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

Sometimes, it is Just Plain Weird Around Here

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Lanny

So today was a livestocky sorta day. All day Bet and I worked on things for the livestock branch of the insanity around here. When Dirt got home, he joined us. After all was said and done and Bet told me to go in and finish up dinner, I ran out to my Market Garden and put the floating row cover back on over the eentsy weentsy carrots and beets, picked Brussel sprouts, mustards, a cabbage and came in to the house and retrieved some tates from the cellar (the well house).

But before that quick vegetable whirl wind, we spent the day for the livestock, sheep to be exactly exact.

The sheep pathway to the barn needed immediate attention. It needed to be built up and the fence needed repair, more accurately, it needed to be pulled up out of the mud and turf that had grown over it.

So it was a tractor sorta day for a good deal of it, yay. Hauled many loads of dirt over to the walk way. Used the bucket to pull the fence up and shake off the sod. Okay, that last part didn’t work so hot, so with the fence lifted in the air by the hooks on the bucket, Bet and I ripped sod chunks off of it.

Bet put in this fine gate to keep the horse off the sheep walk way, And of course, everyone is very helpful here at VF&G so a group of helpers made sure that Bet had all the help she could possible want.

And then some.

Sheep don’t like to be caught in action in the fall. So it is hard to tell exactly when lambing will start. But we don’t keep the ram with the ewes all the time. We turn him in with his flock in the fall and take him our several months later. So we know the earliest they ewes can lamb and the latest. It never goes until the latest, not even one ewe. But it never is quite the earliest date either. But pretty close that is for sure.

This year Dirt has been saying mid-February, then a month ago he narrowed it down, February 15th. I said last week it would be this week, but I sensibly chose not to get quite so specific.

Sure enough, all this week the girls have been lookin’ mighty large.

And acting suspicious. Earlier today, when Bet and I were working, one ewe walked all the way to the west fence line. Bet checked, nothin’ and the ewe walked back to the flock as if she were caught, caught, tryin’ to escape most likely!

But then.. a little bit later she went back out to the fence line and….

Our first lamb of 2012! Yes, it is there, by the time we got to the ewe and lamb we were in work mode, and someone’s admonishment or rather their wondering if I had gotten admonished to put down the camera, rang in my ears. I’ll have pics of the two all snuggly in the barn tomorrow.

All schedules are suspended for the next month! Yay! But I will try very hard not to use it as an excuse to stay up all night writing. That said, Good-night Dear Reader! See you all tomorrow!

Categories: Lambing | 4 Comments

Catching Up..

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Lanny

Last week was full of days that truly were balanced work days, a little regular work that has been on the to do list for months, some work that is actually on this week’s calendar page and some storm damage fixin’ involving both sorts of dirt. But pretty much this post is dealing with backlogged work, I’m now caught up with some October work. Some.

But first, Dear Reader, a word from our Sponsor.

So while I was reading last week’s Mass Readings (yes, I occasional read from the Mass Readings, the residual Catholic in me always manages to come out somehow) I thought it was fairly timely, a little about love and a little about cleaning – perfect for February.

The one that was about love – fairly powerful. It was in fact about the power of love.

for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame
Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot sweep it away.
If one were to give
all the wealth of one’s house for love,
it would be utterly scorned.

I’d say that was fairly powerful, couple that with the whole one-ness bond that God says marriage is and boy howdy no wonder He speaks of bloody clothing when we choose to dismiss a spouse, and head to divorce court.

The cleaning part, well that comes from the Mary and Martha story, and Jesus telling Martha that Mary has indeed chosen the better thing, to be at His feet, Hoovering up all He has to say, contemplating and taking it into her being, ignoring distractions that seem to consume Martha, at the very least Martha’s attention.

I don’t believe we are ever told Mary and Martha’s ages, maybe even if we aren’t told specifically, some wonderful Bible scholar can stand on his head, spin four times and come up with a fairly close approximation of their ages. But I’m not sure I need to know their ages, they could be young and just figuring things out or they could be old and one of them knows what is important and the other is a foolish meddlesome ol’ biddy. We don’t have to be young to be foolish. We don’t even have to be fools to be foolish.

Thursday or Wednesday in the Mass Readings there was a passage that really struck my eyes, as if for the first time. (You know that feeling don’t you Dear Reader, it isn’t just me is it, that can read something several times over the course of her life, come across it again and then all of a sudden see something as if for the first time?)

When Solomon grew old his wives swayed his heart to other gods; and his heart was not wholly with the Lord his God as his father David’s had been. Solomon became a follower of Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and of Milcom, the Ammonite abomination. He did what was displeasing to the Lord, and was not a wholehearted follower of the Lord, as his father David had been. Then it was that Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the god of Moab on the mountain to the east of Jerusalem, and to Milcom the god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrifice to their gods.

The Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned from the Lord the God of Israel who had twice appeared to him and who had then forbidden him to follow other gods; but he did not carry out the Lord’s order. The Lord therefore said to Solomon, ‘Since you behave like this and do not keep my covenant or the laws I laid down for you, I will most surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants. For your father David’s sake, however, I will not do this during your lifetime, but will tear it out of your son’s hands. Even so, I will not tear the whole kingdom from him. For the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen, I will leave your son one tribe.’

The bulk of the story I knew, the particulars would have been a bit fuzzy, but the part that struck me, struck me as if new information…

That he was old! Not that he actually became old, but that when he became old that is when the shenanigans of having multiple foreign wives pulled his heart away from the one true God!

Why do we constantly think that when a person gets old they are set. If they were good and followed God they will continue and if they are jerks and idiots and despised God they will continue in that manner?

Why do we continue to think that, put stock in that lie when God clearly tells us it can just as easily be the other way? Solomon was no slouch in the God department either, he wasn’t just a pew warmer, he was a pew builder, the first in fact, AND his faith went south. (please don’t tell me that they didn’t have pews in the temple and so I’m wrong, you know what I am saying here). And it seems as if we also continue to insist on the flip side of the coin, believing that some folks can’t be saved and transformed, due to the perceived distance from God or the person’s age.

It is like so many other things, we, in this worldly steeped Christian culture of ours, buy, just because it is the norm, or what we want to believe for our own sake, or it’s what the media presents to us so often. We go merrily along in life operating under the lie, that for the most part folks don’t change once they hit certain ages. We have our personality by childhood, if not birth, and once we’ve gone to youth group and been caught afire for God that we’re pretty much smooth sailin’, as long as we show up most Sundays and frequently on Wednesdays and “serve” for a few good years.

But in God’s reality, no one is beyond the saving grace of God through Christ and no one is immune to the conniving of Satan.

So last week was not full of the mediocre mild weather that the weatherman predicted, it wasn’t as bad as all that, just not as good as “they” claimed it was gonna be. In spite of the rain it became a fairly productive week.

I didn’t get more sandy loamy clay hauled to the parking lot, but I did get the berm built up with the top soil I removed and then flattened the berm and readied it for planting. And then Bet and I did indeed plant.

Once again procrastination pays off. After I moved the soil and shaped the berm, I had a nearly blank slate and one that could well remain blank for quite some while, if it weren’t for a job that had been left undone.

Every year I put a lot of my spring flower bulbs in tubs because the carnivorous moles on this farm have turned omnivorous and wipe out most of my bulb plantings. Tulip bulbs are their favs but they will also ruin some others, they have also been known to eat every last pea seed in a wide bed of peas or follow a line of sweet pea seeds down a fence. So either the voles can actually hire them to dig tunnels in very specific places according to what is planted or the moles like to munch a little crudité with their worm and bug delights.

Any way, that is my theory based on my experience and therefore why my tulips go in tubs. Last year I also put a lot of my daffs, hyacinths, muscari and crocuses in the tubs just for looks sake. But I should have taken them all out between summer and fall to divide up the tulips and redistribute them, I’ve been know to keep tulips from one year to the next and to get them back to bloom stage if I take care of them properly, but sometimes they just happen to hit the bottom of the priority barrel, like they did this year.

But hey, like I said, procrastination has paid off, because now as I am pulling apart all of the spring bulb tubs, I was able to plant the daffs, hyacinths and everything else but the tulips into the parking lot berm. The tulips will go back into tubs, deep ones this time for some of the offsets that are too small to bloom well, deep keeps them from setting more bulbs and the production of offsets is what makes tulips peter out and not be perennial.

But then they have moved to near bottom of the priority list again, so if I get to the tulips and their latent care it might just be a miracle. I’ll be tending seed setting and cutting fuchsias in the HHH, planting peas and potatoes in the Hoop and preparing a display and holding area for the bare root berries that are coming at the end of the week. Not to mention helping Dirt carve a way out back for the rock so that we can order up gravel and make a proper parking lot for guest at the Market Shed.

Lambing season should be starting soon. Not sure I’m ready for the lack of sleep and disrupted work. But I am very ready to see the little lambs with their mommies.

Categories: Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Damages and Images: Part Two, Clean Up Begins

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Lanny

Continued from yesterday morning

Since I have been in earth moving mode and knowing I need a decent parking place for visitors to the Farm and Market Shed I tackled the parking area yesterday (Tuesday).

