Monthly Archives: December 2008

Knitting frenzy

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Since Kaia and I took that knitting class at the beginning of the month I have been having so much fun knitting! I think I’ve really got it now! (And no, I don’t think I’m nesting yet :-))

knittingfrenzy

First I knitting Toby some wrist/hand warmers. I got the basic pattern from a youtube video and tweaked it so that they were larger and longer to cover more of the forearm.

Then, I started on a rainbow set for Kaia (I got the pattern from here and decreased the size to fit a child’s hands). Isn’t the wrist ruffle cute??? After knitting one, which I thought turned out adorable, she decided she didn’t want them and now one of her stuffed animals wears it as a sweater. I may knit myself a pair!

Then I went on to a hat pattern. I knitted myself the red hat (that Kaia is wearing) from this site (on the side bar under “for you”). Toby liked it so I altered the pattern so that it didn’t have holes in it and was larger to cover his ears.

Then, I decided we needed some new dish cloths and used this cute pattern (the yellow one) to knit up a couple.

This is fun!! Unfortunately, I’m spending too much money buying new needles and cool yarn!!

Seeds have been ordered…

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…and when I look at what I’m wanting to grow next year, even though I’ve planned out the whole garden, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. 🙂 I like having things organized and it’s been a few years since I’ve gardened (since we’ve been building). Now, I don’t remember all the stuff I knew… like starting seedlings, floating row covers, companion planting, cover cropping, rotating crops, pests, etc. Oy! At least the baby is due before I will need to start the seedlings.

I got my seeds and tubers from FEDCO and Seeds of Change

Sugarsnap Snap Pea
BEAN, POLE, BLACK SEEDED BLUE LAKE
BEAN, POLE, KENTUCKY WONDER
Prescott Fond Blanc Cantaloupe
Sweet Dakota Rose Watermelon
Arava Cantaloupe
Calypso Pickling Cucumber
General Lee Slicing Cucumber
Raven Zucchini
Tromboncino Summer Squash
Saffron Summer Squash
Paydon Heirloom Acorn Winter Squash ECO
Uncle Davids Dakota Dessert Winter Squash
Zeppelin Delicata Winter Squash
Squisito Winter Squash ECO
Jarrahdale Pumpkin
Rouge Vif detampes Pumpkin
Red Ace Beet
Chioggia Beet
BEET, LUTZ SALAD LEAF
King Sieg Leek
Copra Onion
Red Bull Onion
Space Spinach
SPINACH, AMERICA
New Zealand Spinach
Summer Lettuce Mix
Winter Lettuce Mix
Greens Mix
Bright Lights Chard
Forest Green Parsley
Windsor Broccoli
Fiesta Broccoli
Winterbor Kale
Golden Self-Blanching Celery
Pingtung Long Eggplant
Rosa Bianca Eggplant
Cosmonaut Volkov Tomato
Cherokee Purple Tomato
Rose de Berne Tomato
Pineapple Tomato
WOW! Tomato ECO
Peacevine Cherry Tomato (I’m going to plant the cherry tomatoes on the outside of the chicken coop so that some of the plant can droop into the coop and the chickens can enjoy some of the harvest 🙂
Amish Paste Paste Tomato
Potatoes: Banana, Caribe, Sangre, All Blue, Elba, Red Cloud
ASPARAGUS, JERSEY GIANT
Bouquet Dill
Kablouna Calendula Mix
Resina Calendula
FENNEL, PERFECTION
CILANTRO, SLOW BOLT (SANTO CILANTRO)
There are lots more companion flowers and herbs that I want to get, but I may just buy those as seedlings later.

