A Day for Firsts

I'm so upset about the situation with the house that I just really don't want to talk about it right now.  Maybe in a couple of days.

In the meantime, how about some positive news?  We got our first tomatoes!

The fat tomato in the upper right hand corner is our first Cherokee Purple that we pulled (and J. promptly ate it on a hamburger last night, so I'm glad I took the pic fast!).  The 3 red tomatoes in the middle of the picture from top to bottom are our first Roma, followed by our first 2 Early Girls.

Then a straggler strawberry sitting next to our first blackberry!

On Saturday, J. and I attended Tomato Fest at one of the local farmer's market and they didn't have many tomatoes.  Seems odd, doesn't it, being tomato fest and all?  But we did find a few.  One gentleman had some Cherokee Purple tomatoes that were terribly eaten up with cutworms.  Only the small one on the right side of the picture was decent, so we bought it thinking it would tide J. over until ours ripen.

In addition to the nice bunch of carrots, we also found some purple potatoes.  I've always wanted to try those since seeing them on a episode of Chopped.  If you roast them, they keep their purple color throughout.  When we make them, I'll post some pics.

Apparently I missed some garlic when I harvested last year, because it came up again as volunteer.  I went ahead and pulled them and dried them.  The bulbs are smaller, but I'll be able to use them this fall to start another crop.  A first - volunteer garlic!

And, finally, on Saturday, Christine and Dave from The Deadly Nightshade (our new neighbors!) threw a really fun soiree.  We spent a lot of time talking to a couple who moved from Colorado and bought a huge Victorian house about 3 streets over from us.  I love how you can meet new people and just instantly know you're going to be great friends.

Anyway, it was a potluck so J. and I tried another couple of firsts..... 

Cheesecake tarts topped with fresh raspberries

and....

Mini apple and cherry pies made in a muffin tin.  So easy and cute!

How do they look?  They were scrumptious and must have been a big hit, since we came home with an empty plate.  If anyone wants the recipe or directions on how we made these, let me know and I'll post it.

By the way, I'm sharing this post with this week's Homestead Barn Hop. Go check out what other folks are up to!

Just Random Stuff

Man, has the summer heat show up in full force!  I went out last night to tend to the chickens and water the garden and new trees and was absolutely dripping with sweat by the time I went back in.  The thermometer read 98 degrees in the Jeep when I left work, but Jeeps are known to be exxagerators.  You can't trust them one bit.

One more day of this muggy heat and then it's supposed to cool off.  Thank goodness.  In the meantime, I collapsed in the AC to get some sense of humanity back in me.

Out in the garden, the strawberries are still producing like mad. 

I picked three quarters of a pound into the turned-up hem of my T-shirt.  I'm sure I'll be cursing myself come laundry day for doing that.  Some of the berries may have missed the shirt and ended up in my mouth, but I'll never tell.  Anyway, all told, we're over 3 pounds so far.  Not too bad.

J. spent the entire night in the 7th Concentric Ring of Hell weather putting his new toy together.  He's been wanting a smoker for years and we found an excellent deal on this dual fuel one at Lowe's.  It was such a good deal at $138 (after a $10 Home Depot coupon match) that we couldn't pass it up and decided it was time.  I can taste the brisket now!

This uses either propane or charcoal!

The offer got accepted on the house, so now I am tapping my fingers patiently as we wait to hear from the bank.  Since it's a short sale, the next step is that they have to assign what's called a BPO, or Broker Price Opinion.  That's a fancy way of saying "walk through appraisal".  They'll assign a value to the house and then decide what they're willing to take on the house and how much they'll lose on the owner's current loan.  I'm sure they're very upside down.  Just taking some ballpark figures, I think they probably owe around $65K to 70K and my offer for the house was $15K.   Cross your fingers for us.