Removing all the peat like top soil, smoothing out the naked clay layer, ready for some foundational fill dirt (rock and sandy loamy clay). I have several big artificial hills of the sandy loamy clay in the pasture that I have been meaning to move. But the fill rock? (not to be confused with Phil Rock), that is out back, piles and piles of it from when Dale had our youngest daughters out there all one summer picking rocks out of the “new” hay fields.

Unfortunately there is a big mess between us and the rocks. The road through our pastures and out through our woodlot to Norine’s hay fields is a bit of a mess. Bet and I took a walk out to the beaver dams a week after snow and icemagedon and took the following pictures. They are in order, working from the hay fields back to the pasture gate.(The first two are of the road the day the big snow came, before the ice) Each one is a whole new set of downed trees, mostly alder.

I’m not in too big of a hurry to tackle this mess, I have nightmares of 2004, when I had to quickly remove the three trunked, sixty foot, silver maple off of our backyard so that we could re-landscape in time for Michelle’s wedding. My forearms were swollen and purple for a month.

Not sure I want to leave it just to Dirt, not that he has tons of time either, plus I would love to harvest out the nice straight logs so the grandboys and I can build a log house for our Leif Erickson celebration. Dirt might not see the need to do that extra step.

And I would love to do it so that it could also be a little hut for my black lagoon hidden pub (is that a contradiction?) The hut would be the highlight of a nature trail that would leave from the back yard, cross over a main water way, wind through our fern filled woodlot, creep along the edge of the big main pond and eventual end up here at the black lagoon. I was disappointed to see that one of my favorite mossy trees came down over the swamp.

But then it could happen that it adds even more character to the space. The top of the tree is on the edge of the high ground where Bet and I have determined to put in a lovely little gathering area to have a beer and sandwich in the heat of the summer,

or come and snuggle under quilts in the spring among the fragrance of skunk cabbage, poplar resin and listen to the cacophony of mating, nesting, birds.

I know, it seems crazy to be thinking of this project now, when just digging out of the basic mess and keeping up with have to’s ought to keep us busy for … ever. But it is so tempting to chisel away at it, at least a little. The ice covered snow not only brought down branches, broke trees in half and pulled others up by their roots, it also flattened the underbrush. It is amazing how clear it is under the forest canopy right now, very unusual for the murky damp west side of the Cascades. It sure makes it a whole lot easier to see the terrain.

Oh well, if we get to it, it will be a fun project, if not, nothin’ new, there are lots of things we dream up that we don’t quite get to. But I do need to get to the rock piles. Soon. Thanks for coming by Dear Reader see you soon I’m sure. Now I’m off to some yellow light before bed.

Categories: Farm Make Over, Snow Fun, Trouble, Winter | 3 Comments

Damages and Images: Part One, the Wonder and the Havoc

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Lanny

Three weeks ago, on January seventeenth, the whole of the Pacific Northwest received a large dumping of snow overnight, on top of a fairly typical earlier snowing,

short lived and melty, on the fifteenth and sixteenth.

Nearly as soon as we woke up on the eighteenth

and were ready to enjoy a near record breaking snowfall, those of us in the South Puget Sound area began receiving freezing rain on top of the snow by noon.

The ice rain continued on and off through the nineteenth and into the early morning of the twentieth. It glued the snow onto everything and then added a dense casing of ice on top of that.

It was incredibly beautiful.

But then quickly turned less than.

By the next morning we woke to broken trees and spent the day listening to the near silent destructive storm. No howling wind, only the tinkling of the ice rain on your jacket and the crack of branches and trees. The aftermath, even three weeks later, is ugly and disruptive. The weight of the snow and ice broke and fell so many trees it is overwhelming to think of the damage around our farm.

Luckily, earlier snow and ice storms, like the one we had January, 2004, caused the loss and removal of all trees around the Farmhouse, so our house only received minimal damage from the ice and snow itself, not from a tree falling on it, which could have made matters much worse.

The roofs at the farm are metal and most are steep, they often afford some fantastic snow images but this time they also afforded our only house damage. It was to our screen porch, bottom right of the picture cluster, the ice laden snow on the steep roof of the center of the house eventually broke loose and crashed down on our poor little porch. Easy fix among fixes.

The fence lines didn’t fair as well. Our west fence line is obliterated by our neighbor’s fallen trees. Our south fence line is fairly covered by the trees from our wood lot. The worst of the fence line mess, the west line, is inaccessible until our water levels return to summer levels, some time right around haying season I’m sure.

