It's The Dirt | It is all about how we live here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens: Intensely, simply, creatively, lovingly for God, with others.

Why is That?

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Lanny

Deep question of the week: Why does it seem that my faith in God on a particular subject of one area of my life is at its weakest when my faith in other areas of my life are on a high and in other areas my faith is being proved?

Other people seem to be so even keeled, either they have great faith in God for everything or mediocre faith in God for not much.

I, on the other hand, feel like I am on a teeter totter.

Or is it really just a matter of putting on a brave front. You know, like the saying, fake it until you make it. Like makeup in the morning, a person gets up and puts their faith face on. Funny, I was never very good at that either. The make-up thing, by the time I remembered to put it on most people had already seen my unmade face, what did it really matter then? Or when I did get into it, I wasn’t fooling any one, any one with half a brain could see that my eyebrows didn’t go all the way over to the end of my eye.

What is really hilarious is that I see God constantly catching me. In those times when I refuse to heed what the Holy Spirit is saying, and go on my own, I am ultimately unmolested for another day, another try. Oh make no mistake, Dear Reader, I carry the natural consequences of messing up, of disobedience, of faithlessness, but ultimately God is good to me even in my abundant foolishness.

It is so obvious that if I just listened, shut up and listened, things would be so much better. Not on my timeline perhaps and not necessarily the picture I want to paint, but a better one even than what I could conjure up. So what’s the problem, why can I not let go of some of those last little bits and have faith that God will see me through, my family through, my friends through, in His way, in the right time, with the right ones.

My faithlessness in God for certain areas of my life is so downright silly really. I believe, I know God is, I know He has saved me from eternal estrangement from Him and the torment that would be forever and that, only through His only Son. If I know this, why do I see anything as impossible? And really isn’t that what faithlessness is, saying in essence that something is impossible in God?

What I do know for certain is impossible, is for me to see things as God sees them or that He could give a person everything they ask for. That would be ridiculous. So I am not here lamenting that everything isn’t going my way and then making that be my basis for lack of faith in the midst of all things.

In actuality, if I give it a moment of true thought, I do have faith, if I pray and talk with my Father in heaven, lean on Jesus, listen to the Counselor, I find that I’m not in a tough spot, that I can stand up straight, not curled up in the fetal position, neither figuratively nor literally. That no matter the outcome, or my perspective on it, God has perfect purpose. Perfect purpose. Perfect design. My job, my only job, is to follow, to heed His word, to make sure that the voice that I listen to is indeed His, if I do that, listen, hear and obey, then all will be good.

So really it isn’t faith I lack, it’s bad memory I have. It’s allowing panic and worry to take over, it’s letting the Enemy have his way with me. It’s forgetting who I am, that I have my freedom from bondage. Forgetting that I am Free.

So please forgive me Dear Reader if you have had to witness my faithlessness, my forgetfulness.

Another Farmer Enters the World!

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Lanny

Tuesday evening, October 9th, it was just another end of an intense harvest day for me, ready to cry over a sink blanketed on the bottom with tomato scraps as the last batch of peeled tomatoes went into the pot to heat up before being packed in jars.

Then the call came, our oldest daughter, Stephanie called to say that they were heading up to Lake Tapps to the midwife as the contractions were four minutes apart and not changing. They would call us again from there.

I put the last pot of tomatoes in the fridge, change my clothes, tidy the kitchen. Bet got ready as well. Dirt went to bed. His theory was that he would get a little sleep before a long night. Bet and I watched a show on the t.v. while we waited for the call back.

Eric finally called saying that they were staying but things were progressing slowly. I spoke with Steph who said come whenever but they were determined to hold out until after midnight. I asked if she felt she could actually hold off that long. She was confident that she could so I said I was going to let her dad sleep just a little longer then head up.

Eric doesn’t do well in the delivery part of birthing. He was in with Stephanie when their oldest son, Kai was born ten and a half years ago on January 10th. But five year’s ago, when their second son, Aksel was born on September 10th, Eric opted out and turned over the coaching and encouragement to his sister Rebecca and I. We were the official birth helpers but Bet was in the corner of the room and managed to be handy with the scissors when it came time to cut the cord for Aksel’s birth.