Tonight, J. and I are going to kick our heels up and have fun at a Murder Mystery Dinner Theater.  I love that kind of thing and have wanted to go to one FOR FOREVER.  Groupon helped me out a couple of weeks ago with cheap tickets, so off we go.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day,

Fruits of Our Labor

One of my fondest childhood memories is of my grandfather and I driving the dusty country roads together.  It was just restlessness - I think, like me, he didn't want to live in the city and was happiest when we were out driving.  Sometimes it was just for the heck of it, but we often went out morel hunting in the early Spring.  And he knew all the "secret" places where the wild blackberries and raspberries grew on the fence lines off these quiet roads.  We'd go home loaded with berries, chiggers and ticks, but neither of us cared. 

Those wild berries can be hard to spot and their flowers are teeny.  But look at the flowers on my Triple Crown blackberries.  They must be a good 2 inches across.

Who knew that blackberry flowers could be so beautiful? 

That's one of the new plants that I just added a couple of weeks ago.  The existing blackberry plants are growing like crazy and covered in berries.  We'll be rolling in the blackberries this year, I think. 

It's going to be a good year for strawberries also.  Here's one of the little plants blooming it's little heart out back in late April.

The whole bed is now bursting with strawberry plants and runner.  Oh, and berries.  Mmmmmm!

We harvested a pound and a half last night alone, and J. cut them up and enjoyed them with some milk and sugar.  These are Ozark Beauty berries, but he's taken to calling them "Ozark Tasties".  I think he might be on to something.

In other fruit news, one of the silly Honeycrisp apple trees that we dug up and put in a container now has our first little apples on it!  I think there are about 6, so we're not going to have a bumper crop but we definitely welcome our first apples here at Cranky Puppy Farm.  I can't wait....

It was while I was looking at the tree that I noticed that another farmer has taken up residence on the farm and is herding his livestock on my land without my permission.  Stay tuned, because I'll have pics and more on that for you tomorrow.

Shared with: Homestead Barn Hop and Tuesday Garden Party

Monday Minutiae

J. got a new book today and the title just cracks me up.  This guy used to have a website called HogOnIce.com where, of all things, he made fun of Nigerian email scammers.  Really funny stuff.  But it's defunct now and lives only in the dusty annals of Google's wayback machine.  I'm looking forward to flipping through the recipes and getting a good laugh.

 

BTW, if you want to see someone else getting silly scammers to do funny things and take pictures of themselves doing it,check out 419eater.com.  That link goes to the pictures, but the stories are funny also.  It's amazing how easy it is to scam the scammers.  Since I deal with this crap every day at work, I do get some satisfaction out of knowing that they might be on the receiving end of a scam once in awhile.

 

But anyway, I digress.  Back to eating what you want....

 

And what do I want to eat? 

 

That strawberry.  It's the first of the year!

Not Fit For Man Nor Beast

Did somebody not get the memo that IT'S MAY??!!  

 

Not only are we forecast to break the record lows for the lowest temps in May today, but it's also been sleeting and snowing all day. Fortunately, most of it isn't sticking.  Yet.

Last night, we were out in shorts and t-shirts trying to get ready for this crazy weather.  Everything got tarped and you can see the strawberry beds on the left and the tomato and pepper beds on the right in the pic below.  We used tomato cages to make a tent and added a heater to keep it nice and cozy in there until this stuff passes.  Fortunately, it's supposed to be back up in the 60's on Saturday and then go up from there.  I'm crossing my fingers that my little plants survive!

And the snow starts....

Not only am I worried about the plants, but I've also been agonizing over what to do with Daisy Bill, the baby dove.  I know, I know...he's a wild bird.  But he's also a baby and I have a serious soft spot for baby animals.  I just can't bear to think of him out in the cold without a mama to warm him up.

 

Here he is yesterday under our Japanese Maple.  I caught Mama Dove feeding him, so I know he's being taken care of. 

 

Can you spot the little guy in this pic?

