This Is My Year! I Just Know It!

After months of careful planning and researching and seed propogating, the garden is in!  Not as early as I would have liked, but still, it is in.  Everything is planted.  Some things are even sprouting already.

Good Mother Stallard pole bean sprout.
I spent enough time in the garden to watch it
actually open and unfurl yesterday.

This year is something completely new for my veggie patch.  I built raised beds.  Nothing fancy. But, raised beds nonetheless.  Next year, I hope to add a few more so that everything is planted in beds.  I have four so far and plans for four more.  I have wanted to do raised beds for some time, but have always been talked out of it for one reason or another. 

 

There it is.
 Probably should have taken my dirty gloves out of the fence
before I snapped the picture.

Raised beds aren't for everybody.  For myself, I know that I don't have a reliable tiller.  And tilling is quite a procedure even when we have one to use.  The weather has to be just right.  Both of us need to be home.  Seriously, the stars have to align for us to get a decent till in.  Thus the desire for raised beds.  This year, I just decided to go for it.  Power tools and everything.  

Natalie and I built the plank rectangles.  Matt and our neighbor hauled in a trailer full of compost from our community pile.  All the kids (ours and the neighbors) hauled in sticks and leaves from the yard.  I hauled in countless wheelbarrows full of composted chicken manure/bedding.  We dug and picked weeds and sifted out rocks and filled the beds. 

Then the planting started.  Lettuce, spinach, carrots and zucchini in the first bed.  Sweet peppers and pie pumpkins in the second.  Peas and broccoli in the third.  Cucumbers, parsnips, and turnips in the fourth.  Potatoes were carefully tucked into haystacks.  In between all this, bean teepees were constructed and planted.  Marigold and zinnia seeds were sprinkled into the corners and between crops.  Tomatoes were the last to go in.  They were planted yesterday.

The garden from the other corner.
The green in the front corner there is
my little strawberry patch.
Lots of berries this year!

During all this steady, sweaty work on the garden, I read an article about another MN woman who constructed huge raised beds with a method called Hugelkultur.  I thought it sounded cool and like it would help our very heavy, clay soil.  I didn't know it was a thing.  Like hipster gardening.  I don't want to be a hipster.  I look terrible in skinny jeans.  Good thing I didn't know that when I started.  Anyway...

So I dug a small trench, hauled in some rotten board chunks (plain rough sawed pine leftover from a long ago project.), sticks and lots of old leaves.  

Trench with sticks and wood scraps.

Same trench from farther away to give an idea
of scale.

  

Toss some leaves on top.

Once I had a decent sized mound, I put the excavated dirt back on top.  In went my shrimpy little tomato plants.  Then went on a light layer of hay. (It was what was left from my little potato beds.  Time to hit up my neighbor with horses again.)   Once the plants are a bit taller, I will add some more compost & manure and another layer of hay, just to make the soil thicker.

Shovel the dirt back on.
Also make sure to pick out the unwanted green things that
may start growing again.

I  pinned it all in place with about 15 tomato cages.  Then applied a good amount of water mixed with fish fertilizer.  I put the fish emulsion fertilizer on everything.  Now my garden smells like somebody farted.  I'm told that goes away.

The tomato mound.
With our super fancy scarecrow watching over it.
Ok, not really, she's actually facing the other way.

All I can do now is cross my fingers, say my prayers and hope that these little plants have the decency to grow and be fruitful.  It would be rude of them not to.  

Sugar Pie pumpkins are coming up nicely.  So far, so good.

Every year, I think this is going to be my year.  Bumper crops.  Veggies coming up everywhere.  This year, I really hope I'm right.  Organic heirloom veggies will abound or I'm gonna die trying!

Homestead Happenings

It's officially Spring!  In Minnesota, we call this Mud Season.  This year's snowfall was far below average giving way to a mild, dry Spring.  When I say "dry" it's a relative term.  There's still mud.  But it's not deep mud.  It's not don't-slow-down-on-the-dirt-road-or-you'll-sink-to-your-axles mud.  It's still sloppy, but it has been worse.  Far, far worse.

