Winter Farm Update

But is it really winter? Do you guys remember last winter? I don't think I'll ever forget last winter! Exactly one year ago we finally got water back after two weeks of frozen pipes. We had a bunch of snow, frigid temperatures and were living in a double wide that was so cold that it felt like a tent had to have better insulation. Today, the sun is shining, there's barely any snow and it's supposed to get up to the mid to high 30s, just like yesterday and the day before. On days like today it can get up to 65 degrees in the greenhouse, granted it still gets really cold at night, like 3 degrees cold!


We do have a few things growing in the greenhouse, albeit slowly. I just need days to be a little longer days full of sunshine and of course warmer temps would be lovely. I'm hoping that by mid-February we will be eating salad greens, kale, spinach, arugula and hopefully radishes from the greenhouse. It'll be a little longer wait for beets and ages still for leeks and broccoli.

And of course I'm planning for the spring! Last year by April I had tomatoes, green beans, and and a whole bunch of other stuff growing in the old greenhouse. I may have started things a little early this year, but I've already started peppers and eggplants. It has taken almost a month for them to even to sprout, but now almost too many of them have! I'm hoping to have them planted in containers by April (depending on weather of course!) in our little greenhouse and maybe by August we'll have an insane amount of 4-6 different kinds of peppers and eggplants.

A year ago we did not have chickens and I barely remember life without them! We are getting 6-7 eggs a day. We keep waiting for the day that it's going to be too cold and they are going to go on strike and in preparation we have been keeping a back stock of eggs. Our inventory keeps getting bigger (right now we're at 6 1/2 dozen!) and the hens just keep laying! Maybe it's because they're happy that they have a rooster again!


As I may have mentioned out old, huge rooster started attacking people, so he had to go, if ya know what I mean. A friend brought a baby chick over that she was pretty sure was a rooster. I named him Gandalf the Grey in hopes that he would grow into the name. Then a few things happened that confused us. We got a few eggs that looked like the kind of eggs a hen lays when she is first starting out, then we got an incredibility small egg. It was that super small egg that convinced us that our rooster must actually be a hen....damn! We wanted a rooster to start incubating and raising chicks in the spring-where are we going to get a new rooster in the middle of winter!

Well, we were wrong. Our rooster we thought was a hen is a rooster. How to we know this? Even though he is still smaller then all of our hens, he's started doing things that only a rooster would do. No, he's not crowing yet, but lets say that I don't think we need to worry about having fertilized eggs to incubate this spring!


And then there's Fang II. He is ever present, constantly following me around while I'm outside and doing his best to slip inside. He's really good at getting inside and his Christmas present was a day and night napping in the house. Now he thinks that where's he's supposed to be and the constant scratching on the door is getting pretty annoying!


Inside we have a little arboretum going on! This was a great Christmas for trees! I got both a dwarf fig tree and a meyer lemon tree. They both look kind of sad right now, but I will nurse them to be amazing trees (I hope!)


I'm so glad Keith puts up with all of this! I can't wait for this spring and summer when we have veggies growing all over the place, not just little baby sprouts!

Merry Christmas!

Thinking about writing this, it felt like I was going to write one of those holiday newsletters that no one actually reads the whole way through-maybe that's how this always read. With days full of work and evenings full of getting ready for Christmas there just hasn't been time to write anything.

On Sunday December 5th, Keith got up early to go on his first hunting trip with his friends Nic and Ed. Keith was pretty certain that he was going to come home empty handed and looked at this trip as a learning experience. At least he looks good in camo!


Long story short, Keith came home with an elk! I'm sure if you haven't heard the story yet, Keith will be happy to tell you! I've heard it a number of times, but I know I still can't do it justice! Keith shot a 2 (ish) year old female elk at about 3 in afternoon. It was his first shot on his first hunting trip! It starts to get dark here at about 4 so Keith, Ed, and Nic worked fast in the dark and cold to butcher this huge animal (at least 500 lbs!). Keith brought it home in 5 different game bags that we hung in the shop in the garage.



