Beneath the Surface

My favorite things to harvest from the garden are roots... potatoes, carrots and garlic.  The kids love it, too - it's always a fun surprise to see what pops up!  Potatoes grow in all sorts of funny shapes (of course they only select the uniformly round and smooth ones to sell at the stores), and carrots will sometimes emerge from the dirt looking like a pair of legs or even funnier, a pair of legs with an extra little ... ahem... appendage :)
We plant our garlic in the Fall, and it is ready to harvest at the end of Spring... which is now!  They don't come up in any fascinating shapes really, but some grown crazy big, others stay surprisingly small.  We'll save the bigger cloves for this Fall's seed garlic.  We grew 4 different kinds this year, about 150 plants, in all.  Two were hardneck varieties that grew beautiful and delicious flower stems, called scapes, on the top.  The other two were softneck varieties, easy to braid at harvest, and the type you would commonly find in the grocery store.  First we pull them all up.  Straight up, not from an angle, and good to have a trowel handy for ones in harder soil.

Next, I let them dry out in a shady spot for a day or two.  Then I brush off any dirt clumps and trim the hairy roots.  If I was going to sell these heads of garlic, I would clean them more with a dry scrub brush.  But these are just for us and a few to share with friends, so I don't mind them not being perfectly polished.  Next, I braid the heads together and hang them in our laundry room, right off the kitchen, ready to use!

Garlic is not the only treasure hiding beneath the surface this Spring.  As I was digging in the compost bin, my pitchfork became tangled in strings.  When pulled it out, I found this:

Since anything biodegradable can compost (turn back into soil), last Winter I tossed in a pair of Reed's pants that he had outgrown and were just too used to even donate to a thrift store.  These were cotton pants, and I haven't thought about it since.  The photo above is what remains after the compost bin has done it's work!  The only things intact were the elastic waistband, the pockets (which must have been synthetic fabric), the polyester threads, the zipper and waist buttons.

Fortunately, this compost bin has help in making fast work of everything I put in!  I added a few handfuls of red wriggler worms a couple years ago (leftover from an indoor worm bin project).  These are not earthworms, they actually prefer hot compost, not cool garden soil.  I hear they're also great for fishing, though haven't tried that :)

They've multiplied so much that the kids have been able to dig them out and sell them to local gardeners!  They will eat nearly anything that's biodegradable - I even buy paper products when I need disposable dishes for parties, then it can all be composted afterwards!
Now we dig out shovelfuls of the finished compost (mostly highly beneficial worm castings at this point), and I mix a shovel full into each hole where a new plant will live.  Since the garlic is harvested, we're turning one of the garlic beds into Summer veggies.  I have been procrastinating getting the eggplants in, and I did rescue some chard seedlings from the hungry chickens, so I can plant them in this fenced in bed.

Hope everyone's having a great weekend, and Happy Father's Day to all the hard working dad's out there!    I'm always missing my own dad who the older kids only knew briefly, and little ZB unfortunately won't get to meet.  However, I'm ever grateful for the amazing papa we've got here at home - it is really a blessing to have such an amazing partner who works at home and loves spending time with us.
Much Love,
Julie

Garden Tour

We've had over a week now with the two boys gone to Memphis for their annual Summer stay at their Grandparents house.  They're coming home in just a couple days, and we're excited - it's been much too quiet around here!  I've mostly been trying to squeeze extra work hours in, but I've also been spending a good deal of time in the gardens.  It's been raining every few days, and the weather has been just beautiful - so there's no good reason not to be outside!

The annual clearance sale at Painter's Greenhouse is going on this month, which is always a good place to find amazing deals on plants if you live in Western North Carolina!  I ended up packing my cart so full, I literally couldn't squeeze even one more plant in there :)  It's a good place to stock up on things we forgot to plant or that didn't come up, or just didn't plant because maybe we only needed one or two - not enough to buy a whole pack of seeds.  There's still a little bit that hasn't been planted yet - but I'm getting through it all bit by bit...

The kitchen herb garden got lots of new plants from the sale - a few kinds of basil, thyme, sage, cilantro and parsley.

