A spring treat

A few years ago I discovered something new at one of the farm stands I frequent. They had some early harvest garlic for sale so I bought some to try and instantly fell in love. Every year since then I make sure to plant some extra garlic to harvest early. I harvest them when they are a bit thicker than a pencil and slice up to add to most anything, or roast on the bbq. If you are a garlic lover like I am, you will be smitten with the green garlic flavor of these. They are divine! The nice thing about them, also, is that you can just use regular old store bought soft neck garlic and plant them very close together since they won't be around long enough to need much room.

Domestics as Art

This post is over 4 months old but I never added to it as I intended so I'm just going to go ahead and post it now! ha!

Welcome to our spring garden

What with late pregnancy and a nasty cold I've been short on words lately. So I figure I'll let the photographs do the talking for me (well, most of it).

I just tilled in our second cover crop for the season a few weeks ago and let it set. I checked the weather report and saw temps will be up for a week, so I put on my brave hat and planted some corn! I went a little nuts on the different varieties this year and because I don't want them to cross pollinate I'll need to stagger their planting times so they aren't all poofing out pollen at the same time. Hence the early start. If these first crops germinate I'll definitely not have a worry about the old saying about corn which is it should be "knee high by fourth of July" No worries there with an April start!

So this is this years children's garden, enlarged and improved from last years. Click here to see last year's.

Colven helped shape the path through it, I like the tricky little hook he added here at the end (his truck is headed out towards the lawn in the hook there)We had a blast planting the corn together. It's amazing what a difference a year makes! Last year was much more exhausting to "plant" together haha! This year he has been quite the skilled gardener so far.

Here is my new adventure in our fenced garden. This part was previously left wild so I cover cropped it twice this winter and tilled.Tilling, of course, requires fuel and Colven knows just where to find it and can go fetch it for his mom! SWEET!
Freshly tilled and ready for action.

This closest area here has a batch of corn planted in it. The rest will be for a bit of dry farming of peppers and tomatoes.We bought a shade cover to be used on the lawn a few years ago and it worked fabulously. Until we left it out in a wind storm. It blew over our garden fence and into the lower field and the cover ripped to shreds. We stripped the cover off and left the skeleton where it landed until last week when I had a moment of inspiration and decided it would make a fantastic canopy over the summer sand and mud pits for Colven! The whole thing will be planted like mad with beans and morning glories and flowers of all sorts. I strung hemp twine around the entire structure yesterday to give some support to the climbers. I'm really excited to see this in the coming summer. I'm also excited to have a new place to plant the beans as they take up a lot of room in my raised beds.
The warmer weather has sprung some volunteer plants to life so I went gathering and found a few nice poppies, a borage, and some fennel to start the canopy garden entry way. Poppies and borage are both notoriously difficult to transplant because of their long, early tap roots but everyone made it!

Here is one of Colven's favorite pass times in the early mornings: Snail Hunting!

He diligently loads up his truck and delivers them.....

to the chickens of course!

My biggest trouble spot so far is the berry zone. The nanaberries are quite the renegades, and all the strawberry runners that touched down to the ground from their bed have started to bloom. The strawberries I don't mind as much, the nanaberries however are quite the prickly little devils and are proving to be happy enough to be considered invasive. Ut oh. On the far end there are the little baby golden raspberries!

Fabulous spring day + farm stand + ice cream cones = Love.

A rainy half day in the life of this California kid

A photo, courtesy of our resident 2 year old photographer, taken today while out with the flowers. I'm amazed at some of the images he captures.

Rainy day indoor fun... Self portraits

Colven disappeared into the loft with my camera for a few minutes and then called down to let me know he was "all finished." I was so curious what might be on the camera haha. Funny kid!

California Cousins

We are so fortunate to live near family. Yesterday we had a break in the rain and cold of late California winter, the sun was out, the grass is green, the sky clear! Beautiful! The kids soaked up some much needed sun and I had to run in and get my camera because they all just looked so darn cute. They have so much fun together. What a dreamy life.