The melting of all this snow and ice on top of frozen ground caused localized flooding. Of course the flooding here at the farm never rises to the level of that near rivers, no danger to life, unless you’re a worm or soil microbe. Now that we receive far more run off than we used to in the first years we lived here, I have been learning how to not have my Market Garden and most of our pastures be under water during our freeze, melt and rain season, November to March. It is hard to grow grass and crops under water and it takes much longer for soil to recover from extended waterlogging.

The biggest consumption of my time since the storm, when I’m not doing the things on my regular work to do list, like

tending fuchsia and geranium starts, putting seeded flats together, weeding ornamental, onion and garlic beds, harvesting greens and roots, and keeping the house, has been water control.

Late this last summer and all during the fall I managed to do quite a bit of restructuring in the highway hedgerow, forming Pumpkin Pond, doing the ground work for essentially a rain garden, and assuring that the largest amount of garden flooding that occurred last year wouldn’t repeat this year.

These last three weeks, with all the water that needed to find its way to the ponds and channels and off of the Market Garden and pasture grass, I have been forming shallow water ways in the pasture to allow the water to move quicker off of vital ground and running the pump on the one spot I can’t seem to find a low tech solution for. Hopefully curing the Market Garden flooding that still occurred in some spots, by reliving the water pressure, and getting the often months long standing water off of the pasture so that there is less winter kill, more late winter growth and quicker spring return to rapid growth.

I want to get to more pictures of the destruction but I really need to get out and help Bet work on the sheep walkway and finishing up the sheeps’ loafing area for this year’s lambing. It is another great day today here at the Farm, the sun is shining and it is toasty warm. I’ll return soon with my earth moving project of yesterday and what is standing, or more accurately, laying in my way of completion. I hope that will be soon. Along with some other computer oriented endeavors. See ya soon Dear Reader.

Categories: Change, Farm Make Over, Farming, Snow Fun, To Do List, Weather, Winter | 8 Comments

Let’s Pretend

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Lanny

Okay, I have a new plan to solve the problem of being a month behind on a few things, six months on others and over two years on all the rest.

I’m going to pretend I just moved to the farm, I’m from a big city far away, Dirt unpacked our stuff and put everything away or just threw it in a room he thought best. The people who lived here, just disappeared and so it was sold to us with all their stuff still here just as they left it.

You wouldn’t believe this place it is gorgeous, I’ve already made lots of plans, but wow, is there a lot of work to do. Not to mention Bet and Dirt really lived through quite a nasty bit of weather while I was wrapping things up back in the city. There are trees down all over the place, and lots of fence repairs, a new porch to build, just lots and lots of things to do.

I’ll try and keep you updated with all the stuff we are doing. Next post I’ll show you pictures that Bet, Dirt and some lady took during the storm.

(I think the pretend story might work, I feel way better already.)

Categories: Change | 8 Comments

Finally, No Turning Back Now

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Lanny

Down by the highway, so folks know where we are, and who we are, and what we do, we put up a permanant Farm sign.

And now we’re officially more official – this is gettin’ down right scary.

The posts went up over the course of a couple of weeks, the pauses were for large dumpings of rain.

Rain makes concrete work just a bit more difficult than usual, rain makes lots of things difficult. The typical wait in between steps for curing became very elongated with each new drenching rain.

The posts aren’t just cemented in and braced, they also have guy wires.

Anchored in and tight.

The sign painted and mounted to the cross bars ready for hangin’.

Some things just get to have extra engineering to come out with the right look.

Typical compost flipper and manure mover, becomes occasional tool tote.

Ladders in place

Evaluations made

The lift begins…

The ooumph…

The set in…

The ta-da!

And then, the “oh my gosh, it’s high”.

There seems to be a malfunction in the set up. The cross boards aren’t falling into place like they should have.

The fix.

And now for screwing the top cross boards into place on the 4×6’s

We brought everything down to the worksite except the kitchen sink, oh, and an extra drill bit. Dirt got back so Bet and I had to hurry back over the fence, we had wandered off while waiting for the tool replacement.

Setting the east-side lower cross board. For some reason we’ve abandoned the one ladder, too big and cumbersome…so Bet is working from the bucket of the front-loader. Not an approved method, but what can Safety Mom do?

Screwing it in.

Now for the west-side.

Screwing that in. Almost all the screws are in. And Bet decides she wants to do the last ones on her side.

Uhh, this is making the front-loader operator and mother of the adventurous a tad nervous. This is not what the bucket is for. Do not try this at home!

Oh great, now she has to really lean into it. Thanks for the heart attack.

Now the holes are drilled for hanging the “what’s for sale” signs.

