Tag Archives: gardening

Pioneer Day, Part #2

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We spent a lot of our time traveling in our covered wagon when we began our pioneer day. We are fortunate to have acres of virgin pasture behind our home, so besides opening and closing a couple of gates (and the fact that our animal had a motor) it felt pretty authentic. I, for one, had a wonderful time except that I did not enjoy tramping through tall grasses in my pioneer dress. Those weed seeds are not comfortable when stuck to ones stockings.

We stopped at the old water pump next to the pond, and (pretended to) fill a bucket for the animals.

As I try to do as much as possible in our homeschool (despite my tendency toward being a control freak) I let the children choose the route, the activities and the timeline of our journey. I did, however, make it very clear that if they ran out of gas they were on their own in hauling a gas can down to the pasture. (They watched the tank pretty carefully after that declaration.)

It was a perfect, beautiful morning.

We drove – I mean traveled – all over the place, changing our route to get around ravines, muddy patches, thorns.

I was so glad to have saved this costume my mom (an incredible seamstress – she made my wedding dress as well) made for me to wear during a play in high school. Little Cowgirl and I sewed the rest of our costumes, which is saying A LOT considering the fact that I don’t really sew (mostly because I don’t really know how).

Shooter and Farmer Boy were much less into their costumes – but I know they felt very ‘pioneer.’

After an hour and change months of traveling, we reached the perfect place to homestead. We unloaded our wagon, built a temporary shelter out of our canvas (ahem, sheet) cover, and got to work.

The young men took turns plowing the field,

and raking up hay to feed the lawnmower and stick horses animals over the winter.

Little Cowgirl got to work on gathering burning materials for the fire and cleaning potatoes for lunch.

We boiled potatoes from our garden, then added chunks of ham and cracked in a few eggs.

We ate in the grass and wiped our plates in buckets of water drawn from the sink in the utility room well.

Then, we harvested our REAL LIFE patch of sweet potatoes so we would have some root vegetables to get us through the winter. Cowgirl clipped the vines for us.

As an aside, this is the third year I have attempted to grow sweet potatoes and the first year I’ve had any success at all. I think this year makes up for the two years of failures.

If I were a county fair sort of person, that purple ribbon would be mine, em effers. That is all.

After the harvest, mommy was pretty much D.O.N.E. with pioneer day, so she took a long, hot shower and sat down at her macbook. (insert contented sigh) My young pioneers, however, had so much fun they decided to sleep outside without a modern tent. The littler one made it until she could hear the coyotes. The biggest one came in when it started to thunder at around 3:00 am.

But the next morning, they were back outside immediately. Everyone wished pioneer day could last forever.

This is still not the end, one more installment of homeschool pioneer days is yet to come!

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Onion Harvest

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We had a very successful onion patch this year.

And, as you can see behind Farmer Boy, we have the potential for a great sweet potato crop as well.

Our harvest filled an entire (large) laundry basket.

I couldn't have done it without help.

And we have so many tomatoes you would think I’d planted a forrest of them.

Everything is more fun with a little bucket.

Gardening is fun, but I’m quite poor at it. I keep doing it partly because I love having our own food, but mostly because I love doing it with the kids.

Who could resist something so sweet and fresh? The onion looks great, too.

How are things ‘out there’ in your world?

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I apologize for my temporary absence and thank my good friends for complaining in a good-natured way that I am not blogging. It feeds the attention-whore side of my personality and helps me feel like I am contributing in a positive way to the world at large with my little ramblings here. I haven’t been neglecting this space out of any sort of negative feelings about it – we just became very busy with other things for a bit! Here is a sampling of our world the past couple of weeks:

We have been planting corn on our farm as well as spraying our wheat. We are experiencing disease pressures and some insect troubles because of the unseasonably warm and mild spring thus far.

School has been trucking along – we are reading our last two historical novels and in six weeks we will have completed 1st, 3rd and 5th grades. I am shuffling through curriculum choices for next year and plan to begin in July instead of August.

Random learning experience: The oven light wouldn’t shut off – the diagnosis and repair became an interesting lesson for all of us.

Watching the appliance repair man at work.

Showing the children where the shorted-out circuit can be seen.

The garden is growing great guns. My Farmer Boy has been so much help – he can hardly keep himself out of the dirt, especially now that he has THIS contraption (compliments of Grandpa):

No patch of bare earth is safe from these blades.

