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...

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.

Names?

Our blue-eyed beauty needs a name! 

Chardy's doeling and Hop's little wether, half-siblings (and also Aunt/Nephew - goat family trees are kind weird and twisty.) 

We didn't name any of our little goat babies this year, as most of them were destined to move on to new homes. But - we've finally decided which of Chardy's twin girls we're keeping (the little black goat with the big blue eyes), and so she needs a name that is as pretty and vibrant as she is. Scarlet has suggested the name Moulin, which is the French word for "windmill". Heaven knows why, but she's seriously feeling that name. So far, she is the only one to put a potential name in the hopper. I happen to think that this girl deserves a better name than windmill, but I haven't hit upon one just yet. Suggestions?

Just in case it helps, her Mom's name is Chardonnay, her Dad is Buckley, and her siblings are Hop, Barley, Liberty & Hope.

Update: Ladies & Germs - introducing the lovely Miss Bramble. :)

Setting Goals for Farm Income - Phase 1

In the past few years I've read dozens of books about how to sustainably, efficiently and effectively make money from your backyard garden/small urban farm. I always walk away from those books all charged up about how we're going to run our farmstand, and what all we can offer up for sale there. Then crazy things like last May's car accident happen, and we suffer a big ol' setback. Not this year - I'm determined.

Someday, it'd be lovely if this farm alone provided us with enough income so that Bill could retire from his real job and work here at home instead, side by side with the new and improved me, milking goats, weeding the garden and picking apples. I'm not really sure exactly what it would take to make that happen though.

If you're a fan of the show The Fabulous Beekman Boys, then you'll know that they have been working toward a similar goal as us. Somehow or other, they arrived at the conclusion that they'd have to sell a million dollars worth of food/soaps/farm tchotchkes in order to offset Josh's nine-to-five income and allow him to work on the farm full time. I'd love to know how they came up with that number, and I'd like to figure out exactly what our magic number is, but I don't have the faintest idea how to work that out.

Instead, because I really need to set an attainable goal for myself after this past year of missed opportunities and failure, I'm starting low - $5 per day.

Even before we get our farmstand up and running, I figure that I can produce at least $5 worth of salable product each day with my knitting. A single dishcloth goes for $4, and I can easily turn one out per day. A pair of bike helmet earmuffs can also be done in about a day, and sells for $15, covering me for three days if I should somehow fall behind. It is an extremely small goal, but, when regarded in the context of a full calender year, gives me over $1800 worth of knitted inventory to offer at my bazaars and online. Assuming that 50% of that is profit, I can make us $900 doing something that I thoroughly enjoy and that relaxes me. Pretty cool!

And so, that is what I've committed myself to so far. When I have a clearer idea of how much honey and wax that our beehives will give us, how much produce we can grow and sell, and how much soap we can produce with our goats milk and homegrown botanicals, I will set production and income goals for those areas as well. But for now - small, teensy, microscopic potatoes are all that I can honestly commit to. Every successful business has to start somewhere, right?

The Patchwork Farm Girl

If you had to choose: More years out of your life, or more life out of your years, which would it be?

These are the choices I'm thinking hard on just now.

At this moment, I'm leaning toward adding life to my years. I finally decided that enough was enough - I'm going ahead with the knee replacement. I know it won't bring back the knee of my misspent youth, but I can at least get my rump off of the couch and actively participate in our daily farm life to a greater extent than I do now. How much use and pain relief I'll get from my prosthesis is a mystery. It's a case-by-case thing.

When the pain and swelling get so bad now, that standing long enough to cook my kids breakfast ends up trashing my knee for the day, the idea of a knee replacement seems like a Godsend.

But there's a heck of a lot more to the process than just replacing a broken part and getting on with life. There are a lot of potential complications, firstly, that my prosthesis will expire before I do, necessitating a second fairly involved surgery, and the possible removal of even more pieces of my leg bones.

*Shudder*

Secondly, I have to be extra careful about preventing and quickly treating infection in my body for the rest of my life, lest the infection become blood-borne and travel to my new knee, necessitating surgical intervention to disinfect or possibly replace the parts. What does that mean for me? Antibiotics before every dental visit, seeing my doctor sooner rather than later anytime I suspect that I have a sinus infection, or any other otherwise-small bacterial infection. I'm not a fan of taking antibiotics, so this caveat is no small impediment for me.