And what is for sale? Puppies! A few left from the summer batch, when the old small temporary sign blew down, The signage was neglected but not the puppies, we have a girl and two boys, house broke, and started on their come-sit-stay training, nice pups, very nice pups.

That’s it! It is up. Now we need to paint up the produce and hours sign. But first we plant garlic, late as usual but not as late as last year. See… I do do the “next year” thing, I don’t just say it.

Categories: Puppies and Kittens for Sale, Vicktory Farm and Gardens | 7 Comments

Thanks

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Lanny

Header Challenge day again. Kathy has chosen “Thanks” for this week’s theme.

Thanksgiving, a National Holiday

A national holiday for some of the challengers (go see them from my sideboard links), including me, but not the others from other lands (they’re on the sideboard too). Which has always been really confusing to me. That other folks don’t do Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving in my family, current and childhood, has always and only been given to our Lord. Yes, we thank others for their part in our lives but in back of that is thanking God for putting good people in our lives and allowing us to serve others when we can as well.

I very often forget that it is a national holiday for us in America and not for other nations. It’s not quite as obvious an exclusive as Fourth of July, Independence Day or even Veterans or Memorial Day, in spite of Pilgrim hats and buckles, or Pilgrims and Indians on candlesticks. Don’t get me wrong, please, I know other nations have their own days and ways of celebrating thanking God for the harvest and the blessings he bestows. It is less about forgetting that other nations are not doing a “Thanksgiving” tomorrow and more about what actually occurs here in America.

It is easy for me to forget that it isn’t a church holiday. Easy to forget that some folks tomorrow don’t recognize God, don’t recognize it is to Him we own our thanks, tomorrow in a feast and everyday in our quiet prayers.

Oh I get it, in the long run I really do get it, and I can easily get around my momentary confusion. Something like, “that’s what being American is all about”, being able to thank whom ever you want to for your blessings, including yourself.

Thanksgiving as the Christmas Floodgate

A lot of fuss is made here in the States about the pushing of Christmas too early. And the complaint is always filed against the stores. Which I think is hilarious. We don’t get all up in commerce’s face when they are ahead of the other seasons, beach balls are in the stores long before I’m ready to take off my sweater or see Dirt in his swim trunks. Nobody gets all crazy protesty about that.

So I don’t have an issue with Christmas being in the stores, it’s retail for crying out loud! They are supposed to take advantage of your desire to waste your money on things you don’t really need.

But why does this come up today? On my blog? Oh why do I talk about anything, it’s just stuff that gets in my head, mostly because I listen to way too much radio, late at night and in the morning, for that I get to thank Dirt. But really it comes up because in America supposedly Thanksgiving is the national holiday that keeps us from goin’ all Christmasy too soon.

Heaven forbid we do that now, tomorrow on Thanksgiving, or even today. As if you can’t do both at nearly the same time. Funny, Christmas never prevented me from celebrating the New Year and there are tons of signs of Christmas still around on New Year’s Day. Well not in retail establishments, they’ve moved on to the next season we spend money on, usually gardening and Valentines Day.

The fact that I have prepurchased New Year’s decorations mid-December and tidbits and sent out invitations (sent invitations?! not really but you get my drift) doesn’t keep me from celebrating Christmas to it’s fullest. Oh wait, I’m even singing songs about New Year’s weeks before Christmas, and some Christmas songs themselves mention New Year’s. Oh my gosh! Its a travesty, quick call the holiday police, get those holidays separate!

If a couple of Christmas carols in the stores, or on the radio, or even blaring out of my car, causes you to not be able to savor your turkey and stuffing tomorrow (which by the way, is often served on Christmas dinner tables as well) then boy howdy, bummer for you. Obviously I’m not the only one with adult onset attention deficit if thats all it takes to distract folks from the turkey dinner.

If you’re one of those Christmas crazy people who keep your tree up forever or put it up in September, have at it, I may personlly think you’re a bit over the top, maybe in my mean moments I’ll think you childish, but I’m not going to for a moment, think you are ruining my Christmas or my Halloween or Valentine’s Day. I might think you’re ruining yours and tisk tisk you and shake my head for you, but I’m not going to go all congressional act on you or storm into your house and demand you move to a new neighborhood if you don’t shut it down. And I don’t think anyone but the craziest of crazies would either, but there sure are a lot of folks that resent commerce for doing so, and yet demand that they be successful all at the same time.