I checked on him when I got him this afternoon and found him huddled under the tree where he was still getting sleeted on.  What to do?  I suppose I could take him inside and put him under a brooder lamp, but I don't have the faintest idea of how to feed him.  But I just couldn't leave him like that.  So I made him a little shelter and a bed of fresh straw. At least that will keep him dry and somewhat warm while we all weather this late Spring storm.

You can see his little behind right above that yellow arrow.  Note the straw bed that I made for him.

Yes, I'm a big softy. 

Nature's Surprise

I've got some more pictures to share with you from our working weekend and start of the week.  The weather has been gorgeous (if not hot at 84 degrees yesterday) so we've been out in the yard most of the time.   The roofing crew has been here replacing all of the trim on the dormers with Azek ahead of the new roof.  Unfortunately, that has to be reschedule for next week because we've got rain coming.

 

On Sunday, Domino was sniffing like crazy in some grass by one of the basement windows and we discovered this little soul:

Meet Daisy-Bill the baby dove.  When I asked our adorable 6-year-old neighbor, Emily, what we should call "him", she said "Well, Daisy if it's a girl or Bill if it's a boy".  And then we decided that, since we can't tell which, we'd split the difference and give it both names.  Ah, to be a 6-year-old again.

 

This little chicklet appears to have either been thrown out, jumped out or fallen out of it's nest in the crook of our gutter. Mama dove took over an abandoned robin's nest and made it her own after we neglected to get it down last year.  Note to self:  remove nest this year!

 

I think this little baby is about 10 or 11 days old according to some quick Googling.  His pin feathers were just drying out and he appears to be losing his baby feathers.  The weather is warm and everything I've read is that the mama will find the baby and continue to feed it, so we are opting to let nature take it's course.  Of course, I'm agonizing over that.  The good news is that the baby is sheltered in our yard from dogs, cats, etc. as the yard is mostly fenced in. 

The Honeycrisp apple tree we planted last year is blooming!

One of the tasks we had this week was dig up the apple trees that we got from Home Depot.  Our new trees arrived from One Green World so we needed to get them in the ground as soon as possible.  As you can see in the pic above, the silly Honeycrisp that we planted last year is blooming.  I think you're suppose to pinch those blooms off the first year, right?

 

It was actually easier than I thought it would be to dig up the Stayman's Winesap and Honeycrisp trees and we put them into some huge 20" containers that I picked up at Home Depot.  These will be their permanent homes, as dwarf trees do fine in containers.  But we may take them up and plant them permanently on the farm also.

The unused potato bins provide a place with ready made stakes for the container trees.

Then we started digging.  And digging.  And digging.  And it was hotter than Hades.  The two new apple trees (a Braeburn and a Honeycrisp, both grafted on M-7 stock) went back in the holes that the others came out of.  By the way, you can read about different rootstocks here.


Little Braeburn apple tree all happy, happy in it's new home.

Then we had to dig two new holes for some NorthStar cherry trees.  These are dwarf trees on Colt stock and should provide some nice pie cherries in a couple of years.

Next up was getting the tomato and peppers in the newly-topped-off raised beds.  So far, we have 2 Early Girl hybrids, 2 Cherokee Purples, 4 Romas and 3 red peppers.  I need to go pick up some more Romas, as that's not nearly enough plants to make a good amount of sauce.  And we still have the other bed to plant our squash, green beans, watermelon, etc.



And, finally, we turned our attention to the strawberry bed where I was surprised to find them blooming since it's been colder than normal.  I spent the rest of the day pulling Bermuda grass out of the bed until my fingers hurt.  Have I mentioned that I HATE Bermuda grass?

One more surprise and it's not a good one.  Mr. Weatherman is predicting we're going to get a cold snap starting tonight and the next 3 days will be highs in the 40's with a dip tomorrow night near 36.  Gak!  Not what I wanted to hear now that we have tomatoes and peppers in the ground! We'll be covering everything tonight with tarps.

 

Is Spring EVER going to be here to stay?

I've shared thist post with this week's Down Home blog hop and Home Acre hop. Go check 'em out!

