Gosh its hot. We’ve had a weird heat spell that has been in the high 90’s to over 100 degrees for the last week or so. Trying to keep everything watered and reasonably cool has been a serious challenge. We have a mister we’ve put into the quonset hut where the rabbits are. Rabbits can handle cold. The heat, not so much. So every day I put frozen water bottles in their cages and make sure the mister and fan is on. I did lose one young one to heat exhaustion, when the chickens or turkeys landed on the handle of the frost free hydrant and turned off the water. A nice 5+ lb 12 week old rabbit. It had only been dead a short time, so I did what I do in these situations, when I know the cause and the approximate time of death. I cleaned it, and we had rabbit and salsa verde tacos for dinner. Does that make me a bad person? Or just practical? Read the rest of this entry »
June is kind the last hurrah for our yard. We inherited someone elses’ landscaping, and most of the plants bloom in April and May. We have a ton of daffodils and bleeding hearts and other early beauties, but by July, our yard looks kind of overcooked and sad. So we’ve been slowly editing the landscape, taking out plants here and there and adding in new ones. It’s definitely a work in progress. But my husband in particular is pretty darned good at putting great combinations together. And then, of course, there is the random volunteer that steals the show as well. In June, things look pretty darned good.
Golden Marguerite (a tender perennial that also reseeds prolifically and attracts beneficial insects to your garden) and yarrow.
I’m a fan of relatively simple shrub roses that smell fantastic, as opposed to the fussy hybrid tea roses that take all kinds of attention and often don’t smell that good. I’d have to dig to find the name for this one, purchased from Fedco Trees a few years ago, but it definitely fits the bill. Hardy, beautiful, smells fantastic, and you can use the rose hips too!
If you’ve been following along for some time now, and have a good memory, you may recall that one of my many other job incarnations, back 15 years ago now, was bird field research. This went on for several years, but it started in the mountains of Arizona, about an hour out of Flagstaff. I (along with about 20 other people) was tasked with “nest searching”. This meant watching birds, figuring out where their nests were, and keeping track of said nest to document success or failure. One of the 26 birds nests we were searching for was the House Wren. I came to love this little bird over the course of the season. Tiny. Boisterous. Nesting opportunistically wherever they could find space. Males and females impossible to tell apart. Read the rest of this entry »
Soaps and toiletries side. First market of the year in May.
Well, June is turning out to be a busy month. I started with the Downtown Walla Walla Farmers market on Saturdays in May. Then on the 4th of June I added the Milton-Freewater afternoon market on Wednesdays and the twilight market on 2nd Street in Walla Walla on Thursdays. Sales have been great. But doing three markets a week is a lot harder than doing two. Especially when my booth at the Walla Walla Thursday market was on the sunny side of the street, on heated black asphalt until the sun dips behind the buildings at about 6:00 pm. Read the rest of this entry »
Boulder Colorado had a lot to do with my eating habits. I moved there in 1990, at the age of 24. I was ready for a change. I was ready for the mountains. I was ready to no longer deal with Bay Area traffic. I was ready to start exploring who I wanted to become, rather than who I had been, growing up in California.
Boulder has one of the best outdoor “malls” in the country. They blocked off several city blocks on Pearl Street downtown and turned the area into a “walking mall”. But its mostly local shops and restaurants, not Hot Topic and Forever 21. One of the mainstays of the Pearl Street Mall is Falafel King, a tiny little restaurant selling fresh fried falafel in a pita with all the fixings. Of course, when I moved there, I had no idea what a falafel was. But I knew I wanted to eat healthier, and I wanted to try new things. So I tried my first falafel. And I was hooked. I ate a LOT of falafel sandwiches when I lived in Boulder. It was tasty, healthy, vegetarian, inexpensive and satisfying.
For those who are uninitiated, falafels are deep fried balls of ground chick peas (and/or fava beans) with additional herbs and spices thrown in. Popular all over the Middle East, they are a common street food from Israel to Egypt. I just call them yummy. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been making some version of this curry for a very long time. The original recipe came from the October 1995 issue of Vegetarian Times. It was the first place winner for reader submitted recipes that year. Times have changed. The original recipe called for steaming the sweet potatoes, only using 1 cup out of a can of coconut milk, but adding 3/4 cup of water, didn’t include onion, and had no added salt. Read the rest of this entry »
This week, it’s all about the babies, or toddlers, really, in most cases.
Our last lamb was born on May 5th. Our first lamb was born on December 28th. That’s a pretty good spread for 13 ewes. We weren’t sure this one was EVER going to deliver. It’s really hard to tell if they are pregnant when they are only carrying one. But its a beautiful long legged little ewe, and we’re very happy to be done with the season. Note that mama looks so scruffy because she’s starting to shed her hair. We run American Blackbelly “hair” sheep, which don’t require shearing.
The first time I saw hibiscus tea, I was in a small take away restaurant called Super Taqueria in San Jose California. The drink was in one of those big clear plastic containers on the counter where the contents are aerated. I was out of my comfort zone just walking into the place and ordering a super taco with no avocado (the list of things I wouldn’t eat was still pretty long at 19). Most of the signage was in Spanish. I had no idea what jamiaca aguas fresca was, and I certainly wasn’t brave enough to find out. (Super Taqueria is still in business by the way, and if it is still the same as it was 29 years ago, I highly recommend it! Best carne asada tacos anywhere.) Read the rest of this entry »
Grass growing enough to need cutting (which means, if you are keeping track, that you can stop feeding hay).
The dandelions blooming (which means food for bees, and a lot of work for you, if you are thinking of making dandelion wine or dandelion jelly – both of which I’ve done in the past). Read the rest of this entry »
Hmmmm, lets see. We finished this:
Which is good, because I immediately planted broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, Chinese cabbage, spinach and lettuce in flats (all cool season crops) and some if it is already coming up. Read the rest of this entry »
MilesAwayFarm
Miles Away Farm Blog 