Overwintered Leeks

Our freezer got a little too full, and we were a little too burnt-out last Summer/Fall to harvest and process our leeks. I also (conveniently!) remembered that leeks can overwinter well with a little straw or leaf mulch. We finally got most of the garden in by Mother's Day, minus our 12 square foot, would-be onion patch, which was still occupied by last Spring's leeks. 

So, Bill pulled them, I weighed and processed them. The weight before processing was 24#! I trimmed, cleaned and chopped up 2/3 of that, and threw them in the freezer. The remaining 8# were donated to our local Food Is Free table here in Olympia. 

Our take, after trimming them up. 

Our next major harvest is likely to be rhubarb, as we have six plants that are HUGE right now. We are so happy to share our abundance with our neighbors, that we have decided to add another tab to our Garden Yield spreadsheet that keeps track of how much produce we have/will have donated to individuals and Food Is Free tables over the coming year. 

High Summer in Olympia

 'Maters in the window sill. The Black Crims and Black Sea Man tomatoes (both "Russian" in origin) have outdone themselves for us this year! Tomato sandwiches and salads galore. It seems that the recipe for success in the Pacific Northwest is to grow a variety of tomato, melon, etc. that was designed to survive in Canada, Minnesota or Russia. 😄 

Oh-ne-oh-ne-owns...

....or onions, however you prefer to say it. This year, we've got 'em.

We had to harvest our onions and shallots earlier than planned this year, primarily because we have some very hungry bunnies who have infiltrated our garden and have completely destroyed the carrots, peas, beets and beans, nibbled the potatoes down to a nub and might have claimed our precious onions next. Sure, people say that they won't eat alliums (garlic, onions, chives, etc.), but let me just tell you, these bunnies will! In fact, they slayed my first planting of garlic chives (and my hostas, pineapple sage, parsley) before I replanted them in a very tall pot that they cannot access. I am being undone by 4-ounce fluff balls, and that is annoying.

So today I started processing some of our onions and shallots. Whoa, Nelly! My house smells.... pungent.

Half of the onions are getting chopped and frozen, just under half are being dehydrated for seasoning and soup bases, likewise the shallots. The funk coming out of my dehydrator right now is eye-watering.

Up next, Padron peppers! I don't especially look forward to the resultant air quality that their processing will produce either, but there are bigger issues here - the "spicy hands". If you've ever prepared hot peppers at home, I know you know what I'm talking about. The capsaicin gets on your hands and anything you touch with your hands - eyeballs, nose - not mention when you visit the bathroom. IT IS BAD NEWS.

Gloves are an absolute must to avoid the spicy hands because no amount of soap & water, baking soda, milk, yogurt, vinegar or anything else will completely remove the oils. My hands were so fiery last time I processed Anaheim peppers (which aren't even that dang spicy) that I literally couldn't sleep.

So, learn from my fail and proceed with caution, fellow kitchen garden geeks! Happy harvest!

Flower Under-Powered: A Tale of Woe

The poppy seed harvest (such as it is) is now in, and the results are underwhelming, to say the least.

The borage took over the pollinator/botanical beds this year and squeezed out all but 4 poppy plants. I should have knocked the borage back a peg - or five - but just didn't have the heart to do it since our honeybees LOVE the stuff.

Our pollinator bed - borage, poppies, calendula and bachelor buttons.

It's a trade off, I guess.

Sorry, Ukrainian Grammies. I wanted to attempt makivynk this Christmas with all homegrown poppy seeds, but it was not to be. While the recipe calls for a staggering three cups(!) of poppy seeds, I managed to grow just a scant half cup this year.

I *might* be able to eek a lemon poppy seed loaf or two out of this, with a dash leftover to throw in a batch of soap (poppy seeds are the best exfoliants ever), but the makivynk - she will have to wait a while longer.

On the plus side, other Ukrainian favorites grew well this year - beets, cabbage, tomatillos... ok, well pretty much just beets and cabbage. Borshch and holubtsi for everyone! 

Growing Container Potatoes

Our Porch Taters, Day 45

Somehow or other, I got the bright idea to try growing two mostly-the-same-but-slightly-different batches of spuds this year. Picture #1 are the "Porch Taters". They differ from our "Garden Spudz" (pic #2) by location as well as the fertilizer that was used at planting time. We have an unofficial growing contest going between the two plots.