This time Bet wasn’t being bashful and sneaking in the door quietly, whether asked or not, she was going to go up and be an active support for her dear sister Stephanie. We did a few more things Bet and I, then we listened to Dirt’s snoring get louder and louder, at one crescendo, Bet and I looked at one another and said we could drive ourselves. I went into the bedroom and woke Dirt up to ask if he did indeed want to go or stay. He muttered his choice for staying, mentioned something about having got directions off Google, I told him I saw the directions and had them in my pocket.

I grabbed a few dollars for coffee because I didn’t want to wait any longer at home, it would be easier to stop for coffee at this point. Who knew that coffee shops aren’t open at ten at night? Not me obviously. We finally got a cup at a stand on South Hill manned by two lovely self absorbed twenty something glitter bottoms. To bad the coffee didn’t stay as hot as they thought they had.

Messed up a bit on the directions that Dirt had taken down, he only wrote the part he knew he needed to remember, unfortunately I wasn’t totally clear on the preceding part and so took a five minute detour before getting back on track.

Once back on the right route, the Exploder had some objections to the giant hill that took us back up out of the Big Valley and on to the east hill side where the giant fingered lake lays, a reservoir that used to provide power. Its shore, though only full of water in the summer, is lined with beautiful homes with boat docks and garages and the midwife’s is no exception.

I had been there five years ago for Stephanie’s last check up the day she went into labor with Aksel. The midwife’s home is lovely from the outside and the birthing center on the ground floor is very nice indeed.

Bet and I arrived just a few minutes after our predicted eleven o’clock p.m.. The little family and Auntrabecca were just finishing up one of Bet’s favorite movies, The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky. Great movie, but more important was the lady on the couch who would occasionally look a little uncomfortable. With the movie over and Step looking a bit more restless, the midwife came in from upstairs and checked Steph. It was now about twelve-twenty, Steph’s water broke and it was the day to have a baby.

Kai was still awake, he looked like he had had my coffee instead of me, but Aksel had been asleep on the floor even before Bet and I had arrived. I won’t bore you with the details, it was a labor, albeit a quiet one. Steph is not vocal like her mom, much more like her dad, though he’s never given birth so she could even be quieter.

By a little after one in the morning Steph was delivering a baby with her mom and little sister Bet at her sides and her sister and son at her head. The baby came into the world and it was announced, the baby is a boy.

Hurray! Not that a little girl wouldn’t have been delightful but what fun, all boys! All born on the tenth of their month! Good job Steph! Good job…what is his name Eric? Klutch Henrik Manley. Good job Klutch Henrik Manley!

Kai was beaming with joy! He was so excited, and helping dad and mom pull out his baby brother’s going home outfit, the same outfit that Kai had worn home from his birth!

When a person marries they gather round them more than just the one with whom they become one, they immediately gather to them a larger family, and Steph really hit the jackpot with the family God gathered ‘round her. In particular this night, Eric’s sister Rebecca, who shares birthing babies and farming with Steph.

See the bees on the sleeper? With such a first outfit, an older brother who loves to keep bees with mom, an auntie who is always in the garden, an uncle who’s a beef farmer, great grandparents that were poultry farmers, other aunties who garden and raise animals, a grandpa who shears and raises sheep… how could Klutch not be a farmer already?

Categories: Family | 7 Comments

Getting Tucked In

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Lanny

Dear Reader, I need to quit thinkin’ I have until October 15th to get things ready for frost.

First off, it isn’t like it only takes one afternoon to do everything, second, it’s not like it is always on October 15th. It’s an average date! And average means in between early and late! And especially when it is clear like it has been this last month.

And with our summer growing season going clear up to the frost date (and beyond if I get things protected well enough) harvest chores and winterizing chores always smack into one another

Tomato harvest continues, though the chickens are shortening daily the amount needed to harvest, durn birds! We didn’t get to butchering them today, clearly that is on Sunday’s menu.

I harvested some peppers today and had Dirt smoke them along with the roast that he was doing. Oh they were so good smoked! I will be doing more. Not sure if I should can them that way or freeze them. Canning always seems like a bother, but then things get used more when they are just in a can and don’t require thaw time.

They were so good and I had forgotten to spread the floating row cover back over them so after we watched one of Bet’s favorite movies, The Day After Tomorrow Dirt and I went out and recovered the peppers. Now I really want to make sure that I get as many as possible.

