Memorial Day May 25, 2015

It is drizzling outside - seems appropriate. Good weather for reflection. This is a day for remembering those that lost their lives in the service of our county. It seems some people don't understand this designation. Memorial day is to memorialize those that died in the service of our country. We have Veterans Day to thank and remember all those that served and returned, and Armed Forces Day to celebrate those that are currently serving. While there is never a bad day to do any of these things, today is a day set aside to specifically think of those that are gone and thank them and their families for their sacrifices.

I am always taken aback at the salutation of "Happy Memorial Day". No, it isn't. It is somber, reflective, thankful - not a day of profound grief for many per se, but, perhaps, a day to commemorate the sacrifices of those that died, celebrate their lives. Happy? No. Gratitude, yes. Sad that those men and women gave their lives, yet thankful that they were willing to do so.

There has to be a better salutation, greeting, sentiment, to attach to this day. I can't think of one that conveys the proper meaning though. We blithely attach "Happy" to most of our holidays without a lot of thought to what it means. Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Easter, Happy Fourth of July, Happy Veteran's Day, and so on. And many of these holidays are a cause for joy for most people. Most of them are also a commemoration of someone's sacrifice:

     Veteran's Day - so many combat veterans return with scars and disabilities, many of which are invisible to the rest of us. Even those that never saw combat made a sacrifice of the ordinary, everyday lives that the rest of us enjoy to serve, living by someone else's schedule and rules, with the possibility that their lives may be at risk.

     Armed Forces Day - again, those that give up the relative freedom we have on a daily basis to ensure that we may continue to have those freedoms.

     Easter - for believers, Christ's sacrifice for the salvation of us all.

     Thanksgiving - really, isn't this about thanking those that sacrificed the life they knew for a new life in an unknown land far away, and being thankful that it worked out.

     Fourth of July - celebrating our country, which wouldn't exist without the sacrifices of those that believed in their right to freedom and self-government.

     And of course, today, Memorial Day. We remember, we grieve, we celebrate, we commemorate, recognize, and give gratitude for those that lost their lives. Thank a veteran on Veteran's day. But today, ask a veteran about those that were lost. He or she may not want to answer or talk about it, but on the other hand, may be grateful for your interest and the chance to share their memories of a friend and know that we do care.

End of Summer Blues

Summer is winding down. We are again inundated with apples and walnut eating squirrels. School starts up in less than two weeks. The kid is excited to be going back to school, she misses her friends, but I am going to miss her. After weeks of going, going, going for various summer activities, we find the last couple weeks of summer with almost nothing to do. It has been a more or less slow week, but still busy, and next week really isn't looking much quieter. I am shaking my head, wondering what happened to last fall's vow of not so much stuff next summer.

All in all it has been good, and fun. We've seen progression up a level in both swimming and Taekwondo. A lot of reading, including a book I never actually read as a kid, The Black Stallion - although in my horse crazed life, I'm not sure how I passed it over. She loved it, and wants to read the next, and the next, and the next. Also read her one of my favorites, King of the Wind. Their quality of writing shows in their endurance as stories that kids continue to read. And I loved seeing her reactions to the suspenseful parts as I read to her, hiding her head under the covers, squealing "oh, no", or merely smiling a happy grin at the positive conclusions.

In some ways, a return to school indicates a return to a little more quiet, a little more 'me' time, which is both welcome and unwanted. Some how I hijacked myself on that this year though. Turns out I am PTA president for the next 12 months to two years. That in its self has been an experience so far, as I struggle to wrest control from the out going president, who seems to have trouble delegating even when the job is no longer hers to delegate. Hopefully today will find the turn over that should have been done two months ago, complete.

Our house is still in various stages of disarray as we recover from installing our new range! It was bittersweet to take the sawzall and cut into the cabinets and counter that my dad had built so lovingly all those years ago, but I love my new stove! No more expletives and "I hate this oven!" regarding burned or under cooked food. And there is room, lots and lots of room. Bye, bye 24", forty year old wall oven. Bye, bye uneven heating and "gas must be completely turned off at the shut off valve when not in use" gas cook top. Hello new 30" dual fuel range with real convection oven option. I am ready and looking forward to holiday baking and cooking this year!

We moved the whole thing to a different location in the kitchen, and hopefully stage two will be completed next summer. It will be nice to have it all finished, but I cringe when I think about getting the new counter top. It will be gorgeous, but around 250 times the price of the original. Yep, that is right. Sounds extravagant, and it probably is, but put into perspective my dad paid $20 for a sheet of laminate counter top that he installed himself. I'm sure he would tell me I am crazy for picking the beautiful granite we are hoping to get, but it will probably stand up better to 60 plus years of use than the old laminate did.

And the menagerie is growing again. A happy little girl now has a kitten of her own. An orange tabby, attitude filled, lovable monster of a fur ball she named Sun Streamer. He is sweet and cuddly, but a tough little guy with no fear of dogs who keeps the 80 pound hound occupied. Now if I can just convince him that certain things are not for sitting or even walking on. But, he is orange, so it is probably a hopeless battle.