The Garden Spudz, day 45

The differences between the two groups are -

The Porch Taters
* Fertilized with fresh bunny poo at planting time.
* Planted in "Smart Pots" recycled grow bags
* Sitting directly on a concrete porch (receives more radiant heat?)
* Gets Southern sun in the morning thru early afternoon

The Garden Spudz
* Fertilized with well-rotted homemade compost (Goat/chicken/duck manure and bedding, plus some kitchen scraps) at planting time
* Planted in "Root Pouch" recycled grow bags
* Sitting on a wooden pallet against the Northernmost wall of our garden
* Gets high noon thru late evening sun.

Both groups were started on 4/4/15 with organic certified, disease-free, well-chitted seed potatoes from the same batch (Irish Eyes Garden Seeds), in Gardner & Bloome's Organic Raised Bed Soil mixed with a handful of Dr. Earth's Kelp Meal.

Based on the above-ground growth alone, the Purple Majesty potatoes seem to be the happiest and healthiest. I've been surprised and disappointed by the slow growth of the Yukon Gold, considering that they are the earliest maturing variety that I planted. They are supposed to have a 65 day (more or less) growing season, 45 of which have already passed. Yikes. I hope they can ketchup catch up! ;)

More updates to follow...

Sunday, Gutty Sunday

Today seemed like as good a day as any to start the mammoth task that is processing our pumpkins. And so my knife and I got to work, bright and early..ish.

A very small representative sample of the punkins-in-waiting.

This year we grew 4 types of pumpkins - the good ol' standard Jack o' Lantern, a pumpkin which is really only good for decoration, Sugar Pie, which is a proper cooking pumpkin, Cinderella, which is pretty and tasty, and Williams Naked Seeded, which is a pepita/oil seed variety. 

To my credit, I got through nine pumpkins today. I have two roasted and pureed Sugar Pies in the freezer, a pound of the naked seeds brining overnight before roasting them tomorrow, and a few pounds of the non-naked (dressed?) seeds in the dehydrator for future chicken snackage. Go, me!

On the other hand, nine pumpkins down doesn't amount to much in the long run here. Bill brought in another 125 pounds of pumpkins from the garden today. I'm gonna be busy.

 My punkin' helper, Scarlet, calling dibs on the 26-pound Williams for her jack-o-lantern.

 One of my Williams Naked Seededs that was sampled by a mouse/vole/varmint of some sort. Luckily these suckers are THICK walled and the little raider was foiled.

My Scarletti-spaghetti helping me sort seeds and guts.

"Mmm... skwash gutz!"

The garden did us pretty proud this year. :)

The Peace that Autumn Brings

Things have gone from madhouse-busy to relative quietude here almost overnight. The pigs have gone to slaughter, the goats are being dried off and tucked in for the Fall and Winter, the garden is all but put to bed, and the chickens have all very suddenly begun their molt.

The lack of Summer's endless chores is a refreshing change.

The flipside of that, of course, is that we are soon to have no more goat milk, eggs or fresh produce until early Spring. All of which I'm ok with - for now. The predictable cycle of antsy anticipation (Hurry up and grow!) eventually fading into frustration and fatigue (Por favor, no mas, zucchini. I surrender!) has nearly come full circle. I'm not itching to plant anything yet, but I have already started mulling over which fruit and veg will make the cut for next Spring's garden and which won't. My thoughts, so far -

The Keepers:
*Cocozelle zucchini (though maybe half as many plants)
*Cylindra beets (again, half as many)
*Early Bush Scallop squash (Pattypan)
*Russian red kale
*German chamomile
*Calendula
*Toma Verde tomatillos
*Sweet basil
*Scarlet Runner beans
*Hungarian Blue bread poppies
*Roma/Paste tomatoes (Probably a different variety, though. The Roman Speckled Paste never ripened at all.)
*Borage (We didn't really use any ourselves, but Billy's honeybees were NUTS for the stuff.)
*Sugar Pie and Cinderella pumpkins
*Scarlet Nantes and Little Fingers carrots (Maybe 2 beds worth next time?)
*French Breakfast and Cherry Belle radishes