Matt & Joey sawing up a little dry pole they found on the edge of the yard

Along with the mud comes the cleaning up of sticks that have blown loose in the winter and the season's first campfire.  And preparing the garden for the "last frost".  And ordering/starting seeds.  And this year, tapping maple trees.

Seeds, Glorious Seeds!

I ordered seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds this year.  I have never ordered seeds in the mail before.  Just gone to the fleet supply or Wal-Mart and picked up whatever looked fun.  This year, I did a bit of research and decided to go with heirloom varieties in the garden.  I already had some seed left from last year for peas, cucumbers and summer squash that happened to be heirloom varieties.  I purchased new varieties (for me anyway) of carrots, peppers, beans, tomatoes, and lettuce.  

One raised bed down, seven more to go.  Just add dirt.  And plants.

The other new thing in store for my garden this year is raised beds.  Tilling is really a hassle for us.  We don't have a reliable tiller, the weather has to be just right and we both have to be home to get the job done.  And it never fails that I manage to stir up some long extinct variety of weed seeds and single-handedly  bring them back to a thriving population.  So, I'm trying the raised bed method this year.  We have a pile of old pine boards leftover from when we ordered siding for the house a few years ago (This is plain untreated rough sawed pine).  The lumber is no longer in it's prime, but it will get the job done for now.  Natalie and I built the first one last weekend.  We have several more to go, but we've got a start.

Matt putting in the final tap.

Another First for our little homestead is the tapping of maple trees.  Matt and Natalie had been talking about it and he told her that his dad used to tap trees when he was a kid.  So, off to Grandpa's house they went for a hand drill and his homemade taps.  My job was to sort through the recycling and find enough empty milk jugs to put under the taps.  Once we had everything ready to go, they went out and got started.  The neighbors were coming over for the afternoon and soon enough, Matt had all five of the kids (our two plus the three neighbor girls) following him around like he had magic powers.  We have collected about three and a half gallons of sap in our first 24 hours.  I am saving it in my big stock pots in the shed until the weekend and we'll try cooking it down.  Frankly, I have no idea what I'm doing on this.  I'm just along for the ride.  But if the kids want to tap trees, then we'll follow the process to the finish.  We probably will get very little if any syrup, but the kids (and I) will learn another lesson in how to make something.  So, here goes nothing!  Wish us luck!  If you have any insight on this, please share in the comments section.

Random chicken shot.  They're happy to see bare ground too!

Happy Spring!

Winter Wrap-Up: Part Three

This is the last part of my little mini-series.  I'm so glad I can dream up random projects that I feel really urgently need to get done.  Otherwise I might lose my mind in the long dark winters.

This last project has actually been on my mind for a while.  I'm pretty sure everybody has at least one of those giveaway fleece throws with some company or another's logo on it.  We have one that is a really nice size for a picnic blanket and the kids like to curl up in it to watch TV at night.

The problem with these blankets is that they are magnetic.  I swear if there is a cat hair or piece of grass within a mile it will gravitate to these blankets.  So, I decided to cover it with woven cotton fabric.  Essentially, I used the original blanket as the stuffing for a small quilt.

I found some random fabrics in my stash.  About five yards worth.  All woven cotton.  I gave them a quick pre-wash and dry to eliminate any shrinkage.  Then I got out my scissors and started cutting.  I wanted to get this done quickly, so I cut big blocks.  For the front, I used 3 different patterns and cut them all into 1/4 yard blocks.  Approximately.  I do a lot of things by eyeballing.  So, I folded the fabric in half, cut on the fold, folded again, cut again.  Then I laid the pieces out over the original throw until I had enough pieces to cover it.

I sewed the front together in rows.  Each row has 3 pieces.  Two long and one short.  As it happened, I was about 3 inches short on the length.  So, I took some of the leftover orange fabric and pieced together a long strip to attach to the top.

For the back, I just cut two colors of cotton into big rectangles and did a nine patch pattern.  Pretty easy peasy.

