Picture Monday

 Yes, it's picture Monday.  Here's the 2 sets of twins born right after Lil Sister.

 Here's 3 of the quads and the single, the 4th quad wouldn't get close enough to the pack for the picture.  He's a bit of a loner.

 The strawberries I planted last week Wednesday.  They looked dead when I planted them, pushing leaves nicely now.

 Onions and garlic in this box, another one next to this one just with garlic in it.

 Brussel Sprouts and kolorabi which needs thinned again.  I'm the only one here that eats these so a large quantity isn't needed.

 The very angry hen with her 10 chicks in the half done chicken house.

The darn red taters need hilled, again!  I just hilled them a couple days ago and they've tripled in size in just a few days.  I really like the tire method, keeps it all so nicely contained and hilling is a snap.

The nasty storm is upon us, lightning crashing and it's raining steady.  Glad it's not a pounding rain with all those seedlings out there.  I couldnt fit the peppers, tobacco (which looks pitiful after transplant) zuccs and tomato picture in this post!

Time Drags on

No cool pictures today, I finally got up enough change to get new batteries for the camera, changed them and the pictures are gone. That figures. The huge blizzard missed us almost completely. We saw a day of pouring rain and another day of light snow flurries that is gone already, even with the bitter cold temperature. Hmmm, what a disappointment.

I'm getting kind of antsy waiting those last few days before I can officially start seeds. I may not make it this year, LOL. I think I recall that I didn't make it last year either! My local Rural King has tons of seeds set out and several heirloom varieties. The packs are calling to me! I can hear them whispering "come plant me". I am pretty excited about this coming season. So many things to do, so many plants to grow. I can't wait to work additional dirt for the tobacco and the new spot for the beans and corn. with the prices on the commodities market continuing to climb, my home grown feed corn is more of a necessity than it ever was. I used to grow it because I could, now I will grow it because I need to grow it to survive. I may even try a crop of summer wheat to add into my flour mix.

Oh, the cow is officially dried off until she calves. Goober was actually drying herself off, giving a little bit less every day. Guess mother nature knows best. Since the Amish fellow I bought her from hadn't a clue when she is actually due, I'm guessing at it as well. The calf inside her is still rolling around so I know it's not in the next few days at least. The goat milking isn't going as well as I had hoped it would but I'll get that worked out sooner or later. The doe is the brown and white one I got from another Amish fellow and she's about the same as the cow, rodeo material. I don't mess with her near as much as I should, she's hard to catch.

So, not much else is going on around here, just waiting on spring to come around so I can get to cleaning up the farm, working the gardens and getting another season of feeding us going....

Sort of a Milestone

Look at this beauty! Found him/her on the kitchen curtain this morning. Ah, the joys of having no window screens.

This post is sort of a milestone for me. This is post number 300! I spent the day thinking about this whole blog adventure, all the way back to when my only followers were shywolf, grumpyunk, mayberry and bullseye. I am so blessed that all of you have chosen to be a part of this adventure with me. Thank you everyone, God Bless.

Today was kind of a lazy day. I spent the morning restacking 400 bales of hay. I pulled the entire stack down to the barn isle and changed the way it was. The chickens let me know I didn't have it stacked well enough to please them the first time around and they threw around 15 bales on the floor, right out of the middle. let's see em knock them down now, LOL. I also moved a bunch of the panels I have around here so I could get the horses to eat down the near waist high grass in the barn lot. The ticks and chiggers were getting to be a bit of a pain in the ass from having to wade thru that grass tending critters. It looks like we're not going to get the mower fixed this season. We just don't have anything left after the bills and fuel each week. This sucks.

This evening, I spent a couple of hours cleaning up my kitchen. Every day it's a complete and total disaster without me ever going in it. Long story, not going to get into it here but I can assure you, it's never ending and very depressing. I took a break about half way thru it and picked some produce from the front garden. A nice, fat zucchini, some sweet peppers that went right into the quiche, some yummy beefsteak tomatoes and some kidney beans. Pods were dry but the beans still need a little drying. My cat Squeakers helped me pick the beans, she was stealing the pods out of the bowl and eating them. I guess she likes kidney beans. Hope she doesn't decide to start eating them right off the plant or I'll not have any beans left!

