Knitting Project: Little Ladders Dishcloth

Yet another in my endless series of simple dishcloth patterns, Little Ladders is based on the slipstitch tweed stitch, with one small modification. After you get a row or two into it, it becomes blissfully mindless. :)

Little Ladders Dishcloth

I make these dishcloths using worsted weight kitchen cotton and size 8 straight needles, but you can go bigger or smaller easily, as your yarn or gauge calls for.

Cast on 40 sts

Rows 1-4 - Knit all sts
Row 5 and all odd numbered rows - K2 *Sl 1 wyif, K1* to last two sts, K2
Row 6 and all even numbered rows - K2, Purl across to last two sts, K2
Continue repeating as in rows 5 and 6 until the desired length is reached, minus 4 rows.
Last 4 Rows - Knit all sts
Bind off loosely and weave/tuck loose ends

Sl 1 wyif = slip one stitch with your yarn held to the front, as if to purl

Knit away and enjoy!

Please excuse the less-than-stellar photo quality. I had a sleeping pooch in my lap. 

Ehrmahgerd! Merdget Whurt Turkurrz!

Our pair of purty Midget White Turkeys came today!

Cindy, the lady that we got them from, said that she isn't 100% sure of their gender, but she suspects that we may have two toms. This should be interesting...

So far, they seem mostly curious, with a side of intermittent, mild panic. One of the two was initially pretty agro toward the Turken hen and her babies who live in the neighboring run, jumping and attempting to square off with her through the chicken wire. Vulture, the mama hen next door, was utterly nonplussed by this bizarre display, and eventually turkey-lurkey gave up the macho show cooled his jets.

As you may have noticed, Livy, our resident bird nerd, got a touch snap-happy with the camera, following the arrival of her new charges. These photos are 4 of 25 that she took in the space of about 3 minutes. Girl loves her some birds!

We've have both read and been told by experienced turkey-folk, that the poults should stay in their run for a few days, to get a sense of home, before being allowed out to mingle with the rest of the flock. Eventually, they'll be given free reign of the chicken yard, and will hopefully, by then, be happy enough in their new home that they don't immediately head for the hills and/or fly straight into the mouth of a coyote. Turkeys are notoriously, shall we say, not geniuses.

I'm just hoping that having two birds, and both of them being so well started, practically insures that we'll end up with at least one finished bird for our holiday table. *KNOCKING ON WOOD NOW*

Wish us luck!

For more info on the Midget White Turkey breed -

The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy

Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste

Always Somethin' Farm's piece on choosing Midget Whites

Boggy Hollow Loves Our Local!

Our little farm was just accepted as a vendor at the Love Our Local street fair here in Olympia. It's a one-day event, August 25th from 1-9, so it's going to be a long, hot day, but we're totally up for it! we're going to be selling our farm produce and my crafty swag too, so this will be a very interesting bellwether for our future farm, bazaar and market endeavors. 

I anticipate that we'll have a boatload of produce on offer, if the size and staggering growth rate of the zucchini, tomato and corn plants are any kind of indication... :) Now I just need to look through my knits and other assorted crafty goods to see what I have on hand that looks like it will jive at a peak-of-Summertime sale. In other words, no scarves. My wheels are turning. It'll be nice to have a "bazaar" that isn't smack in the middle of the holiday crush for a change.

For more info on the when and where of the Love Our Local market, visit loveourlocalfest.org

I really hope to see you there!

Our Farm Stand!

Looky at what my boo made us this weekend -

My very own farm stand!

The girls and I spent part of the morning putting on the first coat of paint. Then it got hot, so we decided to retreat indoors for a while under the pretense of letting the first coat really, really dry. Here we have what shall eventually be known as, before:

After will happen when the sun lets up a little. 

In a wild, recklessly optimistic fit of hopefulness, I went ahead and added eight pounds of organic lemons and limes to our CSA produce order, in the hope that we'll have a splashy grand opening this weekend, featuring lots of fresh garden greens, herbs, fresh flower bouquets (maybe), eggs and delectable marionberry and lavender lemonades, hand squeezed by these two little enormous rascals -

The monkeys (Primatus Gigantis Boggy Hollowi) at the helm, eager to fix you up a tall, frosty lemonade!

So if you're in our neck the woods this week or next, stop by and say hi! And while you're not looking, a few pounds of kale *might* just show up in your car...

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. :) 

Yo!

Just popping by quick to say Hi, and to mention that I may not be able to post for the next Idontknowhowmany days, because my terminally ill computer has taken a sudden, steep nosedive in which the caps lock, w & q keys have all, rather abruptly, surrendered the burden of this mortal coil and have left me angrily shaking my fist in the general direction of hoever designed this stinking heap of a Helitt-Packard. Once the mystery illness spreads to a vowel, I'm sunk.

Anyhoo - I've been managing to knock out a brief Today's Take post each evening over on Ye Olde Bog Blog, should you be interested in keeping you finger on the pulse of Mudlandia. For instance - on the agenda for this lovely Independence Day? Cleaning chicken coops! The glamour of farm life never ends!

Eggzilla!

According to a handy-dandy little chart on Wikipedia, any chicken egg larger than 2.5 ounces (70+ grams) is considered "Jumbo". Well, they might need to invent a new category for some of our laydies' eggs. Check it out -

Booyah!

Can you read the bitty numbers on my scale? That there egg is a quarter pounder! Curiosity had me googling average duck egg sizes and even they don't typically get this big. Dear hen that laid this - thank you and also, I'm sorry. Maybe we should cut back your protein a tad? :-\

Now that I've brought this egg in, the girls are suddenly keen to have eggs for dinner. They're dying to see how many yolks might be inside this badboy. My guess is at least two. We'll let you know!

Update: Mystery solved! Two full sized yolks!