Hmmm, maybe:
*Yukon Chief sweet corn (many ears came out stunted, loses it's sweetness and becomes starchy very soon after picking.)
*Golden beets (For whatever reason, these were slug magnets and had to be pulled rather early, lest we lose the whole beet bed to the slugs.)
*William Naked Seed pumpkins (The jury is still out on these, as they haven't been harvested yet)
*Onions (Our success with the onion family has been very limited. Billy is super keen to figure them out though, so...)
*Sunflowers for seed (These seem to be taking forever to ripen. I think it's about even odds now that they'll mold/rot on the vine before ever becoming fully ripe.)
*Lettuces (Apparently, we don't eat enough salad to justify growing more than a few cut-and-come-again plants.)
*Sugar beets (These all went to the pigs. Since we don't know yet if we're doing pigs next year, these are a maybe.)

Nope:
*Minnesota Midget Melon cantaloupe (Never fully ripened on the vine, attracted mice in droves, even the ripe fruit wasn't terribly flavorful.)
*Mammoth Melting peas (They don't transplant well for me, and take forever to get their feet under them, whether transplanted or direct-sown.)
*Yellow squash (Between the zukes and the pattypan, we had more than enough Summer squash.)

Haven't Yet, but Wanna:
*Florence fennel
*Potatoes (Haven't decided on a variety yet)
*Cannellini beans?
*Pickling cucumbers
*Cilantro (It was a huge oversight on our part that we didn't get it in the garden this year.)

And that's as far as I've come with all that. My brain is about to go on a mini-vacation before the Winter/holiday season crafting/knitting/soap making freak-out begins. Bon voyage, mes amis.

The view from my studio of our little garden and Goatlandia in late Summer, September 2013.

Garden Milestones

Not having been raised in a farming family, I've had to glean little morsels of folksy, hand-me-down farm wisdom wherever I could. Things like:

 -Tomato plants go in the ground on Mother's Day weekend
 -Don't cut hay before the 4th of July
-Fresh cream won't whip unless it's at least 3 days old
-Turkey poults are constantly on the lookout for new, more exciting ways to die
-Foxes and coyotes are at their murderous peak during the full moon

And maybe the most apropos bit of wisdom re: a Western Washington garden - if it isn't planted out and well established by mid-July, your crop ain't happening.

Our Summers are short here and typically have just two weeks or a month of any kind of heat, which is not always enough to make many garden favorites happen. I've learned the hard way that, short of using a greenhouse; hot peppers, watermelon and anything else that takes more than 90 days to grow or a month's worth of heat to ripen,  isn't meant to grow here.

There are exceptions, of course, a few of which are merrily growing away in my garden right now. My short-season corn is looking amazing, and well after I'd already resigned myself to the fact that in the land of mold and hungry raccoons, there would be no homegrown corn for us, ever. Behold the beauty (and note that the tassels cometh!) -

Yukon Chief Corn, day 37 (direct sown on 5-30-13)

Minnesota Midget Melons (Cantaloupe), day 70 (started indoors 4-27-13)

These melons are supposed to only take 70 days from seed to fruit (hence their appeal), but were held up on account of my delay getting them out in the ground, and their very rough (nearly fatal) transition from indoors to out. I'd love to see our first melon harvested before July is out, but I guess we'll get what we get when we get it.

Toma Verde Tomatillos, day 70 (started indoors 4-27-13)

Giant Greystripe and Miriam Edible Sunflowers, day 42 (direct sown 5/24/13) 

It may not look like much, and honestly, it's not, but to me... how do I put it? I get a sense of pride and nervous excitement when I think about my little garden, and all of the stuff that is growing beautifully there in spite of it a) being grown in soggy/unsunny/unpredictable western Washington, and b) being grown by a lady who is still learning to speak and understand the language of plants. So far I haven't screwed this up. Suffice it to say I'm pleased.

In addition to all of the up and coming beauty and bounty in the garden, there are a few other foodie delights coming our way shortly - wild blackberries and the opening of crabbing season in the Puget Sound. Happy days are here again!