Oh, we’ve heard the song and dance about commercializing Christ, but come on, if you think it does that then don’t participate in the commercial side of Christmas, stop buying stuff. Oh, but wait, even more so, if you don’t like the commercialization of Christmas, don’t get in the store clerk’s face when he says, ‘Happy holidays, sir!” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

In fact, even if you are an over the top Christmas person, blarring carols out of your car September fifteenth, don’t snear at the clerk and report them for not saying merry Christmas to you. They don’t know you, they just got yelled at last year and sued by a Muslim for saying merry Christmas to them. Please, for Christ’s sake, no really, for His sake, don’t get all freaked out about it. Say, “Merry Christmas” back at them if you want, nicely, like you mean it, and move on. Or return a, “Happy holidays to you too”, because that is what they said to you, and because you don’t know that they aren’t Jewish or… I don’t know, something other than Christian.

And if they say, “Have a good day.” sometime between now and January first, please do not return your grumpiest farewell to them. They may be flustered and forgot it was the holidays, they may have sized you up for someone who will yell at them for the wrong farewell, they may in fact believe that to celebrate certain days apart from others is unbiblical, or their religion may forbid them to mention other holidays. Getting all nasty isn’t going to sway them your way, or do you really suppose it will?

A Personal Holiday Wish

And please, really please, do not assume that just because I spell Christmas with all normal letters and only capitalize the “C”, that I don’t know that it is about Christ, or his birth. I do, your neighbor might not, but be nice, don’t tell him he can’t celebrate it, but in a nice, not an overbearing denying sort of way, tell him what it really is all about. And then make sure you look like what you are telling him to be.

Something Completely Different – PSE

So on a lighter note, (and hopefully the last you’ll see of any holiday crabbiness from me) in my header you’ll see I’ve done a very similar thing as my postcard last week.

I was honored by being voted the gold for my header last week, but I couldn’t just leave it there, the pictures stick out from under the letters and that just isn’t right.

And yes, often I am a dog with a bone sorta girl. I gotta get it right, even if it kills me. And I don’t care if everyone sees the embarrassing process. And now… one Photoshop Elements skill down, several zillion left to go!

In a remake of last week’s as well as today’s header, you will see that my pictures in the letters do not peek out from around the edges of the letters! I finally found the correct tutorial for what I wanted to do. It was one of Alibony’s titled, “Fill Single Text Characters with Images” it is an earlier non-video tutorial. And for sure, to never make things easy on myself, I dyslexified two steps for a bit. Two steps that mattered. But I finally got it.

It is all about using a magic wand to select the individual letters after you have simplified the layer with the letters in question, switching over to the picture you want to stick inside it. Selecting it, copying it, switching back to the letter layer and clicking “paste into selection”. Then Wala! And like I hinted at above, some steps you can “mess” with, and some you cannot.

And yes, obviously you have to do all the steps (except for the “simplify layer”) for each letter, which is time consuming. But hopefully you don’t have a big long word or name. There are more intricate points, but go to the tutorial for all the instructions, it is easy and the link is just right up there in the paragraph above the one above this one.

More About Designing

A failing of mine is an inability to revisit something that I’ve done before – er, uh, I know confusing eh… I redo things but when I do I need to do it again with a twist. The above postcard was my first redo of the postcard that I was unable to pull off last week, it isn’t verbatum but really close.

Now what I’ve done with it may or may not be ultimately good looking, I know, sometimes when I learn to do something I do it too much, not everything should be attached by means of a hot glue gun (duct tape perhaps would be the…never mind). But for reasons of side stepping needing a graphics program I wanted to get the feel of working with text in PSE (Photoshop Elements).

On the road to get the final redo postcard, I thought I had a good one until I put all the pictures into the black letters. The “stroke” (outline around the entire letter) was way too light, it really needed a black or nearly black line when on top of a background that was a bit busy.

For me, today’s banner works with a light line (stroke) because the background itself is nearly monochromatic and I took down the saturation of the pictures inside the letters. Which of course in some respects makes it a very soft feminine work, reminds me more of my mom than myself.

Unfortunately when you make a mistake at this point, ready to drop pictures in mis-lined letters, it is too late to change because you have to simplify the layer before adding the pictures and once simplified cannot be warped, drop shadowed, outlined (stroke), and the colors of these effect cannot be changed as well.

So I had to begin again. And of course I had to do it “differently” so this time I dumped in more words, imagine me adding words, who’da thunkit Dear Reader! Some might question at this point if I had indeed messed too much and left it too busy by not washing out the background like I did in the original. Well someone sitting next to me did, don’t know how many more are like that out there. And I admit sometimes I like busy and sometimes…. I don’t.

It came out to a lot of work and time in the end, to just get to the postcard-ready-to-drop-in-pictures part, so I did up a “template” of sorts in case I want to make postcards for the Farm for reals. Which I just might! Basically it is a matter of saving the layers you need before flattening them or simplifying them and saving them as a PSD file not a jpeg, so that you can play with all the different layers.