I'm still picking blackberries every other day. I need to learn how to carry more than one container at a time, LOL. Maybe I will whip up some jam tomorrow.......

Sunny Days and a stiff Breeze

The wind is whipping today but it's sunny and warm. I love that! The old cat in the house, Cookies, decided she would get even with me for whacking her yesterday(she peed on my doormat) and tore up my strawberry planting. Shame on her but I will just have to restart it. I found tiny little sprigs of green in the ice cream bucket I planted my chives in 4 days ago. I love it when seeds sprout quick! Speaking of seed starting, I saw my good friend ScifiChick did a really cool post about seed starting. Scifi did some research and has several ways to start seeds, including a method using egg shells! The blog is called Bacon and Eggs, go check it out!

I learned something new just the other day while I was blog reading. I've used the old tire method to grow potatoes several times but I never thought of doing what blogger upinAK suggests. Potatoes and old tires....... I'm working on cutting a sidewall off all the tires I have here and getting my taters going in them. As I mentioned last year, my potatoes were hit hard by the heavy, constant rains southern Illinois suffered thru during our planting season. My potatoes pretty much drown. With this new method for the tires, I can see a great crop this year.
Today is kind of a mix of several little projects going on here. Mostly in and around the kitchen. I've got cheese going on the stovetop and I'm working on another variation of ingredients for the hash brown crust egg pie. I sold a couple dozen eggs yesterday but i still have 11 dozen in the fridge so we're going to have to eat some of them.

the boy and I found another $28 worth of aluminum cans. Thanks to a couple people that have helped us out, we're just about $100 from making it to the paycheck. Thank you for the help!

We'll be turning the garden spots next weekend and possibly putting some seedlings out. Weather permitting of course......

A Productive Day

Today is the day we decided we were finally going to tackle some of the trees that are laying on the ground from our inland hurricane. We have at least 30 trees of varying sizes knocked down in our fence lines. We spent 7 hours with the chainsaw and have just 3/4 of one bigun cut up. I did a little log splitting with the good old 8lb maul while I was working on grinding some feed. Split some, grind some. I wasn't finished with the feed before it got dark so I spent some time reading the latest edition of Mother Earth News. I love this magazine as it always has something in it I can use in my sustainable farming adventure. This months issue(Dec/Jan) is a dandy and has recipes for no-knead healthy breads, a nice write up about solar panels, one about a DIY pole barn, another article on heirloom fruits and vegetables and here's the best article this issue....... drum roll please........ Grow $700 of food in 100sq feet! You do know how small of a space that is, right? The author used a 5x20 spot and, well, get yourself a copy of the new issue and read it, it's great!

Daily critter patrol

Look what I found this morning during morning chores. A new set of kittens, i think they are Shadows kittens. Like I need any more to add to the list of kittens I need to give away. Cats are an important part of farm life. Whithout them i would be over run with mice from all the grains i grow and store here. But, one must draw the line somewhere! I have at least 10 kittens that need new homes if anyone wants a kitten.....

One of my new does kindled this morning. She did not pull a single mouthful of hair. She's got 15 kits in the box, all are freezing to death. There's nothing I can do about it either. Maybe her sister will do better, she should kindle any moment.

The black and white cat is Mop. She's the only long haired kitten we've ever had here. She was in a litter of 4 and the only long haired one of the bunch. She got stepped on by a horse about a month ago and her tail was mashed. if you notice in the picture, she now has a stub for a tail. The dead tail finally fell off her this morning and she is a different cat in both looks and personality. She's happy to be rid of the dead tail, laying there purring like a chainsaw........

I found one of my young banty hens defending a nest of eggs this morning. I'll keep an eye on her to make sure she's really gone broody and if so, I'll set her up for a little cat and puppy protection for her and the nest. I might get some new banty chicks now!

Well off to shovel some compost for my indoor winter gardens. I need to get it inside and warming up so I can get seedlings started before the really cold weather makes them not want to germinate..........