Next, I sewed the front on to the fleece. 

Then attached the back by putting it wrong side out over the front of the blanket.  Once I got almost all the way around, I turned it right side out, closed up the seam and ran a simple top stitch around the edges.  Just to give it a little extra strength, I ran a line of stitches across the front about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way down the blanket.  I'll pretend it's my "quilting".

Now we have a nice little fluffy quilt with kitties on it.  The kids like that it's bright colored and cute, I like that it's not covered in cat hair.  Matt likes that the kids aren't stealing his blanket.  Everybody wins.

Now, on to Spring projects.  Just in time too because the weather is warming up.  Time to order seeds and get things going for the garden!

Oh and before I forget, I got featured on a blog that I dearly love called Little House Living!  Merissa has a new series called "Making the Most With What You Have".  I filled out her questionnaire a few months ago and she published my story last week!  I'm so excited!  Thank you Merissa for publishing my story!

Winter Wrap-Up: Part Two

The next thing I crossed off my list, finally (!) was to get all my recipes in one place.  I started a recipe binder about 13 or 14 years ago and it has been an ongoing process ever since.

My original binder was pretty simple. A one-inch binder with the cover that you can customize, each recipe on it's own page, a title page for each category.  Well, then I got more recipes.  Pretty soon they didn't all fit in a one-inch binder anymore.  So I got a bigger binder.  Then Pinterest was invented.  Now, my recipes don't fit in that binder anymore either.  Suddenly, I had recipes stuck to the fridge, inside the cabinet doors, in a file folder and stuffed inside the covers of the binder. So I started a second volume.

In case this sounds like a lot of work and you wonder why on earth I would do this, there are two reasons.  First off, I screw up every single thing I make off a standard recipe card.  I blame the tiny print and all the flipping back and forth.  Secondly.  I'm really OCD about organization.  I like to know where my stuff is at all times.

Here's my original binder.  

And my original dividers.  Not much dividing happening at a glance, but it was the best I could come up with at the time.  (Pretend there aren't tabs peeking out from behind.  I'll get to that in a minute.)

The new dividers. (I totally stole this idea from I Heart Organizing, an awesome blog for compulsive organizers like myself.) I kept the old ones too because I still like them.  This gives me an at-a-glance way to head to the right section of the book.  And these dividers have these neat pockets in them for my loose paper recipes.  

Volume Two.  I had lots more recipes for goodies than I thought.  Clearly, there are no diabetics in my house and we are not on any sort of low carb or paleo diet.   Give me Bread!  Lots of Bread! 

 This is how I set up the second volume.

Some of my favorite pages. Just to give you an idea of what the inside of the books look like.

Natalie likes to make pages now too.  

She brings her own stickers and ideas to the table and creates away!  This is one of her pages.

 I mentioned the cool pockets in these tabbed dividers earlier.  I like these because I have lots of recipes cut out from magazines or printed off of blogs.  I don't automatically put all of them permanently in the book.  I make them for the family.  Then I ask if it's a make again meal or a not so good meal.  If it gets a make again rating, then I make it it's own little scrapbook page in my book.  If not, then I toss it and pretend it never happened.  

The tabbed dividers are made by Avery and I got mine at Wal-Mart.  The pages inside the book are all inside regular old clear plastic page protectors of various brands.  

Winter Wrap-Up: Part One

Over the past several weeks, I have been working on getting indoor things done.  I really wanted to get some things off my to-do list before Spring.  So, in my rare moments of spare time, I've tried a couple new recipes, got some sewing done and finally got a handle on my ridiculous recipe collection.  This would be a crazy long single blog post, so I'll write it in a couple of posts.  

The first thing I checked off my list was using up the half-filled jar of   Salted Caramel Pear Butter that was in my fridge.  Pear butter was not something that had been on my must-try list of things to can.  But, my neighbors asked for help with several pounds of pears they had purchased from a school fundraiser.  It was a little late in the life span of fresh fruit to save many of the pears to can as halves or slices.  We saved what we could, but the ones that were just too mushy were turned into this heavenly jam.   I found the recipe on Pinterest we had the stuff, so we went for it. We were pretty impressed with ourselves on this.  Nothing went to waste, even though the fruit was really REALLY ripe. 

