Here are three highlights of today.
Here’s my lunch.
We grew the lettuce and beets, but that’s it. (Although I did brew the apple cider vinegar that the beets were pickled in.) One of my goals is to be able to create more meals that are made up of 50% (or more) of the things we harvest and preserve.
I know we won’t be able to realistically grow our own shrimp, but we are currently growing turkeys and rabbits to harvest. In the future we’ll be able put together salads that have many more home grown ingredients, such as:
There’s something so miraculous about seeing a plant or animal beginning to fulfill its purpose.
Like when you see that first pea tendril form, then grab on to a trellis and begin to climb. Or when a mommy duck takes her ducklings to water and they all instinctively paddle their little feet and dunk their head. Or when baby chicks, just hours after hatching are already scratching the ground, trying to find bugs and worms.
Who taught them how to do these things? It amazes me that they were created with the information to know how to do what they do. It also makes me wonder what information I was given as part of my spiritual DNA. What things was I born knowing how to do because of my divine identity as a child of God?
I don’t want to be insensitive to those struggling with addiction and mental health issues, but I have to be honest– right now our front yard looks like a Portland homeless camp. We have cages, rabbit tractors and chicken tractors covered with blankets, welcome mats, cardboard boxes, chewed up tablecloths, jeans, shirts, towels and sheets. Anything to keep our animals 100% shaded and cool during this “hell week” in Oregon. Today is supposed to hit 112 F, and tomorrow 115 F.
And I am reluctantly grateful for this hot, hot week. As our son prepares to leave for El Salvador, we’re getting a little La Croix of what he’ll be experiencing while there: blistering heat coupled with high humidity. We’ll be able to relate “un poco” to what he’s experiencing.
In about 2 hours we’ll make the rounds to all the animals again, making sure they have cold water, an ice block, frozen fruit, and a sprayed down sheet (evaporative cooling!). If they can survive this heat, it will be an absolute miracle.
We have our very first harvest of garlic! Over the last few weeks I’ve pulled a couple test bulbs to see if they were ready, but today everything was ready!! You can tell that is ready for harvest when the bottom two leaves are dried up and the third is partially dried up. If you wait too long, the bulb will split apart and but preserve as well.
I took the big garden fork (the one I gave to Josh for Christmas last year) and started loosening up the soil around the garlic while trying not to dislodge the corn, salad greens or peas.
Our garden holds water really well, so every clump of garlic I pulled up had about 4 pounds of wet dirt attached to it. No amount of shaking would dislodge it, so I resorted to picking off the clods so that the garlic would dry out faster. I went against all the rules and dipped about half of the bulbs in a bucket of muddy water to get the huge chunks of dirt off. Next year this won’t be an issue because the garlic will be in an area of our property where we don’t water–under the grape vines. I plan to double the garlic next year so that I can give some to friends and family as gifts. Also, I think we can eat lots of garlic in the year 2022. I can guarantee that.
We have a beautiful harvest of 100 bulbs. They’ll be drying in the carport for the next 2-4 weeks. It’s going to be 103-113 over the next few days, so we might end up with roasted garlic. No worries though, they’re shaded and there’s a slight breeze.
My next garden task, after the weather stops having a tantrum, is to aggressively prepare the grape area for growing garlic. We have the chickens out there amending the soil, but we also need to aerate with the garden fork, kill some grass with cardboard and wood chips, then add some fresh rabbit manure. I want next year’s harvest to be phenomenal and massive.
#garlicgoals
We have a massive heat wave hitting us this weekend. Highs will be in the hundred-and-teens. We’re doing everything we can to prepare. We’ve frozen blocks of ice for our rabbits, checked the water levels in the garden (those soakers hoses water deeply!) and have added extra water and shade for our chickens and rabbits.
While we may experience some non-preventable losses this weekend, we have done everything we can to be prepared.
The two animals that don’t seem to be bothered by any of this heat are the Indian Runner ducks and Karen (our St Croix–a heat tolerant sheep). The ducks + ducklings spend the day splashing and lounging. And Karen seems to not mind the heat.
