Oops, I did it again...

Oops... I let another long span go by between posts... I had great intentions of keeping up much more closely with my blog this summer, keeping up with regular updates on the garden and whatnot, but that just hasn't happened.  Summertime is twice as busy for me as wintertime, since I have both the inside and the outside to take care of!

The garden is doing really well, things are finally starting to look like plants!  Our first crop of lettuce in the greenhouse is long gone, replaced by lots of tomato plants, the blackberries in the greenhouse are growing, and we've already tasted the first strawberries!  Outside the greenhouse, our outdoors crop of lettuce is getting gorgeous, the potato plants are shooting up and filling out with gorgeous foliage, beans and peas and greens are growing, and the cherry trees are laden with young fruits.  Our hens are doing wonderfully!  We now have 10 Buff Orpingtons (got two from Red's mom that are a couple weeks younger than the original 8), they're about 3 months old now and SO BIG!  They look full grown, but they aren't done yet!  They're probably only around 2-3lbs right now, if that, and Orpingtons can get to be around 8lbs!  They are a hoot to watch, fun to hang out with, though don't wear sandals (and especially not crocs!) cause they love to peck at toes!  The very best is letting them out of the coop in the morning.  They fly and flutter and run around, so glad to be out in the fresh air!

We've had quite a few run-ins with bears this year, far more than usual, and have had to stop composting for a while until we can get some electric fencing up.  We've never had problems with critters like this before.  We had a couple visits last year from bears, but there was a period of about two weeks where we had a bear almost every night, and several visits during the day, which is not so common around here.  We even had a bear rip the cam-strap off our trash can, which has never failed us as bear protection before, so now we keep the trash locked in the zircon up the hill.  We haven't had any trouble the past two weeks or so, but for a while it was getting pretty ridiculous, and we now have a rule that no one goes outside without the dog (at any time of day or night).  Whiskey has definitely earned his keep, chasing bears away!  I'm just thankful we don't have any grizzlies around here, that our bears are relatively smaller and less aggressive black bears.

I'm extremely excited, because a big order of all sorts of fabrics is due to arrive this afternoon!  I'm going to be rebuilding Red's work clothes wardrobe from scratch, and I'm actually really excited about it!  I've made pants before, but never anything with a true tailored waistband and fly.  It should be a really fun challenge, and I can't wait to take it on!

In the meantime, some pictures of the garden and hens, taken today!

 The lettuce and onion bed!

 Blackberries climbing in the center, tomatoes around the walls, strawberries everywhere else

 Pole beans

Some of the many potatoes!

You can grow potatoes!

This post is the first in a series of 'you can do it' type stuff for the garden and whatnot!  We have a number of friends who have become interested in starting to grow their own food, and have asked us for advice on how to get started, so we thought that this would be a great way of helping people learn how to do it!  I would love if you read this post (or any of my posts) and think of someone who would appreciate it, that you pass a link on to them!  Often times starting a food garden for the first year can be a really daunting task, and a lot of gardening books and articles make it seem more complicated than it needs to be.  We hope to be able to spread the knowledge around so more people can learn to grow and enjoy their own food!!!  And so, we start with potatoes!

Though we've been growing food for about 6 years now, we only just did a potato crop for the first time last year, and it was a complete success!  Potatoes are extremely easy to grow, have great yields for very little effort, and are an excellent staple crop that is very easily stored.

Preparing to plant!
Potatoes will grow just about anywhere- in containers, in old tractor tires, in hay, in your compost pile, or any ol' garden bed.  The easiest way (apparently, we haven't tried it yet but want to!) is to just stick them in a mound of hay, let it do its thing, and come harvest time you don't have to work it out of the dirt, you just pull potatoes right out of the hay!  The only rule you really need to follow is making sure none of the potatoes are exposed to light.  Light turns potatoes green, and the green part is slightly toxic.  The way we prefer to plant them is in dirt, in a slight hole (rather than a mound), and cover the dirt with a good bit of hay.  As the tubers grow, if any peek up through the dirt, you can just add more dirt or hay to keep them in the dark.  Anyways, getting ahead of myself here.  All you need is some good, loose soil, and they'd love some compost if you have it (or can buy it).

