Grow, Baby, Grow

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I haven't been able to get much in the ground yet. This past weekend, I finally came home to the frame for a raised bed, but haven't been able to get the soil for it yet. I did plant a lemon thyme border around the patio today, planted a bay laurel in a very large pot, and sowed three types of beans, Japanese climbing cucumbers, rainbow swiss chard, and lettuce (yes, I know it's late, but I didn't have the bed until today and it is heat resistant lettuce).

In other news, I learned how to wash wool this weekend, as well as watching a sheep shearing, at my new place of employment, Mount Vernon. So now I'm up on the processes of wool...processing...from washing, to carding/combing, to spinning, to weaving. I skipped dying, but we'll do that in a couple of weeks.

I'm very in tune with all of the fields at Mount Vernon, even the ones that I didn't have a hand in. I was happy to see the potatoes finally poking their topknots out of the soil after a great deal of delay, and the flax and the buckwheat are certainly flourishing. A few plants even made it home with me: horehound, feverfew, and caraway. I'm hoping to score a few tobacco plants just for decorative purposes as well.

New Job and the Garden

I was a history major in college, and have always been semi-obsessed with history. It's partially how I ended up so interested in homesteading, along with wanting a more sustainable way of life. And so, I ended up with a summer job at Mount Vernon, George Washington's home.

I'm now a week into the job, and I have turned two massive piles of compost, planted a wheat field, made fish nets, filled a raised bed, and cooked with wild chives that I picked on the estate. Quite the skill set, I must say. We have four acres that we're working on, as well as a gristmill about three miles down the road, and we do every step of the process. Come July, we'll harvest the wheat and start treading it in the barn, then take it over to the mill (the mill cheats a little bit and supplements with purchased grain). We're also growing potatoes, corn, oats, buckwheat (which will just be plowed under as green manure), cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, herbs for different uses, and also cotton and tobacco (mostly for demo purposes). Right now, everything that needs to be in the ground is already planted, without much need for maintenance, so we're making fish nets. We'll hopefully be going fishing in the next couple of weeks, wading in the Potomac. We may or may not just do catch and release.

Next month, we'll be shearing the sheep, then washing, combing, dyeing, and spinning. I think the weaving comes in September. I'm pretty excited, and hoping I can score some of the reddish brown wool from some of the Hog Island sheep. I made friends with one of the rams yesterday. They may be dumb, but they are cute. They're just so wooly this time of year! (This hasn't diminished my taste for lamb one bit).

In my own garden, things are starting to happen. I have lots of small seedlings that I'm hoping will survive: Arkansas Traveller tomatoes, Old Virginia tomatoes, Rutgers tomatoes (all heirlooms, and the first two are supposed to do well in heat and be split-resistant, a big problem here); red and white cabbage; marigolds, nasturtiums, and tansy. I also had a great big shipment of plants come yesterday, a bunch of culinary herbs and creeping thymes for a border, as well as kale and leeks. I'm pretty excited for the bounty of the harvest both here and at work!

I'm Dreaming of a Green Garden

I've mentioned my garden a couple of times. This is my third year attempting gardening as an adult.

Year One:

• Jalapeno pepper plant in a pot on the front doorstep flourished and we ended up using the dehydrator we got as a wedding gift to dry many of them, which we used powdered in recipes.
• Tomatoes in the backyard were underwatered and understaked. We got a few, but most rotted on the vine due to neglect, as we never went in the backyard.
• Herbs in pots in the house did alright for awhile, but died due to over and underwatering.
• I was unsuccessful in starting anything from seed since I had no idea what I was doing.

Year Two:

• Jalapeno pepper plant moved in its pot to the backyard. Since I forgot to replace the soil, there weren't enough nutrients and the peppers were stunted. Still fairly successful.
• Bell pepper plan produced a few fruits, but not many.
• Leeks went ok, except for not enough soil and too close together in pots.
• Basil did great in its larger pot.
• I did better at watering, but the massive amounts of rain in the spring drowned a couple of things.
• We planted scallions and cut them all summer.
• Charles built a patio from used bricks and we spent much of the late summer on the patio, and all the plants got more attention than before.

