End of an Era.

This is my last week in my 20's. This weekend I will turn the big 3-0. I don't usually care too much about birthdays. I find them a great excuse for cake. Other than that I've never been big on parties or celebrations.

The last couple birthdays I have had BBQs. Both times they turned out rather cold. I still have it in my mind that it's 90 degrees on my birthday; it was that way when I was growing up. I had the backyard celebrations mostly because I felt like I had to do something for my birthday. That seemed like the thing I would enjoy the most - a few friends, some food and a yard. This year I decided I really did need to do something. I mean, this is a big one. This is the first birthday I have really cared about probably since I turned 16 and was finally able to drive a car alone. I thought to myself, "What do you really want to do?". I didn't want a bunch of people around, I didn't want a big to-do. I wanted to do something that would symbolize my next decade. So I decided I wanted to spend a weekend in the mountains. Mike and I are taking off on Saturday morning to spend a couple nights in Bend, OR. I've never been and I have always wanted to go since I moved here. I've heard it's supposed to be like the Santa Fe of Oregon. A smaller city, nestled among ski resorts and ample hiking, on the Eastern edge of the Cascades so it's high desert instead of temperate rain forest.

When we get back I'll be a year older and will move into the next decade. Leaving behind the city-jumping era of my life and moving into....well....I don't really know. But I'm excited to find out.

Planting Season.

It seems every day the last couple weeks there is something on my list to plant in the garden. April is a strange purgatory month, especially this year. It's the time to start everything and plan for the growing season so you are busy, busy, busy - but you don't have anything to show for it yet. Lots of work with no reward, only the hope that everything sprouts and grows into something edible.

The garden as it stands today:



I don't have the flowering kale or the overwintering scallions on there because they aren't harvestable and I'm really just waiting for them to seed so I can get them out of there and put something else in their place. Out there now we've got onions, garlic, shallots, broccoli, spinach, radishes, spring kale, carrots, chard and cabbage. You wouldn't know it by looking out at the garden though, everything is super small or not sprouted yet and taking its sweet time getting there. We are supposed to hit 60 by the end of the week! For a couple days at least....

When life gives you lemons...

...you make lemonade, or when life gives you weeds you make a crumble.

There is an invasive species living in our yard. It started coming up in a couple spots by the side of the house and by the fence last year. It grew quickly - very, very quickly. Left to it's own devices the patch by the fence grew to over seven feet in a few weeks and took over about a five foot diameter section of the yard. It was a constant struggle last summer to cut the weed whenever it started growing near the house. We poisoned them several times to no avail. Finally it went dormant over the winter, but the last few weeks it has started springing up in all the usual places again.

This awful weed I speak of is Japanese Knotweed. It is so invasive that it's an illegal plant in the UK. If you have it in your yard you have to get a professional to remove it, the risk of spreading the plant is far too great to do it on your own. The working theory on our little homestead is to keep chopping it as soon as we see it and hope that the roots loose the energy to grow more stalks in a couple years.

In the meantime I discovered that knotweed is edible - and rather tasty! There is a knotweed soup that is intriguing and generally speaking you can use it as a replacement for rhubarb. Saturday afternoon Mike trimmed a bunch of the pernicious weed and I cooked it up into a crumble.





The worst part about it was knowing that inside this scrumptious dessert was the weed we hate so much and have been battling for the last year. Once we swallowed our hate of the weed the crumble was quite delicious! It tasted like rhubarb. Mike even had seconds.

Potato Nests.

I finally got around to making the potato towers this weekend. For some reason it seemed so daunting. I had to build something, albeit a very simple something. Potato towers can range from the very simple (stacked tires) to the very complex (solid wooden structures), I've even seen plain sturdy bags for making potato towers. I went with something in between.




Four wooden stakes, with chicken wire encircling it. There is a hay edging, with compost dirt filling the middle.


As the potatoes begin to peek up through the soil and grow I will add more hay edging and cover them with dirt, until by the end of the season the tower is filled to the brim with potatoes (hopefully)!




