Time

Its that time.  The time when I have so much I could write about but no time to do it.  I could write a looooong post every single day with all that's going on.  So here is the condensed and illustrated version:

So far, I would have to say that this is my best year ever for the garden.  Things have gotten planted more or less on time and things are coming up.  The garden is a lot of work but I am feeling rather proud of it this year.  There's already lots to do.











 This morning I harvested the calendula.  When I am finished writing this, I will go make salve with it.

But there is lots of other stuff going on in the garden, too.  Tomatoes to stake....

 

 Beds to weed.  There are actually 5 cantelope plants in there.... honest.

My favourite kind of zucchini ready to pick...  yum

I created this bed this year.  Just a little bean tipi with spaghetti squash in the middle (and a lot of weeds...)

Wee peppers

Rhiannon's cherry tomatoes.  She's already eaten several

Cherries!  Most the cherry trees around here are LOADED!  We just need some sun to turn them red!

 





Riotous flower pot and a close up of some Malva that I started from seed.  The picture showed white with purple but this pink is pretty, too.

Harvested herbs.  I am currently drying nettle, lemon balm, mint and oregano.

Newest litter of Satin Angoras.

Marshmallow who is mother and grandmother to the others except for the white one.  These are our replacement meat does growing out in the rabbit tractor.

Growing lambs.  Remember these?  Here are Falafal, Olaf and Rosemary in the background.

And here are the last two on the left.  Astrid there in the middle and her brother, Cydri on the left and handsome Renauld walking towards me.  They are busy eating down the burdock before it blooms in the portable electric mesh fence.

And here is what is left of my layer flock.  2 families of raccoons have killed just less than half my flock.  A guy who traps them is supposed to come and set up some traps.  In the meantime, there is Zeus in the background warding off all raccoons.  There have been no losses since he started hanging out there.

Day of the Tomato

No lambs yet. And I am getting more and more tired. When it finally happens, I'll be so tired, I'll sleep right through it. Right now my concern and anticipation wakes me up early every morning. Monday it was 3:20. Tuesday it was 4am. This morning it was 5am. I stumble out of bed in the dark and down the stairs. Throw on my coat and the headlamp and some clogs and go across the driveway to the sheep pen. Nothing. Yet. It is, of course, inevitable. And although I am on high alert, I am not as anxious as in previous years and I do have a certain amount of confidence in their ability to give do it on their own.

In the meantime I have been busy with tomatoes. My friend and I ended up with 215 seedlings.... yah.... So the last couple of days we have been busy transplanting. We each took 60 for ourselves and some for friends and there are still a lot left over! She took some and I took some of the leftovers. Here are the ones I have.

I am feeling very organized this year. Before we started transplanting, we inventoried them and then planned which ones we wanted to have and added them up. Otherwise we get carried away. 215 seedlings is the evidence of just how carried away we get. And 60 tomatoes is already a lot! So now I know exactly how many of each kind of tomato I have.





All available appropriate space is covered in pots and yoghurt containers of tomatoes. What kinds did I go with, you ask? (c'mon, you could ask!)









Here's my exhaustive list:
1 Mortgage Lifter
2 Orange Cherry
10 Large Italian
6 Oxheart
4 Long Pointy Tomatoes (LPT)
1 German Gold
5 Dr. Wyches Yellow Tomato
5 Red with Orange Stripes
3 Old German
1 Money Maker (you must hear James Brown singing when you read that one...'shake your money maker')
2 Yellow Globe
2 German Pink
1 Orange with Green Stripes
5 Cherokee Purple (from Amy)
2 Black Krim
2 Moskovitch
2 Green Zebra
2 Silvery Fir Tree
3 Purple Pear
1 Early Latah
2 Pink Striped

There did you get that far? 60 (or so... might be 61...) tomatoes. Summer dreaming.... Did I tell you it was sleeting here today? Mixed snow and rain? Yup it was.... In that way, I'm glad there aren't lambs yet. Please warm up!

Spring?