We covered what we could, we really need a new roll of floating row cover material. But the weight I want only comes in 1,000 foot rolls at my supplier, I’d probably make use of all or nearly all of it even this year, but…

Luckily we didn’t have to trudge out to the Market Garden in our Artic gear or get our hands and face froze off when we peeked back out of the tunnel. (Thanks for the movie Bet! Hollywood propaganda and scare tactics at its best.)

Dirt helped me harvest all the pumpkins and squash yesterday and then today I moved them in to the grow bench in the Hippy Hot Hut where they will hopefully cure.

Our harvest of squash wasn’t as good this year. For how amazingly sunny nice it has been the last two months our early summer was the exact opposite. Rainy and cold. Much of the direct seeded squash didn’t come up and then by the time I got a second batch going and the crummy weather, well let’s just repeat my favorite refrain shall we, “next year will be better”!

The ones we did get however are beautiful and I cannot wait to start enjoying them on my plate and in my soup bowl!

Well it is time for all good farmers to go to bed, even the bad farmers, and so I say Good Night to you Dear Reader, I certainly hope your autumn is going just as well as it possible can.

Categories: Autumn, Crops, Peppers, Squash & Pumpkins | 8 Comments

Brrr. Thinkin’ of Tomatoes

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Lanny

Sure hope the tomatoes survived the chilly temperature of last night. I’ll know in an hour and a half when I go out to the Market Garden to fetch more tomatoes to can.

The tomato plants here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens spend their whole life (after transplanting) in a poly tunnel, or high tunnel, or funky greenhouse, whatever you want to call the season extenders that are quite popular. So they already had some protection from the light frosts that we have been having. But yesterday evening after a late dinner, I covered the four rows of Solanum (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, ground cherries), with tattered floating row cover (really need to buy a new roll).

I’m hoping to get another week at the very least out of the tomatoes but they didn’t look too sharp yesterday evening when I was out there, although it was getting nearly too dark to see.

We’ve been eating tomatoes a lot this summer, since July, but I just started canning them this week. I just couldn’t seem to get to that part of my to-do list before the fair, and last week, the week after the fair, I was in no condition to can.

My goal is sixty pints of sauced and sixty pints of stewed tomatoes. So far I have fifteen pints of sauce done and ready for the shelf. That was from a small box of Mama Leone tomatoes that made a very very dark sauce and a box of Plum Dandy tomatoes that made a nice thick red sauce.

Bet and I picked three more boxes on Wednesday. I intended to keep the three varieties that we were picking separate, but between “Tomato Twister” and finally bracing the plants up so I could go down the center aisle, the boxes are rather mixed. So it is tough to determine which tomato is the better sauce producer and which ones just plain pumped out the most tomatoes.

The lack of accounting is due to a two year issue of me not staking the tomatoes up right away or even when the actually need to be. I swore by August of 2011 that I would never not stake my tomatoes again. Guess what I’m swearing again this year? Arrgh.

Of course next year will be better. The plan is to pre-make my stakes. Because of course I cannot just have stakes, I have to have Lanny style stakes. (No, I do not ever learn that sometimes it is good to just get the job done like a normal person running out of time). So in January, when there isn’t all that much to do, and I am seeding trays with tomato seeds in the Hippy Hot Hut, I will, yes, I will, walk into the Market Shed and sit at my lovely table with the wood stove going and a press of coffee brewing and make my stakes, 6 feet tall, pointed on the end, painted, with the name of the tomato variety and at least two cross bars on each stake. One hundred twenty-five stakes. Maybe one hundred fifty.

At least this year I have tags in the planting holes of each tomato and pepper plant so that I can trace the branch back and tell which variety is which. I could have tried harder, and Bet would have been willing, to keep the varieties separate but the jungle was just too much. And I rationalized it with “the sauce will be better mixed, like we do with the apple cider”.

Because of the tagging and the more space I gave them this year over last, I am at least confident in saying that I am fairly pleased with all the varieties that I used this year and I will repeat them again, providing that the seed companies are carrying them again next year.

