Starting the Summer Garden

We started the summer garden this weekend!  It's later than most people put their gardens in around here, but a week earlier than last year, when we still had a light frost a week after planting the tomatoes.  We seem to be in an odd micro-climate that gets much colder than other places.  The winter temperatures are closer to that of Monticello, near Georgia, than anywhere close by.

We put in 236 tomato plants, 25 tomatillos and ground cherries and 93 peppers and eggplants, and a bunch of different kinds of basil.  I didn't mean for there to be quite so many.  Last year we only had a single double row of all of those combined.  I only actually started five of each variety, but because the seeds were so old, I started two in each pot, just to be sure we would get one.  Most of them sprouted, and I didn't pinch off the extra ones like you're supposed to, because they looked so little and hopeful.  I had planted them on opposite sides, so it was easy to separate them when I transplanted them.  Most of them look like they are doing well.  A few of them didn't like being separated, but they were the runty little ones, anyway.

I've had a tricky time fitting everything into my garden plan as well as rotating things to places they haven't been for three years.  These were the best spots for the Solanaceous plants.  Next weekend we put in the cucurbits--the melons, watermelons, squash, pumpkins and cucumbers.  I know it doesn't look like much yet, but it's a start!

Growing Things

In between starting the summer garden this weekend, Ethan got some pretty pictures of things starting to grow.  This was a wild persimmon leafing out.

The blackberries are just starting to bloom.

The sheep's sorrel makes some of the fields pink.

The pawpaws are blooming.  I think they are beetle pollinated.  I see beetles all over the flowers.  They look so dressed-up in the greening fields, like fairies going to a ball.

Possibilities

Yesterday I laid out all my summer garden seeds (well, most of them).  I had to stand on the couch to fit them in the picture.  Some of these are flowers and basil varieties, and a lot of them are cowpeas or dry beans that I'm intending to plant in long rows here and there as borders, and so won't take up much space.  Ethan hates how many varieties we have, but I think it's interesting.  He says it gives him heart palpitations.

 We have the nicest collection of melon varieties this year!  The melons were so fabulous last year.  It was such  a delight to eat so many sweet, delicious homegrown melons.  I really hope we get at least that many melons this year.  I'm trying a new kind of watermelon--Gold Baby.  It turns yellow when it's ripe, which would be helpful.  We wasted a few watermelons last year thinking they were ripe and they weren't.  It's so fun to plan gardens, but it never ends up being planted the same way as in my plans.  It doesn't really matter, as long as we get a lot of melons and ground cherries.

More tangibly, I re-potted my tomatoes.  They are already twice this big, as this was from last week.  I think we are going to start putting the garden in at the end of this week.  Ethan has promised to help me with the garden this year, but I have my doubts.  Last year he actually tilled the garden, so there might be hope.  This year he promised to plant the corn and the peppers, but I already had to start the peppers for him so we would get any at all this year.

I recently re-potted them, too.  They seem to be happy.  Last year I tried leaving them in pots in the garden and they nearly all died, so we only got a few really hot peppers, the sweet peppers having withered early in the summer.  I love how much possibility there is in just one seed.

Greening

 Everything has gotten so green lately.  I've wanted to post pictures of it before, but whenever the sun was just right I was busy feeding the rabbits or something, and by the time I went to get Matilda the sun had set and it was too dark.  The black cherry trees have leafed out and are all blooming now.  The line in the foreground was where we desperately had to put the cows after Richard was gone.  They were only there for a few days, but everything green is gone.  It was only a small area, so hopefully it didn't do too much damage.

These are the higher up grazing lines that we've only just last year had the cows and goats in.  Mostly the goats, because the blackberries scratched Matilda's udder and made it uncomfortable to be milked, and the cows don't eat the browse like the goats do.  They still look much wilder than the first grazing lines.

We gave the cows an entire grazing line, which they have been very much enjoying.  Matilda has started to fatten up noticeably.  She was thin after she got scours during the winter (we're pretty sure it was a virus she'd had from before we got her.  She also had a cough and runny nose and was the only one to get sick).  I'm glad to see her get some meat on her bones.  Every time I've been to other farms and seen other Jersey cows I'd realize she really wasn't that thin, but she was so much thinner than our other cows I couldn't help but worry.  Can you even see the cows out there?  Geranium was to the left of the big pine tree, and Belle, who has been hanging out with the cows lately, is just next to the little plum tree.  The hay bale is on the far end, so they always look like little specks when I get out there.  It's been a little challenging to get Matilda down for milking every day, but once they see me Geranium and Isla come running, and that usually gets Matilda, too

Spring Flowers

The narcissus bulbs I planted in January are blooming.  They are so lovely.  I wish we could have gotten more.  The amaryllis were really pretty, too, while they lasted.  We enjoyed them for a few days, and then May got out.