Thirdly, my body and my family have already been through the ringer this year. Our car accident in May broke my arm and my thumb, spawned a pair of brain bleeds, gave me a wicked, lingering concussion, erased a good chunk of my memory, and cost me about 20% of my scalp, which took three months to re-grow, even after plastic surgery. Should I really even think about putting my body and my poor, put-upon husband through another round of incapacity?

And lastly, though this is a fix of sorts, my life won't be quite the same anymore. On my list of permanent can'ts are things like running, jumping and jogging, or anything else that could be considered a high-impact activity. Not that those figure greatly into my daily life, but still, when someone tells you that you can't do something, you grieve the loss of that freedom a little. They're also pretty adamant that I avoid falling down on my new knee. Now that could be a problem for me. Gravity and I don't always get along so well. Soon, I'll have to be extra-extra careful not to wipe out in a giant pile of chicken crap or step into a molehill, since apparently, I've not been precisely fastidious in avoiding these pratfalls up until now. I'm glad that someone out there has faith in my ability to pull my shizz together!

So, there it is. The good, the bad, the annoying and the practically-impossible, all laid out just like that. If I had a sincere love of couch surfing and piling evermore crap on my husband's to-do list, I could ride this messed-up knee thing all the way down the line. But I don't. We bought a farm because I wanted to work a farm, not play armchair quarterback to my poor, overburdened hubbin. So in spite of all the downsides, can'ts and possible complications, I feel like my only real move here is to take a chance on this procedure.

The length of time I have here on earth is completely uncertain, as my brush with mortality in the high desert taught me well. I have to be decisive and take the best advantage I can of what lies directly in front me, and that is working this farm, building a family business and experiencing life and exploring the world with my husband and daughters. And the knee I have now won't get me there, so in the end I guess there really isn't much of a choice...

I'm gonna do it.

A Coming Out Party for Beth

Our Bethie, a lovely black-laced red Wyandotte hen who we have long suspected of actually being a rooster, made it official today. Beth crowed!

"Beth" surrounded by a portion of his harem

Crowed might be a generous description. If I had to convey the sound in terms that a non-farm-exposed individual could understand, I'd describe it as...the sound of someone gargling mud? If I didn't know it was Bethie, I'd be sure that there was someone out there murdering a set of bagpipes with a sledgehammer.

Beth has been a strapping chickie from the get go, and a notorious food hog/nibbler of exposed digits (he is why flip flops are a no-no in the Chicken Yard), setting himself apart from his slightly more timid peers. His robust physique and assertiveness lead us to suspect she was a fella, but hey - we don't judge. It was up to him to let us know where he stood.

There's plenty of room for all on this little farm. :)

The kiddos want to give him a new name, but so far, nothing. Any suggestions?

Over Analysis Paralysis - Pears

These lovelies have me stymied.

We have 20 pounds of these mystery variety pears, which for a week after picking, sat in a cool back room to finish ripening and are now spot-on, perfect. The clock is ticking on these babies, and I'm stumped about how to best use them.

We have TONS of jam already, but then again, I do give a lot of it away. Hard cider sounds delicious, buy I feel like that isn't fully capitalizing on these pears' potential. Chutney? Pear sauce, a la applesauce? HELP!

I know of one way that we'll definitely be eating them - I just made a fresh batch of chevre last night. :)

For my chevre how-to, check out my post on Today's Handmade.

Meat Chickens?

We've never raised chickens with the sole purpose of eating them. Sure, we've harvested a spare, uppity rooster now and then, but we've never bought chicks with the express intent to butcher them.

I think we're ready.

Being that I'm a total noob in terms of meat chickens, I really don't know much of anything about what breed to try. Help a sister out - what breed(s) have you raised for meat? Would you choose that breed again? How was the flavor? Was the time, trouble and cost of DIY chicken rearing worth it?

My Fridge Runneth Over

How can it be that we've only been milking our girl, Sidney, for about a month now? I have a serious case of milk fatigue! Our fridge is so full of half-gallon jars of goats milk and cartons of eggs that there is practically no room for anything else.

The batch of feta that I made last week came out too soft, so I'm challenging myself to a Chopped-style cook-off. I have eggs, goat milk & smooshy feta galore, plus a few items in the produce drawer which have entered the "use or lose" zone.

My available ingredients include-
*Feta, 2 lbs
*Eggs, 4 dozen
*Whole, Raw goat milk, 3 gallons
*Golden beets with greens attached, 1 bunch
*Dill fronds, 1 bunch
*Raspberries, 1 pint
*Cherries, 3/4 lb

I have (tentatively) on deck-

 *"Spanakopita" deviled eggs (Feta, dill & beet greens) Uses maybe 4 ounces of the feta, 15 eggs, all of the beet greens, and maybe 1/4 of the dill.