Year Three:

• I'm getting a little ambitious. I've already started some seeds for houseplants as practice. Chamomile, basil, forget-me-nots (probably will go outside) and marjoram are all doing well. Parsley is poking its head out. These were all leftover seeds with varying viability. Some of them did not start, but I blame their age instead of my neglect. I'm using grow lights, watering them regularly but not overwatering, and generally being a good plant mommy.
• The garden is planned, but we might have a hitch in the replacement of the fence depending on the budget. We'll see what happens.
• Assuming all goes well, we'll have the following:
• Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Kale
• Leeks
• Potatoes
• Green Beans
• Dried Beans
• Rainbow Chard
• Onions
• Carrots?
• Strawberries
• Jalapenos
• Cabbage
• Cucumbers
• Lettuce

Now, we're not starting all of that from seed. Some are plants or cuttings. I'm looking forward to trying my hand at preserving, by pickling some of the cucumbers and making sauerkraut. And of course, dried beans. We'll also have a wide variety of herbs and edible flowers, if all goes well. I'll also dry/freeze some of the produce for the winter.

Our apples come from a local orchard where we go apple picking every fall. Apples store well in the fridge, although they get a bit wrinkly. We eat fresh apples for awhile, and when they get wrinkly, we switch to using them for cooking, applesauce, and apple butter. We also use honey from the same orchard's apiary.

I can't wait until we have enough space to have our own orchard and a few chickens. That's about all I want out of life, although Charles would also like a goat.

Garden

With two feet of snow outside, sometimes I despair of the day ever coming when I will actually have a garden. All the same, tomorrow marks eight weeks until the last frost date, so I am trying to keep up hope. Then again, this has been such a wacky winter that I am a bit worried that frosts will persist past that date.

The eight weeks mark means another thing though: it means that it's time to start seeds. I had already practiced a bit by starting seeds for herbs meant to be house plants to keep us going all year, and maybe give us some fresh herbs before spring is fully settled in. Back in January, I sowed German chamomile, sweet marjoram, oregano, chives, parsley, basil, rosemary, and forget-me-nots, which I just happened to have lying around. All of the seeds were from past years, so besides being practice, I wanted to know what was viable before I actually started seeds for the garden. The German chamomile sprouted very quickly, just as it was supposed to, and is growing quite well. The parsley had the longest germination period, but is finally poking its head out of the soil. Unfortunately, it seems that the oregano, chives, and rosemary were not viable. On the other hand, they are part of a plant package that I ordered, so I'm not too bummed about it.

Today, I started the first seeds that will be transplanted outside when the weather improves. We use a lot of tomatoes around here, so I started nine plants, all heirlooms. Four are Old Virginia, four are Arkansas Traveller, and one is Rutgers, which was a freebie from the seed company. I also planted Bullnose peppers, an intriguing variety that has sweet flesh but hot ribs. I started pot cilantro, vital for all the salsa that I plan on making this summer.

Using a heat propagation tray, I started Danish Ballhead cabbage and Red Danish cabbage. The Red will probably be pickled and served at the table, but I plan on using the Ballhead for sauerkraut, a superfood. Also in the tray, I started a different variety of basil, which hopefully will end up decorating our front yard. I also had ordered a seed set of edible flowers, consisting of: calendula, heartsease (AKA Johnny-Jump-Up), nasturtiums, borage, and citrus marigolds. In the non-edible category, I started French marigolds, which supposedly help repel nasty insects like mosquitos. Here's hoping, since we had a bit of a mosquito problem last year.

I'm impatiently awaiting the delivery of a few more seeds: a purple basil named Rosie, some wild bergamot destined for my teacup, and bell pepper seeds. Later on, after our last frost date, some plants will arrive: kale, leeks, and a big selection of herbs. We'll round out our garden with plants from our farmers' market when it opens in May.