And of course, you need some potatoes!  You can buy "seed" potatoes at garden stores or online nurseries, which are no different from what you'd buy at the grocery store, except they are probably already sprouting out the eyes.  If you can't find true seed potatoes, you can use potatoes from the grocery store, but you're better off buying organic potatoes (better chance that they are not a hybrid variety; you can't save seed from hybrids to use for next year). (If you buy potatoes from the grocery store, wait until they sprout before you get ready to plant them.  Some store bought potatoes are treated with an anti-sprouting spray.)  Last year we grew organic Russian Banana fingerlings.  This year we are trying Yukon Golds.  Larger potatoes (like Russets) need a longer growing season, so keep that in mind when choosing a variety.

24 hours before you want to plant them in the ground, you will need to cut the potatoes into pieces, with about 3 eyes per piece.  Let them sit overnight in a bowl or paper bag to allow the cut edges to dry, which will protect them from molding in the ground.

Planting day!
The best thing about planting potatoes is that you really can't screw it up.  As long as the ground isn't frozen anymore, you're good to go.  Roots and seeds know when the time is right for them to start growing.  If it's too cold for them, they won't grow until it's warm enough.  Smart, huh?  On planting day, you'll want to dig a hole about 3" deep, and the width of your shovel.  Put one piece of potato in each hole, and make each hole about three feet apart.  The spacing might seem wide, but trust me, the foliage will get huge, and the potatoes need lots of room!  If they cant grow outwards, they'll grow down, which means more digging come harvest time.  Fill the hole back in with the dirt, add some compost if you've got it, and cover with about 2" of hay just over the hole (you can find bales at feed stores, which will have the best certified seed free hay).  If you don't want to use hay, you'll need to plan the potato a few inches deeper in the dirt.  If you want to do them in containers, you'll need a quite wide container, as there needs to be plenty of room for those potatoes to grow!

The Waiting Game...
Different varieties take different lengths of time to get to harvest time, but the time between planting and harvest is really pretty easy.  Keep them watered, don't let the soil get bone dry, and if any tubers start peeking out into the light, cover them up with more dirt and/or hay (Hay is easier cause it's a whole lot easier to remove at harvest time than a whole lot of dirt!).  Potato foliage is beautiful, the flowers are really pretty (not all plants will flower, so don't freak out if yours don't), and some will even form little seed pods that look remarkably like tomatoes.  But BE FOREWARNED!  ALL parts of the potato plant EXCEPT the potatoes themselves are POISONOUS!!!  Potatoes are a member of the nightshade family, so if you have a curious kiddo who happens to like green tomatoes, keep an eye on them that they don't stick a potato seed pod in their mouth (been there, done that with Wyatt!).

Potato blossoms!

Their foliage is so big and beautiful! (That's only about 5 plants!)

Harvest Time!!!
When the summer is waning, the foliage of the plant will start to yellow- that means it's harvest time!!!  You don't have to worry about frost as long as they are in the ground.  You probably want to get them out of the dirt before it snows, but that's more a matter of convenience ;)  When you harvest, it's easiest to cut the foliage down so it's out of your way, and pull away the hay (it's all great for your compost pile!).  Be very careful as you dig, because scraping the skin of the potato will shorten the length of time you can store it.  The easiest way to safely loosen the dirt is to dig in a wide circle around each plant, loosening the dirt with a spade (like you would do to till a garden bed), but be careful when you put the shovel into the ground, push it in slowly so you don't chop a potato in half.  Then, it's a bit like a treasure hunt!  Break up chunks of dirt by hand, and be sure to go through the dirt all around the plants, because stray potatoes might have decided they liked a bit of privacy and gone deeper or further to the side of the plant than you might expect.  Once you think you've gotten them all, dig a little deeper just to be sure.  If you've planted in containers, you might even dump the whole container out on the ground to get every last little tuber.  Discard any potatoes with lots of green on them.  If there are potatoes with just little bits of green on an end, you can still eat those, just cut the green bit off before cooking.