If you're interested in learning more about any of the varieties of seeds/plants that I've mentioned here, you can read more and/or purchase some of these same seeds through Victory Seed Company and Seeds of Change. By the way, this is not a sponsored post - just one farm nerdess gushing about her garden. :) 

Our Victory Garden - 6/23/13

It's been just over a month since we got the very first few starts and seeds in our garden - radishes, kale, lettuces and peas - most of which started off on such rocky footing that I wondered if we'd started too late, chosen the wrong varieties, or otherwise blown it again this year.

In spite of my concerns, we kept plugging still more seeds and starts into the garden beds and watering everything each evening just before heading in for the night. It's a really nice "chore" when compared to some of our other glorious options, like feeding the pigs. In the garden, you get to calmly walk amongst little green things and flowers, doing a mental inventory of any changes that have occurred in the past 24 hours, or any that will need to be made in the next 24. All the while, swallows and robins swoop and dart overhead, catching mosquitoes and gnats. It's extremely peaceful.

Even being that connected with a place, you don't always really notice the very small daily changes. It's sort of like raising kids - you take your eye off of them for a minute, and suddenly they're huge. Our garden pulled just this sort of presto-change-o on me this weekend. We left town for just 3 nights, only to come back to our very own greenery jungle.

Everything grew appreciably in just those few days. The beet tops have grown by inches and they're starting to put on some root as well. The lettuces and kale need a good, heavy-handed trim, lest they go to seed, and the peas, finally recovered from the trauma of transplantation, have started blooming like crazy and setting pods. But the runaway success, the beast in my garden are the radishes. Behold -

A 2-ounce Cherry Belle and a 3-ounce French Breakfast radish.

These beauties were planted from seed just 35 days ago. Gotta love that fast turnaround! We still have several dozen in the ground that urgently need picking, so it looks like our little pipe dream of a small, roadside farm stand could be just a day or two away from becoming a reality. We won't have much variety -  just the radishes, kale, lettuces, oregano, lavender and some eggs - but boy, what a long time in coming this little project has been! Farmer Chelle is one happy little camper right now. :)

Still Soggy

Our raised beds are finally all built, our soil has been delivered, and we have about 1/3 of the beds filled with soil and ready to go. Watch out, garden! Here I co....

Son of a...!

&%#$!!!! 

It is almost June. The only things I have in the garden so far are peas, beets, radishes, lettuce, strawberries and kale. Whoopy-ding-dang-do. Do I even stand a chance of getting tomatoes, melons, corn or zucchini this year? 

Not happy. 

Pie Cherries in Bloom

My gorgeous Montmorency sour cherry tree is packed with blossoms this year. And our two colonies of Italian(?) honeybees come this weekend, hopefully in time to fertilize the heck out of each and every one of these flowers!

By the 4th of July, I'm optimistic that I'll have at least enough homegrown sour cherries to make one purty little lattice-topped pie that I may or may not end up eating all by myself with a fat scoop of goats milk vanilla ice cream on top. Hurry, Summer, HURRY!

The Three Little Piggies - Week 4

Not a lot new to report on the piggy front. Not even new pics. Yes, sirs and madames, I'm precisely that lame.

Not to digress too much, but it has been a rather full week - goat sales, chicken murders and three big birthdays in a 48-hour period have kept me on my toes, ergo no porky paparazzi shots this week.

We will start milking the goats later this week or early next, so the milk will be joining the mix just as the bulk organic grains that we've been feeding them will be wrapping up. The piggies have been enjoying their soybean/sorghum/corn/cracked wheat porridge, but from here on out, I anticipate that the bulk of their meals will be baked goods and goat milk, with a few kitchen scraps and garden gleanings tossed in as they are available. Luckily these three don't seem to be too picky about their chow, so long as it doesn't contain bananas. Who knew?

I'm going to have to do a little research on estimating/guesstimating pig weight, since I have no earthly idea how much these three have grown in the past month. Does anyone have any suggestions here? Do I use a weight tape? Does the breed matter? I could fill a book with what I don't know. :-\

Anyhoo - the three little piggies seem happy and healthy, and thus far we're still really enjoying having them. Now, when the weather finally heats up and the odeur de cochon becomes wind-borne.... well, I guess we'll cross that funky bridge when we come to it.

Critter Census - Spring 2013

For better or for worse, these numbers are likely to change due to either loss or gain - hopefully gain - within the next 12 weeks leading up to Summer.