We have spinach and lettuce being served on our table, onions and peas growing like mad, the first strawberries are beginning to ripen. The potatoes Farmer Boy planted are up and thriving (though not where he marked them…) and my second planting of spuds are tucked in. We put in carrots, a leek-ish sort of vegetable, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and sweet peppers. Still to come are cucumbers, sweet corn, okra – and maybe we’ll be out of space by then but we shall see.

We had a lovely Easter – one which made me feel especially thankful for good friends.

Don't you just want to eat them up?

Still to come: Tales of an eleventh birthday, our first visit to the botanical gardens of our area, things I’ve been cooking, other cute oddities of spring. What’s been happening with all of you?

Some of our spring activities this week:

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We set strawberries for the first time this year! Aren’t they cute? The onions and peas are waiting to sprout on the left.

I found some pansies in memory of my husband’s mommy – they didn’t have her favorite yellow/dark purples, so I went with a more KSU-esque shade.

I thought of my own mother when we planted bulbs to spruce up this flower bed. I vividly remember the childhood moments I spent ahhhing with Mom over her red tulips. I let Little Cowgirl choose three – she also picked red.

Shooter has asked for blueberry bushes every year since he was four. Imagine if I’d had time to put them in way back then (he’ll be eleven in a couple of weeks!) how many berries we could have enjoyed. Better late than never. Notice the “I’m-so-cool-without-a-shirt-on” look.

I’m in love with these little mounding perennials – but of course I’ve already forgotten their name.

To wrap up, I would like to share with you one of the best. stories. ever.

Cowgirl followed one of the chickens (we have been free-ranging them during the day) to the chicken house while we were planting the aforementioned bushes. She kept telling us that Red was going to lay an egg. We kept saying things like “that’s great,” “cool,” and “maybe so” as we worked away. Farmer Boy rode over to check her story and even kept watch with her for a few minutes.

I bet she stood there for half an hour. I’m not even kidding you. She kept telling us “Here it comes! Here it comes!”

We finished up planting, watering and mulching around the bushes. We cleaned up all the tools. We picked up the rest of the yard.

I was just taking a breath to let her know it’s time to go inside and get ready for our activity that evening when she spins to face me, arms thrown open, mouth open wide, eyes like moons, gasping and laughing.

She had been right all along.

Of course, then we had to have a conversation about her questions regarding the hole the egg came out of, and do cats have a hole for their kittens to come out of, and what happens to mommy’s holes after they don’t have babies anymore, and even really OLD ladies have holes?

Have a great weekend and happy St Patty’s birthdays to my two best girls – you know who you are. xo

Of food and spring…

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I know, I keep talking about food lately. I think I get excited about food when spring comes. Or when autumn arrives. Or during the height of summer grilling. Or when I’m thinking of a warm pot of chili in the winter. I just love food. And eating it. And cooking it. And reading/blogging/talking about it. Did I mention the eating part?

Here is something I whipped up on a whim last night after dark:

Using one half batch of Mae’s biscuits, I rolled the dough out on floured wax paper and topped with thinly sliced apples, a spritz of olive oil, a sprinkle of brown sugar and a generous shake of cinnamon. I baked it as usual and it lasted through a single sitting.

I also got into my flower beds this week – OH how glorious to have dirt under my fingernails again!

And speaking of dirt…while I was giving Cowgirl a phonics lesson last week, Farmer Boy disappeared to do his chores. He materialized again at lunch time to report that he had planted the seed potatoes. Granted, I have no idea how deep/shallow they might be, and they are awfully close together – but I am a truly poor gardener and expect he will do a much better job if I let him go at it than he would under my guidance. So we put in the peas and onions mostly according to his plans.

Guess what we found today? One of his potatoes has sprouted! Did I tell you he has sown wheat along the north edge of the garden? Yep. We are growing four rows of wheat that he planted at the same time Dad was drilling this past fall. It is so lush and green that Farmer Boy told me he wants to roll in it.

What is happening in your immediate out-of-doors?

Why I guess gardening is something we love more as we age…and that it somehow makes me more religious

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I’ve darn near given up on having a garden this year.  It is themiddleofApril for the love of Maude (as they say over at rants from mommyland).

 

The latest I’ve ever put in peas and spinach was April 5th.  We are well past that, in case you had not noticed.

 

This may turn out to be a tomato-okra-bean-only kind of summer.

 

And honestly, it’s a crying shame, because Farmer Boy spent the end of the fall and the entire winter, any time it was dry enough (and even if it was mostly frozen) working that garden with the push-plow just because he loves the dirt SO much.  My garden has never been better prepared or looked as well-cared-for as it does this spring.

