The Quick Sprout

Remember me talking (cryin) about how my mini vacation resulted in some of my seedlings (cat and no water) getting ruined? Well, this past Sunday night, I restarted some of the seeds I lost. Brandywine tomatoes, zucchini, spaghetti squash, cherry tomatoes and butternut squash. I intended to replace the sweet and hot peppers but I ran out of peat pellets. All these seeds take between 7 and 14 days to sprout and all have sprouted in just 4 days in the ziploc baggies. This is with 2 overcast (cold and rainy) days. I so love the baggie method! So, with the first day of spring upon us, I'm only behind a couple of weeks now. I hope to find my way to the farm store tomorrow to pick up some peat pellets and finish up my restart.

Todays Experiment

Since it poured rain all day yesterday and is still overcast, I have decided to follow up yesterdays batch of cheddar cheese with some caraway cheddar today. While the cheese is setting, I'm going to work on more dehydrated eggs. "Watcher" from over at APN agrees with me on the taste of dehydrated eggs for eating but he says they work great for baking. So, I'm going to do a couple dozen more and store them for when I don't have any fresh eggs.

Since it's not blowing rain this morning, I opened up the barn doors and now Lucky the goat is running around on the front porch, calling for me. I hate to not let him in but he's big enough now that he does damage in the house. he's a goat and he is just doing what goats do, chewing on everything, jumping on everything and head butting everything. It breaks my heart listening to him cry but I can't sit out there with him all day and comfort him. He's a goat. There's other goats in the barn. he'll get if figured out.

cold and rainy Monday in March

Like the saying goes :"in like a lion, out like a lamb". Freezing rain over night and it was pouring cats and dogs this morning for chores. The rain on the barn roof was deafening and Daisy Mae was full of spunk. She knocked my milking seat (5 gallon bucket) over and kept running by and kicking it on me. Goober is doing well, producing 3 gallons a day, even with Daisy suckling. I decided to leave Daisy on her instead of raising her separated as some dairy folks like to do. I think she will be healthier if left with Momma and I don't need milk "that bad".

Funny, Elvis the cat has eaten the tops off of every seedling I started except the tobacco. Imagine that, LOL. She even hit the Romas pretty hard. I split 2 of the tobacco plugs up late yesterday afternoon and this is how they look today. They'll still need to be either split down farther or thinned out later on. Even so, I'm pretty pleased with it all.

I'm working on some cheddar cheese today...

Just Another Day in March

I finally caught up on sleep and woke up bright and early this morning. Too bad daylight savings is going to screw me all up again, ;) The cow behaved this morning, more or less and I now have 3 gallons of milk to make some cheese with. My son has been invited (by a girl) to hang out today so I promised to drive him over there (round 30 miles). So, the cheese making will probably be late this evening, after milking tonight.

I've already got some eggs in the dehydrator in an attempt to try making some powdered eggs. Not too sure how that's going to turn out.

On the other hand, I've already got rolls done for the weekend and a batch of butterhorns. Now all I have to do is figure out what I'm making for supper...

The seedlings are starting to shape up from the damage my mini vacation caused them. I guess the kids don't see the importance of keeping seedlings moist like I do. I ended up losing about half. So much for the early start on the garden. Oh well, something always seems to happen to wipe out all my efforts, every year. I'll still have one heck of a garden, just not as quick as I like. On with life.......