It is a sunny, lovely day outside. I can hear the wind in the trees and I am glad for the cooler weather. There are apples to pick, chores to do, and phone calls to be made. Until next time, take care and have fun.

Quail, Quail, Oh Beautiful Quail

Coturnix Quail are our latest endeavor. These little birds are beautiful, and have (to me) more personality than chickens. A couple of months ago we purchased ten quail chicks from an ad on Craigslist. I picked up the tiny, adorable chicks on a Friday afternoon in mid-March and put them in our homemade brooder. Over the period of a few weeks they grew rapidly while Josh built them a permanent home in the barn. They are now housed, seemingly happily, in their new home and producing eggs by the dozens!

We have 7 hens and 3 roosters of various varieties: two Texas A&M type, five Pharaoh, and three Tibetan type. At least two of the Pharaohs are roosters, but not quite sure which is the third rooster. The shells are a beautiful speckled brown - from tiny specks to large spots - on the outside and a creamy white/bluish color on the inside. The tiny eggs are a pale lemon color with the thick white typical of very fresh eggs. They have an extremely high nutritional value, packing in more nutrition per egg than two regular chicken eggs combined.

Quail eggs are also rumored to be safe for people that can't eat chicken eggs. So far, this seems to be true. I got over my "we're eating our babies!" qualms and had some for breakfast. With chicken eggs I would have been very sorry within minutes, but so far I am quite happy with the results from the quail eggs. Pretty much taste like eggs, but as our daughter put it, "they have a taste of their own too".

We also have about twenty eggs in an incubator that should start hatching in the next 10 days or so, if they are going to at all. They are our very first eggs, so I think it is debatable whether or not our little roosters had gotten their job quite figured out at the time. Hoping that we at least get a few so we can add to our little flock. But if these don't hatch, we'll have plenty more to try in a matter of days.

All the hens are laying now - every day! So the eggs are accumulating quickly. A friend took a dozen, and I am hoping we will be able to sell them on a regular basis as we are getting 14 every two days. I am going to have to get creative with marketing these until we get a following.

Next on the agenda is building a portable run that we will be able to put them in for a few hours so they can get some nice time outdoors every day when the weather is good.

In other news, March brought us 5 1/4 inches of rain, and April brought 3 inches. We're still pretty soggy and already at 1 1/4 inches for May. Hoping this week continues to be sunny and we can get the garden worked up and get planting! I have been considering putting in raised beds so we can get lettuces and such planted a lot earlier. I know of people that are already eating fresh lettuce from their gardens! Looking forward to the plant sale next weekend so I can pick up some good organic veggie and herb starts. I so miss fresh tomatoes and other veggies. Working away from home last year meant our garden didn't get planted.

Happy Birthday Baby!

I can't believe that my little girl will soon be turning seven years old! Yes 7! The time has gone by much too fast - in the blink of an eye it seems. While I am excited for all that life has ahead of her, I am also saddened that time seems to have slipped by without me having really noticed it going. I'm glad for the memories, but wish there was time for so many more. I guess that is why I am going all out for her birthday party. A fairy themed party at a gazebo in the park! I am excited to be doing this for her and hope it is as magical for her as I am imagining it in my head. There is one thing that I must remember though, a mantra of sorts for things like this - keep it simple, stupid.

So - to share in my enthusiasm here is my collection of ideas that I have assembled on pinterest annette0394 fairyland I won't be using them all, but it is nice to have everything in one reference point when I want to check on something. Now I am off to make lists and plans and - yay for sales and dollar stores - do some shopping.

Three years old was so long ago yet it seems like it was just yesterday!

Ahh, Spring!

The snowdrops have bloomed and gone, the daffodils are blooming, and leaves and buds seem to have sprung up on everything over night. And I guess it is time to make up a batch of hummingbird food. Our first hummingbird put in an appearance today - following Josh around the yard and watching him through the shop windows as he worked on the coop for our new Coturnix Quail chicks.

Yep - Quail, our newest endeavor. We picked up ten of the adorable little birds two weeks ago. It is fun watching them grow - and they are growing fast! Josh is very enthusiastic about the possibilities of quail. He is even growing meal worms so they will have more options for food - hopefully by fall (meal worms have a rather long life cycle apparently).

I have also come to the conclusion that I need to take a slightly different tack with my blog - growing things can be such a slow business, and I often have other things on my mind, so I'm expanding to include topics that aren't necessarily about farm life or growing things. Not today, but next time I have something to get off my chest or expound from my soap box, I will. Be warned. :)

Finally!

Yikes! After a huge hiatus - partly due to having an old hotmail email address that I could no longer use to access my blog, google finally came through and allowed me to just change my email for my account instead of having to go through some sort of microsoft account creation to get back in. Thank you google.

All that stupidity aside....

The sun is out, the mud has subsided a little, and the weather is chilly. I see that the snowdrops and daffodils are starting to push their little heads through the soil, the irises have new leaves starting, and the clematis has brand new leaf buds. Josh has cilantro sprouting in a mini greenhouse in the mudroom, our first seed catalog came right after Christmas, and the yard needs a serious clean-up after our last big windstorm. Lots of must-do's and plans for this year, and hopefully the weather won't defy us again.