Chickens - 14

Sir Rosco Peckins - Lavender Orpington roo
Leroy Brown - Splash Cochin roo
Leon - Black-laced Red Wyandotte roo
Lacy - Silver-laced Cochin hen
Coo-Coo - White/Wheaten Americauna hen
Amelia - Dark Americauna hen
Rose - Brown Americauna hen
Gracie - Golden-laced black Polish hen
Puffy - White Silkie hen (currently sitting on 9 eggs at last count)
Ewok - Brown Americauna hen
Miss Bitey Pants - Black "Policauna" hen
Jasmine - Black Policauna hen
Australorp hens who's names I don't remember (2 of them)

The coyote seems to have picked off a few look-alike hens without our notice, based upon our slowly but steadily shrinking flock. 

Guinea Fowl - 2

Spotty & Sylvia - Pearl Grey hens

Rabbits - 1

Prince Charming - Neutered mini-Rex male

Goats - 19 (Aye, chihuahua!)

Blue - 11 year old Agouti Grey, disbudded Nigerian Dwarf doe
Chardonnay - 5 year old Caramel brown, blue-eyed, gopher-eared, disbudded mini-Lamancha doe
  Chardy's twins - dark in color, doelings
Hop - 2 year old Fawn & White spotted, gopher-eared, mini-Lamancha doe
  Hop's male kid - White & Grey, ND "erect" eared, disbudded mini-Lamancha wether
Valentina - 2 year old Fawn colored, elf-eared, mini-Lamancha doe
  Valentina's twins - Fawn/buckskin colored, gopher-eared
Liberty - 1 year old Caramel brown, blue-eyed, gopher-eared, mini-Lamancha doe
  Liberty's kid - Black with white markings, disbudded
Hope - 1 year old Caramel brown, blue-eyed, gopher-eared, mini-Lamancha doe
  Hope's kid - Fawn colored, disbudded
Sidney - 4 year old, White with black markings, erect-eared, disbudded Alpine doe
  Sidney's kid - disbudded wether
Sophie - 3 year old, White with black markings, erect-eared, disbudded Alpine doe
  Sophie's kids - Black & White, gopher-eared, disbudded, mini-Lamancha/Alpine doeling
                         Black & White, erect-eared, disbudded, mini-Lamancha/Alpine wether
Buckley - 2 year old, Buckskin colored, gopher-eared, mini-Lamancha buck

I feel bad that I can't recall off the top of my head all of the pertinent details about all of the new babies, but between my memory issues and the landslide of babies born in the past two weeks, I'm just out of my depth at the moment. :\

Pigs - 3 (I'm not too committed to learning these guys' names, and so I venture a guess at who's who here.)

Baykin(?) - 9 week old spotted gilt
Prosciutto(?) - 9 week old black gilt
Porkchop(?) - 9 week old black barrow

In addition to our livestock, we have the pets - dogs, Rex & Penny, curmudgeonly old box turtle, Bob, and our lone parakeet, Applesauce. That brings our grand total to 43 critters. HOLY CRAP.

The Three Little Piggies - Week 2

I spent an unreasonable amount of time this week reading some incredibly informative, yet utterly mind-numbing facts & stats on swine nutritional needs. Who's jealous? ;)

Trying to take everything that I'd read from various sources into account, I ended up deciding that the best diet for our pigs is one based on protein-rich organic grains and cereals, homegrown raw goat milk, beet pulp, molasses and some supplemental vitamins and minerals, and of course, the odd bit of produce or kitchen scraps. Tonight was our first time feeding the pigs their "porridge", and it seems to have been well received. Based upon whether this satisfies them, and whether or not they seem to be gaining well with this formulation, some tweeking and fine tuning the recipe may be in order. But here it is, as it stands now, my recipe for lip-smackin' swine delight. ;)

Chelle's Pig Porridge 

serves 3, 40-50 pound feeder/grower pigs

1 1/2 cups organic soybeans
1 1/2 cups sorghum grain
3 cups medium ground organic corn grits
3 cups organic cracked wheat
2 cups pelleted beet pulp
1 scoop (about a tablespoon) nutritional yeast
1/4 cup molasses
2 scoops (included in package) kid milk replacer powder - Eventually this will be replaced by fresh, raw goat milk, and the volume of water used to rehydrate/plump the cereal grains will be reduced accordingly.
1 scoop (included in package) loose minerals
14 cups +/- very hot water