New Goals for Self Sustained Living

Way back when I first started blogging, I wrote a post supporting container growing and how it can benefit just about everyone. This is one of my favorite pictures, it shows that even an apartment dweller with very limited space can grow some of their own food. Even if it's just a couple meals a week, that is better than not at all! You can put plants in just about any empty container allowing enough room for the root system of the plant. Things like tomatoes need more room than a bunch of carrots, even garlic and onions can be container grown.

I have personally grown dwarf bananas, tobacco, coffee, cantalopes, tomatoes, carrots, shallots, garlic, radish, cauliflower, lettuce, sweet peppers, cucumber and tons of herbs thru the winter in my kitchen windows.

I have and still use things such as ice cream buckets to grow plants in. anything that will hold dirt and water is fair game here! I prefer 3 and 5 gallon buckets as they are easier to handle, stack well for storage and are just plain easy to get around here. For bigger containers, I like the cattle tubs(big buckets mineral mix for cows come in) as the cattle pastures are full of them. It seems farmers can pack those heavy things out to the field but have a hard time picking up the empties! So, I always ask to get them and no one has ever said no to me. A couple of holes punched along the bottom edge for drainage, we don't want rotted roots, and some compost mix and the plants. Works out pretty good! After a few weeks of good growth, it's time for a little fertilizer. You'll want to keep on top of that, especially if you have heavy feeders such as tomato plants. The more you feed a tomato, the better your harvest. If you think your plants are getting too tall, do just like you would in a regular garden and pinch the top suckers off so the plant bushes out more than it grows up.

Keep an eye on the moisture level and you'll do so well, you'll wonder why you haven't been container gardening all along.

There's plants that have been bred specifically for container growing such as the tom thumb series of tomatoes and peppers but even regular garden varieties will grow in containers. it's harder to control plants such as cherry tomatoes since they vine all over the place so stick with the bush variety of whatever plant you choose to grow and the plant will do much better for you without extra labor intensive attention.

Now, go find a bucket and plant something for those windows!

Late night, busy week

I had a temporary hiccup with the computer giving me 2 days without so I haven't had a chance to respond to the new comments from my last post... I will soon tho. Turns out Microsoft sent out and update that conflicted with my Kodak Easyshare software, caused it to show a fatal error and when my anti virus updated and needed a computer reboot, Windows could not load with the looped error from the Kodak. Sweet, thanks Mr Gates, appreciate that.

So, it's been a busy weekend and lots to share. It's been cold overnight here the last 3 days, in the low 40's! Thankfully, the cantalopes don't seem to mind too much and I've been having fresh fruit for breakfast every day. The rest of the summer garden appears to be smoked tho, all but the container tomatoes. The fresh ground whole wheat made a beautiful loaf of bread with nice slivers of wheat too. I would have taken a pic of the baked bread but the kids vultured it too quick.

Hubby got a steroid shot in his elbow and we're thinking he's having some sort of side effect. The poor guy has swollen feet and legs. It looks awful. Good thing he's got a Doc appointment in the am.

I need to say a huge "thank you" to several great people that helped me to fix my haybine. You guys are great and I'm back in the hay field tomorrow. Hubby did most all of the work while I moved and restacked 200 bales of hay in the barn this weekend. I tested it this afternoon and it's all good! Just in time too, 50 acres of alfalfa await me in the morning. Thanks again you guys, you're the greatest! Is it okay if I send ya's Christmas cards this year?

I'll be in the hay field all week so farm updates will be late in coming. I hope to get right on the corn crib as soon as it's all done out there and I'll be posting pictures as well. Also, the back corn patch will need turned so I can plant the wheat I need to post about. I should have posted about it back in the spring, sorry about that, but this way you all will get it right from the start....

Oh, I found the chicken I lost. Apparently she fell off the hay bales and got stuck behind them. I found her dead as a doornail, upside down when I was restacking the hay. Well at least I know what happened to her now.