 *Goat's milk Chocolate pudding Uses 3 cups of goat milk and 3 eggs.

 *Roasted beet & feta salad with raspberry balsamic vinaigrette Uses all of the beetroot, all of the raspberries, and another 4 ounces or so of feta.

So that leaves us with cherries, dill, a pound and a half of not-well-formed feta, and a crapload of eggs & milk. Cherry ice cream? Feta & dill omelettes? Aidez-moi!

In addition to all of these dishes, I see another super cheese-a-thon in my near future. Maybe a harder cheese, that I can set to press/dry/age and forget about for a little while, rather than being under the gun to use before it goes sideways? I'm also thinking of starting a (weekly) challenge for myself and anyone else who might be interested called "Use it of Lose it", about creative ways to use/preserve/share the bounty from our gardens, critters, foraging, or even a really good sale at the market. Who's in? :)

Kick-starting a Cottage Kitchen

The Washington State Cottage Food Law is on its way! Soon, I might be able to sell my jam, jellies, baked goods and more to complete strangers at markets or from right here on the farm. :)

But my kitchen is wee, and the CF regulations require that you store your personal food/ingredients separately from your "commercial" foods, which would be a serious obstacle to having an approved kitchen. So I'm wondering - should I seriously consider expanding/renovating my little kitchen?

I could get a bid on the work and equipment, then launch a kickstarter fund drive and cross my fingers. The idea of making my homemade food for the masses makes me kinda giddy. I'd also like to start making some bath products (soap, lotion) with some of our goat milk. Those types of items wouldn't fall under the heading of a cottage food product, but an increased kitchen space and facilities would certainly afford me more space in which to produce my goaty toiletries too.

What say you? Should I give this a serious go? Would you contribute to my cottage kitchen project for a small gift and my eternal thanks? ;)

Plant sale suggestions, please!

I'm setting a personal goal to contribute 100 plants to our school's plant sale, and I'm wondering if you all could help me figure out what the people might want?

When you buy plants (indoor plants, ornamentals, edibles, trees, etc.), what are the top three types of plants that you look for at your nursery? Do you buy primarily bulbs, veggies, herbs, flowering plants, seeds, shrubs/trees or garden decor?

I have started a few veggies and plan to start more, but I want to know what the hot sellers are, veggie or otherwise, so that I can make the most of my time and effort on behalf of our kids. I want to send this year's plant sale numbers through the roof! :)

Our sale will be taking place in early May, which is typically when most folks in Western Washington start their veggie gardens. It's also good to note that our growing season is on the short side, meaning that some plants are more trouble than they're worth in a Pacific Northwest garden - peppers, melons, citrus and tropical-type plants just don't do well here. Our first frost date is often in October. So bearing all that in mind, please lend a hand - what else should I offer up?

I just bought a handy little book, called The Plant Propagators Bible that has inspired me to try things that I haven't had much luck with before, like rooting cuttings and simple grafting, so baby trees and shrubs aren't outside the realm of possibility. I also have some old garden roses that I'm considering digging up and offering for sale, since Rex is cracking off canes regularly for his own personal chewing pleasure, and when darting through the bushes to bark at startled cyclists. He takes protecting his charges from attacks by sinewy men in spandex very seriously. Would you buy a hand-me-down rosebush?

So please leave me your thoughts in the comments so that I can get to growing some goodies to benefit our little school. Thanks!

Freezer Raid!

I try to give the freezer a good purging around this time each year to a) Toss the funky stuff, and b) Use up last Spring/Summer/Fall's haul before the garden, forests and water give us more food for socking away. It also has the surprising effect of inspiring me to try some odd combinations and different sorts of recipes than I'd make on an average night. My freezer findings so far, and what I'll be making with them-

*Pork roast and other assorted pork products - bacon, sausage, ham, chops, etc., about 80 pounds worth! (from Aunt Alice's home grown Duroc barrow, "Turbo".)
*Dandelion Petals (for wine making)
*At least 5 pounds of organic blueberries, from the farm down the road
*Silver Salmon
*Pacific Sand dab (Flounder) from last summer's camping trip
*Nettle tea/broth
*Assorted wild berries - red huckleberry, Oregon grapes, salal
*Rhubarb
*Grated zucchini from Sweet Serena's garden (thanks, lady!)
*Pureed Pumpkin from our garden

And I haven't reached the bottom yet.