Mix together in a large bucket, stir well and allow to sit and absorb the liquid and cool to room temperature over an hour or so. The dry grains themselves, before adding the water, weigh about 8 pounds. The water and other ingredients about double that, making for roughly 16 pounds of porridge, more or less. We also have a large stockpile of past-sell-by-date bread products and pastries that we feed at a rate of 3 packages (these could be doughnuts, hot dog buns or high-end whole grain breads, etc.) per meal. This seems to be an adequate meal for our three little piggies - for now. We'll make adjustments and additions as necessary.

As for the source of our grains, I had such a hard time tracking down certified organic products that I could buy in bulk quantities, that I ended up having to buy people-grade grains from a local (Oregon) mill, Bob's Red Mill. 

The single most expensive ingredient were the organic soybeans, at $46 for a 25-pound bag. The sorghum, corn and wheat were all less that a dollar per pound though, meaning that we got 150 pounds of grains for about $140, which sounds like a lot, until you consider that -

a) This should last us close to a month, being fed this porridge once per day (for now they have a lighter breakfast meal of pig chow, bread products and kitchen scraps)

b) Organic is always more expensive, and finding organic/non-GMO corn & soy is getting very hard.

c) This diet won't go on for more than a month or two. When the goat milk and garden food streams start flowing, we'll be able to reduce the amount of purchased feeds for our piggies.

d) If you believe the feed conversion rates that I've been reading about, ad nauseum, feeding three pounds of these high quality, high protein feeds equal one pound of pork. So, $140 worth of grain = 50 pounds of hormone-free, organic, happy pork. Keep in mind that that number is based upon the grains alone, and doesn't count the nutritional contribution of the goat milk, kitchen scraps, etc.

e) If all else fails, we can eat the grains that we bought for our piggies.

It's possible that I've grossly miscalculated everything, and these will be the most expensive, spoiled pigs on earth. It is also possible that I will have tried something non-conventional and slightly risky, and end up rewarded with ribs and chops that are to die for.

The proof will be in the puerco. ;)

The Three Little Piggies - Week 1

Basically, so far, so good. Everybody seems to be in good health and good spirits, and no one has tried to make a break for it yet, which is maybe the best news of all. The hotwire that Bill ran around the pen - maybe 6 inches off of the ground - seems to be more than enough to stem their curiosity of what lies beyond. The piglets aren't the only ones figuring out what hotwire is about, our puppy Penny seems to have learned the hard way that the pig pen is no place for a 7-pound morsel such as she. She's fine, but let out quite a yip upon encountering the wire.

As for feeding the pigs - that has been going well so far too. We went spelunking in the depths of our chest freezer for the freezer burned, forgotten and out-of-date items that have a way of accumulating in there. In just 7 days, the little porkers have cleaned us out of old bread, last years frozen goat milk, 3 1/2 year-old fruit (apparently `09 was a bumper year for blueberries) and some incredibly freezer burned fish. All mixed with a generous scoop or two of the leftover kid milk replacer powder that was leftover from this rocky kidding season that we've just come through. The pigs relish this mish-mash of half-frozen leftovers, and clean their trough of every last speck, every single time.

     

We do have a bag of Pig Chow that we've been mixing in with their slops now and then. At $13.99 per 50 pound bag though, we probably won't be feeding much if any more of it once that first bag is gone. Our goat milk and bakery outlet haul will make up the larger part of the piggies' diet, which will also be supplemented with garden gleanings and rejects, kitchen scraps, odd or elderly hard-boiled chicken eggs, and, if we get lucky, more imperfect produce generously given by our local grocery store.

We're really trying to keep the costs of our grass-to-bacon experiment as low as possible, so far, we've fed the pigs - our freezer gleanings (free), half a bag of kid milk replacer, which would have been wasted after having been opened to feed a baby buckling who didn't make it (about $8.00 worth), kitchen scraps (free), and about 1/2 of a 50-lb bag of pig chow ($7.00 worth), which brings our total feed cost so far, to $15.00, or roughly seventy-five cents per day, per pig.

