ignore those in favor of dark corners of the shed and inviting bushes. The first child who makes it outside in the morning has the best chance at finding the real prize- a green egg. Two of our dozen or so hens are Americaunas. They lay naturally green-shelled eggs. Ladybug and Siren are their names, and they are getting old for chickens, so the green eggs don't come as regularly as they used to. Therefore discovering a green egg has become a special event.

As we approached Easter this year we began to save up the green eggs, as well as the white ones. This year we are going to try using dyes made of natural materials to color the eggs. I found a list here:

http://www.lakewinds.com/store/Natural-Egg-Dye-Recipes-W4698C18760.aspx

I was also pleasantly surprised to find a list of natural dyeing materials in the magazine that our grocery store puts out. Here here!

Isidore reminded me that last year the Easter bunny left some muddy paw prints on the kitchen table when he ate the carrot we left out for him. I do hope he will be a little tidier this year. I wonder if he knows the kids have had so much practice hunting for eggs. He better hide them really well.

Spring is coming