A Day In the Sunshine

I'm really getting spoiled by all this beautiful weather we've been having for the last 3 weeks or so.  It was supposed to rain last night after 1 a.m., but the storm never materialized and we woke to filtered sun streaming through our stained glass windows.  The weatherguesser said it would be 76 degrees and sunny.

On the way out the door, I noticed that my white asian lilies are blooming for the first time.

J. and I got out early and spent the day working on those little odd projects that just seem to come with owning a house and a backyard farm.  One of the bad things about using PVC fencing for your garden beds is that you can't use the weed eater around them because it will break the brittle fence.  So I have to weed by hand with some grass shears.  Doesn't take long, but it's not as fast as with a weedeater. 

While I was harassing weeds, J. was putting the finishing touches on the garage downspout which was the last "to-do" after our unfortunate truck incident a couple of weeks ago.  Finishing at the same time, we decided it was way past time to sit down, enjoy the view and have some iced tea before starting down the "honey do" list again.

This robin agreed that a break was needed after the morning's worm hunting and nest-building, so she enjoyed some time in the sun with us at the base of one of the apple trees.  I tried to get a closer shot since I only had my phone but she flew off.  So sorry for the somewhat unfocused shot!

Our resident crew of baby bunnies were hiding in amongst the overgrown grass around the beds, and they weren't happy about being woken from their mid-day snoozes.  At one point, we had three little cottontails hopping around the yard.    The good news is that they aren't coordinated enough to hop into the garden beds yet.  I picked one of them up to move him from his nap location and he jumped out of my hand and into one of the beds where I snapped this pic.  He stayed there for several hours.

One of our sweet baby bunnies sheltering from the sun under the lettuce leaves.

The chickens are quite angry with me because I won't let them out to free range, but I'm a little worried about doing that with all these bunnies running around.  A grown chicken can easily kill and eat a mouse and I'm sure they wouldn't discriminate against eating teeny bunnies.  They'll have to wait until these babies are gone or a little bigger.  It didn't stop them from giving me an earful, however, as I finished mulching the tomato beds.

As dark closed in on us, J. and I retreated to the house for dinner and to cut up some fresh strawberries that I picked up over the weekend. Out of 6 pints, we got 3 quarts of usable strawberries, all cleaned and cut up for freezing.  I'll post more about those tomorrow.

And, guess what?  We never did get that bunny fence put up.

Sharing this post with the Tuesday Garden Party, where you can check out some fabulous gardens, and Weekly Top Shot #32!

Creative Gardening With Arches

If you were around last year, you may remember that my cucumbers, watermelons and pumkins took over the whole dang yard in late summer.  They spilled out of the raised beds and across the lawn and, while beautiful, it meant we couldn't mow that area for a month and a half. 

So I spent the winter thinking about what I could do to fix it:  move them to a different location, give them their own bed...hmmm, what to do?  And then I thought "why not go UP?"  And the idea of using arches to do that was born.  As my garden design came together for this year, I thought an arch trellis would be great to allow the cucumbers (on one side) and the spaghetti squash (on the other side) to grow up the trellis over the Contender and Blue Lake bush beans, where they would shelter them from too much sun as the summer heat grows.

I looked and looked and looked some more on Craigslist and elsewhere for some used fence panels, but there were none to be had.  So we loaded up the truck and trailer and headed to Tractor Supply where we snagged a 50" x 16' goat panel.  I have no idea why it's called a goat panel (do you?).

Once we arched it, however, we realized that it was way too tall so we cut off about 4 feet of it.  I'll use that as a trellis elsewhere in the garden.

Cutting the fence panel with a grinder was the fastest way to "get er done".  It only took a couple of minutes.

Cutting the panel left some prongs on one end.  Turns out that it was really useful to stick those down into the ground to make the whole thing more stable.  But we also sank some rebar into the ground and tied the panel to it with metal ties.  When the plants grow up, I can just see it becoming a sail in the summer wind if it's not tied down well.