Billy is picking up a new load of critter bread from the bakery outlet as we speak ($25.00), and we're presently trying to make a plan for starting to wean the goat kids, freeing the mamas' milk supply for our use in the kitchen and in soapmaking, and for sharing generously with our porcine pals. I'll be keeping a close watch on every penny spent on this piggy project, in order to determine just how much a pound of non-antibiotic saturated, happily wallowing, well-fed pork really costs.

We anticipate that our portly Three will be ready for harvest around late August/early September, but their size and weight will be the final deciding factor on just when Bacon Makin' happens, exactly. I look forward to the final crunching of numbers and cost/value analysis almost as much as I look forward to that first rack of ribs hitting the barbecue. This is food nerd nirvana. :)

Turning Grass into Bacon - A Work in Progress

Step one - Find a little piece of land that is very green, to call your own.

Step two - Procure Goats that will happily eat your grass

'Sup?

Step three - Milk Goats 

Step four - Share your goat milk (upcycled grass) and bakery outlet bounty (wheat = grass) with your three little piggies.

What $20 will get you at the bakery outlet.

Three little pigs, Baykin, Porkchop (Choppy) and Prosciutto (Shootie)

With a lot of nutritious slops, some hiney scratchin' and a few months time, these little 30 pound "weaners" will end up as 250 pound "finishers". At which point I'll be switching their diet from primarily protein-intensive goat milk, bread and kitchen scraps to a diet that is comprised mainly of windfall and foraged apples and pears. At least, that's the game plan as it stands now.

By the time the girls head back to school in the Fall, the verdict should be in on whether or not all of this pig wranglin' and raisin' was worth the trouble. Stay tuned... 

The Goatses with the Mostest

Dairy time is about done for us here. The does have all been dried off, and have very likely already been  re-bred by our escape-artist of a buck, Buckley. So we'll be buying milk until February at least, but not having to milk in the cold and wet makes the trade off quite fair.

On a day like this, when I'm missing my goat milk in my coffee, I come across a post from a fellow farm chick, Matron at Throwback at Trapper Creek. She has a gorgeous Guernsey, Jane, who gives her four gallons of milk per day. I have a mild case of cow envy.

Sure, we'd drown in 4 gallons per day, but the stuff is golden and just...amazing. I could make a whole different assortment of cheeses, and enough butter that I wouldn't have to hit up Costco whenever a baking jag hits. And we could feed the extra to the pigs that we plan to get this Spring. Oh, the things I could do with all that milk...

But.

But, we only have 3 1/2 acres.

A full acre of that land (the bog) is under water 9 months out of the year.

We have well water and a septic system, which means that we basically recycle the same water constantly. I try really hard to maintain balance in those systems by not overwhelming the septic with chemicals, phosphates or tons of cow poo. Goat poop is in "jellybean" form, and can be cleaned up/moved easily, and breaks down slowly. A giant cow pat in the rain will end up running off into our bog, and eventually our septic/well system. Simply put, it would just be too much for our little foothold to handle.

We've already committed to pigs this coming late Winter/early Spring. And their care and "output" will be plenty for this little farm to take on. The reason that we green-lit the pig idea, rather than the cow, was primarily because there is an end date to it. The pigs will be with us for no longer than 9 months, at which point we can evaluate whether the cost/work/impact was worth the trouble.

So, for the foreseeable future, goats will be where our dairy begins and ends. And really, these little gals do a pretty bang-up job of providing us with milk for our coffee, little batches of snowy white butter, some really intense aged parmesan, and the secret ingredient for our lovely homemade soaps.

These are the gals who make it happen. Thanks again, girls.

Early Spring Planting in the Hollow

As much as I'd like to be putting some of my veggie starts in the ground this week (or even this month, for that matter) it is still much too wet here to work the ground for the new garden. So, I'm going to turn my focus to putting in a few trees and some ground cover.