Is spring really 11 days away? Hard to believe when this is the view from my South facing window. See my poor sheep in their snow and ice encrusted pasture?







If, while looking out that same south facing window, you looked down, this is what you would see. I have 148 tomato seedlings sprouted on all my south facing window sills.... And more planted. They aren't all for me but at least 60 of them are. (Amy, click on the photo and look at the label and you will see that the one in the middle says 'Cherokee Purple' - still growing the seeds you gave me for Christmas:)
























Here are my peppers just poking their heads out of the soil to the warm of my friend's plant heat pad and the light of my grow light.









And these are flower seedlings for flower baskets and gardens for Eryn's wedding... ah the preparations....








In the meantime, my garden looks like this. Still half the tomato stakes in the ground from last year because of the sudden and very hard freeze that never let up... well, gives me something to do this spring, anyways....


But what is on everyone's mind who lives in this old house is when can these guys go outside? 50 of them for Eryn's wedding dinner. Normally they would go outside today at 4 weeks old. But the ground is either wet and muddy or covered in snow - no space for these stinky critters. Hopefully next week we'll be able to get them out of the basement....

What I Have Been Doing - Tomato-ing

Isn't that a thing of beauty? The deep yellow are my Dr Wyche's yellow tomaotes, the green are green zebra and the pale yellow are yellow globe tomatoes. I can them without red because otherwise the red takes over.







But I love my reds, too. See this tomato? That is not a small cutting board and that is a rather large paring knife.










A sink full of red goodness.

It all equals more than 50 quarts of canned tomatoes in the cold storage room and a good start on our year's supply of salsa.

Anyways, that's where I have been instead of here.

The Obligatory Garden Pics

I don't know if I'm the only one who gardens based on what happened the year before.... Last year I tried to plant a year's worth of squash and got only 1 squash per plant.... Determined not to have that happen this year.... I pretty much have a garden of squash and tomaotes. This is my biggest bed and it has 6 squash plants in it.











And I commissioned this old stump into service - the squash are doing really well. The rabbits are contributing what they can to help...

And there are 5 more plants here on the last year's compost pile. They seem to love it there.

And that isn't all the squash I have. There is at least 1 squash plant in every bed as well as 4 zucchini plants. We are already getting so much squash between the zucchini, the spaghetti squash and the pattypans to eat squash for almost every meal... it is going to be a squash kind of year, I think....






And of course the tomatoes are really coming along.




I like the jungle-y look of my garden at this time of year - nary a piece of ground to be seen...

Quiet

Rhiannon has gone camping with some friends this week. She left on Saturday and will be back this Saturday. I wondered how she would do - her first time camping without her dad or I. But she seems to be having a blast. Kaetlyn is hardly ever here - working and hanging out with friends, often staying over. And Andrew is busy all day riding his bike. So it has been pretty quiet around here.

It has given us time to do this on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we went to Jade Bay on Kal Lake and Sunday we went to Dean's favourite spot on Okanagan Lake - Ellison and managed to snag our favourite rock. We ate good food, read good books and enjoyed each other's company. It was a very nice weekend. The beach without kids has been very rare in our relationship. Although I love being at the beach as a family, it was nice to be there just the two of us.

I've done some knitting and crocheting, watched some movies (Sense and Sensibility, Miss Austen Regrets, You Can Heal Your Life and finally North and South - all from the library). I've done some mending, sewed up some window washing rags and mops and finished doing my taxes... (I know its late but not as late as last year!)

Tonight I harvested a large basket of Linden blossoms which I am about to wash and set out to dry for tea. My Linden tree is blossoming as it never has before in the 4 summers we have spent here. The tea tastes like jasmine and my whole yard smells like it all day long - a beautiful, heady scent. A friend of mine who grew up with avenues of Linden trees says that the Linden blossom is a symbol for perfect rebirth. I like that. I have been feeling like I am being reborn this winter/spring/summer. I'm in the mood for a perfect rebirth. I'm going to make some of that tea right now!

My Mornings

Warning: Lots of Pictures.