That is, if this snow ever decides to melt.

Lent

My husband and I are not particularly religious people, although we both grew up going to church. I always participated in Lent, however, feeling that it was a good exercise in self-control while being easy to explain to people. No one questions your reasons if you tell them you gave something up for Lent.

This year we had talked about boycotting chain stores, but after much research and planning, found that it would be far too expensive for our humble budget, mostly in the food category. I can give up a lot of things, but not food. This morning, with Lent just around the corner, we made a new plan. We will give up the middle of the grocery store. Specifically, we will give up buying foods with unintelligible labels and stick to the sorts of things Michael Pollan would define as food. With no Sunday cheating. We had already given up high fructose corn syrup for our New Year's resolution, so this is really just taking that to a new level.

It would be a lot easier if our garden would be ready, but of course, with three feet of snow on the ground, we're stuck buying food. We'll just buy food that's good for us.

Yogurt

I've been wanting to make yogurt for awhile, but was a bit intimidated by the idea of having to maintain an exact temperature, or even go out and buy tools. A friend uses a heating pad to make hers, but I didn't really even want to buy that.

Then I read on No Impact Man's blog about making yogurt without worrying about an exact temperature. And yesterday, I tried it.

1. Heat a quart of milk until it starts to boil. Shut it off before it boils over.
2. Let it cool until you can leave your pinky in it for ten seconds without it burning. At least, those were the original instructions. I actually did use a thermometer for this part, and waited until it cooled to 116 degrees, the recommended temperature accorded to my dairy book.
3. In a small bowl, large enough to hold two cups and stir, add 2 tablespoons of yogurt with live cultures (you can also add a yogurt starter. Yogurt with live cultures is labeled). Whisk until smooth.
4. To the yogurt, add two cups of the milk and whisk until combined. This is now your starter.
5. Slowly pour the starter into the milk, whisking slowly.*
6. Pour into containers, seal, and put in a warm place covered by a towel overnight.

So, the warm place was the issue for me. We keep our house at 65 degrees, and it definitely has cooler spots. I'd been baking bread earlier, and I had monitored the cooling of the oven, opening it to let some of the hot air out and closing it to hold the rest in. I liked the idea of using heat that had already been generated and served a purpose. I put the yogurt in with the oven right about 116 degrees, turned off but with the light on, and covered it with a towel. I happened to leave the thermometer in until this morning, and it was still 70 degrees.

I didn't leave the yogurt overnight, but took it out after about 8 hours. My book had recommended at least 6. It looked like a good consistency when I took it out. Perhaps my experiment had worked!

This morning, I took it out of the fridge, and scooped some into a bowl to mix with some granola made from scratch at the bakery that I used to work at. The consistency was definitely perfectly creamy and thick. And it tastes great, although I definitely could have added a bit more vanilla. Goodbye, store-bought yogurt. I love mixing vanilla yogurt with frozen fruit or granola, so this is just about all I need. I can't wait to mix fresh fruit in this summer!

*I also added a teaspoon of vanilla at this step.

DIY Dry Erase Board and Shopping Bags

We've been working on planning the garden, and I've been trying to keep track of when things need to be planted, when they should germinate, etc. So, I really wanted a whiteboard to write all this one, so it was more visual than being written in a notebook, and all in one place. But, I didn't want to buy a whiteboard new. I looked on CL, and they all cost a bunch of money. So, I did a search for DIY dry erase board, and found out that you can use dry-erase markers on Plexiglass. Which we happen to have sitting in our basement. So, that's going to get screwed to some sort of frame and hung. Excellent.

In our hall closet, we have a ton of old plastic bags. We use some of them to pick up after Genny, but a large number of them have holes in them. I've heard of people knitting them into reusable totes, so that's what I'm going to try to do. I found a couple patterns to try out. My knitting is only so-so, so I'll see how that goes.