I did notice a few things about the varieties:

Plum Dandy, a hybrid determinate didn’t have a lick of trouble and his foliage was always very nice looking, I like that in a plant. The tomato crop was abundant but it seems to be one of the last to ripen of the plum varieties.
Oroma, an open pollinated determinate, was first to ripen on the plum side of the tunnel. Heavy fruited plants, not quite as durable as Plum Dandy but pretty good none-the-less.
San Marzano, open pollinated indeterminate (not sure if it is the one Territorial Seed carries), is wicked tall, er.. make that wicked long, next year we’ll call it tall! Good crop.
Roma, open pollinated determinate, nice plant but it certainly needs staking at least by the time it fruits, all of my determinates (the catalogs say don’t need staking) need staking because of fruit set, even most of my pepper plants needed staking this year! But that’s another post.
Mama Leone, open pollinated indeterminate, continues to be a favorite because of its dual purpose nature, the best sandwich tomato of all the “sauce and paste” tomatoes. And it’s cute!
Chocolate Cherry, open pollinated indeterminate, continues to be the snitchers all time favorite.
Black Cherry, open pollinated indeterminate, nice alternative to Chocolate Cherry if you need one.
Early Cherry, open pollinated determinate, certainly early, but not sure it is necessary when I have Chocolate Cherry and the two early slicers, Glacier and Stupice.
Oregon Cherry, open pollinated determinate, sort of lost in the shuffle, maybe good for up in the ornamental gardens for a snack.
Stupice and Glacier, open pollinated indeterminate, both of these pump out tomatoes all summer, a few of the tomatoes get to a real nice size. Glacier was a bit earlier than Stupice. Further review when I stew the two varieties.
Reverend Morrow’s Long Keeper, open pollinated determinate (tall for sure) I am waiting to talk about these, so far they look great.

Well I am out to pick more tomatoes in the chilly morning. No rain in sight yet, this dry weather is crazy, crazy, crazy.

Fire danger is pretty high so there won’t be a Leif Erickkson bon fire this year, there might not even be a party – Baby Manley #3 is on his/her way, due on the tenth of this month.

If the baby comes a day early, and is a boy, I wonder if Eric and Steph will name him Leif (pronounced Layf by the way) the baby’s brothers have very Nordic names, Kai and Aksel. We are all super excited to meet the new baby!

But now for some more tomato canning today (I might even try some oven dried tomatoes), chicken butchering tomorrow and more tomato canning, lamb butchering and more tomato canning on Sunday… .

Categories: Crops, Hoop Houses, Tomatoes | 4 Comments

Freakish About Weather

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Lanny

When I first met Dirt, and for the first years of our marriage, I noticed that he was some what freakishly concerned with the weather. I mean freakish, with a capital “F” Freakish.

I, on the other hand, barely noticed it. I loved it when it went my way, like snow on a day I didn’t want to go to school or wanted to go skiing, or both. Or a really nice sunny day when I wanted to do something that I needed to do outside that rain would definitely mess up, like getting a tan. Even my early years of gardening didn’t make me crazed about great weather.

Slightly aware that our weather was very different than the rest of the world, like Kansas, I just grew stuff I knew would grow and not terribly worried about stuff that didn’t make it. I loved rain. I was fond of puddles and loved my red galoshes that went over my saddle shoes.

But then I grew up and got married and over the years Dirt wore off on me and things changed, my gardening became more purposeful, haying season became a personal issue, I can’t find a decent pair of galoshes and now I am a weather freak as well.

So what do I wanna talk about most of the time Dear Reader? Weather. So tonight I’m going to indulge myself again.

We are about to have an El Nino event. (I love that they call a year’s worth of weather an event. Only weathermen could get away with that.) I was very very excited to hear that we, as a people living on the planet, were going to experience an El Nino finally after two years of La Nina.

It means dry and warm for the Pacific Northwest. (and doesn’t dryer mean fewer clouds? It should.) But then, realizing that so much more than just the Puget Sound region is called the PNW I thought I should investigate further.

So I googled El Nino effect. From one map and explanation I found that in actuality our weather is more normal than not during an El Nino. Harumph. Really? But then….

Then I remembered the year I went to college. I packed my skies, so excited to be doing a lot of skiing that year! It was a horrible year. It was the winter of 1976-77. That year, and the years before, lift tickets were reasonable, affordable, and never really changed. After that year.. they doubled. According to the internet, that season is still on record as being the worst ski season ever.