She doesn't care about electric fences at all, not even at 8,000 volts.  So when she ran out of the tastiest morsels in the new paddock, she escaped.  And now the amaryllis look like this:

Who knew they were so edible?  I thought lilies were poisonous.  The narcissus have proved to be much less palatable, so they are still okay.

Spring

After the long, slow rains of Sunday and Monday all the greening cherry and plum trees were almost blindingly verdant.  I can see the summer grasses just starting to grow.  They were knocked back a bit by the frost a couple weeks ago.  And the cactus has begun to stand up, making us realize just how much there is out there, since it shows up so well against the soft brown grasses of last year.

We are excited to see how things grow this year and how the grazing lines will change things.  This is the first spring since we started grazing the lines.  We just put in an order with Midwestern Bio-Ag for minerals and  fertilizer.  Last summer we had gotten a soil test done, and we are only just now getting ready to improve the first two grazing lines.  This is something we've wanted to do since we first started.

  Hopefully it won't be too early for it to start making a difference this spring, as Ward's just ran out of hay last week, and they will be out until next season when it is cut again.  We were driving out to High Springs to the Midweast Feed store to get bales, but they told us they're a week away from being out, and the next bales are going to be $80-$90 each.  That's double what they were.  The heat and drought in Texas means that all the hay is going to them.

  We're trying to get rid of Richard the bull as fast as possible (this weekend?).  He eats so much hay, it's just incredible.  They've gone through hay twice as fast with him around.  I had thought AI was expensive, but it would be like nothing compared to keeping the bull for 6 weeks, and paying for his services.  Our neighbor has some square bales we can buy for slightly less expensive than the store, but it's still going to be more than before.  We moved the goats to the wooded lot where Fred was last year.  There is a lot of underbrush that they'll love to clear out, so they should be happy for awhile.  The calves don't eat much, it's just a matter of feeding the four girls.

Grow grass, grow!

The Cat Warmer

The seedlings for the summer garden seem to have gotten a good start so far.  I feel much more relaxed about the whole thing this year.  I had a rough start as a beginning gardener, what with our very sandy soil, no rabbits or cows for lots of manure and limited knowledge.  I'm embarrassed that it took me two years to figure out that the seedlings need heat and light.

Teasel has made it very clear that the cold frame is actually her personal cat warmer.  And that it needs a cat-door.  She keeps getting stuck between the double layers of plastic on the sides, although maybe she's not really stuck, because she's always mad after I pull her out.  It can be hard to tell with cats.

We've been getting the most beautiful eggs lately.  The Araucauna layers have started laying their beautiful green eggs, and we've even gotten a few turkey eggs (the beautiful speckled one at the top).

The new California White layers are still too young to lay, but I am hoping they will be laying well for Easter, because everyone like the white eggs for dyeing.

The only other exciting things around here have been that we put a weaning ring on Butch, our steer from Matilda and put him out a few weeks ago.  He was supposed to be in his own paddock, but he quickly escaped and is in with Matilda and the rest of the herd now.  It was fine for a while, but he figured a way around the weaning ring, so we haven't had any milk.  There's just no way we can catch him right now, either, short of one of those nifty stun-rifle things they use for tagging wildlife.

The problem should be short-lived, because this weekend we are hoping to bring Dennis Stolzfoos's Devon bull from Full Circle Farm here, and we will be keeping him in our only permanent-fence paddock with Matilda, Geranium, Chestnut and Isla and a bale of hay, so Butch's milk-drinking spree is soon to be at an end.
What do most people do for weaning calves?  I'm hoping it will be easier once we have more calves and they can keep each other company, but I could be really, really wrong about that.

Catching up: Easter

For Easter this year we made our own dyes. Yellow was turmeric, red was beets, blue was red cabbage and purple was mulberry juice. We also tried coffee, but that only turned them brown, making our efforts to save four dozen white eggs a little pointless, so we didn't use it very much. For green we tried nettle infusion, but it was a little muddy. I made some nice greens with the red cabbage and turmeric, too. I've never liked soaking the eggs in food coloring, but the artistic side of me loves the bright colors, so we've always done it that way. I didn't think natural dyes would be as pretty or colorful, but I was astounded at how lovely the eggs turned out. They were not as vivid as the commercial dyes, but they were more suited to Easter, being very soft and subtle and pastel.

The blue was an amazing robin's egg blue or a perfect spring sky blue, and the mulberries were a beautiful violet. You can tell the two eggs Mirin dyed at a friend's house with regular food coloring. The colors are very bright, but have a sort of chemical look to them next to the other eggs. I have to say, these lovely naturally-dyed eggs were hard to find. They easily blended into nature. The Easter bunny (ahem) had a great time finding flowers and fallen leaves that matched the egg colors perfectly.

After we were done dyeing all the eggs I soaked strips of white muslin in the dye for a maypole. They turned out so beautiful. I couldn't believe how intensely bright they turned out.

They've faded a bit in the months I've kept them. I crocheted a little mini rug out of them, since we will probably want to dye new ones next year. Maybe someday I will have a big rug of them if I keep adding to it.