I saved my “Postcard Template” that way, but then, so that I could show you, I saved it flattened and jpeg-ed.

All along the way, I learned so much more than just putting images inside letters. Isn’t that they way most projects work? So I’m really okay with it taking a lot of time, even if I never do the technique again. I learned a lot, won an award last week, stayed off the streets, and outta trouble. A big win all ’round I’d say, ’nuff for me anyway.

Categories: Autumn, Blogging, Christmas, Holidays, Thanksgiving | 8 Comments

Postcard From Vicktory Farm & Gardens

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Lanny

Imac picked the theme for this week’s challenge. Did he say it was going to be easy? Perhaps not, maybe that is what Dave said last week. But it probably was easy for him, maybe easy for the others as well, but not for me. Make sure you go see what they came up with for “Postcard From ….”.

Often when one of the fellas, er, other challengers, mentions their idea for the theme my mind immediately picks how I want to present it, sometimes I have a scene or object in mind, sometimes I go searching.

Plenty of times my mind gets changed: I see something that would serve the theme so much better than my original thought; the target subject will not cooperate; once loaded into Photoshop my pictures for the project look like wet toilet paper and I have to switch up; or my aspirations are just too grandiose and I scale down to my abilities and equipment.

It’s what I should have done today. I should have… went out, found a picture-postcard scene, snapped a few straight up shots, a few more for good measure, cropped, edited and posted.

But no. I had an immediate mental image of a vintage travel postcard in my head. A fifties – sixties number, with pictures in the big block letters, with scenes that have a pin up model in them.

That was the target look. I’ve never done it before but what the heck I have, uh, had, a whole week to teach myself. So how hard could making a retro travel postcard for the Farm be, really?

Bwahahahahahah!

I thought it was going to be easy, I thought I could just make picture letters with the cookie cutter tool. Uh. No. So that began my big “how to” search.

The photoshop tutorials that got me goin’ are found at alibony.

Actually with these tutorials I found out a lot of very cool things to do, But never quite what I was looking for. They were time consuming to go through for sure, but not to awful brain breakin’.

As good as the end result from what alibony was showing me, it just wasn’t what I was lookin’ for. So back to google searching I went.

Ahhh I found it! Separate pictures in separate letters, oh dear, this fellow is using Photoshop and Illustrator, another Adobe product. So I downloaded a trial of Illustrator and was off and runnin’.

But alas, some step is missing on the written tutorial and there was no way I was gonna figure it out.

So I cobbled something out of a lot of the things I learned on alibony.

Still not the look I was shooting for. You can see some of the pictures I used to “color” the letters peaking out from the edges.

I also wanted to create a bit of a story on the back of a “postcard” to go with it. It helps fill out my header and heck… just for fun, just for you Dear Reader.

I will get this figured out, to where it looks nearly as good as my mind visions it. I’m not stopping here by any means! If I don’t get back here, have a great weekend!

Categories: Blogging, Fiction, Vicktory Farm and Gardens | 11 Comments

Veterans Day

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Lanny

We want to extend our immense gratitude to the American Veterans of all wars.

We appreciate beyond words the freedom that has been fought for and fought to be kept. The freedom those who fight bring to us and to others around the world.

Not ever knowing a time personally when we have not had incredible freedom, our hearts are broken for those around the world who’s every move is restricted.

We can’t imagine the heartache and tension of living in a country where a person not only knows there are many things they can’t do without suffering undo consequences but the horror of living under tyranny that can just decide one day that they don’t like how a person looks or lives, or a tyranny that feels threatened by a last name or gender, enough to drag them from their meager home, beat them until near death, lock them in inhumane places and beat them some more, physically, mentally, emotionally.

So we humbly thank those who have not only fought to maintain our unimaginable freedom but saved others from unimaginable tyrannies.

Categories: Heritage, Nation | 7 Comments

Weird And Wonderful, That’s Us!

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Lanny

Dave’s choice of a theme for this week’s header challenge is “Weird and Wonderful”.

I’ve got the weird covered and Dirt always handles the wonderful part.

I’m a bit late again with my post, a sunny day and lots still to finish before the real cold weather sets in. Not to mention a bit of trouble with photos. But I’m here now! Even after more issues with pictures and fonts. Please, go see what the other players have for headers if you haven’t already. Then prepare a trip down Tater Lane as you read on here!