And yet, here’s the interesting bit, according to the El Nino information that was a “weak” El Nino year. What? It was warm and dry. I know, I remember it well. I went to college on the other side of the mountains in full anticipation of finally spending winters in a place that had winters. It snowed very little. It iced over very little. I had no great excuse to miss early morning classes. Even if it would have only been an excuse in my own mind and not one for the prof, I still had few real excuses. Few times when I could marvel over the fact that I lived in a place that had heated sidewalks. No snow, no cold. Warm and dry. And yet that year goes on record as a weak El Nino?!

This could make me very very happy. Okay, sad, because I really do love winter weather, last year’s ice storm could not have been more groovy for a crazy group of weather nuts who live at Vicktory Farm & Gardens, in spite of all the work it caused. And I love watching Bet ice skate on our ponds.

However. I could not be fonder of the possibility that I won’t have to pump water out of my garden. Thrilled over the prospect of not standing in the mud, shovel in hand, making sure that the water in the ditch I just adjusted was indeed flowing away from the garden and the pasture and into the canal that takes it to the pond and to the dam and over or through the dam. Beavers. I could almost consider enjoying the thought of them working this winter.

I am quite certain El Nino has in fact arrived, we are so very dry, and the dust in causing me to use my neti pot daily and think about wearing a bandit scarf while working outside, but it is not causing me to wish we had rain. I’m happy to continue to drag hose in October!

Categories: Weather | 4 Comments

Fair Was Awesome!

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Lanny

It was the best Fair I’ve experienced so far (as an exhibitor in the Animals of the World Barn, not to include the State Fairs as a parent), in spite of coming down with whatever this sore throat, drippy nose, heavy chest thing is.

The Fair Began Early for VF&G

Usually Bet and I go to the opening day of the Fair as fair goers. Last year we even bought rodeo tickets for that day and we had a blast! But this year Bet got hired on at the Fair’s Petting Farm and then at the last minute the Fair also hired Anna.

While the girls had tons of fun talking with children and their accompanying adults about farm animals and made a little bit of money, Dirt and I were doing all of Bet’s chores and tripping over Anna’s dogs while trying to get our own work done as well.

Bet pulled a lot of double shifts, essentially she worked from 8am to 10 pm, and since neither the twenty-one year old or the married nineteen-year old is in possession of a driver’s license, we took the trailer to the fairgrounds from the first day of the fair to the last.. Even if they had been able to drive I’m not sure I would feel good about them driving the forty-five minute trip back and forth.

Fair Day Arrives for VF&G

Dirt and I had everything packed and ready to go so when we got up at 4 am, got dressed, made coffee and jumped in the truck, we ended up down to the fair by five fifteen. Got all signed in with the security gate for our special vehicle pass and off to the center of the fairgrounds to the Animals of the World Barn.

Dirt rolled back the barn door…

And there it was a cleaned out, set up barn ready for the last five days of our seventeen day State Fair. And the big empty spot just waiting for our turkey exhibit pens to be set up.

Our help rolled out of bed across the fairgrounds where the trailer was parked and joined us in the empty barns. See the big smiles? That’s ‘cuz they know that the best days of the fair are ahead of them

But first we have to set up the pens and my crazy idea of what an exhibit should look like. I aim for eye catching, well actually first is the whole objective of keeping turkeys in and children out and then be eye catching.

And yes, we are there with turkeys, but at home we are a lot more than that, so I try to express that in subtle and not so subtle ways. The “education” at the pens is a mix of basic fun turkey info for the folks that will never grow them but appreciate what goes into making a different sort of bird than the ones found at Safeway, and some of the other things we do at the farm.

I always try to improve from one year to the next. Either improve for the public or for our own comfort while their. One of my favorite new additions was the solid pen wall and bi-fold doors that enclosed the tack “room” and hid our mess and sometimes ourselves.

The other favorite new thing was the “Unwanted” posters, they were of course a last minute addition, thought of them a couple of weeks earlier but finally got to sit and make them on the Monday before we went in. It isn’t the Fair unless I am sitting at my computer at early morning hours in jammies and coffee in hand, having ran to Costco the day before to get ink for the printer.

I saved everything in plastic sleeves this year so I shouldn’t have much to do or even room to come up with stuff for next year. But we will be adding pigs to the exhibit next year so…

Junior Poultry Expo

The day after we get into the fair and settled, the youth come in with their poultry projects

Anne and Abby Bowerman (Mike and Rebecca’s girls) and their cousin and my grandson Kai, clean up their birds, take them to the fair, the birds get judged on Thursday and then on Saturday the youth do fit and show.