The dehydrators have been going pretty much non stop for a few weeks now, I just pulled out some herbs, sunflowers and the last of the soup beans. I've got tomatoes pulp simmering down on the stove to make sauce with, 2 wheel of traditional cheddar in the presses this evening and the second loaf of bread should be done in a few minutes....

Those darn cats

You guys remember my farm cat, Yoda? One of the 2 I bottle fed thru last winter, one of the coffee plant killers? He's now around 9 months old and quite an attention hound. He's a real companion cat, loves attention and often lounges on the couch, usually wallowed half on you. Today has been filled with thunderstorms so it's been kind of a lazy day. Yoda came in around 5:30 while I was making pizza. Our evening entertainment is the animated film, Ice Age along with Ice Age 2. Yoda slept thru the first one on the couch. When we put the second movie in, e had to watch the animated short with Scrat the squirrel. Yoda suddenly came alive, dashed to the TV and sat down staring intently. He made a few attempts to catch Scrat and even tried to catch the acorns during the credits. No I'm sue he isn't the first cat to do this but it's the first time one of our cats has done this and it's very entertaining. He was actually watching TV.

BTW, the pizza was all home grown, dough, onions, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon, sausage and the cheese......

Harvest start for self sustained living

Well folks, it's about time to go get the wheat. Have a couple more days of rain in the forecast then some dry weather. Looks like I can "pick" my wheat Saturday or Sunday. I will share pictures and a description of how I do it.

Normally my first garden harvest is cucumbers but I lost all my plants during our inland hurricane. They got ripped off the trellis. Not to worry tho, I have a whole line of cucs coming up and a few already flowering all in a row close to last years crop spot. I guess I missed one or 2 and the seed scattered when I cleaned the trellis. That's a good thing for this crazy year!

Looks like I've lost hubbys potato patch. I checked it this morning and every single plant has gone to flower. I picked the flowers off but that won't help. So much for the potato crop this year. I'll be there isn't 20lbs of tater in those hills. Well, now I know not to trust hubby with the tater hills!

I picked my first zuchinni last night. A nice, 8" long zucc. Will make a nice batch fried. The bell peppers are flowered now, I lost one to the goats but the others should produce enough on their own. Tomatoes are flowered with tiny tomato buds on them. I will also be harvesting my first round of broccoli in the next day or 2.

I checked the corn patch this morning and the 4 new rows have popped up along with the beans, sunflowers and peas. Still waiting on the cantalopes, they should be up in another day or so. Going to get another 4 or 5 rows or corn planted along with the kidneys and the rest of the melons today and tomorrow.

Self Sustained Living- eating with what you grow

I thought maybe you all would like an example of a nice meal made with things you grow. Now, I didn't make the noodles, I bartered a dozen eggs for a bag of vege rotinis with a neighbor that makes them. Everything else was produced on my own farm.

Last night I caught up 6 young chickens I raised and butchered them this morning. I don't pluck feathers here, too messy. I just skin my chickens and cut the meat off the carcass and throw the rest- well, you don't really want to know.... Anyway, I have my chicken in a bowl of ice in the fridge for half the day and then I just cook it in a fry pan with some water and some herbs I also grew. When the chicken is done, I simply cut my pieces into small chunks and set them aside while I finish my noodles. I put parsley, dried red bell pepper, minced onion, basil, oregano, minced garlic, some salt, a dash of pepper and a bit of olive oil into a bowl, mix it together and toss my noodles in my seasoning. I add my chicken and some grated home made cheese to it and it's ready to eat.

So, basically, I just showed you how to make yourself a nice pasta salad just like what you would buy in a box from the grocery store without the ferous sulphate, mononitrate, matodextrin, MSG, partially hydrogenated oil, calcium stearate, hyrolyzed corn proteins or any of the growth hormones and antibiotics commercial chicken has in it. Yum, that stuff all sounds so good, doesn't it? Thanks but no thanks! Living self sustained, growing the things that you eat doesn't mean you can't eat all the things you love to eat. You just don't buy them from a store. You are also eating so much healthier without all those chemical preservatives and additives. Think of the money you just saved too.