The Greening

My, how time has flown!  This week has just been insanely busy between work, finishing up taxes, getting quotes for a new roof and some housepainting, and multiple conferences for work.  So this is the first time I've had to sit down and write a post since last weekend.  In the meantime, however, life outside my windows has gone on without me.

The tulips are blooming...

A gorgeous red Emperor Tulip turns its face to the sun. I shared this over on Madge's Weekly Top Shot.  Get well, Madge!

I can't remember what kind of tulips these are, but they're unusual aren't they?

The strawberries are waking up from their long winter's nap...

Ozark and Ever-bearing strawberries. They survived!

I'm thinking about moving these over to the blackberry beds closer to our house because it's been impossible to keep the crabgrass out of this bed.  But I need to do some research and find out if it's OK to move them now.  Anybody know?

And there are some lovely Cherokee Purple and Early Girl tomatoes and red peppers waiting for the weather to stabilize so they can be planted in the garden beds.

If the weather holds today, we'll be amending the beds and getting ready for planting.  But the temps are supposed to dip to a high of just 41 on Tuesday, so those tender plants can't go out just yet.  We had everything out in the middle of March last year, so it's unbelievable that we're here at the end of April and still dealing with frost warnings.

I just heard J. start up the mower outside so that's my cue to get outside and get to work. 

Hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday!

The August Garden

It's the first of August and we've turned a corner.  August means that fall is not that far away, and thank goodness.  Cooler temps have gotta be coming soon. 

*crossing my fingers*

We garden and homesteading bloggers often make it look as if we lead easy, carefree lives in a land of perfection.  I'm about to stomp soundly on that fantasy with my muck boots by showing you some not-so-pretty pictures of the farm as it looks right now.

So leave your rose-colored glasses on the patio table, grab your mason jar and come with me.

It already seems like fall with all the leaves dropping from the trees.  This heat and prolonged extreme drought are really taking their toll on everything.  I'm mourning the fact that we probably won't have a fall with beautiful colors this year.  Heck, at this point, I'd just be happy to have the trees survive.

This picture is pretty embarassing, actually.  Maybe somebody should clean this place up!  And maybe that would be me if it weren't still 97 degrees outside at almost 9 p.m. 

The strawberries actually look pretty good and have filled in nicely.  This is the bed after J. and I spent a couple of hours sweating and weeding...and sweating some more.  Without our constant attention over the last 5 weeks, the weeds took over.  But, to be honest, those weeds shaded the strawberry plants and are probably the reason they're still alive.  As you can tell, we have more weeding to do.

Poor almost-dead Early Girl tomato.  Like many of the other plants, I would rip her out if there weren't still tomatoes waiting to ripen.  The only good thing here is that the tomato plant and cage are providing something for the Sugary Baby watermelon vines to climb up.  They're loving this weather and are quickly overtaking 1/2 the raised bed.

At least the Roma tomatoes are doing well.  They're a little crisp around the edges, but producing like mad.

And, finally, my cucumbers.  They are just now starting to take off despite my constant battle with the cuke beetles.  Tons of blooms on these, but no cucumbers have set.  I wonder if I'll get any this year?

Well, thanks for touring my poor garden.  I wish I could show you those beautiful plants that I had last year, but they just aren't here.  I'm not going to be sad about it anymore.  I'm not going to dwell.  Remember, failure is a learning experience!

Thanks for stopping by and before you go:  don't forget to enter my Amazon gift card giveaway.  It ends on Saturday!

Jam Session

What do you do when you luck into 4 pounds of big, juicy, luscious strawberries and you've already got a freezer full of them?

Make jam, of course!

5 full pint jars and 1 for the frig later and I am one tired puppy.  Tomorrow, I'm off to talk to someone about an exciting job opportunity and then I have the rest of the day off.  I'm hoping to spend that time stopping by an awesome bakery called WheatFields and then working on some really cute labels for the jam we just made.   I'll have pics of those and also the newest addition to the family.