We used pint jars to can the pear butter because that's what we had handy.  Hence, we wound up with one jar that wasn't full and needed to be used right away.  So, back to good old Pinterest for Pear Butter Cinnamon rolls.  I found a handful of recipes that were all slightly different, so I just used them as a guideline and did my own thing.  They were large and sweet and lovely.

Here's the recipe for my version of 
Salted Caramel Pear Butter Cinnamon Rolls. 
(Say that five times fast!)

Rolls:

2 loaves frozen bread dough 

1 cup Salted Caramel Pear Butter (link to the recipe above)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup chopped canned pears

A good shake of cinnamon

2 Tbsp. raw sugar (or plain white sugar)

1/2 tsp. corn starch

Frosting:

Mix canned vanilla frosting with a block of cream cheese, a splash of milk and powdered sugar to taste.  (this was sort of a pinch hit frosting I made for the last batch of cinnamon rolls I made.  It makes a LOT, so I froze the extra and used it on these rolls.  It was perfect.)

The rolls are pretty straight forward.  

Thaw the dough overnight in a greased pan with a dish towel over it on the counter or some draft free place (like the microwave). 

Once your dough is thawed and had a chance to rise, punch it down and roll it out into a big rectangle. 

Fill the dough by  slathering it with your pear butter.  Sprinkle on the brown sugar (and if you're not frantically trying to do 17 other things at the same time, you would also add in the cinnamon and corn starch at this point) and then the chopped pears.  

Roll up dough and slice.  I usually cut my slices about an inch or so thick.  If you want monster cinnamon rolls like you get at a restaurant, cut the slices thicker.  This particular batch of rolls leaned toward the "thicker".  

Set the rolls in a greased cake pan.  I used a 10 x 15 pan, but if you only have smaller pans, just use two.  This is probably common knowledge, but I try to put the outside edges of my rolls (the flappy seam part that never fully sticks for me) facing in toward the other rolls.  This way it can't escape and come undone.

Cover with a towel again, set back in a draft free place and let them rise for about another hour.  They should just about double in size.  

*If you should get to this stage and realize that you left the cinnamon out of your cinnamon rolls, then mix the cinnamon/raw sugar/corn starch together and sprinkle over the top.  It'll be fine.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, depending on how thick your rolls are.

Let them cool almost completely, then glob on the frosting.  I've never ever had a cinnamon roll that I thought had too much frosting on it, so let 'er rip.

Plan to have a pot of coffee and or some cold milk to serve with these guys.  

This recipe is pretty free-form in that I was going a zillion places at once when I made them and wasn't very focused. Frankly, I'm impressed that I even remembered to take any pictures of the process.  I forgot the dough in my microwave for a few extra hours in the morning and it looked scary at first.  But it was OK.  I put the covered dough in the fridge until I got home that night.  Canned pears are really wet.  So I added a bit of corn starch so my rolls wouldn't be slimy.  It also helps thicken up that yummy caramel ooze.  I forgot to put the cinnamon inside the rolls.  So I sprinkled it on top instead, thinking that if I mixed it with a bit of sugar it would melt down into the rolls.  It sort of did, but what happened was even more glorious.  It mixed with the frosting.  Oh. My. Stars.  Best kitchen mistake I ever made.  I'm not always this clumsy in the kitchen, but when I am, I have to tell about it because it's just too funny not to share.  Besides, I did get cinnamon rolls out of the deal and cinnamon rolls are always worth sharing.

A Quick "Jam Session"

So, I've had this jar of chokecherry juice in my freezer since August.  I've been meaning to make it into jam/jelly.  I finally did it today.  Possibly my best chokecherry creation to date.

This is not a true, pure straight up chokecherry jam.  I also had a handful of frozen strawberries leftover from some Christmas Jam I made, at you guessed it, Christmas.

