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It IS useful sometimes.
Perhaps you’ve heard some version of this John Muir quote “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Well, on this farm, it would read, “When we try to pick up anything by itself, we find it is hitched to a piece of baling twine“.
Trust me, this is bigger than the photo makes it look.
We’ve been slowly shoveling, pitch forking and sometimes hand pulling our way through a large pile of rotting hay on one side of our old barn. There used to be a roof over it. The roof collapsed in a winter snow, and then was left to rot for who knows how long. So first, we had to remove the half rotted tin roof. Then we started working on the hay, which, if the number of baling twine pieces is any indication, used to be at least 10 ft tall. Read the rest of this entry »
I was really excited to move to a lower elevation and have a longer growing season. But with every new garden comes new challenges as well. My new weed nemesis (which I will happily accept instead of bindweed in Colorado) is annual bugloss, which is in the borage family, and has the prickles to prove it. It is absolutely everywhere, has been coming up since April, and is STILL germinating. Read the rest of this entry »
Note the lack of radishes, which would not be here even if they had been perfect. Those are homemade sourdough croutons, by the way.
Three apple trees on the property. Fingers crossed for a good crop this year.
I hereby officially petition that the first day of Spring should be floating, depending on where you live, and tied to the first apple blossom. It finally feels like spring is here, in the third week of May!
The wild lands near my house are starting to bloom, the plum flowers are almost done, the apple blossoms are just starting, and one of our 5 lilac bushes just started to bloom yesterday. Nights are still in the high 30’s/low 40’s, so the garden is growing S L O W L Y. But it IS growing. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve planted two types of asparagus, one green, the other purple. Guess which this is?
Building chicken pens, checking on bees, moving seedlings from the grow lights to the sunlight and back again, mowing a suddenly growing lawn, celebrating a 13 year wedding anniversary with my husband, looking for a lost cat (still looking), digging up endless alfalfa (the garden is in an alfalfa field that was plowed last fall. A LOT of the alfalfa is still happily alive), and planting planting planting. These are just some of the things that have happened in the last two weeks. Not much time to blog, I must admit. Read the rest of this entry »
This is how the “hive” of bees arrives. The can is full of sugar syrup, with small holes at the bottom, to feed the colony. The queen is in a small box hanging from the top. You can bet that when this arrives at the post office, they call you right away!
On April 16th, we hived an order of Carniolan honey bees. It’s good to have bees again.
I love the idea of keeping bees. What’s not to love? The ultimate in a “local” sweetener, the increased yield from fruit trees and garden plants, a source of wax for making lip balms and hand salves, not to mention the pure fascination of having this colony of insects living in harmony with humans. Bees are just amazing! Read the rest of this entry »
An unexpected surprise growing in my good dirt this spring. Nice to know that the gophers have not eaten every bulb ever planted here.
I think every plant I have ever purchased from a nursery had a tag that said “best when grown in sandy-loam”. Well thanks. That was really helpful. I’ll just run down to my local soil dealership and pick up a couple of yard sized loads of sandy-loam.
I’ve gardened in California (clay-loam), Arizona (rocky sand) and Colorado (clay-loam, with an emphasis on clay), and now in northeast Washington. And lo and behold, the soil here is sandy-loam. It DOES exist! Read the rest of this entry »
The soil here is some of the easiest to dig in my gardening experience. Seventeen 2-ft holes went pretty quickly. My husband gets most of the credit.
A2 + B2 = C2. Remember that formula for finding the hypotenuse (long side) of a right triangle from a long ago math class? My husband and I were using this formula to lay out my new garden space this weekend.
I love math. I love the preciseness, and the idea that underlying what appears to be the chaos of the natural world there is this framework of concrete mathematics explaining it all. It was my favorite subject in elementary school. But alas, math has never been a strong subject for me. If I work at it, I can get the correct answer, and more importantly, even understand why (I even got through college calculus with an A), but a week later, it is all forgotten. Read the rest of this entry »
This was the view out my back door on Wednesday March 9th.
Seriously?!
Thankfully, we spent the weekend getting a seed starting area ready to go in the house. We repurposed a wire rack, purchased a couple of shop lights (to add to the two I already had) for about $10 each, scrounged a few “S” hooks and chain, and were ready to go. Read the rest of this entry »
This was actually three different carrot varieties, including one called “rainbow”. Why seed catalogs don’t just put together a mixed color carrot packet like they do with lettuce is beyond me. My current favorite carrot (at least for Colorado) was Napa, which had great taste, wasn’t too long, and grew well (no splitting) in clay soils.
I am a connoisseur of seed catalogs. I spend hours pouring over them, comparing prices and circling what’s on my “wish list”. Ever wonder why anyone would order from a catalog and pay shipping when you can just go down to your local hardware store and pick up a packet of seeds? One word. Selection. You just can’t beat a catalog with 18 different varieties of carrots, complete with information on type, length, season, soil preference and color, along with a tantalizing picture. Read the rest of this entry »
MilesAwayFarm
Miles Away Farm Blog 