Josh and I did a garden walkthrough last night as part of date night (but it’s also becoming a fun 2x daily tradition). He collected soil samples from four parts of our garden and I planted bush beans where the struggling peas are. We came inside the house, dripping with sweat. This heat coupled with high humidity reminds me of the very small, teeny tiny country of El Salvador. When we check the weather for El Salvador, we can’t complain about our little heat wave. They have high heat and high humidity 6 months out of the year–plus lightning, volcanoes, and organized crime. We just have two out of the three in Portland.
Our garlic is looking so, so good. I’m looking forward to a generous harvest in early July. I want to save a good amount to use as seed for this September when we plant garlic under the grape vines. Can you imagine what life would be like with unlimited free garlic??
Today is June 21st. We got our first two snow peas a couple days ago! And the rest of the garden is looking magical and lush. Here’s a little lookie-loo at what’s happening.
Not pictured: the purple hominy in the pasture and the brand new baby duckling that hatched on Father’s Day!! In the next few days we’ll get a few more ducklings, plus we’ll be planting the sorghum! Exciting times!
We want to be like this guy…kinda. Sipping apple cider and contemplating life. Except this guy looks like he’s drinking alone, which is saaaaaad. So, minus the sad lonely drinkies, we want to be like him.
And that’s going to happen this September!! Last year year when our neighbor shared her windfallen apples with us, we mostly fed them to the sheep. Then as mid summer turned into deep summer, we started saving some of the apples for ourselves. We made some apple sauce. We also painstakingly hand-squeezed a few quarts of apple cider. Basically one for each birthday this year, plus anniversary and Christmas. We knew we eventually wanted a cider press, so we could make more cider.
So we looked at prices then decided we did NOT want to buy an apple cider press. But this week I found simple plans (in a library book) for a DIY Apple Cider Press, and we just happened to have all the supplies (except for some lag bolts, which we picked up yesterday).
The 2x6s came from Jake. The 4×4 pressure treated lumber came from Jalen’s dad. The buckets came from Blaine Jemmet. The extra 4×4 non-pressure-treated came from our neighbor John’s friend’s house. There’s a huge spike in lumber prices right now, so the fact that all this wood was gifted to us over the past couple months is a huuuge blessing.
For the cost of 8 lag bolts we got ourselves a free apple cider press. We’re going to test it out this fall!
I love that we can make apple cider. We’re not huge juice drinkers in our family, but sometimes you just want something special to drink that reminds you of the happy, long days of deep summer.
The corn that Hercules trampled or ate is gone, and that’s disappointing. Three weeks of growth–gone. Time is so valuable in late spring. Everything is getting started, and so many things are time sensitive. If we don’t get the corn going now, we can’t just replant it in late July. There won’t be enough time for the corn to mature before the first frost comes.
I replanted several bare spots in the corn row today, then watered the corn with something called Pee Tea or Poop Smoothie. It’s rabbit poop + pee and hay mixed with water. It smells like the bowels of Hades, especially after sitting in a yard cart for a few days, but it’s supposed to be hecka good for plants.
Hopefully that’ll give the corn a jump start and a strong dose of nutrients. I’m hoping it’ll catch up with the other corn within the next three weeks.
And in other sad seedling news, most of the Boston Pickling Cucumber seeds that sprouted in soil blocks last week were mowed down by slugs last night. I had the soil blocks in shallow plastic containers on the ground. Josh suggested propping them up tonight, so slugs couldn’t get to them. I’m going to try that. It’s not fun to have cute little seedlings eaten. Josh expressed sympathy, and I know he meant it because he knows how it feels to have cute seedlings mowed down, and to lose valuable time. It’s frustrating.
After our duck trampled the half-dozen corn seedlings on our last row while circling the chicken tractor, I decided to move the chicken tractor far, far away from the garden. It’s under the grape vines now.
My brain must live in a Disney fantasy farm world, where all plants and animals and hoomans live together in musical bliss.
That’s never been the case on our farm.
Free-range chickens rip up plant starts. Sheep devour kale plants in one bite. Escapee ducks flatten teeny seedlings. Chickens kill bunnies. Bunnies mow down freshly planted herbs.
Yesterday Josh said that he could live without the animals. He would much rather just have the garden.
