Things for the farm

So after over 4 years since leaving Ames, we finally sold the Nevada house...Thank the heavens!!

Selling the house allowed us to purchase some badly needed items for the farm like a nice snowblower, drill, and saw and a few things to just make life easier!!! Like our super awesome pull behind tiller purchased at Sears. Tilled 6 of our garden beds in less then 30 minutes and most of that was devoted to the learning curve. Can't wait to really test it out next year!!!

So I got a little busy....

I had great ambitions to keep this blog up to date....alas....busy.... but we did have a lot on our plates including the addition of Mason Owen into our family in July. His birth was a bit dramatic and involved being sent home from the hospital only to deliver him myself in the front seat of our minivan with my husband driving us to the hospital. Yikes..oh well...we all did well and he is a sweet, happy, healthy baby.

What happened on the farm??

The Carmine Jewel Cherries have done phenomenal, despite our hard pack clay dirt. They literally went from twigs to about 2 foot tall!! So excited. The other interesting thing we noticed is they were unphased by the japanese beetles. Unfortunately, the nanking cherries didn't fair as well and were completely defoliated by the beetles. Prior to the beetles they also went from a twig to nice bushy little 1.5 foot high plants. Honeyberries are in and living, but not thriving like the cherries. Goumi has also out done the honeyberry plants. Will likely do some more soil amendments with manure next year.

Other news from this summer include the addition of a cow and selling a horse. After much debate over the years, I finally gave into the fact that I don't have time for a young horse...and it only took me six years to figure that out. Kayla found a wonderful home with a young girl who just graduated from college and is planning to do dressage and eventing with her. I will say having only the 2 horses has changed they dynamic of the barn completely, much calmer and quieter and much less competition. Also much less poo to clean up!!. So I sold a horse but added a cow. My reasoning is I don't have to feel quilty about not riding the cow and at the end of the day I could always eat the cow. After looking and looking, I finally found a miniature Hereford heifer we could afford. We decided our future herd would be named based on gemstones and jewels and so our first little cow is Ruby. The plan is to breed her in about a year to something small...maybe a miniature jersey...if we got a heifer it could be a good little milk cow. Although, there is nothing to stop me from milking the hereford for table milk.

Spring weather brings sore backs.

It is finally starting to warm up here, which means there is an enormous amount of work to do.
Todd has been working on getting the gravel out of the lawn and we have both been working on the winter mountain of manure as it thaws. It is a pain but once composted grows the most amazing vegetables and fruit. If only we had a tractor the work would be done in one half hour.
We also removed the weed stalks and tilled the beds we made last year on top of the hill. They are nice raised beds that are 4 ft wide and 24 foot long. We filled one with 16 Jersey King Asparagus plants and then made another bed with some plants I bought a few years ago but never officially planted down around the electrical transformer pole. I don't remember what kind they were. Can't wait for all the fruit plants to start arriving although being 6 months pregnant sometimes all I want to do is nothing.

Making Root Beer - the old fashioned way!!

We are soda addicts. Yes, we admit. But since the goal is to make everything we can at home..or at least have the knowledge to do so I thought we would give root beer making a try. My brother, Josh, has made it several times and we have always enjoyed the flavor in frosty mugs.

I got some root beer extract ( and cola and lemon-lime ) from the Brew Haus. I also thought it would be a good chance to use the glass bottles that have been out in the barn for a year, so i also got a package of caps and a capper. Josh later informed me that he suggested we use plastic bottles so that the glass bottles didn't turn into grenades. So instead we "recycled" some 2-liter plasic bottles.

We made just 2 gallons to practice. Recipe per gallon.

1/4 tsp of yeast dissolved in warm water.

tbsp (15mls) of root beer extract

2 cups of sugar

and quantity sufficient warm water to one gallon.

This made 3 2-liters and 1 about 3/4 full. I don't know if the 3/4 full one will work but we shall try, will probably let it sit out longer.

It needs to sit on the counter for 3-5 days until the plastic containers are bulging with pressure. Then goes to the refrigerator. I think a nice batch of homemade ice cream to go with it will be a nice treat.

Preparing for Spring

Well, I haven't posted for awhile because frankly there isn't much to talk about. It has been a snowy winter and we have basically been in hibernation, fighting colds and sinus infections every other week. The only glimmer of hope that it will be warm and green again is the numerous garden catalogs coming in the mail. The biggest questions of the year are which plants are worthy of garden space, time, and resources.
Tomatoes were tough..there are so many that seem worth trying in the catalogs, but ultimately they are really just repeats. For the last 3 years we have done so many seedlings that somehow the names get washed off the tags and I never can track which plants do the best. I read about using cow ear tag markers so hopefully I can do a little scientific trials regarding which plants are worth keeping. Ultimately, at this point I feel we need a good cherry/grape, a large slicing tomato, and productive roma type. I also like not only a red version of the slicing tomatoes and romas, but yellow as well. We had juliet last year for a grape variety and it was very productive and rather large. Calysta ate her body weight in them and I took tons of bowls to work for everyone to snack on.
Here is the line up from totally tomatoes:
Goliath Original (Todd's dad, Dave, swears by these alone)
Lemon Boy
Big Beef Hybrid
Roman Candle ( a yellow roma)
San Marzano
Saucey
Sugary (grape tomato)
and from the store 4th of July

Peppers:
Northstar
Sweet Goliath

Herbs: Delfino Cilantro
Cauliflower: Snow Crown
Broccoli: Waltham 29
This week getting the 4th of July started and a few Juliets that I can put into containers for a few early bird tomatoes.