Mother's Day Farm

Happy Mother's Day!
It's 6:00 a.m. A little sprinkly rain is welcome this morning. The pasture lies under a thin blanket of clover and buttercups still, and the pecan boughs overhead make everything lush green.
The spinach is bolting.

 The peas are coming along nicely. We "trellised" them this year using the string trellising method that worked so well with tomatoes and cucumbers. It does NOT WORK with peas! They don't like to grab onto the strings; they need something sturdier.

 Lots of lovely lettuce this year, and we've enjoyed salads many evenings.

 I bought only two tomato seed packets (Amish Paste and Matt's Wild Cherry) from Johnny seed company. They ALL germinated, and I have over 200 tomato cells, 2 plants per cell. ((sigh))
The paste plants have grown quickly.

 If I can't give them away, we'll compost the extra plants. I don't have enough room in my garden beds for them all.
The cherry tomato plants will soon be going in this bed (below) that is overgrown with weeds.
The bed covered in straw has potato plants coming up nicely.

 Adam has finished lining all the raised beds in metal. It's hard work, but will cut down on weeds in the future. The bed on the right (below) should already have cucumber seeds in it, but I'm slow. The bed next to it has spinach (bolting), collards and kale (why do we plant them, again?) and peas on the other end.

 And here is our garden friend. We've each seen him once. He's about 4 feet long, and I'm hoping he keeps the rabbits out of the garden. He's just a harmless black snack, and very docile. He's far from the chickens, so no worries there.

 I'm still painting cards. I sold 8 cards at the market yesterday (Yippee!!!) This is a chicken card I painted this week and it sold yesterday.

 It makes me extremely happy to see my little artwork walking away down the street in the hand of somebody who will do something happy with it :)

Adam and I went to Williamsburg for the last time on our annual passes. I told their gardeners, who were weeding so nicely, that they could come to my house next. This (below) is the terraced veggie garden beside the governor's palace.

 Adam planted a plantain bed for me, and it's doing very well.

 I think this is the last photo I took of Arthur, our rooster. He was a very mean, aggressive rooster, and I think it led to his demise.

 On Thursday Adam found a few feathers near the garden gate, and then a little mound of feathers at the base of a pecan tree. Arthur was gone. We never found him, so I think he started a fight with Ned, leapt over the pasture fence for a duel, realized his opponent, and skeedaddled behind the barn and over the back fence into the wide world. Poor fella. I don't miss him much; I always had to carry a very large stick around him. But his hens are now at a loss of how to conduct themselves. He was always in charge and told them all what to do!
I bought a small elderberry at a plant sale. Adam made a big tire bed for it, and it's doing wonderfully! I want to make elderberry jam.

 I sold all my basil plants at the market this year, a very good year. I saved 27 plants for my herb beds so Adam can make basil salads for us this summer. They were all started from last year's seeds that I saved.

The basil plants grow nearly 4 feet tall. I let them go to seed and dry thoroughly, and then harvest the seed heads and freeze them to use again early next spring ... to start the process all over again. When I stand in the garden in December next to those tall, dead plants, it's hard to believe they hold so much life in them. My hand smells strongly of basil after clasping the long, brown stalk and pulling my fist along it to strip the seeds off. We enjoy the bright, tasty leaves all summer, and that's good. But perhaps the most important gift the basil plant gives us is the seeds, which nobody notices. Most people would pull the dead plants from the soil and toss them on the burn pile. When you garden, consider the dead plants. Look at their tiny seeds. And think of spring!

Pulling Out the Space Heaters, and Making FROG Jam

The leaves are falling fast and the sun lies to the south. It's nearly December.

My basil plants are dry as a bone. It's time to harvest some seeds from them.

Basil seeds are tiny and black. After cutting the dry stalks, I rub the flowers roughly between my hands to loosen the seeds. They drop through a sieve into a bowl.

I enjoy saving seeds. Seeds generally should be kept in the freezer or frig, not in a warm place.

Recently I heard a strange noise outside, next to the house. It sounded like someone was out there breaking sticks. Pop!! Pop, pop!!
We couldn't discern its source then, but yesterday I heard it again and traced it ... here:

Our central heat/AC unit was running,  but the fan wasn't turning. It was making that noise. Honestly, Adam and I have talked before about the certain death of our heat/AC unit, which was installed in 1996. Last night we tried our plan: heating with small oil heaters like this:

We have three small DeLonghi oil heaters that plug in the wall, plus one small DeLonghi electric heater. Our house is small (1100 square feet), and we can close off two rooms. Last night this arrangement worked fine, but it only went down to 40 degrees. The space heaters were set low, and we only used two of them.

Where we live, winters are mild but summers are severe. We will buy two window AC units before summer arrives and see how things go from there. We hope to save a good bit of money not using the old, non-economical central unit.

I made Henny Penny's F.R.O.G. jam!!

This is actually Henny's sister's recipe, I believe. No frogs were injured in the making of this jam, haha!

I'm so glad I had a bag of our figs in the freezer from last summer. Here's the recipe as I followed it:

F.R.O.G. Jam

6 cups chopped figs (I had a bit less.)

3 cups frozen raspberries

(I added some frozen strawberries to make up for

a lack of raspberries.)

5 cups sugar

zest from one orange

juice from one orange

3 tsp. finely grated ginger root

(I should have used more.)

Combine all ingredients in a heavy non-aluminum pot and bring to a boil over medium/med. high heat. Stir often and cook like this for 45 minutes, until jam thickens and turns darker.

Process in sterilized jars in whatever method

you're accustomed to.

Makes 4 pints.

It's a yummy jam. I think next time I'll use all strawberries, which I prefer to raspberries, plus they're easier to find frozen in their own bag. And more ginger. I'm so very excited to have a use for my figs, rather than just fig preservers, which neither of us like.

Look what Adam made for me!

That's a hackle. Didn't he do a nice job, especially on that wooden base? It works well. My problem is not my spinning tools; my problem is a lack of experience and skill. So now I need to get after it and learn HOW to spin. I tried a little:

I can tell it's over spun, and all different thicknesses. But it's a beginning!

Adam bought a bag of mixed beans at the store to make this for lunch:

Warm and bubbly. Winter comfort food.

Life on the farm is quiet, beautiful, peaceful. The chickens and dogs are happy. The sunlight slants across the pasture and through the trees, and I can hardly get enough of standing there, watching.

We should probably be doing more with our garden in the winter, as some of you are doing. Maybe another year. I've put my onion bed under some straw. Soon all these bedraggled plants will disappear back into the soil for the winter, and go to sleep.