Yeah, I understand why he said that. The garden is a special place for Josh. And I absolutely adore our garden, too. However…I also love the variety, spontaneity, chaos, and personality that the animals bring to our farm. We don’t binge watch TV, and could care even less about the big screen. But if you were to count up the hours that our family spends watching the animals, you might say we have an addiction.
We’ve loved watching the rabbits + bunnies, sheep + lambs, ducks + ducklings, chickens + chicks. It’s adorable! And if I keep learning and observing, it will be more than just adorable. It will be beneficial.
One of my goals is to better manage our menagerie–to use the strengths of each animal to improve our garden, our pasture, our farm and our lives. We can use the animals to enrich the soil, reduce destructive pests, heat up our compost, enliven the land, and eliminate weeds.
But for now, we’re kicking the duck out of the garden.
Half of my first row of corn is now gone, thanks to a duck. 🙁
It’s June 14th–not even summer yet–and we’re getting small, daily harvests. (Still no peas.)
Today I cut leaves off our lettuces. I love “cut and come again” types of lettuce. It means I can harvest as soon as a leaf is the size I want, then come back tomorrow to get another few leaves. Next year I’d love to try some different lettuces. Josh was all excited this year about planting lettuce, but I wasn’t. But now I am. Lettuce is an early win. You can harvest lettuce before almost anything else (except for overwintered crops). I guess I wasn’t too excited about lettuce back in February because we had so much kale and chard. Now that it’s gone, I’m so grateful for our little patch of tender greens.
We also harvested 5 beets. We eat the beetroot and the leaves. Beet leaves always look sickly and unappetizing, but they transform when they’re lightly steamed and tossed with butter. They turn a glossy, rich green.
I cut a few stalks of what I call our “grocery store green onions” because that’s what they were. Since planting the little stublettes from the bottom of the green onions last year, we have been harvesting non stop. Something that normally ends up in the trash has been a source of reliable flavor and color for well over a year now.
We also harvested our first real cutting of winter savory. Winter savory is an herb that I almost wrote off as just an old fashioned, outdated herb. You never see it in sexy poses on magazine covers. Winter savory never gets lead roles in Broadway musicals or even bit parts in made-for-TV-movies. I really don’t know why. Winter savory has got her act together. She grows upright, has a bright, fresh herbal scent, she’s easy to grow and she fits in with any recipe (never overpowering).
It’s been a very rainy, cool weekend. Our plants are loving it (with the exception of my precious little Jimmy Nardello peppers. Those little pepper plants are struggling. They’re in the garden expansion (which means the soil hasn’t been improved, it’s a high percentage of wood chips, and they are growing on to of dead grass).
But the rest of the plants are doing the happy dance. Even the tomatoes.
It’s June 12th, and that means there is more happening in the garden and on the farm than I can write about. We’re keeping this farm blog so that we can improve, learn and grow. It’s working! We have used this blog to see “where were at” in terms of same time last year’s garden. It’s exciting and frustrating at the same time. Things seem to move so slow, but like I said, they’re almost moving faster than I can keep up with!
My kitchen is my food lab. Three of my recent experiments are in this photo.
Yogurt: this is a whole milk yogurt, filled with good, grocery store variety bacteria, and cultured in the Instant Pot. We put it on curry, pancakes, or in smoothies.
Popped Wild Rice: Popped like corn, but 10x crunchier. Best with lots of butter and salt. We served it on our chickpea curry last night. It was, as the cool girls on TV say, “Uh-MAY-zing.
And the last item in the photo is the one I’ll be holding my breath for–Mennonite sorghum. I feel like the secret to being self sufficient is growing storable calories. A.K.A. graaaaaains! We had great success with corn last year (as a fresh vegetable), so this year we’re expanding to include Mennonite sorghum, Bloody Butcher dent corn, and purple hominy. And yes, we will nixtamalize our corn and hominy (if you’re wondering). There is no proven link to autism or Alzheimer’s connected with nixtamalization, and we feel confident and safe with the process, so we’re moving forward–no matter what judgement we receive from others. Part of being a homesteader is being confident in your decisions, no matter what the fallout is.