Click the pic to biggify and you might be able to make out our teeny cucumber plants to the left of the trellis.  They'll be climbing shortly.  Most of the green in the middle of the arch is the bush beans and we noticed yesterday that they have teensy weensy little bean pods on them.

Turns out the panel fit perfectly within our garden bed with about an inch to spare! All that was left was to get the squash started up the trellis. One of the runners was over 3 feet long, so we couldn't have waited much longer to get this trellis in.

Spaghetti squash vining up the new arch. Crossing my fingers that this works!

What kind of creative garden ideas have you used or are thinking about using?  I'd love to hear about them....leave me a comment!

I'm linking up to this week's Homesteader Blog Carnival, Homestead Barn Hop, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways, Teach Me Tuesday and Tuesday Garden Party.  Go check it out!

Adding to the Potato Bin

Hello there!  What's that?  What's on tap for today? 

Well, it's time to give some much-needed attention to our poor, neglected Yellow Finn potatoes that we planted in our potato bins almost two months ago. (Click here to learn how to build your own!)

They're growing nicely and, as you can see from the measuring tape in the pic below, they are about 9 inches tall.  Oops...  *blush*  We should have had these mulched about 3 inches ago, but we were too busy with our vacation.  Luckily, they're not flowering or anything, so I think we're good.

As the potatoes grow, it's best to keep them mulched with straw or add more dirt so that  2/3 of the plant are buried.  We opted to use straw because it will be much easier to harvest the potatoes and not as heavy as dirt.  In keeping with our original bin design, we added another level of boards all the way around the bin and then added a heavy layer of mulch in between the plants.  Don't worry about burying some of the leaves - that's OK.  Just pack it in there real good, but be careful not to break any of the stems or leaves. 

Here are our two bins after we were done:

Growing potatoes in bins is easy.  Add boards and mulch or dirt as the potatoes grow, leaving 1/3 of the plant exposed.  Rinse and repeat!

We also mulched the Yukon Gold potatoes that are growing in the laundry tubs as well, since they are up about 8 inches or so.  They grew really fast considering that we just planted them in late April!

While we were pulling weeds and mulching, I found a little friend hanging out on one of the potato plants.  I'm sure he doesn't eat much, but I'm not sure I want him hanging out too much.  In real life, he was about 1/2 the size shown in the picture below.  Cute, isn't he?

Speaking of baby wildlife, we noticed that a couple of our Rutgers tomato plants were looking a little chewed on.  I think I know who the culprit was.  Look who I found lurking in the tall grass right outside the garden bed?

Eyes now open and hopping about, this teeny little rabbit is about 10 or 11 days old.

I guess we have the answer to yesterday's mystery, huh?  Not long after I found this little guy, I found his brother under the rose bush.  Time to get that rabbit fence up around the garden beds, I think.

What's going on in your backyard this weekend?

I'm sharing this post with this week's Rural Thursday, Farmgirl Friday, Ole' Saturday Homesteading Trading Post,  Foto Friday and Garden Life hops.

Garden Mystery

It's a beautiful, sunny Friday morning but I'm not sure whether to be happy or sad at the moment.  Heading out to open the "magic door" for the chickens (the pop door that leads from the coop to the run), I detoured past where the baby bunnies were.  The weed pile was completely flipped over and the nest was empty.  They were there last night around 8:30 p.m. when I checked on them.

Did momma move them last night?  Did an enterprising neighborhood stray get them?  There's no evidence of any carnage.  It's a true life mystery!

May the Farm Be With You

Need a laugh today? I ran across this silly video over on Garden Fresh Living and it definitely made me chuckle. Being a child of the 70's and 80's, anything Star Wars is fun. Hope you enjoy!

It's Always Something

Work was like the twilight zone yesterday, and last night should have been a boring night of planting tomatoes and jalapenos in the raised beds.  And so it was.  Except for the unexpected surprises that we ran into. And I suppose that is what makes life interesting, eh?

The first surprise involved something planted in the garden that I didn't put there.  Last weekend, I weeded the garlic and tomato bed and piled the weeds up at one end, fully intending to get them into the compost pile.  But I got busy and they never made it there.  So imagine J.'s surprise when he picked up the pile to move it and found this!


