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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 »
As I’ve mentioned before, this old farmstead was likely established around 1904, long before the days of indoor plumbing. So on the property was an old outhouse (or privy, as my father would have said). Long since abandoned to its original purpose, the back supports had slid down the hill, and what was left of the structure was being held up by a Douglas-fir tree.
Clearly not worth trying to save, we dismantled it when a friend of mine came out to visit. She was celebrating her 50th birthday, and has had a tumultuous last two years. She thought it was highly appropriate to be “tearing down some shit” for the start of her 50th year on earth. 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 »
OK, I was a pretty small kid, but this chicken is seriously huge. She was my buddy for sure.
Confession. I have always loved chickens. When I was just a toddler, my parents moved to a farm in the Missouri Ozarks, and my father promptly bought chickens, geese and ducks. I remember picking the day old chicks up at the post office in a big flat box with holes in the sides (yes, I have memories that go all the way back to BEFORE I was two – crazy but true). Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s the evaporator in action. I built it next to a fence so I could tie a tarp over the set-up to keep the rain out, which worked pretty well. You know how you can sit and watch a fire for hours? When boiling down sap, you get to do this and be productive at the same time! Note the slightly wonky block placement. Things moved around a bit with the heat from the fire. Keep an eye on your bricks and your pans or bad things could happen!
If you’ve been following along, then you know that the big new experiment this March has been to make syrup out of boxelder tree sap. You can store your sap in food grade containers for a few days until you are ready to boil, as long as you keep it cool. Fresh sap is like fresh milk. You want to treat it the same way. I happened to have a few 6 and 7 gallon water containers and a root cellar that is currently at 40 degrees, so it was easy to hold the sap for a few days. A food grade 55 gallon drum with a lid and a spigot would be ideal. 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 »
Here’s what I needed for my set up. Taps, tubing, hammer to place taps (they don’t look like they will fit, but the tree is flexible and they do) and 5/16 drill bit (which I happened to already have).
Sometime last fall, I ran across a reference to making a tree syrup (ala Maple Syrup) from the sap of Boxelder trees. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making maple syrup. I love the idea of a readily available free sweetener, just out there in nature waiting for me to come along. However, I figured it was a bucket list item that was going to go unkicked, as Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum), the tree from which maple syrup is made, does not grow much west of eastern Kansas. So when I heard about boxelder syrup, I was stoked. Read the rest of this entry »
Ok, starting a blog post with a quote from “Buffalo Bill” in The Silence of the Lambs is maybe not the best lead in. But admit it, you did laugh a little bit. Alternative title: If you can make salad dressing, you can make lotion. Seriously. It really is that easy.
This was for one batch of lotion. You don’t need to get this carried away. I was just trying to use up what I had on hand.
Ready to go into the oven
I’ve tried a lot of granola recipes over the years, and rejected my fair share as well. Granola is supposed to be healthy and good for you. So recipes that call for tons of sugar and fat just don’t cut it, in my book. I once saw a recipe that called for a cup of oil. A CUP. Well of course it tasted good. It was practically deep-fried! I’ve also tried recipes made with just fruit juice to cut down on the sweetness, and those were not sweet enough. It’s hard to find just the right balance. Read the rest of this entry »
As I have mentioned here several times, I was not a very adventuresome eater for the first part of my life. One of the “no way” foods was avocado. Then I discovered Super Taqueria on 10th street in downtown San Jose California when I was in my early 20’s. A grab and go Mexican place that I walked by every day for a year before I was brave enough to go in, and then only because someone I trusted recommended it. Read the rest of this entry »
MilesAwayFarm
Miles Away Farm Blog 