Introducing the new recruits

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Fezzik (the gentle giant Ameraucana Rooster, 8 months old) Isn’t he lovely?
fezzik

Buttercup (the Buff Orpington Hen, 10 months old)
buttercup

Rosie (the 4 month old Welsummer, dark egg layer)
rosie

So, we are back up to 8 hens, and have 2 roosters now. They are all getting along wonderfully! (Oh, well, that’s mostly because we gave cranky Honey to my brother-in-law after she pecked a nasty wound into Sparkle’s (our baby silkie) neck. She just doesn’t like little ones and if we are going to hatch our own chicks in the Spring, we can’t deal with cranky ladies.) The two roosters are just fine with each other. The Ameraucana is definitely the head honcho, even after just one day. The little silkie rooster is so laid back, he doesn’t care. Though our silkie would crow at 7:15 am on the dot every day and that was it. He was very kind to let us sleep in. Fezzik, on the other hand, began crowing at 5:45am this morning and again a little after 6am (what is he thinking???), again at 10:30 and 1pm…. I don’t think he cares about the sun, he just likes to show off his great crow.

They are so much fun to watch!

A lap made for cats

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With two other warm laps in the house, you’d think the cats would learn to move elsewhere as I lose my lap space. But no… they just shove themselves in where ever they can!

catlap

Poodle Noodle’s girlfriends

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We’ve added some ladies to our chicken family… two silkie pullets. One is white (“Snowflake) and probably about 3 months old. The other is blue (I think) and ~2 months old; her name is “Rainbow Sparkle” but Kaia has agreed that it is ok if we just call her Sparkle. They are total sweeties! Sparkle likes to be held and petted. She was getting really picked on by Honey, one of our older Ameraucanas, so we had to separate the new little ones from the rest. Hopefully just for a little while.

Oh, and on an egg note, we got our first egg in months, finally! The old girls are finishing up their molt and the new ones hadn’t started laying yet. But, Vera, our Faverolle, laid her first egg today! Yay!

I love their blue ears!

Wild life

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In the past 2.5 years that we’ve been on the land, we’ve seen surprisingly little wild life. A raccoon and a possum here and there and maybe 2 coyote when we first moved here, but that’s it. But, I do believe this is a bear print. I know bears have 5 toes, but it was the size of my palm and I don’t know what else it could be… it just doesn’t look like wolf, coyote, or anything else. There are two muddy prints on each side of the barrel that holds the chicken food, too. Luckily no damage to anything… it didn’t touch the bee hives. I think Suki needs to sleep outside tonight. She’s been lazing around in the house too much and isn’t doing her ‘farm protector’ duties.

Cock-a-doodle-do

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Yesterday morning, as I was getting Kaia up for school, I thought I heard an odd sound coming from outside. We all stopped dead in our tracks and waited patiently to hear it again…. and there it was, loud and clear… ‘cock-a-doodle-do’. Now, if Crowy were still alive, we wouldn’t have thought this odd. But, since all we have is 6 hens, we were a bit surprised! I ran to the window and looked out to the chicken area to see Poodle Noodle, our little black silkie, puff up his chest, stretch his neck and crow a lovely crow. I had gotten Poodle Noodle because silkie hens are supposed to be fantastic moms…. looks like I need to get him a girlfriend 🙂

Manly Mitts

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Toby heads out to the little cabin every morning to start a fire and begin working. It doesn’t warm up out there for a few hours, and it’s hard for him to keep his hands warm while he’s typing. So, I made him some fingerless gloves, AKA Manly Mitts. Aren’t they cute? It was a really easy project for a beginning knitter. I got the idea from here and then made them a little larger to fit his hands.

Growing seedlings without energy…

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I’m starting to plan out my garden for next year and trying to figure out how to get seedlings grown. It seems like we will need to buy warming mats (to keep the temp. constant) and maybe even grow lights (since we are on the north side of a mountain and may not get enough daylight in Feb. and March). But, I don’t want to spend more money or use the energy to power this stuff. Once it gets warm enough outside, we can use our cold frame for starting the seedlings. But, to get the greens, broccoli, kale, and such started in early March, it will be too cold outside, even in the cold frame. What do you all do?

