Long Time, No Write

Things have been slightly nuts here. Scratch that. Things have been full-on cuckoo nuts here. The details aren't glamorous, just the usual holiday crunch on top of trying to open a business. When I'm not submitting reams of paperwork to the city/county/state for the store, I'm feverishly knitting dishcloths and leaning way too heavily on Amazon to wrap up my shopping.

Thus, I'm all manner of distracted and haven't had the time or mental oomph! to post anything. So here's an update from the Boggy Hollow crew, in a nutshell.

Bunnies - Marshmallow is *possibly* pregnant. We'll know definitively in another 20 days or so. We're moving her hutch into the basement, just in case, to keep her and the (maybe?) babies out of the weather.

Dogs - We've started up fostering again! We hosted a sweet little girl named Mariah for just 8 days this month before she moved on to her forever home. We were lined up to pick up a Pyr/Aussie pup to foster today, but he was adopted at the last minute. Fostering is work, but it's so rewarding.

'Riah and Rexy, snoozin'

Chickens - We've already lost a few this Winter to a trio of raccoons that were slowly picking off the less-wary gals (the ones who roost up outside regardless of how often we've wrestled them into the safety of the coop at night.) Rex managed to tree the thieves one night and Bill gave them a little something to think about with a few pellets to their butts. No one has gone missing since!

Goats - We still have 6, five girls and one stinky boy, though that number is about to grow soon. 

Greetings from the Boggy Hollow maternity ward!

Ol' Bluey, as wide as she is tall.

Buckley, the cantankerous, highly smelly, soon-to-be Papa of the lot

And that's about it. The giveaway is still forthcoming, though I'm rapidly reaching knitting fatigue, so the goodies contained therein may be slightly different that originally planned, but still good stuff for all that. In the mean time - have a wonderful Christmas/Solstice/Ugly Sweater season, and kindly chug a mug of something spicy and bourbon-laced for me. ;)

My M.I.A. Mea Culpa

I haven't been here much, which is lame. I haven't forgotten that I promised you all a giveaway, but I haven't gotten around to doing it just yet either, which is double lame.

But - I'm here for just a second to give you my paltry reasons why, or perhaps more fittingly, why not.

El numero Uno - Ta Daaaaaah! I'm opening a shop! Or, to be more accurate, Billy and I and two amazing business partners and fellow urban farm nerdz, are opening a shop! The amount of paperwork, legal filings and mandatory workshops that a new business owner has to complete are cray-zay NUTS, but we're getting 'er done, lining them up and knocking them down, etcetera, etcetera.

Eastside Urban Farm & Garden Center plans to open its doors to our farming, homesteading, and DIY'ing friends and neighbors in February 2014. (Hooboy does it feel nice to finally let that cat out of the bag!)

'Tis Bazaar Season - And I know you know what that means. It means I'm the lady who is fervently knitting dishcloths in the waiting room at the orthodontists office, scouring Pinterest for organic soap and sugar scrub recipes and wrapping bars of goaty-good soap waaaay into the small hours.

The Universe has been Ever-so-slightly Uncharitable this week past month or so - Lots and lots of personal craziness has been raining down upon our little family and the families of some of those nearest and dearest to us; more than there is any kind of time to go into detail about here, but suffice it to say that the old adage that "bad things come in threes" - Yeah, I wish. Bad/crappy/really, really, unfortunate things are coming in half-dozens at least, but we're still kickin'. I'm up all night rocking back and forth with worry (while knitting, wrapping soap), but still hanging in there.

And so, you know, ergo, my absence.

I'm going to try to check in more often, and I have a few new knitting patterns to post, I just have to carve out the time. Oh, and the giveaway - DEFINITELY still happening. :)

Thanks for your patience, mis amigos.

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. :)

Happiness Is...

... a freezer full of homegrown porky goodness!

Fear not, my friends. The scary-looking pink stuff is just some lard.

That's 200-odd pounds of meat, including 17 packages of bacon. This is where the nexus of homesteading nerdess and foodie bliss lies, right here in this little freezer. :)

In our other little chest freezer (holy crap, we need two now!) gently rests our Summer/Fall harvest of veggies and fruits. I feel pretty pleased with our progress this year in raising an ever-increasing percentage of our overall food supply. Besides a little seafood and beef/buffalo now and then for variety, I think that between our eggs, roosters, turkeys, and pork we're nearly set for protein for the coming year.

Whether we undertake the raising and harvesting of another pair of piglets next Spring still remains to be seen. It will depend, in large part, on how this pork tastes, so a lot is riding on tonight's dinner - waffles with pears and whipped cream and a large side of bacon. We'll see what the consensus is on effort vs. reward shortly thereafter. Fingers crossed that we didn't spend 7 months on something that ends up being meh.

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.

Fall Done Fell

In the space of a week we've gone from humidity, thunderstorms and 80 degree temps to falling leaves and pea soup fog in the mornings. Fall has arrived in Boggy Hollow, and with it, as ever, a nearly-endless list of stuff that needs doing, yesterday.

As a bit of strategery, I am posting my to-do list here in the hope that the threat of an on-the-record public shaming will serve as motivation for me to get my crap together and not, say, take a nap with my puppy.

Hope springs eternal.

Chelle's end of Summer/Fall To-Do list:

*Finish harvesting the garden - tomatoes, tomatillos, basil, lemon balm, garlic chives, runner beans, pumpkins, cylindrical beets, sunflowers, chamomile, calendula, breadseed poppies, Fall raspberries

*Forage - apples, crab apples, pears, walnuts, hazelnuts, hawthorn berries, rose hips, dandelion roots, mushrooms?

*Can/Freeze/Dehydrate - Spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, tomatillo salsa, pumpkin puree, hard cider (apple, pear, hawthorn, etc.), wine (rose hip, hawthorn, raspberry), egg noodles (using beets, basil, etc.), pumpkin ravioli, chamomile, lemon balm and calendula for tea and soapmaking, dandelion roots (for bitters), pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, beet chips, beet greens, compound herb butters (basil, lemon balm, garlic chive), Scarlet Runner beans, 3 "surplus" roosters, 2 tom turkeys.

*Ferment - Cider (for ACV), wine, sauerkraut

*Make - At least 2 more batches of soap - one with goat milk and one vegan, re-batch soap trimmings, knit at least 2 dozen more dishcloths and 6 pair of bike helmet earmuffs

*Set up/Organize - The new pantry/storage room shelving - oy. This will probably involve a trip to IKEA, better known in our family as the Yuppie Modular Cattle Chute from Hell. Uff da.

As if that weren't enough, in addition to my regular Mom duties, a friend and I are in the process of starting a new business that entails real estate deals, meetings with bankers, tons of market research, paperwork and spreadsheets out the wazoo and a big, fat, healthy dose of sheer panic. Good times!

So, there you have it. My next 12 weeks, chock-full of farm housewifferey (did I just invent that word?), lava-hot mason jars and self-imposed stress and deadlines. Hold my feet to the fire to get this stuff done, guys and gals, because that nap is looking better with each passing minute.

Coming Soon...

...after the last wheelbarrow full of tomatoes is canned, the last of our three-roosters-too-many are culled and sent to the stock pot, and I've had a day or two to straight-up veg out on the couch, I'll be posting a long overdue giveaway!

Because I'm still presently freaking out all a-tither over getting a ton of produce picked and put up, I don't yet have my lineup of goodies selected, but don't be surprised to see some jam, salsa, sauce and maybe a knit or two in there. More details and the pics of the goods are forthcoming... soon (I hope.)

This represents a wee sampling of what I'm working on these days. Mercy!