We've done some canning, and purchased a pressure canner/cooker a while back. Looking forward to filling the pantry with our own home grown fruits and veggies this year. Our favorite canned veggie so far has been a veggie mix with carrots, corn, green beans, and red bell pepper that Josh found in one of our books. The green beans had gotten a little over ripe, so we shelled them before adding them to the mix. Very good and with a little butter and a dash of Johnny's seasoning even better.

We have managed to make canned apple pie filling for the last three Autumns, so that has become a staple and easy to do pantry addition. Instead of making pie with it, which requires two quarts, I have been making crisp in an eight x eight baking pan. Using just one quart makes it go further. Also found a yummy crisp topping recipe that is gluten free and doesn't take as long to get crispy so our filling doesn't turn to mush in the oven.

Here is the recipe - 

1 cup uncooked oats
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Combine and sprinkle over fruit filling. Bake at 350F until crispy and golden. I'm sure it would taste wonderful with any canned pie filling.

I found it here apple crisp with oatmeal topping  

Other than a day of snow, and a week of really cold weather, we have been having a mild winter. I am hoping that the cold snap was enough to put a damper on this year's mosquitoes and give the irises and peonies enough chill to bring on a lot of flowers. Time will tell.

Last bit before I sign off (hopefully only briefly) - we acquired a puppy this past summer. An adorable little hound puppy that we named Shadow. I stress little, because that is a long past condition. At a rate of a 10 pound gain per month, at seven months old he is now about 70 lbs. and tall enough that he has to duck a little when he goes under the dinning room table. So much for little, but his size isn't a surprise, just how quickly he got there. He is still adorable (for the most part :) ), and we love him. The cats and our other dog are still undecided.

Counting Chickens

You are not supposed to count your chickens before they hatch...or your vegetables before they grow I would guess.

I have seemed to jump the gun in the past, but darn it, now that 75% of the garden is planted I feel fairly confident that this year will be successful. The rain has returned, but the past two weeks have been glorious. Warm, sunny, beautiful weather has made planting the garden so easy and relaxing. It is hard to describe the delightful feeling of that first handful of sun warmed earth in my hands. It just feels like a promise. Although it warmed up to around 70 degrees, it never felt truly hot as daily breezes off the bay kept it cool enough to be comfortable. And things are growing!

The beans are already up, as are onions, and lettuces. While weeding yesterday I could see that the carrots are also starting to sprout. Can't wait to see everything else sprouting up through the ground. We are trying something different this year with the tomatoes. We have two plants in those upside down things, and the rest will be in a "tomato house" - a plastic covered frame that I am building myself. An experiment to see which method works better. We'll have to water them of course, but this should eliminate the blight causing dirt from getting flung up onto the plants during a heavy rain. I'm so tired of losing tomatoes to blight.

This past Saturday my daughter and I went to the Sustainable Connections plant sale. Wow! The plants were beautiful, and so well priced. We came away with six tomato plants, one jalapeno, three bell peppers, a couple of squash starts, a little pot of artichoke starts, and a half dozen or so herb starts. Twenty four plants in all - plus two flower bulb freebies my daughter picked out. That was all I could carry. Next year we will be much better prepared. I noticed some of the more experienced shoppers had brought their own little red wagons to carry their selections. There were also flatbed carts available. That will be my choice I think, since the selection of bedding plants was ten times as amazing as the vegetable starts and I left behind so many beautiful plants and flowers.

It is just beautiful around here with so much in bloom! Again this year the Golden Chain Trees next to the house are loaded with blooms, a golden canopy over the side yard. The lilac is a beautiful counter point to all the gold. in front of the house, the second rhody is blooming and buds are starting to open on the one at the back of the house. Azaleas are blooming golden orange and red. I can see that the bearded iris will have some nice flowers this year. Everything else is just growing like crazy in this warm weather. The clematis and honeysuckle are thick and should put on a good show later in the summer. The flower beds are looking ragged, although lush...being neglected for the more important task of planting the vegetable garden has let the buttercup take over in the beds against the house.

The wonderful weather has already led to several 'al fresco' dinners - grilled of course. I hope just the first of many more. I discovered a simple and tasty way to grill vegetables - on a skewer of course - after preparing the veggies I just brushed them with a vinaigrette and let them marinate for a while before grilling. Yum.

The little flock of Rufous hummingbirds that spend all day fighting over the feeders are just gorgeous. It is not uncommon to get buzzed while sitting at the outdoor table, and they have provided a lot of entertainment these past weeks. I hope they will stay all summer this year.

I have also been delighted to have my dear friend Corinne helping out in exchange for some space in the garden. She has brought extra companionship and great conversation to the farm, as well as broccoli, English cucumber, and Walla Walla Sweet onion sets and a variety of seeds to share. It will be fun watching our garden grow.

One other little note - on Saturday I also had a chance to chat with Sara, Sustainable Connections' food & farming outreach coordinator. There will be three or four openings available this fall in their Food to Bank On program - a three year program that provides training, mentoring, and markets for new and beginning farmers. Not sure if we will be accepted this year, but I'll be putting in my application as soon as I can in the fall.