Can you see them?  Look at those adorable little ears and feet!

 Apparently, Mr Easter Bunny is a Mrs. and she thought my weed pile was a great opportunity for a shelter for her little kits.  She had actually dug out a small hole in the garden bed, had her babies in it, and then feathered the inside of the nest with rabbit fur to keep them cozy.

These little guys were right where a tomato plant was supposed to go, but I didn't have the heart to disturb them any more and we put the weed pile back on top of them.  I'm sure it's cosmic bad mojo to kill babies, which is why I had made J. build a nesting box for some sparrow babies that we found when we were rebuilding our front porch several years ago on Mother's Day.  I was certain we would be struck by lightning if we killed baby birds on Mother's Day.

J.'s response to finding the rabbits?  "I wonder if she planted them feet first or head first?"  *sigh*

I guess we'll have to wait a bit to plant that tomato plant.

Then we were off to the coop where we discovered one of the Austrolorps has gone full on broody. She's been sitting in the nesting box at night rather than flying up the roost and only reluctantly gets out of the box with some prodding.  Last night, there was no moving her of her own volition.  I had to pull the box out and physically remove her.   But having seen what was under her, I don't blame her one bit!

One of these things is not like the other, kids.

That picture is pretty representative of our egg harvest everyday from 8 hens (Henrietta is still in quarantine in her chicken condo) with the one exception being the double-sized egg in the middle.  It's almost twice as big as a normal egg!  I'm sure whichever hen laid that did an extra long touchdown-dance and announcement after she laid it.  Can you say "ow?!"

Well, of course, I just had to crack it to see what was in it.

Just as I suspected.  A double yolk!  We'd already eaten dinner, so it got scrambled up along with a couple older eggs and the ladies will get a high protein treat tomorrow morning.

And so our crazy day here at Cranky Puppy ended with the sun setting on the little rabbits and me cooking up some eggs with the dogs dancing around waiting for me to drop something.

How is your week going so far?  I'd love to hear about it!

Back From the Staycay Vacay

Cranky Puppy has been strangely silent the past couple of days and I apologize for that, but we were super busy finishing up our vacation, our own "honey do" list (which included getting the truck into the shop and the garage repaired after this incident), and tackling this project for J.'s brother:

I tried to talk them into using half of this for a chicken coop so that my girls could have a vacation home, but they didn't seem convinced.

Man, we couldn't have asked for nicer weather while we were on vacay.  Except for the one day at the Baker Creek festival where it was in the 90's, it was basically in the 70's and sunny.  We got lots done and there's lots going on in the garden now, so let's take a quick tour. 



Early Girl tomatoes are already outgrowing their cages.

I snagged some Purple Cherokee and Rutgers heirlooms yesterday at Home Depot, as I managed to neglect my tomato seedlings enough that they died when I tried to harden them off.  So much for starting from seed.  I may try some more pepper plants this season, since it's really not too late.  But I wanted to get the tomatoes in the ground and going.

Cute littel Yukon Gold potato plants are now almost 5 inches tall.  I'll have to mulch these with straw by the end of the week, I bet.

The green beans are going gangbusters and already have flowers on them.  Since this is our first year growing these, I was surprised.  Shouldn't they be taller?



The bean flowers sure are pretty, aren't they?  They're so dainty and delicate.

 Just to the right of this picture is the spaghetti squash that will be overtaking these beans if I don't get off my duff.  We had the trailer out as part of our shed-building project, so I took it over to Tractor Supply and finally got my goat panel, which I'll be using as an arched trellis.  Basically, I'm going to have the cucumbers go up one of the arch and the squash up the other side, where they'll shelter the beans underneath.  We'll see how that works out.  I'll be putting that in later this week, so I'll have pics in a later post.