Tonight's dinner will be Pork Roast dressed with a huckleberry/balsamic reduction, served with zucchini cakes a la Andrea the Kitchen Witch and spinach salad.

I'll also be starting a few batches of wine here shortly, including more dandelion and rhubarb, and maybe some blueberry. I'm not sure if blueberry wine will be a great drinking wine, but if all else fails, I can turn it into vinegar. I'll probably (eventually) make some blueberry jam as well, though I'm still wayyyy burned out on canning just now.

Bill will probably end up smoking the last of the salmon, or else using it as crab bait if he determines that it is too old to use otherwise.

Between the pork, the fish and our (knock wood) constant supply of eggs, I shouldn't have to buy us much if any protein for the next month, maybe more. Think of the savings! :)

Do you do a routine freezer or pantry purge? What fascinating delights have you found hiding in your freezer's depths?

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! ;)

Another Odd Egg

We've seen a few of these lately. I'm not sure what causes it, but we call these "water balloons".


Looks like a relatively normal egg, right?


Except...


No shell at all, only membrane!

I'm going to have to research this phenomenon further, but I suspect that it is just a fluke that occurs now and then, especially with newer layers. Our girls get plenty of calcium in the form of crushed oyster shell and a very complete diet of organic, locally milled pellets, a loaf of bread per day, and all of the fresh grass, plants and bugs that they can eat, so we're not really worried that it's dietary, but can't rule it out altogether either.

To play it safe, we always compost these, though it might be fascinating to try and incubate one one of these times. Hmmm...

Cheese Advice?

I'm looking for a fairly easy cheese recipe in which I can use a mixture of goat and cows milk. I'm leaning towards Romano or Parmesan, but the whole idea of waiting a year to try my first cheese makes for a rather lame start to my cheesy adventures. I could go for some more instant gratification-style cheese products. Maybe feta??? Does anyone have a recipe to recommend?

We only have about a quart of goat milk right now, so first things first, I'm going to make some cajeta. Cajeta is a Mexican caramel sauce, akin to Dulce de leche. I foresee it having a starring role in my goat milk lattes during our Farmer Feed Thyself challenge next month. If I have to go cold turkey off of chocolate, I hope that I can at least appease my sweet tooth with a down-home caramel macchiato.

Come on out of the woodwork, cheese people. What's a good beginning cheese making recipe that works well with some goat milk in the mix?

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.

Grow Your Own Challenge - The Rules

I've read and pondered and researched and thought over the guidelines of this Farmer-feed-thyself challenge that we're gearing up for, and I've whittled things down a bit. Here's where we stand now on the rules and details-

*We still haven't picked a hard and fast date to start, but with the weather we're having (another no-grow spring), I'm thinking that we'll have to wait until August before the garden is giving us much of anything. So for now, let's say August 1st.

*We have massively refined our allowances. We will include -
*Coffee (fair trade, organic)
*Oil for cooking (domestic, organic)
*Seasonings/Spices (organic, fair trade)

*What is fair game -
*Anything hunted, caught, foraged, grown or otherwise produced by ourselves.
*Honey, if I can find someone to barter with. I'm not optimistic. :(

*What we anticipate eating -
*Eggs
*Goats Milk/cheese/butter
*Salmon/crab/clams caught/foraged by Bill & I
*Fruits & veggies from the garden
*Foraged berries, mushrooms, greens, etc.
*Our canned jams & jellies from last summer
*Our homemade beer & wine
*Hopefully, our own apple cider & rhubarb wine vinegar

I just know that the things that are going to kick my butt are the minimal dairy and the almost complete lack of carbs and sugar. I am going to be one bitchy sloth the first few days of this challenge, you can count on that!

I have a feeling that my great goat milking motivator will be that morning cup of joe. I have to have cream in my coffee, ergo, I'll have to milk at least once a day for my wake-up cup. This is the aspect of this challenge that intimidates me the most. Milking has not gone well so far, and the ladies are producing less now than the last time I tried milking. This could be rough.

Is there anything that I'm overlooking here? Do these guidelines sound pretty reasonable? I'm excited and nervous as hell to try this feeding myself thing. Cheer me on, friends. I need all of the forward momentum I can get!

Gearing up for a Challenge

Ever since reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a few years ago, I've been mulling over trying for myself one of the book's core ideas - eating only what you yourself grow and produce (with a few guidelines & exceptions) for a specified period of time. I don't look at this like a stunt, but more of a way to challenge myself to eat better and make the best use of what I have. And what better time to start than summer, when the crops are rolling in and the goats are all well in milk?