After the 25 minutes it took me to build both towers and was pretty mad at myself. I've been putting this task off for weeks out of anxiety and it turned out to be so darn simple.

Seedlings.

It's almost time for some of the seedlings to graduate to the yard. This weekend I'm setting out the cabbage and broccoli.

This is my best cabbage. I'm really excited about them; the variety is Mammoth Red Rock. I hope they turn out like they sound.




Something funny happened with a lot of my seedlings. They grew tomatoes off to the side. The best I can come up with is that there were tomato seeds in my compost. I mixed seedling mix and our own compost from the worm bin for all the seedlings. Tomato seeds are hearty and survived the decomposition process and weren't eaten by the worms. There are random tomatoes in about one out of every five pots.




This is my best broccoli. It is the same variety I grew last year, DiCicco, but these seedlings seem a lot stronger and larger than they were last year. The yield last Spring was great, so I'm sure this season will be even better.




The lettuces aren't going out just yet, but this is my best lettuce so far. I can't wait for summer salads.

Report Card.

Planted in the garden today:

• 1 row Northern Lights Swiss Chard
• 1 row Rainbow Carrots
• 1 row Napa Carrots
• 1 row Bloomsdale Savoy Spinach

Harvested from the garden today:

• Last batch arugula (it's starting to flower. Seeds soon!)

Delayed from the garden today:

• Sowing more peas
• Transplanting cabbage and broccoli to garden

I ran out of time to sow the peas. I'll have to get up extra early tomorrow for that one. As for the cabbage and broccoli starts, they are delayed due to weather. The next two days are highs in the 40's and raining. I'm going to wait until this little chilly snap is gone and we are back in the 50's. I don't want to freak the little guys out.

Monday Morning Progress.

Here's a couple photos from this morning's pre-work garden session. I started pulling up the cover crop.




I didn't do anything to the clover and it took off over the winter. This bed had the poorest growth last year and I'm hoping the cover crop will help with that. Legumes have nitrogen fixing nodules on their roots that help put nutrients back in the soil and increase the soil fertility. They also help keep weeds down and naturally fluff the soil with their fibrous roots to make my job come spring a little easier.

The kale has started to flower. That means I'll get to save seeds soon. Good thing, I think I'm out.

Weekday Bread.

The all day bread rise the other day worked. I turned on the oven as soon as I got home and we had fresh-out-of-the-oven whole wheat Italian feather bread to go with our pasta dinner, arugula salad from the garden on the side, of course.

Early rise baking.

It's starting to get lighter earlier in the mornings. I have a really hard time getting out of bed before the sun comes up, something I should remedy if I want to focus more on agricultural pursuits. I was able to get up a little early this morning and had time to start a loaf of bread for dinner tonight. It's a quick loaf normally; it only takes one rise of about an hour. I left it in the fridge this morning though so that hour-long rise can take all day. Hopefully when I get home tonight I can turn on the oven and have fresh homemade bread within the hour.




And, Mike, if you are reading this, sorry I left doughy dishes in the sink. I didn't get up early enough to do the dishes too. Oops.

On the last day of March, Year Two.

Last year on the last day of March I posted several pictures from around the ranch. Here's year two.

**This is a couple days late in posting, but the pictures were taken on March 31st.**

Overwintered garlic and shallots:

Overwintered arugula. We've been having one or two arugula salads a week lately. Arugula + gargonzola + balsamic vinegar = yum.

Overwintered lettuce. Still making a comeback! We can try out a lettuce salad in another week or so.

Radish sprouts. Last year at this time we were already done with the first radish harvest.

New growth starting on the raspberries:

Pea sprouts:

Bolting kale. I'm hoping to harvest seeds soon. We'll get maybe one more harvest of leaves from these guys. There are spring kale sprouts coming up as well, but there will probably a month long gap between the two.

Bifur found me in the garden. He wanted to help. Or he wanted pets. It's hard to tell.