Its 6am and I roll out of bed and pull on my 'milking clothes' of the week - long pants and long sleeves to protect from the mosquitos.

I open the door and step out into the lightly scented morning. From the porch I can see the sheep still asleep around the doghouse. A sign they must have been worried about intruders last night. Otherwise, they sleep under the walnut tree.

But its not time for the sheep first. I'll let them rest.


Around the corner to the back of the house (which was originally the front of the house) The chicks are first on the list. The beauty bush is in full, spectacular bloom. I can see it through both kitchen windows and it gives nice scenery for the chick chores.





Of course, they aren't really chicks any more. They will be moving into the freezer tomorrow or the next day. But they still sound like chicks - with little cheeps and peeps.

First I open the chicken tractor so they can get out. Then I move the chicken tractor over to fresh grazing.


Its not hard to get them back in. I just fill up the feeders and most of them run back in.








Then while I clean and fill up the 10 gallon waterer, I walk the stragglers in.












There they are - all in and eating. Can you see the dark ones? Those are the layer chicks. One week younger but smarter and faster they have managed to survive with these Goliaths.







Then, its the chickens. I fill up their 3 gallon waterer and feeders.











And open the door. Suddenly it isn't so quiet any more.











Marigold starts his morning 'chase and pin'.
































With the hose still on, it is into the garden. See this old stump? Its got 6 squash plants growing in it. I planted them out as seeds and they have all sprouted (+ 1 extra, I only planted 5). There is a White Bush Scallop in the middle which grows like a zucchini and then there are 4 vining ones to sprawl over the edge. I don't remember what kind. I know there's a Queensland Blue... I'll recognize them when they fruit.



Pick weeds for the rabbits.










Here's one of my favourite early tomatoes - Silvery Fir Tree.
















Here's an especially beloved tomato - Cherokee Purple - Amy gave me the seeds for Christmas. There are are couple others in the garden and I gave one seedling to our mother. This one is in the middle of a cucumber patch.





Here's a view down the side. I've planted black currants (Missouri Berry) and some black berries down here next to the hedge of dead tree stumps. The soil is incredible.

And see the wood frame in the corner? That is a cold frame I bought at a garage sale for $5. Its got potatoes in this year but next year it will have peppers.

I set up the hose to do some watering and head to the sheep pen.





I am eagerly greeted by Renauld.

















Grain! Grain! Give me my oats!

I put in his bucket with his cup of oats and tie him up in the corner.







Draga is at the gate before anyone else and I let her out without tying her up. I may only get 1 - 1.3 cups of milk from her a day but it is so darn easy, I just keep going. She runs to the stanchion ahead of me.





















Then its back to the pen to get Brida. She is a little harder. She doesn't like to go near the dog so I have to go into the pen and set out some oats. Freya wants some, too. She jumps up on me like a dog.

I hope I am not going to regret letting her do this when she is a full grown sheep.




Once I've secured Brida, she follows right behind me. I feel like the pied piper. I took this picture by just putting the camera over my shoulder. That's my own wooly, grey hair at the bottom of the photo.













We've now worked out all the bugs out of milking and she also hops right up on the stanchion with minimal coaxing. Can you see that her udder is lopsided? Basil beat me to the right side this morning. That's okay. There's plenty to go around.



This week's milking song was "River of Dreams" by Billy Joel. I now have the entire song memorized. What a great song!









I'm a messy milker. So I don't have any kind of bucket. I just hold yoghurt containers and milk with one hand at a time. It might take a little longer but I don't waste milk by squirting it all over the place.






I put Brida back in the pen and head to the garden.











I move the hose and pick an armful of weeds for the chickens.










The 'old ladies' of my flock are now up. Here's Lacey getting her morning exercise.










Then into the house to strain and measure the milk. I got a bumper amount from Brida this morning - more than 1 3/4 cups. The most I have ever got from her was 2.5 cups at a time when the lambs were first born. I milk morning and evening so she runs around 3 cups a day.

Now it is time to make pancakes with this milk.

And that is my morning - well at least it was my morning until 8am.