I ordered a lovely assortment of heirloom fruit trees, the majority of which were unfortunately out of stock. So we probably won't be adding any new apple trees this year, dang it, but I did get my hands on a few cherry trees. Here's what I picked up today-

1 Black Tartarian Sweet Cherry
1 Montmorency Pie Cherry
2 Sugar Maples
2 Scarlet Oaks
1 Monkey Puzzle Tree
4 each of Kinnikinnick ("bear berry") and Wintergreen ground cover

The trees will be split between our orchard rows and our chicken yard, and the ground cover will all go in the chicken yard. We're trying to control the rate of erosion in the chicken yard by replacing some of the now-devoured grass with spreading ground covers that do well in clay soils. There aren't many of them. The fact that these produce a fruit that we may or may not be able to get to before the chickens do is just a bonus. ;)

I found out after I bought just the one Monkey Puzzle tree that you actually need a male and a female in order for the tree to produce nuts. Did you know that Monkey Puzzle trees made food? The cones contain up to a few HUNDRED nuts each, which, when roasted, are supposed to be quite tasty.

Unfortunately, the trees have to be upwards of 30 years old before they can bear fruit, so I won't be reaping my nutty reward any time soon. Their unique look, and the fact that they can live to be 1000 years old sold me on them anyway. Maybe my 10 times great-grandkids will like Monkey Puzzle nuts? I'll plant some for them, just in case.

The Garden (take two) and Other News

We can all agree that last year's garden was an unmitigated flop, yes? And yet, here I am again, feeling that garden fever, brought on by an inundation of seed and nursery catalogs.

I heard it mentioned within the farming community, that a seed catalog received before mid-January or so is considered tacky, bordering on pushy. Our minds and backs have earned the right to a Winter of not even thinking about gardens, fertilizer, seeds and weeds, so what's the hurry?

Well, the hurry is about getting the seeds you want from the supplier you trust before everyone else does. Because once they're out of stock for a season, you have to find a backup source or nix that crop for that year. I buy almost exclusively from Victory Seed Company and have learned the hard way in years past that if you snooze, you lose.

So I did a quick inventory of what we have leftover from last year, and found that we are all set in the greens department, but could stand to stock up on carrots, pumpkins/squashes, sunflowers and herbs. So a-browsing I will go to see which cool old varieties are on offer. This bit of the garden planning is cake. It's figuring out the logistics and layout of the new garden that is going to drive me (but even more so, my poor Billy) completely mad.

We've consulted with an amazing edible landscape designer, and decided on a new, sunnier, less soggy location for the garden. Now we "get to" till fresh ground, slog a couple thousand pounds of compost and critter poo down through the hollow and back up the hill, and disassemble and move our deer fencing. My knees and spine weep at the very thought.

On a completely different subject, which doesn't pain me at all - yay!, is the happy news that we're finally getting a dog!

We found our little fella, Rex, though a Great Pyrenees rescue organization. He is not a purebred Pyr, but does have (according to his foster Mom) all of the friendly and desirable traits that you could want in a livestock guardian and family companion. We are very excited, especially the girls who love dogs. We are going to foster him for a few days in order to make sure that he is good for us, and we are good for him before locking him down as our forever pooch, but we're certainly hoping that that will be the way things work out!


The newest member of the Boggy Hollow crew!

It's shaping up to be a very full 2012 here in the Hollow! ;)

Container Growing - Hits and Misses

I came across a link on Dr. Earth Organics' facebook page about how to grow your own ginger root. Cool! Ginger is one of the more expensive, oft-used flavors in my kitchen, so this could potentially rock for me, right?

The instructions are super easy (find them here). Essentially, buy some organic ginger and plant it in good potting soil in your container of choice. Don't let it get too hot/cold/wet/dry, and in a few months, you've hopefully doubled your initial investment. Can it really be that easy?

This is me we're talking about. Does anybody remember the re-generate your celery thing from last summer? That gave me about 3 inches of new, skinny, pale celery before it up and died. Not one of my greatest hits.

Last year's container grown spuds didn't exactly wow either. But that was owing to a few things beyond my control, like my protective bird netting being mercilessly hacked by my chickens, slugs falling from the sky, and us selling the house and moving before the spuds had rightly finished up, amounting to 2 pounds of seed/waste potatoes producing 1 lb, 13 oz of sad little micro-spuds. I guess that the slugs and the hens got the difference.

In spite of my track record, I'm going to give the ginger a shot. It sounds pretty low maintenance, which is half the battle when you're a plant/pet/hairstyle of mine.