Unfortunately, you probably don't want to cook a potato straight out of the ground.  They will be much better, and will do better in long term storage, if you let them dry in darkness for several days up to several weeks, to dry the skin (don't wash them!!!).  We put ours in cardboard boxes in layers between newspapers, and stuck them in the closet.  After this time, they are ready to eat and store!!!

Storing your harvest
Potatoes do best in darkness and dry coolness, in a very well ventilating container.  Brown paper bags are not ventilated enough, unfortunately... Wood boxes are probably best.  You can also store them in sand, or burlap sacks, though I don't recommend buckets, even with loose lids.  That's what we did, and all the potatoes we saved for seed to plant this spring ended up liquefied.  GROSS!  If you don't have a cool garage or basement, a dark cabinet will do, but if you have a big harvest, you'll need to find a cool space to keep them.  Don't put potatoes in the fridge though!!! Too cold, and the starch will turn to sugar, and while I love sweet potatoes, a sweet regular potato is not so tasty...  Only wash potatoes right before you cook them.

Last year, we planted 10lbs of potatoes in 48 holes, had 46 plants come up (We think the two that didn't grow were dug up by the dog), and got 55lbs of potatoes from those 46 plants.  Pretty freakin awesome!!! This year we are planting 20lbs!  Yay!!!

One of many boxes of our Russian Banana Fingerlings! Yum!!!

This is a case of mistaken identity...

Well, two weeks of chicken ownership has been wonderful! We didn't lose a single chick, no health issues, they grew so fast, and are nice healthy birds! But unfortunately, not all of them were the birds we wanted... We *thought* we had 12 Buff Orpington chicks, and thought the 8 darker ones maybe just had different parents or were just darker birds or something... Well, as they grew, so did their feathers, and as their feathers came in with patterns, we realized something wasn't right... It took until they were very nearly 2 weeks old before we were able to positively identify the 8 darker birds as Rhode Island Reds, a very beautiful breed no doubt, but not the right breed for us.  For one, they aren't as cold hardy and wouldn't do well in the winter here, and for two they are prone to be a more aggressive breed, and probably wouldn't get alone with the 4 Orpingtons we did have once they got older.  But thankfully, thanks to Craigslist we were able to find the Reds a new home, and take the 4 Orpingtons to Red's mom Kayla, and get 8 new Buff Orpington chicks for ourselves, all in one day!  Ca-RAY-zy!  So now we have 8 weeny teeny little yellow puffballs (and yes, this time they ALL are Orpingtons!), they are 4 days old today (or thereabouts, we got them on Wednesday, and are assuming they were day-olds then), and already have grown quite a bit.  It really is remarkable the difference in their behavior even at this tender age compared to how the Reds were, the first batch of chicks were constantly peeping and chirruping, but this batch is quite quiet in comparison!  They aren't as fond of being fed special treats (cracked wheat and oats) by hand by us yet, whereas the Reds weren't too shy of a hand full of treats, but these are much more tolerant of being picked up and held, whereas the Reds were very skiddish even at 2 weeks old of a hand without treats... Anyways, this new batch are healthy and doing well, and we're excited to get our flock right the second time ;)

(On a personal note, today is Wyatt's 3rd Birthday!!! My poor baby boy is so sick with a nasty tummy bug, and we've had to postpone his party, but we still have special stuff to do with him tomorrow even if he can't have friends over :(  Poor kiddo!  I think Red and I are more upset about it than he is though!)

Here chickie chickie chickie!

Today we grew our family by a whopping 12 teeny little girls!  No, I didn't just have duodecuplettes (PHEW!), we got CHICKS!  12 adorable teeny fuzzballs, all Buff Orpington pullets (female chicks).  We've been planning for some time now to get chickens, but weren't sure if we wanted to go with day old chicks (like these) or juvenile pullets, or even if we could find laying hens locally, but after no luck of finding free hens, and no luck finding pullets of the breed we wanted, we decided to go with chicks!  And luck have it, the local feed co-op has Buff Orpingtons!  We picked them up this morning, and they are happily chirruping away in their brooder box in our living room.  They'll live in this box for at least the first few weeks, as they need constant heat heat heat!  The first week, we have to keep them at around 95 degrees!  Fortunately this is easily done with a couple 60 watt incandescent bulbs and some nice dry warm and insulating wood shavings for litter.