Wish me luck!

Linked to:
 Monday's Barn Hop
Carnival of Home Preserving
Country Homemaker Hop
Your Sunday Best
Weekly Top Shot

Strawberry Fields Forever

When processing strawberries, make sure you wash the berries first to remove dirt, leaves and other debris.  A colander is really useful in the process.

Want to hear something crazy?  I'd never eaten a strawberry until this year.  Strawberry jam, strawberry syrup....sure.  But not a whole strawberry and certainly not one that I just picked and plopped into my mouth.  We're getting strawberries here and there on our own young plants and they are supersweet and yummy.  Why I avoided strawberries and said I "didn't like them" I'll never know.  But there are lots of foods that this once-picky-kid is learning to like.

I wish I could say that the beautiful bowl of strawberries in the picture are ours, but they're not.  I picked these up at the store over the weekend for a steal thinking we could freeze them or that I could make a strawberry pie for J. (his favorite).

One of ours!

Sunday night, we stood in the kitchen for half an hour with J. cleaning and me slicing and the end result was about 3 quarts of berries.  Now the question was what to do with these beauties?  If you do nothing, they last only 2 or 3 days in the refrigerator.

Itching to bring out my canner for the first time this year, I tried to convince J. to let me make some jam with these but he really wanted to eat them whole.  So we opted to freeze about 2/3 of them and leave the rest to be eaten.  Freezing is easy - you just spread the berries out on a cookie tray so that they don't overlap and then stick them in the freezer for 24 hours.  These berries were pretty tart, so we mixed them with a 1/2 cup sugar per quart before freezing.

But...did you know....there are several different ways to preserve strawberries?  Me neither.  But what yuou plan on using the berries for and how long you want to preserve them can dictate which method you choose.  Also, be aware that most freezing methods will alter the color of the berries slightly (they'll be darker) and they will also be more mushy when thawed.  That may not make a difference if you're putting them into smoothies or into a pie.

Methods for Freezing Strawberries

Freeze them whole.  Wash and hull the berries, but leave them intact. Then pack them into plastic freezer containers or plastic bags, or use the cookie sheet or an ice tray.  If you pack them in bags, they may stick together.  With this method, the strawberries must be used within 2 months.

Freeze sugared strawberries.  This is the method that we used.  Wash and hull, and then either leave them whole or cut them into desired sizes.  Then sprinkle them with 1/2 cup sugar per quart of berries.  Pack them into plastic bags or containers or on the cookie sheet and then freeze for 24 hours. With this method, the strawberries can be stored up to 6 months.

Freeze pureed strawberries.  Wash and hull, then either mash or puree with a blender.  Then pour into plastic bags or individual ice cube trays. Puree can be stored up to 6 months.

Freeze strawberries in light syrup. Place washed and hulled berries in a plastic freezer. Boil together 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water until the sugar is dissolved to make simple syrup.  Then pour the syrup over the berries and freeze. With this method, strawberries can be stored up to 6 months.

Freeze with dry ice. This is the best method of freezing berries *if you have dry ice on hand*!  The key is in freezing the berries as quickly as possible and this is the only method that will keep the berries from getting mushy when they are thawed.  With this method, wash and hull, then mix berries with a crushed block of dry ice in a metal bowl.  Place the bowl in a cooler with a lid and leave the lid cracked slightly so that pressure from the gas coming off the dry ice can escape.  Wait 20 minutes. Then place the berries into a container or plastic bag and store in the freezer.  With this method, berries can be stored up to 6 months.

I hope you found this strawberry information useful - what I found the most interesting is that freezing them whole is really short-term.  My grandparents had always done it this way and I thought they would last longer.  But my grandfather was a notorious berry lover and, now that I think about it, they didn't stay in the freezer that long.  :-)

Have a "berry" good day, everyone!

Linked with this week's:  Monday Mania, Living Green, Fat Tuesday, and Country Homemaker hops.

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!

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.