I did get one of my "to-do's" from April done this weekend finally - my friend, Paula, and I had our garage sale on Saturday.  That forced me to organize the garage, basement, laundry room and dining room as well as go through a bunch of our books.  I made $73 and change in 5 hours and got rid of 8 Rubbermaid containers of stuff, so I'm calling that a success.  Even if I was a month late.

What's up in your neck of the woods?

I've shared this post with this week's Barn Hop and Garden Life link ups.  Clicky to find out what everybody's up to this week!

It's National Dance Like a Chicken Day!

And these birds have some serious moves!



Thanks to J. for the calendar reference. It's amazing what you can find when you take a break from reading a week's worth of vacation email at work.

Good Ol' Downhome Cookin'

One of my items on my to-do list for last month (oops...I'm late) was to get ready for the garage sale that a friend of mine and I are having tomorrow, so I figured I better get around to figuring out what I wanted to sell and get it priced.  It turned into a much bigger organization project than I expected and I ended up completely reorganizing the kitchen, pantry, basement and laundry room yesterday.

That's when I came across the long-lost box of cookbooks that included all of my grandmother's old books and handwritten recipes and I knew I just had to share this gem with you!

Originally copyrighted 1966, printed and purchased by my grandmother in 1975 for $1.25 in Osage Beach, MO.

Peppered with categories like "Side Vittles" and "Jest Plain Foolishness", this little cookbook is ripe with mispellings, interesting folk language and a dizzying array of somewhat scary recipes for things like pigs feet, baked coon and possum, and snapping turtle stew.  I think I'll pass on those, but there are actually some really good recipes in here as well for southern style biscuits, bread, cakes and pies.  Yum!

In addition to recipes and colorful language, there's quite a bit of sage advice like this thrown in. :

• Tea made from hot water an' corn silk will cure bed wettin' in young'uns.
• Th' root of rhubarb, worn on a string 'round th' neck, will keep off bellyache.
• Tie a big red onion to th' bedpost an' it keeps th' ones in th' bed from havin' cold.
• A live snake put in a barrel of cider will keep it frum spoilin' an' keep it sweet.
• To cure chicken pox - after th' sun goes down, go to th' chicken house, lay down an' let a black hen fly over you.
• If you keep a mule shoe in th' stove oven it will keep hawks away frum th' chickens.
• Thunder sours milk an' kills th' chickens in sittin' eggs.
• A buckeye carried in the pocket will cure rheumatism.

That last one is kind of funny to me now, because I remember that my grandmother used to put a buckeye in her bra every morning.  When I asked her why, she said it "cured ills". 

Of course, I can't end this post without giving you one of the recipes and, with coffee as expensive as it is, this might come in handy.  So here goes and I hope you enjoy!

Hard Times Coffee

Short of coffee an' too pore to buy any? Here's yore answer if you have the' followin' ingredients.

Mix well 2 quarts wheat bran with 1 pint yellow corn meal  Add 3 well-beaten eggs and 1 cup sorghum molasses.  Beat well; spread on pan and put to dry in oven.  Use great care by stirring often while it is browning-this is the secret of good coffee. A handful is sufficient for two persons. Sweet cream improves the flavor of the brew, but, as with store-bought coffee, this is a matter of personal taste.

Let me know if you try this recipe - I'm afraid I don't have any sorghum molasses!

Shared as part of this week's Country Homemaker Hop.

Visiting Laura Ingalls-Wilder

I suspect, if you're reading this, that you're familiar with and may have even read the Little House books (or even seen the TV series), so I doubt the name Laura Ingalls Wilder needs an introduction.  The house that Laura lived in and ultimately wrote the Little House books in is in Mansfield, Missouri and not far from the Baker Creek seeds location, so J. and I took an afternoon out to go visit her farm.  It has now been designated a National Historic Site and is being preserved, pretty much the way it was when she and Almanzo lived there.

For a small admission fee, you can tour the house and a museum that has a staggering amount of photos and personal items from Laura, Almanzo, Rose, Ma and Pa, Mary and Carrie.  The star of the show is Pa's Fiddle, which is still played annually at a local festival.