 

I don’t even have any pansies in my flower pots yet!  For SHAME!

 

However, this sinus infection (yes, it has been officially determined as the cause of my recent lost week) is not very helpful in terms of motivation for outdoor work.  In fact, I shut the house and turned the AC on this week in order to keep the pollen out of the immediate vicinity (I forget this every spring and remember after my allergies make me completely miserable).  It has helped (along with the drugs).

 

But, in order to remind myself that I am farther ahead than last year, the flower beds I expanded and transplanted bulbs to look great, the kids have spent several days picking up all the stray sticks in the yard and hauling them to the burn pile with their cool riding mower/yard wagon, so things are mowable. (YES goshdarnit, spellcheck, I *know* that “mowable” is not a word!!!)

 

I’ll get to the outside work when I can get to it.  In the meantime the inside of my house is working pretty well, and though I dropped the ball on my Lenten cleaning as far as the garage, I have nearly completed the filing/office work I’d hoped to work on a little here and there through the season.  As Easter gets closer, I’m really looking forward to Farmer Boy’s first Communion on May Day.  He has been practicing in his religious ed. classes with the host and wine.  He told me the wine tastes (insert disgusted face) and the host is (insert so-so hand gesture).  Then he said it would taste different on his first Eucharist because it would really be Jesus then.

 

I explained that, actually, it would not.  He said, “well, it will *feel* different then, right?”  I told him that maybe it would, that for some people it feels different right away, but for others (like me) it took a while to really feel the Grace that entered my life because of eucharist.

 

It’s like planting bulbs.  After the initial work, you have only bare earth.  The next year, if you wait and keep the weeds out, you have green.  The next year, if you’ve been patient and taken care to pay attention to that place, you will have a flower.  Each year the bulb will propogate and fill more space with color and joy.  Things that are inherently good usually require an investment of time and attention and are often something we might overlook unless we are tuned in.  And, as always, the more work we put into it ourselves, the more we get from it.  The older I get, the more I find this to be true in so many ways.  It applies to my relationships (especially within my marriage), my home, cooking, exercising, taking a trip, reading a book, writing this blog.

 

It makes me feel old, yet satisfied and appreciative to see that I’m growing in wisdom and maturity. (Also I may have thrown up a little in my mouth when I said that.)

Guess who came to visit while we were out of town?

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That’s right.  Squash bugs.  There are literally hundreds of them.  They are on every squash plant in my garden. 

That is half of my garden, people.

Although I should probably start calling it Sodom or Gommorah.  There are squash bugs partying it up and reveling in the pleasures of the exoskeleton EV-AH-REE-WHARES!  There are eggs all over the leaves.  There are hatched, immature squash bugs everywhere.

These were on one of my precious zucinni!

So, I’ve picked all the zucs, butternuts, and melons.  I don’t know what I’ll do when the pumpkins come around.  I’m still not using synthetic chemical insecticide, technically.  I am spreading Borax with a hand-crank spreader for grass seed.  I am also planning on using diatomaceous earth.  These are slow but effective.  I don’t think we’ll be getting any more vegetables from these plants, but I don’t want a hatch wintering over to next year’s crop.

One of the side effects of these methods, which I’ve been trying to avoid up to this point, is they will also kill the beneficial insects on these plants.

Sorry, little beetley dudes.  And sorry to all the other insects who have been attracted to the feast of the squash bugs.  Next time bring your family, friends and neighbors and I won’t need to use this aggressive type of treatment.

But there’s still okra, and I found a way to bake it that’s pretty yummy.  So I got that going for me, which is nice. (Name that movie!)

Stroke of genius,

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Or something like it.

I am up to my armpits in tomatoes.  I know – it’s a great problem to have!  I like to stew, puree and freeze them so I have a quick addition to soups, stews, sloppy joe, chilli, spaghetti. . . you get the idea.

When the ripened tomatoes had taken over my counter and surrounded the coffee maker like an army of angry little protestors, I decided I better do something with them even though it was 10 pm.  I sliced off the stems and threw them in my crock pot – Viola!

I don’t know why I never thought of this before.  I even thought to toss in some sprigs of my very own parsley and sweet basil!  They turned out terrific.  I shut the crock off when I turned the coffee maker on, and blended/froze the tomatoes after breakfast.  Then I dropped the crock in the dishwasher.  It may not be the same as having a cook or maid, but this morning it sure felt close enough.