My 13 year old son has the heart of a farmer. He loves planning, envisioning, designing, growing, nurturing and harvesting. In fact, our neighbor (and good friend), John, calls him “Farmer Grant”. Grant’s always outside, riding the tractor, mowing grass, collecting hay, feeding animals, pounding T stakes, cleaning up or giving our sheep “scratchies”. If you ever see Grant indoors, he’s usually either eating food or impatiently pacing the floor waiting for his next farm project idea. I adore Grant because he is my farm friend and we love spending time together outside.
If there’s “farmah drama” (ALWAYS!!), we figure out together what’s causing it. We dream together about growing lavender, sunflowers, sorghum, and hominy. We looooove projects. We’re both dreamers and doers. Grant isn’t afraid to use power tools or get all sweaty and dusty. He astounds me with his innovative farm solutions. I couldn’t imagine Chehalem Prairie farm without him.
And do you know another 13 year old who asks for farm tools and farm equipment for birthdays? Like I said, he’s got the heart of a leather-handed, muddy-booted, sweaty, tender-sweet, 1850s farmer.
P.S. That other thing in the picture is my go-to garden tool. Great for busting up rocky soil, weeding, and planting. It helps me get a lot done, but not as much as Grant does.
God is good. He put variety on the earth in such astonishing abundance that there’s no way we can discover all his good gifts in one lifetime.
I know a little about God’s abundance. I’ve been gardening with Josh for 22 years (we even planted a garden together at the house where he lived while we were dating). We’ve grown tomatoes, beans, corn–all the garden favorites. We’ve been able to eat, preserve, ferment, dehydrate and share so much of our garden’s abundance.
But yesterday, I found out– MIDLIFE–that there’s a garden fruit that I’ve never heard of. It’s not that I’d never grown it, or never bought it at a farmers’ market, or saw the seed packet and was not interested. Nooo. This fruit had never before made an appearance in my life–ever. I had never heard of ground cherries until yesterday.
And here’s why God is good. I discovered ground cherries last night while watching a garden tour on YouTube. And, it’s not too late to plant them. Aaaaand, our local real nursery had two varieties in stock. It’s miraculous to me…I love that God put ground cherries on the earth, that I discovered them, that there was still time in the summer to plant them and that our garden store had them in stock.
I don’t know how they taste (other than hearing other people’s descriptions) but I’m excited to try a new fruit and explore all its possibilities.
The two varieties we got were Pineapple and Aunt Molly. They’re planted by the beehive, just outside of the pasture. They’re surrounded by peppermint, comfrey, marjoram, oregano, mullein, and a volunteer pumpkin plant.
Garden 2022
GARLIC: Plant 200 cloves of hardneck garlic along south side of grape vines at the end of September 2021. The grapes don’t start fully leafing out in the spring until the garlic is almost done. Plant garlic on west ends of garden rows. Stop watering when it starts to get dried leaves. We’re using garlic as a pest deterrent. It seems to have worked this year (2021) We’ll harvest at the end of June when the bottom three leaves have turned brown and the bulb is nice and formed.
SQUASH: Plant squash in the area around the beehive, where it can sprawl and take over.
Start all plants in 2×2 soil blocks. Put together a more nutrient dense soil block mix. Ingredients are in the shed.
KALE + CHARD: Plant kale and chard as early in the spring as the weather will allow, before the overwintered ones languish and go to seed. Try saving seed from kale this year.
CARROTS: Keep trying with the carrots. You’ll find your system. The board worked, but I’ve also seen people have success with burlap, watering twice a day. I want to try this idea.
TOMATOES: 3-4 Juliet Tomato plants in the garden, and 4 Sungold Cherry Tomatoes on the east side of the house. I love that smaller tomatoes come on sooner. I want to use the Juliets to make a year’s supply of sun dried tomatoes, as well as pizza sauce and salsa. More varieties for paste. Maybe some slicing? Definitely more than 11 plants. We need more tomatoes.
CUCUMBERS: The Boston Pickling seemed to do well in 2021. Don’t over crowd them in 2022. Let them have more room. Also, say nice things to them. They got bitter as the season progressed, so rethink this plan, mebs.
MELONS: Don’t grow large melons. Grow some that are specific to Oregon and our climate. Maybe some small melons. Watermelons take too long.
ANNUAL HERBS: Plant ALL annual herbs on the south side of the house. This will include dill, basil, chervil, cilantro (spring/fall), Keep annual herbs out of the perennial herb garden.