Then right after they show they go down to another area and participate in a judging contest. They judge poultry carcasses and place the four in order 1 – 4 as to best to least. They judge a few groups of four hens for laying and four meat birds. They also have to identify chicken body parts and meat cuts.

Once they go around to the different stations they go up to a judge and give the placements of the birds in each group along with the reasons why they placed them the way they did.

Fit and show is a good thing to do and the kids have to do fit and show in order to get any premium money for all the other things they do, but quite frankly, from a farmers point of view, the judging contest, where the youth judge birds, figuring out who they would keep and who they would cull, that would be the most important contest, even over type class.

Well the kids did pretty stinkin’’ good in the judging contest. They did darn fine in the other contests as well. And up at the Animals of the World Barn… VF&G (that’s us) won the herdsmanship award for creativity.

Aside from the awards that we received, this year was one of the best since we have been doing the turkey display, maybe because we got the fewest harassing visitors about being meat eaters. I think a few years of crappy economics has made for a slightly more realistic citizenship.

Or it could just be all the sunshine we’ve had here this summer Dear Reader, most of July, all August and then all of September so far, no rain. We in the Pacific Northwest just don’t know what to do with ourselves when it gets like this!

Of course I am still way behind on what I need to have done around here. I know I said I would come back to full blogging speed Dear Reader, but we’ll just take it easy for now. If I get back here in less than a week, I’ll be thrilled!

See you soon!

Categories: Family, The Fair | 6 Comments

See You At State Fair!

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Lanny

I can hardly believe that it is State Fair time already! Wow what a summer we’ve had. I meant to make a post and call it, “Haying Season, It was the best of times and the worst of times”. But then haying season was long since gone and the post rather stale. Maybe when I get back from Fair I’ll revive it as: “Summer it was the best of times and the…best of times!”

It truly has been a great summer and I am sad that the blog took a far back burner and I haven’t shared my summer with you Dear Reader. Give me one more week and a day and I will be back to the blog better than ever.

The Fair will be over on Sunday, by midnight Sunday the turkeys will be back to the farm, Bet, Dirt and I will collapse into bed then wake up and do the necessary on Monday and Tuesday. And then, barring catastrophes, Bet and I will both be getting back to a less harsh schedule, one that includes keeping up on our blogs and staying in touch with dear friends, far better than we have for the last four months!

I have lots to share!

Like how Bet, who turned 21, July 1st, got us started on sheep milk and how I’ve made sheep cheese. The Market Garden changed again and more changes are in the works (imagine that?!) and I’m so excited for the next phase! The grandbabies are growing and another is due the first part of October! And we are about to experience an El Nino winter! For us that means warmer and dryer than usual to which I say, Yahoo!

See you soon Dear Reader!

Categories: Blogging, Family, Farming, Vicktory Farm and Gardens, Weather | 6 Comments

Big Update!

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Lanny

Hatching Day! Reclaim my garden day!

The killdeer who’s mother laid them in between two beds in the Market Garden are hatching!

I was off a few days on my guess. I expected them in a few days, this means that mom got in there and laid those eggs moments after I ran the tiller down the beds. That’s cheeky brave, but perhaps she knew that I am working on not tilling more than I have to. Trying my best to till a good bed just once and then let it be.

It is hard when you love to run a tractor and smell the fragrance of fresh turned earth, but I am trying to do my best to keep my tilling at a minimum. Not just for the critters above the ground but the little itty bitty teeny weeny fellows that live below the surface and make my soil so very good for growing real food.

And as far as not using the space until the young hatched? Heck, I didn’t even notice the hiccup. Most, nearly all, the folks who spend their lives growing stuff are the same, ready and willing to inconvenience ourselves when possible.

Oh… I bet you would like to see some pictures wouldn’t you Dear Reader. Well I’ve got some. But I want to warn you first, they aren’t all that great. I still do not have the camera of my dreams or even my half dreams. So it is way hard for me to get good zooms. But here they are:

Remember what mom looks like? And the eggs?

Well here is what the nest looked like around noon today. See anything Dear Reader? Didn’t think so, so I’ll zoom in a bit more.

How ‘bout that? See it now?

So here I’ve cropped my zoomed in picture, now do you see the little feller? He, or she, is off to the left of the three remaining eggs.

