Over the weekend, one of Steve’s coworkers let him know that a swarm had landed in his front yard.  Would we like it?  Yes, please!  Steve was working so I loaded up a couple of kids and headed north of Quincy.  It was in a three foot tree in the front yard.  A couple of good shakes of the branch and they all fell nicely into a swarm box.  Got ‘em duct taped up, taken home, and hived up with some old comb to make them feel more at home.  Easy peasy.

A week or two ago, we got a call from Cara about doing a cut out.  A contractor working on an old house found bees living somewhere in the third story and contacted her to find an interested beekeeper.  I got there and the fella pointed out where they had been going in & out, way up high in the eaves of this gorgeous, historic three-story home.  I didn’t see any activity outside but he assured me that it had been up until that morning.  Not knowing bees, he thought that maybe bees just weren’t active in the mornings.  Once inside the third story, there were no bees to be found.  The walls were brick so they couldn’t be in there.  The ceilings were lathe & plaster, much of it fallen away so that I could see inside.  No bees.  I knocked all over the ceiling, trying to get a rise out of them in case they were hiding out of sight.  Nope, no bees.  We did find a pile of dead bees on a window sill in an adjoining room, away from the entrance/exit area but that was it.  That pile was only a couple of cups’ worth of bees so it wasn’t as if the entire colony had died.  We figure they must have heard that I was coming and moved away to escape the horror of my cooties.

In other news, the Great Potting Up Event has finally ended!  Whew! The pic below shows the sidewalk before I had even started the peppers, ground cherries, and wonderberries.  (The big, green clump on the left is the patch of sunchokes and the big, green clumps on the right are lemon balm and mints.)

Now, after potting up 551 tomatoes, 273 peppers, 42 ground cherries, and 54 wonderberries, plus the TPS and other miscellaneous seedlings already there, the sidewalk is full.  Good thing I didn’t bother potting up my own several hundred seedlings.  Those suckers are getting/have been planted out directly from their smaller 6-cell packs.

Speaking of which, it’s time to get out there and plant the TPS and the rest of the tomatoes.  I’m not sure if I’ll put the peppers, wonderberries, and ground cherries out yet.  I’ll have to see what my gut tells me when I’m out playing in the dirt today.  Have a good day, everyone!

The opening day of the new Hannibal Farmer’s Market is this Saturday.  Yikes.  I am so not ready.  These past couple of weeks have seen my spending hours on the phone with various state & local offices, getting paperwork, permits, & fees in order, and trying to come up with some general (sane) plan for it all.

A few days ago, I planted out 170 tomato seedlings into TomatoHenge.  I still have about 100 left to find spots for — and support.  I might end up having to do some fence trellising with them for this year.  The onions I planted earlier this year were bitten back by frost pretty hard and many of them did not survive.  I’ve bought a few replacements that I’ll get planted out this week.  Same for the potato pulls that were hit by frost.  I have a few dozen TPS with which to replace them this week.  I’m thinking I’ll get some dent corn planted this week as well and maybe some early plantings of bush beans.  I bought a few pounds so that I can succession crop them over the summer.

I’ll be spending the rest of today potting up the rest of the seedlings to sell.  And watching ducklings hatch!  We have six already hatched with several more eggs left to go.  Of course, they won’t all hatch out but we’ll hope for a good percentage.  Six goose eggs are keeping them company and due to hatch out in the next couple of days as well, along with a few chickens. Shortly after that, there are more goose eggs and a dozen White Silkies to hatch.  And did I mention I’m saving back duck eggs now to incubate?  Yeah, because I need more to do.

(For my notes, I set about five dozen chicken eggs to incubate on the… 9th?  10th?  Thirty of these will be for the Cooks to raise for a laying flock and we’ll keep the leftovers to sell or add to our flock.)

(Are you getting the sense of scatterbrained-ness in this post?  Yep.  I’m there.  Consider this one of my thinking-out-loud posts.)

The salad greens and herbs are doing very well so I’ll have plenty of those to sell at market on Saturday.  I’ll also have all of those seedlings for sale, along with some sourdough.  I fed the starter this morning and will begin baking tomorrow. (Cody’s grinding wheat as quickly as he can for me while I’m out tending to plants.  I don’t know what I’d do without him!)  Steve’s going to be working some miracles for me in the next few days to get canopy weights & tables made for me.  This is truly a family effort!  Then again, most things we do are.