Bet took this week’s photos for the header on the new little camera she now wears on her belt all the time. So “losing” our camera this summer was a bit of a good thing in the long run. She was an honorary member of the Header Challenge a little while back so I figured she could be the photographer this time as well. She took ’em; I fixed ’em up.

That is most definitely a live dragonfly on my hat! I don’t have just any ornaments on my clothes, only the finest, natural and green, oh wait, it’s decidedly burnt sienna. It was there most of the day, out in the Market Garden, while I drove my tractor, worked in the hothouse. Weird.

The dragonflies were intense this year blue, red, green, double winged (I’m sure not all of what I think are are dragonflies). The red ones especially are still out on warm days. We always have what seems like an awful lot of dragonflies here at the Farm but this year, even more so. And clearly acting a bit weird.

Dirt, well Dirt is just plain wonderful. Very helpful during harvest time, very encouraging and supportive about the Market Garden on and off the farm.

Dirt has always loved harvesting potatoes with me. But he does bring the spade fork a long and uses it still, until he punctures two really nice looking potatoes, then he digs with his hand like I do. No mechanical harvesting of the potatoes here!

We actually harvested one whole bed together the other day and didn’t’ say three words. Not weird for Dirt, maybe, but definitely weird for me! It has been a wonderful harvest of potatoes this year in spite of the ruined first plantings.

We planted four beds in mid July! And still we managed to harvest well over three hundred pound of taters. We even have some very big bakers! Each of the harvest boxes hold between forty and fifty pounds. This is off of one bed.

I used fish bone meal for the first time this year, I’m thinkin’ it is wonderful stuff, a bit weird ‘cuz you can see bright blue fish scales in it, and clear shiny ones. Very weird but wonderful results. I will definitely be using it next year. In fact I’m going to go up to the fertilizer distributor Thursday hopefully and get a bag along with some rock phosphate. The rock phosphate I’ll add to the Market Garden beds now and the fish bone I’ll put in my window boxes with the spring flowering bulbs.

I learned a new thing not to do with potatoes this year. As we were harvesting I was very bothered by these black flecks on the skins, like black tater zits. And mostly on the russets we picked up from the Webster Road Feed, who gets them from Irish Eyes who deals only with certified seed potatoes (certified virus free not certified organic, there’s a difference.) So I knew that the original potatoes were clean, and this was bran’ spankin’ new dirt – new to garden cultivation, it shouldn’t have potato diseases in it. Weird right?

I researched the flecks, and they are Black Scurf, weird name. Its cause by a fungus but isn’t any big deal other than cosmetic as far as eating quality but who wants to eat taters with black flecks and do I wanna spend all my time explaining why my taters have flecks? So on I read.

In one place I read that potatoes are more susceptible to black scurf if they are planted too deeply. And that they were. Especially the bed that had the most scurf. They had very long sprouts on them, if you’ve read other post on taters here you know sprouts on seed taters are a good thing, but shorter is better. These taters had super long ones, because they had begun to sprout in the dark. Keeping taters in the dark is important but once you start chitting them (sprouting them) they need to be in the light so the spouts stay short not long and spindly.

When Bet and I planted these we started out laying the potatoes down and letting the long sprouts just lay sprawled on the surface as we put about four inches of soil on the whole surface of the bed. By the last bed and a half I just felt the need for the sprout to be up right so I talked Bet into making holes in the bed, putting the taters in and covering the works with the soil from the pathways, resulting in very deep potatoes. It seemed to work great, the potato plants sized up quick and were healthy for the rest of summer. Everything was great until we dug the potatoes.

Now I have scurf, black scurf, and I don’t want it again. So yes, we won’t be using any of these potatoes for seed. We will continue to practice crop rotation but scurf lives a long time in soil. It’s a fungus called Rhizoctonia solani. We won’t be planting them deeply to accommodate long sprouts.

It doesn’t sound like there is any easy way to reduce the incidence various practices and planned planting times. There was a group that experimented with planting mustards as a green manure crop just prior to the potatoes. It appears to help.

That’s wonderful! Very easy for here, mustards can grow nearly year round. The article talked about allowing them to flower and after this year I’m thinking of planting taters later than March. So a quick cover of mustard before planting will be very doable. I’ll just need to make some minor adjustments in the planting plan.

Look! Potato Bird! Did I mention that we harvested over three hundred pounds? Need some taters?

Hey look if I turn Potato Bird I get Potato Mitten.

I can flip it around and get the other hand.

Better yet, I can put the two together for a pair, dedicated to my snowy friend Far Side! Have a great weird and wonderful day today Dear Reader. And thank a veteran tomorrow. or several. or all of them.

Categories: Dirt, Garden Methods, Potato Culture | 7 Comments

Management