Blue arrow points to the chick, yellow arrow to the remaining eggs. Okay, call me nuts, there are all sorts of things coming to life all the time on the Farm, nearly every day, but boy howdy, it is exciting each and every time.

We have another birth announcement but I’m gonna see if I can make Bet do a post.

Until then, have a terrific Memorial Day weekend, enjoy your time off of what ever it is you usually do, enjoy family and friends and the bbq. But mostly Dear Reader remember all the brave people who fought and died that we, and others in far away lands, may be free.

Categories: Farming, Farming Manners, Wild Birds | 5 Comments

A Fairly Uncommon Atmospheric Occurrence

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Lanny

The following photos have not gone through the Photoshopmill, mostly to conserve time, but also to be able to say beyond a shadow of doubt, that we, Bet and I, saw what we saw.

Cloud iridescence. Fascinating. Don’t you think Dear Reader? Like cloud rainbows. All about thin clouds, sun angle just right, all that kinda stuff, the explanation of which neither increases or decreases the beauty of God’s amazing creation, it just explains it.

More corn planting today, and pumpkins and winter squash. The zucchini and cucumbers are already in.

Oh, and I need to put the plastic on the tomato hoop Dirt built and move them out of the Hippy Hot Hut. And water the beans that I planted a couple of days ago (in bucket with the scale used to weigh the proper amount of soil amendments mixed in the half barrel). Yep watering the garden ‘cuz LaNina has left the building, er, uh, planet. Lots of work, but no worries, Ruby can handle it, she’s coming out today!

Categories: Farming, Garden Methods, Hoop Houses, Weather | 5 Comments

Happy Onion Day!

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Lanny

Here at 46.94°N it is Onion Day! Today is the day they will receive 15+ hours of sunlight here and begin to bulb. Happy bulbing to you! and yours!

This is one of my “Keepsake” onions, they and “Keeper” wintered over quite nicely.

So did my Ailsa Craigs, except for the odd occurrence of much smaller onions on the west side of the bed, all the way down the whole length. What the heck?

You haven’t seen me on the blog much Dear Reader because we’ve been whacked-out busy and the Market Garden business, according to plans, isn’t quite there yet, lots of time getting things in place. Our efforts this spring have been focused on the perennial side of life: raspberries (above),

asparagus, rhubarb,

blueberries, figs (oh wait, figs are just for personal consumption), honey berries, aronias…that sort of stuff.

Here’s a little funny that happened during raspberry planting. When my raspberry plants arrived from Sakuma Brothers via my son (in-law) Justin, I wasn’t quite ready to plant them. So I put each of the four varieties in their own tub and for the label I completely covered the packing label they came with with packing tape and wired it on to the tub. Smart right?

Well while the tubs waited under the trailer awning it was a smart idea, but when the last two tubs stayed out in the field because their portion of the bed wasn’t quite ready to prepare, the tags faded…

Yup, nothin. Neither of the two tags, neither side, no tale-tell lettering to give a clue, nothin’, nadda, zip.

But one of the two in the tubs had really put on the sprouts and so had one row of raspberries in the bed (yes, I know, weedy bed). And a young lady at Sakumas confirmed my suspicions, the primo cane raspberry are most likely the ones sprouting like crazy.

Mind you two of the four varieties are primo cane and two are flora cane. Early I planted the Caroline (a primo) and the Tulameen (a flora) they were marked and I know which is which. The two I had left were Autumn Bliss (primo) and Cascade Delight (flora), marker faded. Does it really matter?

Well no, but I did want both floras in one bed and both primos in the other. I had already planted the upper, drier, halves of both beds and now that the lower bed was dry enough to plant I wanted to finish.

So I went for it and now all the raspberries are in the Market Garden and I have some extras to pot up, hopefully they are who I thought they were.

Speaking of the Market Garden…no actual Market Shed hours have resumed for selling produce from the M. Garden, Dirt’s students are snatching up all the eggs and have spoken for taking any produce as it comes.

That was a God-send earlier this spring when we established that I have customers I don’t have to be available for, even one day a week! It allows me to keep my grubby clothes on, my head down and work like a crazed person.

But not so much that I haven’t had time to enjoy the finer things in life!

We had what I hope is our last frost Friday morning, which is a good thing since my corn is up! I planted it last Saturday and yesterday (Saturday), exactly seven days later! I saw the first little green tops. (in the catalog days to emergence is cited as 7-14 days, mine…7 days exactly!)