Bean and Tig are both absolutely entranced, clearly they think this is the best thing that has ever happened here... Though the chickies are nice and safe in there!  Wyatt is excited too, and all of our new favorite activity is just sitting and watching them!  I am so excited to watch them grow, get to know their personalities and quirks!  No names for them yet, for one they're very hard to distinguish from one another (and will continue to be, as their feathers will be in a constant state of change for the next few months!).  They will begin laying in about 5-6 months, so come early fall we'll be enjoying delicious eggs!  Three of the twelve will go to Red's mom when they are about 6 weeks or so, past the fragile chickie stage and well on their way to being big girls!  Buff Orpingtons are a heritage breed, originally bred in England in the late 1800's.  They're a heavy breed, hens reaching around 8lbs at maturity, and they will lay large light brown eggs.  They're very cold hardy, and have small combs and wattles (the floppy things on their heads), and that's a good thing cause the bigger the combs and wattles are, the more prone they are to frostbite.  Here's a shot of a mature hen- (borrowed from pluckandfeather.com) 

Sprout-tastic!

This winter, we got a sprouting kit put together for us by Red's mom Kayla!  We both realized we missed salads and fresh greens SO badly, and storebought lettuce was remarkably disappointing after the awesome lettuce and greens we grew ourselves last summer.  Kayla has been sprouting for a long time, and helped us to get started with an awesome kit she assembled for us for Christmas.  Sprouts are delicious, crazy easy to grow, and amazingly nutritious.  It's a great way to get home grown nutrition in the winter!  Here is how we grow ours, but be sure to check out sproutpeople.org for everything you could possibly need to know about sprouting!  (They also carry seeds, sprouting equipment, all sorts of good stuff!)  

All we use to grow our sprouts are wide mouth quart sized mason jars with a small circle of non-metal window screen and the screw band that goes with the jar.  Other than seeds to sprout, that is all you need!  We have a great seed mix from sproutpeople.org that we LOVE that includes clover, arugula, cress, fenugreek and dill seeds.  It is the perfect mix, and tastes amazing on sandwiches, in burritos, and even by itself with a little dressing!  We tried sprouting mung beans, but didn't like the flavor, so now we stick to this seed mix.  To grow a quart of sprouts, it only takes about two tablespoons of these seeds, so it's a great value by volume!  

Step 1- Soak em!

First off, measure out your seeds according to the variety (different seeds will grow different amounts, so check on sproutpeople.org for how much to use so you get a good amount of sprouts but don't end up with an overstuffed jar).  Put the seeds in the jar, put the screen over the top and screw on the band.  Fill up the jar (through the screen) with cool water and let the seeds soak 8-12 hours (or however long is needed for the variety you are using, again, see sproutpeople for individual seed instructions).

Our favorite seed mix has some pretty small seeds, so we use two layers of screen until they begin sprouting and become big enough not to fall through the screen.

Step 2- Rinse, Repeat! 

After your initial soak, drain the water out, fill with cool water, and swirl it around to make sure every little seed gets wet, then drain it off again, getting as much water out as you can.  Then tip the jar upside down and set it at an angle in a bowl, which will allow any leftover water to drain out without leaving the seeds too wet, and allow good airflow.  We keep ours on our kitchen windowsill, so we don't forget about rinsing them!  It doesn't get any direct sunlight this time of year so it's ok for us, but don't put your jars in direct sunlight.  I do recommend keeping them in or near the kitchen, so you'll be less apt to forget about them! 

   Rinsing; The first signs of growth, day 2

Repeat the rinsing and draining every 8-12 hours or so.  Doesn't have to be spot on timing wise, but you don't want the sprouts to dry out completely.  Since we keep ours by the sink, we usually rinse them in the morning while coffee is brewing, and again around dinnertime.  You will start to see the first signs of growth about 36 hours after you first put them up to soak (or sooner or later depending on the variety of seed).  At first the sprouts will be short, spindly and white, but once they get started, they really take off!  You'll notice the hulls of the seed start to fall off once the leaves start to form, around day 4-5.  

