11 Days Later

I tried several times today (7 or more actually) to post a picture of my garden, but it wouldn't upload. The blue corn I saved from last year's harvest, the Bakers Creek hubbard squash and some pumpkin seeds I saved from a pumpkin we bought at a private farm market all came up where we planted them directly in the manure.

It is an experiment. I've been reading all about no-till planting. We did weed the manure, and Bruce spread it out using a garden fork. It was spongy stuff to plant in. I didn't bother trying to mark the rows. I'll be interested to see if the corn stalks stand tall. That area of ground was seeded with yard rye and bluegrass, and we just dumped the manure on it straight out of the barn last fall. Now little corn sprouts are poking out of it.

The kolarabi and brussel sprouts have been suffering from some bug. I dusted them with diatomacious earth the day after I posted last. It seems to be helping, but negligably. Any help they get, however is worth the effort if we get kolarabi and brussel sprouts in the end.

The geese ate my beautiful Lolla Rossa lettuce down to the ground. They were banned to the goat pasture the very next day. The geese are big enough now that they can't get through the woven wire fence. The lettuce is coming back slowly. Fortunately they left the mustard, so I have greens to put on my sandwitches for work, without having to buy them.

I planted Job's tears, turnips and basil that day. The turnips are up. I'm not sure if the basil is or not. I'm hoping the storms today provided enough water to moisten the Job's tears thoroughly and get them going, because I did not soak them before planting.

I think menopause is beginning to settle in. After being 17 days late, taking 3 negative pregnancy tests and surviving a flood that wiped me out that entire week, I've pulled out a book someone recommended to me a few years ago, "New Menopausal Years The Wise Woman Way," by Susan Weed. It is a wonderful book. There are some new herbs, flowers and vegetables I am thinking of growing now; not to mention, the dandelions all over my yard have taken on a new important function. Dandelion greens are better for you than about any green leafy vegetable and replace exactly what you need in such circumstances.

The big new project this summer, gardening-wise, is going to be the flower bed next to the house. I'm finished with my Japanese knotweed eradication program. It didn't work. And since it still has to be pulled out, better that it is not between briars. See, I let some bird-planted blackberries grow in the flower bed the past few summers, propogated them, and harvested bumper crops of blackberries. But half of the berries have a bad rust. So after the blackberries are done, they will be cut off; all the knotweed pulled up, and we are going to do a manure experiment on the flower beds. When I figure out how to post pictures again, I will.

The Garden

Please permit me to share my garden with you. In several months, I hope to post a picture that you will find unrecognizable from this one.

In the far background, you can see my brother's trailer. Then there are box elders lining the drainage ditch; their leaves clipped as high as goats eat when they get out, and a large black willow behind the chicken house.

Between the garden and the chicken house is an area that I seeded with grass several years ago for my folks, when they felt they had become too old and too busy to garden its entirity. We covered a portion of it with sheep and goat manure from the barn last fall. Our 8 goslings of unknown breed, and the two ducks enjoy that area immensely. The goslings are mostly white with some gray tones. The Rouen drake and the brown Indian Runner hen hang with the goslings often, as if to parent them a little. Off to the left in that grassy area is what I had intended to be a trellis for some cutleaf blackberries that are still growing after 3 years of being transplanted there, but have never thrived.

The garden has green onions, mustard greens and red leaf lettuce to the right in a small area I turned over by shovel in early April. The larger tilled area that is growing in nicely with small weeds also has a barely visible row of kolarabi, then carrots, then 2 rows of beets, then brussel sprouts. A lot of the green you see is actually volunteer tomatoes from last year. I have since weeded most of them out, and it looks much prettier today.

Bruce tilled off to the left, a size about this big. Today I planted a row that is half Job's tears, and half turnips. He also weeded and turned the manure, and in it now is 5 rows of blue corn, surrounded on the 3 grassy sides with hubbard squash, watermelon and pumpkins that will hopefully grow out over the hay and assist in keeping the deer and goats out of the corn.

In the foreground is a rusty old chime that hangs on the porch. Some carpenter bees make a nest in one of the bells each year. Down below the chimes from the porch are some blackberries I have been propagating for several years, and lots of Japanese knotweed. The blackeberries were part of my Japanese knotweed eradication program; but alas, it was not as successful as I'd hoped. I am doomed to pull knotweed from around my porch, as I and my mother before have done for the past 30 years. Whats more, about half of the blackberries have a very thick rust on them this year. So I am going to cut them all out after harvesting them, pile manure on, and make it all back into a flower garden.

Shearing

This is me shearing Rosie, our Corriedale/Lincoln cross ewe. She was pregnant before we shore her, and lambed a few days afterwards. You can see her full udder. We have electric shears, but prefer to use the hand shears. It takes a little longer, but the sheep jump and fight less.








Rosie has a beautiful black ram lamb. Here she is after lambing, eating some grain left on the ground.

Black Lamb's fleece

This is the first shearing of our one-year-old black lamb. He was jet black after shorn, making sheep I used to call black look dark gray. Left is the inside view. Below is the folded fleece with a staple measured next to a yardstick on a gray roof slate.







And this is the outside.