It was risky planting in the ground so early, but one of Dirt’s sheering customers just up the street had bragged about having gotten his in a couple of weekends ago, and you know me and competition Dear Reader (if you haven’t realized it, two things spur me on, “you can’t do that” and competition)

Any way, risks and crummy looking sky aside, I planted the first two beds of corn for the year, covered them with plastic at night and now… they are up!

Last weekend, as you surely know Dear Reader, was the Kentucky Derby…Big Hats and Mint Juleps! It was established that horse racing is one of our favorite sports to watch on the television. You watch for four minutes (or a little longer if you catch the parade to post and the awarding of the roses) and get back to work. If you time it just right, it can coincide with a regular break and then there is zero guilt for sitting and watching.

Why do I mention the Derby with my planting corn?

Last weekend I realized that Kentucky Derby weekend is the perfect weekend for planting corn. Really? Why? Well the Kentucky Derby is all about big hats and mint juleps. What goes in a mint julep? Besides mint!? Kentucky bourbon of course. And how do they make that? With corn!

The boys were out last weekend. Kai helped Dirt put in all the fence posts for the fence between the main pastures and the Market Garden. Very important to coincide with my planting corn, since last year the horses kept breaking through the electric fence once the corn was up, it kept getting trimmed, not so great on production.

Kai helped Dirt lay out all the posts in line with the Market Garden, not my crooked ditches, he helped mix and pour cement around the corner posts, and he drove the Lil’ Orange Tractor around.

The fabric went up on Sunday. Hip Hip Hooray! It is none too soon, should have had a field fence up last year to keep Miss Marvelous and her mother out of my corn. But at least it is up at the beginning of the big garden season this year!

Remember last year, or was it the year before, any way Dear Reader, remember when I had to put dragging fields because of killdeer nests? Well this year they did it again, made a nest right where I was going to work.

This nest is in between two raised beds. If I were to till again, which I was planning on to plant more corn on one side and more taters on the other, the tractor tires would go right over the nest. I don’t need a government forced environmental impact statement to know I now will wait for the twenty-eight days it will take her to hatch them before I use either of the two beds.

The nest was discovered by Michelle while she and I were planting the potato beds near by.

While we were planting the killdeer were spazing out like they often do, so we knew we had to be close to a nest. Michelle began to reminisce about the many hours she spent as a child looking for the killdeer nest. And sure enough before we were done planting the two beds of taters, she had spotted exactly where the mom had hidden the nest.

The plastic and my watching for the corn to come up hasn’t seemed to bother Missus Killdeer. Mister and Missus Crazy Pants have already managed to hatch three young killdeer to add to the chaotic population in spite of my dragging and spreading lime on all the pastures earlier this spring. And now, sitting on four eggs right in the middle of two of my drier Market Garden beds. That’s 4 hundred square feet of garden she is tying up!

I’ve decided on no more potato beds and locating two more corn beds else where in the garden. Now both of the Killdeer beds will be Brussels Sprouts, which go in after the first of June or later. By then the chicks will have hatched and I will have my garden rights back.

Michelle and Ruby have been coming out to the farm to work one day a week, they are working off the price of a butchered lamb, garden plants and supplies for their garden and extra produce. I love the arrangement!

And Ruby loves the animals!

I gotta go Dear Reader, but first speaking of saying good-bye… they say that La Nina is gone. Gone for good I hope, at least for a few years. Last year “they” said she was gone and then she returned a month later. That wasn’t really gone then was it?

They say this year she was to be gone by the end of April. Seems like she left out this way because the first week of May was her throwing a tantrum as she left and closed the door. It was cold and wet, no, really really really wet! But now it is so incredibly delightful, Bet is fantasying about a drought that dries up the backyard pond so that we can do some reconstruction out there.

We’ll see. For now however it is nine o’clock on the morning of Mother’s Day, I’ve had a lovely time writing (something I miss and wanted to do today) and now it is time to go plant beans (something I love to do even on Mother’s Day) and then take a bath using my new shampoo that is supposed to cure what iron algae does to your hair and then enjoy my grandchildren and a little of Dirt’s finest barbecue, pork ribs and beef roast, oh yum!

I leave you with pictures of the last time almost everyone was out together (minus Justin and Anna) on Easter…

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