Big Crafty

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I’ve been feeling really crafty lately! It all started this past Wed. when Kaia and I went to a kids knitting circle. She’s been wanting to learn how to knit, but isn’t really ready to use knitting needles, so we went to the circle to see if we could get some tips for her. She ended up learning how to finger knit and loves it! She started at the circle and knit the whole way home, through the evening and until bed. Then she woke up and knit some more… and then all the way to school, and all the way home. And it stayed like this until she had over 30 feet of finger knitted yarn. She finally finished it up so she could wrap it around our solstice/christmas/yule/festive evergreen tree. Right now she’s only knitting on one finger but this shows the basic idea.

Kaia wrapped herself up in her knitting before wrapping the tree:

After Kaia’s knitting class, I just happened to be headed to a ladies night with some friends and learned how to knit hats. All I’ve ever done up until now was simple stitch scarves and blankets, but I love knitting. I stopped doing it when I tried to read patterns and couldn’t figure out what I was doing. I think I’ve got the hang of it now! Now I just need a high paying job to afford all the awesome yarn that I want to get!! Here’s my first attempt. It was supposed to be a newborn hat, but it turned out a bit wide, though not deep enough for Kaia (but she was gracious enough to model it for me).

Well, then I got inspired to make something with all the tangerine peels we have right now (I ordered one of those citrus fruit boxes!) It wasn’t as easy to do this with thin tangerine peels as I imagine it would be with oranges or lemons, but they still turned out cute!
First, lightly score around the skin. I took off the top 1/3 of the tangerine.

Next peel off the top 1/3 (with the tangerines, I really wasn’t able to save this or make a candle top out of it because it was too small).

Then, slide a spoon under the remaining skin and loosen as much of it as you can, working your way around.

Once it is fairly loose, slide the peel back and work your thumb in to peel the remaining skin off of the bottom. This is tricky as it may want to break at the end, so go slowly.

Once I had a bunch of bottom peels ready, I put some candle wax in a double boiler to melt. Then I got the wicks ready. I used some putty and stuck the wick to a metal candle thingy (don’t know what it’s called) to get it to stay in place better.

Then I pressed this into the bottom of the peel.

Then I poured the melted wax into the peel. After it cooled just a touch, I stood the wick up in the center (if it wasn’t already there).

And here they are… wick trimmed and all. We used red, orange, purple, and blue colors in our wax (though it’s hard to tell from the picture)

Hey, You Out There!

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Is there anyone on the other side of this thing??

Meow!! I mean ROAR!!!

Oh, please don’t let my mighty fangs scare you! I’m really a very gentle cat!

(Pictures taken by John Narrin, the photographer for the New Life Journal. Their building experts came over on Friday to check out our place. They are doing a review/feature on our place in their April, 2009 edition!!)

The Best Garlic Chowder Ever!!!

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Ok, so it’s the only garlic chowder I’ve ever tried, but it is fantastic! I got the recipe from a restaurant in San Francisco called ‘The Stinking Rose’, where every dish is full of garlic. (I found the recipe on-line, so I imagine it’s ok to pass it on.) This recipe made almost 4 quarts, so I think I might double or triple it and can some up (I’ll leave the cream and parsley until I heat it up to eat it)

Garlic Chowder

1/4 cup olive oil
4 ounces bacon, diced (optional)
2 medium onions, diced
1/2 bunch celery, diced
1-2 fresh leeks, cleaned and chopped
5 heads roasted garlic (see recipe below)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
3 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
6 cups chicken stock
Salt and white pepper to taste
1 cup whipping cream (optional)
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

In large pot, heat olive oil. Add bacon, if using, saute briefly, and then add onions, celery and leeks. Saute until onions are translucent.

Remove roasted garlic cloves from head by squeezing the roasted head. Add the soft cloves to pot.

Add thyme, potatoes and chicken stock. Bring to simmer and cook until potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add cream and parsley. Remove from heat and serve. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

To make Roasted Garlic:
Preheat oven to 375
Cut off the tips of the cloves (while the garlic is still part of a head) and place whole garlic head on a baking sheet.
Bake for 30 minute.
Cool and pop/peel the garlic cloves out of their skins.