I thought they sounded like a good combo, so I thawed them out and put them in with the chokecherries.  But then I ran into my classic jam dilemma.  Just too much for a four jar batch and not quite enough for a six jar batch.  (I use the Ball brand pectin with the flex-batch recipe on it)  I can't just pour out that extra half cup of precious chokecherry/strawberry mix.  Nope that would be wrong.  Immoral.  Possibly illegal.  So I think for a minute.  I dig around in the freezer.  Then, I find it.  A bag of frozen raspberries.  I add another 3/4 of a cup or so, enough to that my measurement comes up to that magic 4-cup line on the measuring pitcher.  The results are just plain wonderful.  

Here's the "recipe" for my clean out the freezer jam.  I think I'll call it Cherry Berry Jam. That sounds good.

Cherry Berry Jam

makes 6 half pint jars full

2 1/2 cups chokecherry juice

1 1/2 cup total strawberries and raspberries, crushed.

1 cup water

9 teaspoons lemon juice

4 1/2 tablespoons low sugar pectin (I use Ball brand)

1 1/2 cups sugar

Mix everything except the sugar together in a big pot.  A Dutch oven sized pot will do nicely.  

Bring to a rolling boil.

Add sugar all at once.

Bring back to a boil and boil hard for 1 minute.

Ladle into hot jars.  Adjust two-piece caps.

Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Enjoy :)

A New Year Already?

It's 2015.  What?  Wait a sec.  It was January 2014 about 20 minutes ago.  Crazy.

So, yeah, the year flew by.  I really didn't intend to take a break from blogging.  It just sorta happens sometimes.  

Since my last post:

Natalie turned 8.

My girl is growing up!

We made our annual trip to our neighborhood pumpkin patch.

I think I have a picture like this of the kids
from every year of their lives.

Natalie took a picture of us in the corn maze
to mark our 15 year wedding anniversary.

Matt went deer hunting. A lot.  To no avail.  For the first time in many years, we do not have fresh venison in our freezer. Joey tried out deer hunting this year too.  He even helped his uncle Danny haul his deer our of the woods.  It was a long walk for a little guy.

Joey headed out to go hunting,
pointing out deer tracks in the yard.

I started a second part time job as a substitute para for the school district.  I signed up for multiple districts, but have been busier than expected just with the schools right here in town.  I love it.

We hosted Thanksgiving.  My brother and nephew came.  Matt's parents came.  We had a huge turkey.  The whole deal.  It was yummy and fun and relaxing all at the same time.

The kids and I went for our annual Bon Bon day with Auntie Iris.  We made a bunch of different candy which was heartily sampled.

We butchered some roosters.  We wound up with 9 of the 10 chickens we hatched this spring being roosters.  That's way too many for a flock our size.  One went home to the neighbor's coop.  Six more went in our freezer.

We did lots of artsy projects and crafts for various Christmas gifts.  

Auntie Iris's tomato cage tree

Cookie decorating

We spent lots of time with family over Christmas.  Christmas Eve with Matt's family, Christmas Day with mine.  It was calm and relaxing.  Mostly.

The kids watching How to Train Your Dragon 2
on Christmas morning.

Joey gave Natalie a pink tip-up for Christmas.  They got to test it out on the day after Christmas when they went fishing.  She brought home a nice sized pike.  We ate it for supper that night and it was delicious.

Natalie's nice pike.  Caught at an undisclosed location
on a tip-up with shiner minnow bait.

Today the kids went back to school.  It is bitterly cold.  They weren't thrilled.  At all.  When I stopped by Joey's class after lunch to drop off his snack, the room was full of glassy eyed five year-olds.  I had a rare day off today.  Got some errands run.  Did some organizing of my recipes (an ongoing project for the past decade at least) and canned a quick batch of cranberry sauce.  

I don't do much in the way of New Year's resolutions, but if I had to say what my goals are for this year, they would be to blog more and spend more time in my garden.  We'll see how this pans out.

Happy 2015!