The house is a quaint little farmhouse with a large beautiful yard.  We toured through the downstairs (the upstairs bedrooms are off limits), and the entire house is filled with the furniture that Laura used when she lived in the house.  Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures inside the house so I can only share exterior shots of the house.

Laura, 27, and Almanzo, 37, moved to this location in 1894 after a series of misfortunes left them in debt and in ill-health.  After a 6-week journey over 50 miles and with a $100 bill representing the last of their savings, they purchased the 40-acre farm and named it "Rocky Ridge Farm".  The tour guide told an interesting story about the trip from South Dakota in which they arrived and couldn't find the $100 that had been tucked away for safekeeping.  It ultimately was located hidden away in Laura's desk.

The "back porch".  The window to the left is the music room and library and to the right is the sitting room where Laura liked to write.  I am love with that stacked stone fireplace chimney, aren't you?

Another view of the screened in summer porch.  It's evident that the house began as a smaller one and was added onto as the farm grew and became more profitable. 

I wish I could share interior pictures with you, as I found the kitchen to be really fascinating.  Laura was just 4 foot 11 inches tall and Almanzo custom built all the cabinetry and countertops for her, so they are shorter than today's modern kitchen fixtures.  An accomplished woodworker, Almanzo also built much of the furniture and the built-in bookcases throughout the house.

We were very surprised to hear that there are actually two homes on the property.  Their daughter, Rose, was a very successful free-lance writer and had a more modern house constructed as a gift for her parents.  Laura never wanted to move and refused to visit the building site until the day they were to move in.  Rose moved into the old farmhouse until she ultimately left the farm for good 8 years later. 

Despite the fact that the house was within a 15-minute walk of the old farmhouse, Laura had never wanted to move from the house that she and Almanzo had built with their bare hands, and they moved back into the old house where they lived until their deaths in 1949 and 1957 respectively.

The stone used to build this house is gorgeous and I fell in love with the tool marks in the mortar.

Nestled among the trees and on the downslope of an Ozark hill overlooking an immense field, you can see forever from this house.  On the side overlooking the field, the entire wall of the living room is a bank of french doors that open up to take advantage of the view. Rose certainly knew how to pick a location!

Well, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the visit to this historic landmark as much as we did.  I'll leave you with a quote from Rose, one of the most influential Libertarians in the 20th century:

"Everything that an American values, his property, his home, his life, his children's future, depends upon his keeping clear in his mind the revolutionary basis of this Republic. This revolutionary basis is recognition of the fact that human rights are natural rights, born in every human being with his life, and inseparable from his life; not rights and freedoms that can be granted by any power on earth."

I'm sharing this post as part of the Rural Thursday Blog Hop.  Hop on over and see what everyone else is up to!

Scenes from Baker Creek Spring Planting Festival

As promised, here are some pictures from the beautiful "town" and grounds of Baker Creek Seeds where J. and I headed for their annual Spring Planting Festival on Sunday and Monday.  They were expecting around 7000 folks to show up from all over the country and I believe it - we saw licenses plates from Minnesota, Alabama, and Illinois to name a few.

Baker Creek is nestled in the Ozarks and situated about 45 miles east of Springfield and a little over a mile north of Mansfield, Missouri on Highway 5.   Highway 5 is a little of a misnomer, as the pavement on this twisty road quickly ends and you find yourself on a very dusty country road.  Of course, Baker Creek would have lost cool points in my book if they had been on a paved road.

It was hotter than tarnation on Saturday, with temps in the low to mid-90's but a good breeze to cool everyone off.  The only time you really noticed the heat was in the buildings themselves.  The air conditioners  just couldn't keep up with the fanning of the doors from people coming and going.

A look inside the seed store at the racks of heirloom seeds for sale.  This rack extended the entire length and width of the building on both sides. 

When I saw it, I made a beeline for the seed store.  You could find just about everything and every variety in there, but I was looking for something they didn't have:  comfrey.  Not only do they sell seeds, but these seeds are from plants that they grow themselves on the property, so they are VERY knowledgeable about the plants.  Tomato and pepper seeds were just $1.00 this weekend so we picked up some Brocade Marigolds, Stupice tomatoes, Cherokee Purple tomatoes,  and Orange Bell peppers.  Outside, they were selling seedlings and some decently sized plum, cherry, apple and pear trees.