A beautiful sight

I absolutely love having chickens. It has been so fun (and sometimes a lot of work) so far! This is what I get to find when I go into the coop for one of the two or three trips in to find eggs. Fresh, warm, clean eggs nestled in pine shavings. So fun! One of the Buff Orpington gals is busy laying in the center nesting box.

I took this photo of the new batch of organic chicken food. I want to feed them whole grains instead of the pellet or crumble mix which is so commonly fed to poultry. One big reason is I want to avoid soy for them, and it is nearly impossible to find a soy-free pre-mix. Also, these grains can be sprouted to achieve maximum nutritional value as well as cutting down on wastage from spilled feed. When a crumble or pellet feed is spilled or dropped on the ground it essentially becomes garbage. Whole grains can still be found and if left behind for a few days they will sprout and become more tasty. I made this new batch from a different recipe this time than I have used before and I have to say it's really pretty ;) The chickens seem to be loving it as well. We now have 400lbs of food for them which should last a bit, eh? Now the trick will be cutting the cost of the grain itself. In the next few months I need to do some research and see if a new supplier I have found will cut the cost as much as I think it will. Even with shipping they have to beat Whole Foods, right?

The new recruits

I have been terrible at posting lately! Life has been busy. I thought I'd post quickly the new 3 week old chicks we got today. They are Speckled Sussex, a breed I wanted to get when we began our flock last summer but they were quite an elusive breed to procure. I'm feeling lucky to have a few! They will only be in these cramped quarters for tonight, tomorrow they move outside into the house we are building for the broody hens we will have someday. They'll be separate from the main flock for a number of months still, I think at this age they would be pecked to death. These new chicks bring our total up to 28. Once I get a feel for the good layers and friendly breeds we'll start culling out the "undesirables" to reduce the flock size. I'm still trying to figure out how many chickens we need to not only keep our growing family in eggs, but provide enough chicks who grow into chickens to make yummy dinners. I have absolutely no experience with this, so getting a handle on the exact perfect number is still fairly elusive for me. It's all a work in progress, this life of ours!

Rainy day silly kid

Colven called me over to read to me. He is looking at the sign which holds the address to our house. He read "one, noodle, noodle, noodle, omelet"

Hot damn!

Our first egg!

And to think I headed out to the garden just to see if I had managed to trap the gopher who was wreaking havoc in the chamomile!
What a good day in the garden! ha!

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A blood red genital mutilation post

We have been busy busy with holiday travel and family in town so I'm lagging on a new post. I have one in the works with lots of photos, but in the meantime I wanted to share something I feel very passionately about and that is the human rights issue of genital integrity. For some odd and sickly reason male genital mutilation is still seen as socially acceptable in many areas of our country, despite the fact that 80% of the world's male population has intact, uncut male genitalia. We are very far behind on that one. If anyone would like more info on that, http://www.nocirc.org/ is a great site, and they take donations of any size. I like to donate when I can to try and help educate other parents to protect their children.

I feel equally as passionate about female genital mutilation. I just saw this on http://www.mothering.com/ and thought I would post it here in case it might reach someone who didn't know about it before and would be willing to sign this petition to President Elect Obama. Each one of us can make a difference, every teeny act adds up to a lot over time. I don't usually advocate here, but this is just so very important to me.

Stop Female Genital CuttingSponsored by CARE
Female Genital Cutting (FGC) is
an invasive cultural practice that removes part or all of the external female genitalia. This act is dangerous, yet it is very common in Africa and parts of Asia and the Middle East. Up to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGC. There are an estimated three million girls in Africa at risk of undergoing female genital cutting every year. And there are more at risk worldwide. FGC causes serious psychological and health complications. The practice is often done under unsanitary conditions and without anesthesia. The average age of girls forced to undergo FGC is between 4 and 12. There are no health benefits of FGC. Help stop the practice of Female Genital Cutting. Tell President-elect Obama to fight for human rights, and stop FGC.
Sign the petition here: www.thepetitionsite.com/campaign/signatures/958269284/226