So you can take your elk to be 'processed', but we know Keith won't let someone else do that! For the next week and half or so our kitchen was butchering central and our whole house smelled like meat!



Keith even hand ground all the meat! We got about 45 thick steaks, 30+ pounds of ground meat, and at least a dozen huge roasts-it's amazing and our freezer is a bit overwhelmed!


And BJ got a huge elk bone to munch on!


And that's that-we have over 200lbs of elk in the freezer and it is delicious!

This house lends itself to wanting to go crazy decorating for Christmas. This year we have the biggest Christmas tree I have ever seen and it was not easy to get in the house.


We cut this massive tree down from our backyard. It had been planted too closely to a couple other trees and a bush that were all slowly strangling each other the bigger they got. The tree didn't look that big outside-inside it looks huge.


We only had enough decorations for the top half of the tree-or a regular size tree-so it took some time to get it all trimmed. Finally, we got it done!



The greenhouse is going well, I'll write about it ad nauseum sometime soon!

Merry Christmas to everyone! Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday and that everything we shipped arrived on time! We'll be hanging out at home feasting on delicious prime rib, drinking too much wine, and eating way to many sweets.

A good old-fashioned greenhouse raising!

Over the past four weeks or so Keith and I have been focused on one thing and one thing only-getting this greenhouse up! We bought a kit from Oregon Valley Greenhouses. Saying it's a kit makes it sound so simple! It was really all the giant pieces of a 16 by 20 ft structure and some confusingly vague instructions. It took a while, but we finally got it all up!

We prepared a section in the pasture that gets an amazing amount of sun even in the winter and has kind of a sweet view!


BJ and Fang (now referred to as Ebony and Ivory) were helpful throughout the whole project. I'm pretty sure that Ivory/Fang is hoping to live in the greenhouse-that will not happen!





For the frist few days of working on the greenhouse were absolutely beautiful! Warm sunny days in the 60s and 70s were perfect for pouring concrete and framing the structure. Most of my job on these days was holding the metal posts level while Keith left for 20 minutes to mix concrete, that kind of sucked, but at least it was nice out!


Then winter descended with a vengeance! Snow, freezing temps and wind made hours of working outside less enjoyable, but thank goodness for smartwool and snow pants! This amount of snow this early in the fall was as a reminder as to why we are even building this greenhouse.



The part I was really worried about was pulling and the securing the plastic on to the frame. Through this whole project it was just Keith and I working together and I thought this was the time to get more that two pair of hands involved. Keith firmly believed we could do this together and I have to give it to him-he was right and we got it up with pretty much no problems at all! After that we just had to put the corrugated plastic ends on and we were good to go!



Today was the first day I had time to actually work in the greenhouse! I planted my little broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, endive, and leeks sprouts that I hope survive through the winter! I also planted seeds of beets, carrots, radishes, and even more lettuce. Please grow! But take my word that there is something really planted under there because this is what the inside of the greenhouse is going to look like pretty much all winter-rows double covered with frost protection fabric.


Today started out sunny and while I was out there working today the temperature got up to 75 degrees inside! But while I was in there the weather turned dark and stormy-at the moment we are having a mini blizzard!


I know I'm planing a little late in the fall/winter, but hopefully soon we'll have some veg!

Not so pretty in pink!

There was so much daunting about buying this house. One of them was the massive amount of ugly wallpaper hanging in this house. The previous owners son is a contractor and he did his best to talk me out of even trying to take the wallpaper off. His story was that it took he and a friend over 20 hours to remove the paper in one of the rooms, so I should just give up before I start. He thought I should paint over the paper, wallpaper over the paper or just leave it-none of these were acceptable options! We've going to be in this house for a very long time and this ugly crap has to go!

Streamer in hand, I got started in just about the most hideous room in the house-the room of pink bows. Please note the beautiful valance they left in the window!