In addition to the seed store, the little town consists of the main house (scroll for pics of this beautiful house!), a vegan restaurant, Harriett's Mercantile (below), a livery\stable,  a flour mill, and some other smaller buildings.  It's not at all hard to imagine that you are walking the streets that Pa and Laura walked in the Little House books.

Think Harriet Olsen is in there?

No Harriet, and these ladies were much nicer than her.  I love the butcher paper roll on the counter - just like the old days.  On the other side of the room, a lady was handspinning yarn from alpaca hair.

How would you like to pack up everything you own in this little wagon and move across the country?  This is a perfect replica covered wagon that is true to size at 4 feet wide and 12 feet long.  That's about the size of a PT Cruiser!

Down the hill from the town was a huge area for different vendors to display their wares, which included handmade quilts and baskets, forged knives, gardens seeds and plants, custom garden tools and homemade soaps and candles.  No commercial stuff here!  Interspersed throughout were straw bales for lots of seating, water stations (which were busy!) and different musicians playing old time folk and mountain music.  That was really relaxing because we were serenaded as we strolled.

The craftsmanship in the buildings on the Baker Creek property were amazing.  Here's a small log cabin from hand-hewn logs that helds a pottery vendor who was actually making pottery as a demonstration.   At 6 feet tall, we had to duck to get through that door because people were smaller in those days.  Laura Ingalls-Wilder was just 4' 11" and Almanzo was 5' 4".

And I've saved the best for last.  Here's the main house at Baker Creek Seeds. 

Look at those quilts airing on the 2nd floor porch railing.  And I believe those are Climbing Blaze roses on the archway into the garden.  I want to live here!

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Baker Creek Seeds and will definitely visit again now that we know what to expect.  These pictures just don't do it justice in terms of how neat and beautiful this property is.  If you're within driving distance, I recommend you consider checking it out next year as a weekend trip.

I've got more pics to share with you in another post - these are from the Laura Ingalls-Wilder home that was nearby.  Hope you enjoyed our view of Baker Creek!

Sharing this as part of this week's Barn Charm,  Homesteader Blog Carnival and Barn Hop.

Quick Garden Update

Home again, home again...lickety split!  Even though I had all the best intentions of posting pictures while we were at the Festival, it seems that my Android tablet didn't fully like Blogger's new interface.  Specifically, I couldn't alter the size of pictures.  Phooey!

So, since it's so late and I still have to unpack and re-orient to home life again, I'll finish this post that was supposed to go up on Saturday.  It's a quick look at what's growing in our fledgling garden right now.

Cabbage with a head starting to form?  What's weird is that we have 3 cabbage plants and, while 2 of them look normal like this, the third is twice as big and standing straight up.  I think it might be some kind of freakish, maneating cabbage possibly grown from irradiated seed.  We may see it dancing as it destroys Tokyo later this year.

Something is chomping on my cabbage.  I sprayed them with an organic pest repellent and they do look better, but there's still damage.  Could be slugs.  But I've been unable to locate exactly what's doing it.  If you've got any ideas, let me know please!

Here's one of the beds with the lettuce in the background (coming along nicely), cabbage next to it, and beans (left) and spaghetti squash (right) in the foreground.  I planted some Straight Eight cucumber seeds just to the left of the beans right before we left and we came back to discover that they have already sprouted!

Too bad there's not a blue ribbon for growing weeds.  I'd be a shoe-in!

And, finally, a shot of the onion and strawberry bed, and the potato bins in the background.  And more weeds.  *sigh* 

Well, tomorrow, I have a TON of pictures to share with you from the planting festival, so I hope you'll stop back by and check them out.

Signing off for some much needed shut eye,

Linking up late to the Country Garden Showcase.  Click to see what is goin' on in other folks' gardens this week.