By the way, the Hannibal Farmer’s Market does not yet have a website up and running but they do have a Facebook page.  Check them out here:  Hannibal Famer’s Market.  On that same note, I’ve been tinkering with the SpeedKin Facebook page.  I’ve had to go back to old blog pics since the garden isn’t terribly photogenic at present.  I’ll try to get some better pics with this in mind over the season.  In the meantime, check it out here:  SpeedKin on Facebook.  I’m open to suggestions. 

When we first moved here, I asked around about the farmers market in Hannibal and got nothing but negative responses.  This year, a group of people got together and decided to take control.  The Hannibal Farmers Market is being reborn this year and I get to be a part of it!  How exciting!  Or at least it was exciting until I started trying to find my through all of the regulations at the various levels.  Sheesh. I think I’m finally getting a solid understanding of most of the requirements and I’ve typed it all out on my reference page here.  Maybe it’ll help some other poor schmuck out.

For the rest of you out there, stop by a see us!  We’ll be in the historic section of downtown Hannibal, Missouri every Saturday from May 19th through October 13th this year, from 8:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.  We should have a pretty good mix of vendors selling a variety of items.  Once the gardens start coming in, I expect there will be lots and lots of fresh produce for you to choose from!

Personally, I’ll be selling breads (including sourdoughs), produce, sewn items and other crafts, soaps, seedlings for your gardens, and fresh eggs.  Later in the season, I hope to have beeswax and raw honey available (remind me to go give the bees a pep  talk!).  I’ll also take orders for live chicks to hatch out.  If you have any special requests you would like to see me carry, please let me know.

I’ll be working on getting a separate page set up for my farmers market customers.  You can see a link to it already along the top navigation bar.  I’ll try to get that done this week, along with reworking the Speedkin Facebook page and a newsletter.  I figure three different choices for customers/potential customers to be updated should be enough, right?  I assume that the Hannibal Farmers Market will be getting a website as well and I’ll link that once it’s up & running.

In other news, we had another turkey poult die overnight, one of the black ones.  That brings us down to 14 live chicks, I believe.  That’s still plenty enough to get us started on turkeys.

Yesterday, I got my main tomatoes planted out in TomatoHenge.  170 of ‘em.  I still have another 100 or so to plant out…. somewhere.  I’ll try to figure that out this weekend while I’m potting up the remaining seedlings for sale at the market.

Now off I go to don a beesuit and do a quickie inspection.  I’m betting (hoping?) at least a couple of the hives need a super added right about now.

So have I ever told you about my fear of styrofoam?

We now have two incubators and, for those of you unfamiliar with them, they’re made of styrofoam.  So what’s a slightly-off-her-rocker gal to do?  Modge Podge & Pokemon fabric!  We now have two dozen turkey eggs, two dozen duck eggs, and ten goose eggs in various stages of incubation.  The first of them should be hatching out in a week or so.

We bought the turkey eggs from a wonderful local lady we recently met, Gail.  The other eggs came from Bob, mighty leader of our Boy Scouts and an animal control officer to boot.  Ducks and geese at one of the local parks lay eggs and then kids come along and smash them.  What a waste.  So he’s been collecting them and giving them to us to hatch out for ourselves.  Good stuff!

He also let us know about a hen and chick at the humane society a week or so ago.  They’re not really set up for birds and wanted them out of there ASAP.  We bopped over there the next day and picked them up but it turns out that the chick did not belong to the hen.  The hen went out to be introduced to our flock and we built a small brooder for the chick.  (We had a few brooders already but they’re big, not appropriate for smaller amounts of chicks.)  Of course, one lone chick is a pitiful thing so we went and bought him a half dozen friends from the farm store.

Bee update:

I did a bee check today.  A fella came out to interview for the local paper this morning, doing a story to help us get the word out about a new 4-H beekeeping club we’re starting up.  While I was already suited up and showing him the hives, I went ahead and dug through them all.  The bees were very well behaved for us.  Thanks for coming out, Matt!

Fred, the 2011 Italian hive, is doing well.  This is the hive that split & swarmed.  So, while it is smaller than what it was, it’s doing fine.  Lots of nice brood in there.

Phyllis is still very small and I’m just not sure how that’ll all work out.  Our local beekeeping meeting is tomorrow evening so I’m sure I’ll get some good advice on how to handle it.

Hans Huberman is doing great!  Beautiful comb being built.

The new swarm hive completely wowed us.  Every frame was filled with bees and comb.  Gorgeous, creamy white comb!  I added a second medium to it, knocked off the entrance reducer to add a boardman feeder from one of the empty hives, and gave it one of the outer covers from the same empty hive.  (Originally, I’d put an empty box on top and gave it a tub of syrup, along with a Rubbermaid tote lid as a temporary cover.)  I love, love, love this hive so far.  We’ll have to give it a name soon and either give it a real hive stand or move it to one of the existing ones.