Not even close to 20 hours later all the paper is down! While there is still a little glue on the walls that I have to get off and yes I have to patch up a few places (especially from where they cut the paper with a razor along the drywall instead of taking the time to measure-gee thanks), but it's all off!


It's hard not to think there's a special place in hell for people who put wallpaper up, but I guess it's a little early in the removal process to get so melodramatic. I have 2 1/2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and a master bedroom left to go. Up next is the downstairs bathroom, which is pretty terrible. As my friend Jean noted, one better not have too much to drink before going in that bathroom due to the severe nausea that it induces! I will be getting started on that shortly!

What's taters?

Waaaay back in May I decided to plant some potatoes. As usual, I really didn't know what I was doing, but like that's ever stopped me! I planted about a quarter pound worth of tiny little fingerling potatoes. They are good little taters and the perfect size since I was planting them in a container so I could move it with us to the new house.

Planting taters, or I'm guessing any root veggie, is freaking nerve wracking! It's not like tomatoes where you can see exactly what's going on. Instead you just plant them, water them and hope that you have some potatoes in the end. At least a month or so later there were an actual plants growing.

Today, 5 months after planting them, I went out in the garden and the potato plants were so obviously dead. But unlike all other plants, it is a great thing when they die-it means it's time to harvest! Being incredibly optimistic, I thought we were going to get a crazy mother load of potatoes-I was thinking at least 15 pounds. Well, not so much, maybe next year! And I'm sure Fang will be as helpful next year as well!


How about 5 pounds, 5 pounds isn't bad right!? It's 5 pounds more than I ever grown before! Realistically, it will take us a while to go through that taters. I have planted more potatoes in the garden, but it seems that the gophers are throughly enjoying them, along with my rutabagas and turnips!

Two weeks later

I can't believe it's been two weeks in the new house! They have flown by and after taking these pictures it's kind of amazing how much we have gotten done! It is very nice to have Keith in my ear saying it's just been two weeks, we can't get everything done in such a short amount of time so we should absolutely make time for fun too-which we have!

Where to start? Well the chickens are very happy! While they have escaped a few times (and gotten in the garden-argh!), I think we fixed the problem and we are getting about 6 eggs a day. One of the best parts of this house-the chickens have their own space and we no longer have 8 chickens and a dog begging for dinner when we eat outside!


But now we have a dog and a cat begging for dinner. Fang 2 is not allowed inside-although that does not stop him from trying-but when we are outside he is always trying to get attention. BJ and Fang 2 still do not get along, but hopefully that will change and no more blood will be shed between them (BJ is just fine, he just needs to get a little tougher or smarter)


The garden-Fang loves to help pick raspberries in our little jungle of berries. We've gotten enough raspberries to make jam and still have a gallon in the freezer. I should probably out there picking right now, but oh well, they'll still be there tomorrow! The rest of the garden is doing well, pretty much everything has sprouted. I tried so hard to take pictures that didn't have weeds in them, but honestly that is just impossible. Weeding sucks and I know I need to do it, but I am in no hurry!




Our little greenhouse is working, well mostly working. The door won't stay on and some wasps built a nest in there this week, but besides that it's great!


We love this this view! We love it even more now that there is not a single bird house in it! And the back yard is no longer divided up into eights by random fences-the yard is getting amazing!


Shall we go inside? There are a lot of random closets in our house and we are using one of them in a way that I am sure was never intended-beer closest!


The rest of the house is coming together. Keith put our bed together a couple days ago and generally it's starting to feel more like home, but still it feels kind of barren at times.


The fun we have had has mostly been huckleberry picking. This can be very tedious, but we have had a couple beautiful days and found an amazing spot (which we will be keeping mostly secret). We've gotten enough to make jam and have some in the freezer, but I don't think they are going to last long! We've already have huckleberry pancakes twice and huckleberry waffles this morning and they are amazing!

We have the guest bed put together, so when are you coming to visit?