FLOWERS: Move all flowers to farm stand and front yard. Have a mix of annual and perennial flowers. 2022 mix will include Merrie’s California poppy seeds, the poppy seeds from the Fossil schoolhouse, the Calendula seeds from Champoeg Kitchen Garden, some sunflower from bird seed, some Rose Campion from the Newberg Library, some saved zinnia seed, and whatever else I can forage over they next few months. I want the front of our front yard to be so full of flowers that it’s ethereal.
PEPPERS: We might not need to grow hot peppers in 2022. But it might be fun to grow the Jimmy Nardello peppers along with maybe another variety. We could split them up and put the other variety with the tomatoes on the east side of the house. It might be super fun to grow a mild version of jalapenos, like the Pablano/Ancho peppers we’re growing this year on the south side of the house. Grow long skinny sweet peppers. At least 30 plants. Plant them closer together. Start 8 weeks before planting outdoors.
Use floating row covers for spring plantings.
FERTILIZER: Keep doing the liquid plant-based fertilizer. It’s working!!!
Save seeds: as many as possible from the plants that aren’t cross polinated.
Grow overwintered crops
Control thistles by mowing. Also, thistles can be harvested and turned into liquid fertilizer because of their deep taproots. They are very nutrient dense.
Re-woodchip the garden perimeter and pathways.
Prepare for perennials in our landscape: artichokes, asparagus, maybe another fruit tree?
Keep the garden going year round.
Add chervil to herb garden
Make strawberries go vertical to avoid slugs. Or give them all away.
Pay attention to the currant bush. Maybe prune it in July 2022. Give it a little love. Also, make a plan for the ground cherries and the raspberries. They’re not thriving out by the pasture. Maybe that ground isn’t fertile enough yet.
Plant more tomatoes
Early cherry tomatoes
Plant- San marzanos, Juliet, sungold
Chinese long beans again? For pickling?
No drying beans, just no.
Plant sweet potatoes, grow own slips
Plant cabbage in September?
Yellow beets and red beets and white maybe purple?
Tons of wildflowers in front yes!! Upick
Annuals herbs in south yard: dill cilantro basil fennel, coriander, cumin
Sunflowers next to John’s fence???
Use a greenhouse made of our wire shelving!
Grow CUMIN on south side!!
move the perennial flowers to the ditch!
Area next to the house ALL Annual herbs!
Move squash to outside ofpasture
Soil block recipe
3 (five gallon) buckets of peat moss or coconut coir
2 (five gallon) buckets of perlite
2 (five gallon) buckets of compost
1 (five gallon) bucket of garden soil
Last year during the middle of Covid, I went to Champoeg State Park to visit their beautiful vegetable garden. Usually they have vegetables for sale, but since there was no one there to mind the store, the park ranger on duty said I could harvest whatever I wanted to.
We left with some beautiful vegetables, along with some perennials that I divided from their garden (hyssop, chamomile, lambs ear, and some other perennial herbs that I can’t remember now).
Well… That 4-foot-tall plant in the above picture was the little chamomile I divided from Champoeg. When I brought it home last year it was so very small (like the country El Salvador), so I assumed it would stay that way.
Today I harvested my first batch of chamomile flowers! The secret is to harvest them in the morning before the volitile oils have dissipated in the hot sun. Then let the blossoms dry out completely. Once they’re dry you can store them and use them to make chamomile herb tea.
And here’s how I say Chamomile: CAM-uh-meel, because I ain’t no pretentious foo.
That was a collection of snapshots from the garden today. I forgot to add the pic of my apocalyptic basil garden. Golly, there are probably 50 basil plants (Genovese, mostly) that are going to get me through 6-12 months in a survival bunker with an all you can eat pesto stash. I refuse to fight off zombies if the apocalypse managers feed me a diet of expired Spaghettios and Tang drink mix. I will not comply.
And…I weeded today. I must be getting super old and super boring because weeding is fun! I was always a boring gal, but admitting that I like weeding is truly tragic, just like a Shakespeare play. It’s a tragedy where everyone important dies, but the female heroine is alone in her garden pulling weeds, with a peaceful smile, and singing a song about english roses and fragrant lilacs, then the British army comes in and drags her off the stage. Scene.