In theory, it should be pretty easy. In theory. I have eggs for protein and fat, goat's milk for dairy/protein, a fishing fiend of a husband who brings home salmon, clams and crab, and (hopefully) a garden, teeming with fresh greens, berries, corn, tomatoes, carrots, pumpkins, potatoes and squash. I also live in an area with no less than 4 blueberry farms in a one mile stretch. I'm flush with food. Now, do I have the gumption and the willpower to limit myself to eating that and that alone for a while? This is where I get a little shaky.

Bill and I have tossed this idea around a little and come up with a few hitches and fudges -

1) Coffee would have to be permitted. I already buy organic, fair trade coffee, so I don't have too much guilt about letting this one go. And I can get my beans from a fantastic local roaster, Batdorf & Bronson. Besides, I'm planning on doing this during the summer when my kids will be home with me all day. A day without caffeine could get ugly quick.

2) We're not going to make the kids do this with us. A morning without cereal, a summer day without ice cream, we'd have an insurrection on day one.

3) We might expand our food shed area to include food produced within our city. We're talking grown, born, butchered, etc. in Olympia. No doughnuts or Chinese food from downtown, lovely though that would be.

What else are we not thinking of? We'll be doing a lot of physical labor on the farm this summer, so we've agreed at this point to only have the experiment last for two weeks so that we don't run ourselves down too much on a diet with significantly less carbs than our usual pasta and rice intensive fare. Is two weeks long enough? Does that seem too wussy? Have we made too many exceptions? Help us get this ironed out so that we can put our little farm to the test this summer! We're thinking of beginning in July, as the garden should be kicking by then. What say you to all of this craziness?

The Goatalympics!

One of my very favorite animal rescue organizations, New Moon Goat Sanctuary & Rescue, is sponsoring an event called the Goatalympics. I'm seriously thinking about entering a goat or three from my herd, since this is all in good fun and benefiting a great organization, and because even unruly, less-than-perfect goats are welcome.

They have a ton of different categories, both "skilled" and unskilled - obstacle course (aka "bribe a goat"), loudest bleat, prettiest eyes, widest goat, etc. So I'm looking for a little input here - if I were to enter, who should I enter and for which category/event? I can take up to three goats to the Goatalympics, but that might be pushing it for me to handle all three, even with help from the girls. You tell me - should I go? Who should I take and why? I have a small album of goat pics over on my GGG facebook page, but I'll include a few here as well, because like any proud Mama, I'll take any excuse to whip out the pictures of my babies. :)

Behold our potential contenders-


Fritzen, "The Boss-Lady"


Buckley, Teeny & Oreo, Fritzen's babies


Gertie, the Princess


Blue aka Donkeh (with Blackjack)


"Sassypants" Chardy


Archie, the one-horned eating machine


Spike, aka, Sir TurdBurglar

Only does and wethers (castrated males) are eligible, so Blackjack, Barley & Buckley will have to sit this one out. Review the candidates and take a peek through the "goats of happiness" category to get a little more insight into their individual personalities and tell me who should represent Boggy Hollow at the big game!

It's a Boy! And a girl and a girl and a girl...

No, the Gertster didn't have babies yet (that is if she is pregnant at all, it's still impossible to tell.) We got a little impatient with the uncertainty of goat fertility and decided to look for some additional does that were for sure pregnant. And hooboy did we find them!

We found a breeder of Nigerian Dwarves and Mini Lamanchas on craigslist, and decided to go check out a pair of his bred does. Long story short, we ended up with the two bred mini lamancha does, and a Nigerian Dwarf doe and her baby buckling. I don't have any pictures of my own to share yet, but the link to the website of the breeder shows our ladies and gentleman.

Dreamcatcher Ranch

Our ladies are Fritzen, Chardonnay, Blue Steel (who will probably be known as Blue from here on out, poor thing) and Blue's baby boy, who has yet to be named, which brings me to the point of this here post. Check out our little man and let us know what you think his name should be.


Photo by Wayne Kiser, Dreamcatcher Ranch

Please cast your vote via comment from the following choices-
*Angus
*Blackjack
*Fergus
*Blackberry (the girls' choice)

I don't know why I'm so partial to the Scottish names for my goats, but it just seems fitting that an intense wee man have an intense wee name. Picture it Fehrrrrrrrrgus! Cohm an' git yer grrrain, lad! See what I mean? It just works.

Anyway, I'm looking for a little outside input, since we are completely indecisive on the matter. So leave a comment and be heard!

More info about our new, ginormous herd, pictures and the results of the great naming question to follow soon. :)