The medicine herb garden also got a few new plants, but mostly to make up for the loss of the swiss chard around the border...

Who knew chickens like swiss chard so much??

I did have a few new swiss chard starts that were going to go in this garden, but I think I'll wait until the garlic is harvested from the fenced garden and put the new chard plants in there, so the humans can eat them :)  Of course the chicken house borders on the fenced garden, so I guess it's just a little bit of torment for the little hennies!

Our two big pots of hops plants were needing some love.  They have been getting attacked by aphids and spider mites.  B read that this was due to nutrient deficiency in their soil, so first we killed the bugs with a tobacco tea wash.  Then we boosted the soil with fish emulsion and worm castings... hopefully it will do the trick - I'd sure like to brew some beer with our own hops this year!

ZB's been having an excellent spring eating up all the strawberries she can find!  She's also discovered the blueberry patch and doesn't seem to care if they're ripe or not - they're all fair game to her (which means we find lots of chewed up and spit out green berries around).  The strawberries have finished producing for the year and and starting to send off their many runners.  While the arctic kiwi that share the bed are just starting to climb the porch...

With all the new plants, I actually decided to make another little garden bed next to the front steps.  The other side of the steps has the figs trees and some fast-growing comfrey, with pumpkin vines spreading beneath.  So this new bed will be surrounding the lonely little daylily that was already there.  I will plants a forsythia that B rooted for me, and last night I put in an ever-bearing strawberry and some fun little zinnia flowers to fill the space this Summer.  I am sheet mulching it - it's an easy way to kill the grass naturally - just layer something solid (like newspaper, cardboard, etc.) on the ground, and then layer anything else that's biodegradable on top of that for several layers.  Right now it just has a sprinkling of compost to keep the paper from blowing away.  This afternoon I'll put on a layer of chicken poo and then some straw.  As those break down, you can replenish with grass clippings, leaves, wood chips, etc.

In the midst of all this working from me, B is getting lots more Papa/baby time with ZB.  He's really good at getting her to go down for naps, and lately since the weather's been so nice, they've been going for walks to take a nap.  This is the cuteness I came home to today:

Aw!  Alright - enough typing - I've got work to do!  See y'all later ~ Julie

Bath Time

The weather is warm and everyone seems to want to be in the water!  ZB has nearly grown out of her little Rubbermaid bathtub - time to use the real thing, I think!

Our cute ducks are a few weeks old now, and love to have water play time!  Khaki Campbells are not the type of duck to need a pond, but they sure do enjoy splashing around.

The bad news about the ducks is that we are now down to only 2 :(  We've had two recent hawk attacks on the ducks.  We live across the street from a huge field, so there are naturally a lot of hawks, but now that they've seen our little baby bird buffet, we have a problem!  For now, the babies are confined to the enclosed run during the day.  They can free range a little at around dusk - the hawks don't seem to be out then.  The hawks also haven't bothered the chickens at all.  Hopefully the ducks will get big enough that the hawks won't mess with them - in the meantime, if any readers have any hawks deterring tips, I'm glad to hear them!

Waterpark ... again!

This was our third trip to a hotel waterpark, seems to be becoming a tradition - and we learn new things each time.  This trip, since we went in warm weather, we found out that the outdoor parks are also really fun, especially when you just need a break from the loud, chlorine-heavy indoor park.  We also learned not to eat at any of the hotel restaurants (who would've imagined that kids eat free really means 1 kids eats free while adult meals are double the price - and anyone over 11 is considered an adult? yikes!)
For Clay's 12th birthday, he'll actually be spending the week with his grandparents in Memphis.  So he decided to celebrate early by inviting a friend to Wilderness of the Smokies waterpark.  It is only 1-1/2 hrs away, in Pigeon Forge, TN.  I love that he encouraged Reed to invite a friend as well - that gave Reed a pal at the park, so he wouldn't be getting on Clay's nerves (a win-win, I thought).

This type of waterpark is only open to hotel guests, which makes it a little less chaotic than a regular park.  There were two outdoor parks and one indoor park - the outdoor areas has very similar things as the indoor, but it really was quieter because it was smaller, I guess.  Outdoors, the younger kids mostly stuck to the climbing structure, and the older kids played LOTS of basketball:

ZB had lots of fun in the baby area - it was very shallow, not many kids and no chance of getting sprayed with a watergun or a fountain spraying too high!