Here are our sprouts at about day 5. Notice the brown hulls of the seeds- they fall off on their own, but are still edible.  We don't bother with separating them out, though most end up in the bottom of the jar anyways.

We keep two jars going at different intervals to keep a steady supply of sprouts growing.  

These jars are at day 5 and day 2, respectively.

Step 3- Enjoy!

We've started eating our sprouts as early as day 4, but they are best when they've had a chance to get bigger and greener, around day 6 or 7.  We store our sprouts in the jars on the sill just like when they're growing, since they usually get eaten quite quickly.  But if you'd like to store your sprouts for longer, they will need one final rinse, then a thorough drying out (try a salad spinner or laying them out on a paper towel), and will need to be stored in an airtight container in the fridge (you could store them in the jar they were grown in, just replace the screen with the regular lid).  We've never gotten to that point, since we eat them too quickly!  They are amazing on sandwiches or in burritos or fajitas, and we've even eaten them by themselves in a bowl with a little dressing, like a micro-salad!  Wyatt even loves them, and stuffs them into his mouth by the handful!  They're so tasty, it's a wonder it took us this long to do our own sprouts!  Yum!

Grown in the Mountains ;)

Hello blogland! Sorry for the haitus- it's been a busy summer! I have indeed been crafting, but most of our free time lately has been spent working on our little mountain homestead. Now more than ever we are trying to be as self-sustaining as we can be, with what we have. This year we've expanded our gardening areas by a lot, and even simple tasks like watering take up a very significant portion of our day every day (our water pressure is crap, so we can only have one sprinkler on at a time, and most sprinklers don't work for us (again due to lack of pressure) so it is a lot of moving the one sprinkler all over the gardens and the yard, which is doing the best it's ever been this year!). We've already been preserving foods this year as well! We have a food dehydrator, but the heating element is broken so only the fan works, but this suits us much better than a fully functioning dehydrator, since instead we just put it out in the sun! We've dehydrated a huge batch of green onions, which we made into dried (pseudo)chives (excellent on baked potatos!) and a very flavorful green onion powder! We also dehydrated a batch of grape tomatoes (not our own, purchased from the grocery store in bulk, it was a great deal!), and some basil that I had forgotten about in the fridge. We also took advantage of a 10 for 10 deal at the grocery store on organic blackberries, and so we put away 9 cups of pureed blackberries in the freezer to make preserves with in the fall, when the weather is cool enough to make preserves and can all day. We're also in the process of making two batches of cherry wine, made with the sour cherries from our tree that we had frozen from last summer's bumper crop. We just transferred the first batch yesterday into the secondary fermenter, and with the dregs and fruit from that batch, we made a second batch, adding more cherries from the freezer. In total, it will be about 4 gallons of cherry wine! Yum!!! We also had a gallon baggie of frozen green tomatoes from last year's frost-killed tomato crop, which we finally thawed and made into a very tasty green tomato salsa, with some green onions and three Siberian hot peppers from our garden as well! For still being June, we've had a very productive food-preserving summer!

As for crops in the ground, this summer our biggest crop (we're hoping!) is potatoes! We have about 54 organic Russian Banana Fingerling potatos planted, many of which have multiple plants coming up from them, so we're hoping we get to put away lots of potatoes in our soon-to-be root cellar we're going to build! Potatoes are probably our most-often-consumed produce, and therefore our biggest crop this year. We're also growing= many varieties of lettuce, spinach, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, tomatoes, green onions, Siberian hot peppers, elephant garlic, arugula, parsley, mint, cilantro, cabbage, pole beans, sugar snap peas, and broccoli (at least we think we're growing broccoli, we have the broc and cabbage planted in the same bed, and one of them is coming up, the other one doesn't seem to, but we can't really tell what is what... they look so similar! But we're pretty sure what is coming up is cabbage... Only time will tell!), and of course the cherry trees! I think that's the extent of our edibles crop, but I could be forgetting something! Who knows what of all this will actually make it to harvest, at 7800 feet above sea level nothing is a given in gardening, even in the greenhouse, so knock on wood we have a productive season this year!!!