We were bummed to find out we couldn't bring in ZB's floatie that we had found for the trip - she was content to just play in it, though :)

The inside waterpark had the bigger slides, a wave rider for surfing and boogie boarding, and a wave pool, as well as the climbing structure and another baby area.

Whew!  We were exhausted at the end of the day!  A great thing about it being a hotel park is that you can relax in the hotel room after a long day of playing, and when you check out in the morning, you can keep playing in the waterpark the entire next day (we lasted until about 6 before heading home).

Clay is so excited to turn 12 ~ I'm really glad we got to celebrate here at home before his big trip!

A couple LEAF-y Pics

My camera was hidden away most of LEAF (not intentionally!) - but it was fabulous as always!  Great music like Taj Mahal singing the blues, The Wood Brothers jamming out and Seun Kuti with his West African beats.  I also went on a lovely Wild Edibles plant walk in the woods during the festival.  We camped with great friends who I was glad to get to know even better!  The weather stayed nice nearly every day - with the exception of Sunday, which made packing up camp pretty soggy!  I did grab a few pics when a friend and I, and our little ones were roaming around among the vendors and stopped to play with hula hoops (and ZB found a juggler to watch).  Sorry not more pics from the weekend - I'll try to do better this week.

I hope everyone had a beautiful Mother's Day!

Around Town ... and back home again

We had a really fun weekend - there were two festivals in downtown on Sunday.  One was called the Tiny Tykes festival which was cute and was for the under 5 crowd.  We met up with some of ZB's baby buddies there and played in sand, made music, toddled around and listened to a fun kids' musician.
"Here, let me help you with that"

ZB has to be where the action is!

Even if it's not the popular place to be:

Then we headed over to a much larger festival called "Big Love", a go-local kind of Asheville festival  - great music, drink, vendors, etc.  I gave the kids $5 each and told them not to go beyond the festival limits.  Reed can find his own way to break rules, though :)

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Around the farm, there is much activity, per usual!  We got several new friends today!  These are Khaki Campbell ducks - they will be great egg-layers, and don't need a pond, though they do have fun in water, so thye'll get a kiddy pool when they're older.  For now they're a week old, and they are super cute (and super messy!)

It's a fun time of year to watch all the plants pop up - especially new ones (to us)... like sweet potato slips I'm starting in the kitchen...

We've grown garlic for years now, but B wanted to try a new variety, this one is classified as hardneck.  We usually grow softneck.  They had really neat scapes that grew out of the tops.  We had to cut them off, so the garlic underground can finish fattening up for harvest.  The scapes themselves are mighty tasty, though!

We're also getting all organized and packed up to go to our favorite local festival, LEAF (Lake Eden Arts Festival).  We'll camp there for 4 days, and ZB was just dying to lend a hand:

With her new-found ability to climb on tables, I'm not sure how much of a help it really was, but she's still darn cute :)  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Beginnings

All projects have to start somewhere - even if it's a small start, it still feels good to see beginnings of progress.  The strawberries are producing a handful a day - this is from the off-shoots of our 1 plant last year that survived the move, so next year hopefully we'll have a basket-full a day!

 She says, "Stop taking my picture, mama!  Let me eat my berries in peace!"

This years starts are ready to be put in the ground, I believe...

The guys built a half-fence around the veggie garden.  We were thinking the hens only get into the garden from close to their coop, so we'd experiment with the fence only being on the side of their coop.  Well, it took them about 2 hours to figure it out... see them on the trellis next to the pink flowers?  They think they're hot stuff for sure.

We shooed 'em outta the garden, and look how big and pretty they're getting at 8 weeks!

Plums are starting to fatten up, too...

 I just turn my back for a second, and of course ZB's found mischief to get into :)

We're feeling good about the little farm beginnings, and yet have no time to dwell on them because a full-fledged toddler is emerging, and needing a "watchful eye" nearly always ;)  Love to all~