All in all, losing all of those packages was pretty tough but we’re already over it and moving on.  I’m sure there’s some Giant Life and/or Bee Lesson in all of this that we’ll figure out later.  I’ll try to read up on making splits and, eventually, someone will call us to collect a swarm or two.  In the end, we’ll come out just fine.

Garden update:

The Sugar Snap peas are up and doing well.  The broccoli & cabbage are growing… slowly.  The self-seeded lettuce patch is loving the spring and the lettuces I recently seeded are up.

All of the pulled (potato) sprouts got bitten back by frost.  Since there are no tubers under them, there are no reserves from which they can spring back.  I’ll replant those rows with something else, maybe the TPS (potato seedlings from True Potato Seed).

The onions I started from seed this year were perfect!  I’ll definitely be starting my own from seed from now on.  I love Dixondale but you all know how much I like being able to collect seed & start them myself.  But, this year, I’ll have to buy some plants from a local store.  We had just one too many frosts/freezes after I set them out.  Some will come through it but some are completely gone.

All of my mass-planted seeds are now separated, potted up, and living on the front walk (except for frosty nights).  In an effort to reduce the amount of potting soil I go through each year, I’m trying to keep most of them in 6-pack cells.  If I’m going to sell them, I’ll probably pot them up because people just won’t pay what the time and supplies are worth for the smaller plants.  Then again, once I pot them up and put that time & expense into it, there are so many unsold ones at the end that it’s not really worth it, either.  I need to get better at estimating what I’ll use + what I’ll sell + what I give away.  Heck, I give away far more than I sell each year.  That might be part of the problem.  Heh.  But, yeah, the sidewalk is still crowded with seedlings.

We’re up to our eyeballs in garden chores lately so I wanted to jot down a few, quick notes for reference.  Time keeps slipping away on me.

The sunchokes in the front walk raised bed have poke their heads above ground & mulch, as have the orange mint and apple mint planted there.  I gave the mints a wide area to go nuts in and planted several dozen chunks of celery and parsley in the end of the bed that gets a bit of afternoon shade from the porch.  The peppermint & spearmint in the other front walk bed have gone absolutely bonkers.  The lemon balm in the same bed is also very vigorous but much better behaved than the mints.

Charlie has most of his bed planted but has saved room for tomatoes, ground cherries, and peppers.  The other kids’ beds still aren’t built but, with any luck, Steve should get to that this week.

In the backyard raised beds (that I have yet to show you — new this spring) are now filled up.  Bed #1 has walking onions, potato onions, and newly planted Red Welsh onions that I started from seed this year.  Bed #2 has nothing but garlic, garlic, garlic.  Bed #3 has the raspberries I planted a couple of weeks ago, plus the Alpine strawberries from last year (transplanted from the front wheel beds).  Beds #4 & 5 have full size strawberries.  Bed #6 has asparagus, transplanted from back yard wheel beds that I started last year.  Bed #7 has transplanted rhubarb (previously in back yard wheel beds).  Bed #8 has various greens in it (corn salad, mache, orach, French sorrel, kale, Swiss chard, Good King Henry…  I think that is it for that bed.

In the remaining backyard wheel beds are a couple types of oregano, chives, garlic chives, brown mustard seed, dill, sage, green onions, and cilantro.  In the main garden, the broccoli and cabbage have been planted — a wide row of each on either side of the pea/bean trellis.

The tomato, pepper, and ground cherry seedlings are all ready to be separated and potted up.  I’ll have to spend a few hours in the basement doing that this week.  I’ve presprouted the Sugar Snap peas and soaked the spinach seed so will get those planted first thing in the morning.

And… while I was typing up the draft for this, we got the call that our bee packages will be in this Friday.  Way earlier than what we expected and, so, we are unprepared.  That means everything else is out the window while we pull some bee-equipment-building miracles out of our butts.  As you all know by now, that’s just how we roll…

See ya on the other side!

First, a minor bee note for the records:  Steve got out there and reversed the deeps on the Italian hive and added a second deep to the Carniolans.

I’ve been working on starting several types of seeds the past few days, now that I can scootch down to the basement.  I usually keep track of everything I start but, this year, I’m just having to suck up the imperfections and be content with having gotten things planted.  Still, here’s my attempt at a somewhat incomplete accounting.  Note that all are sown thickly, not just one to a cell or pot.  Each cell of a 6-pack has anywhere from three to a dozen seeds.  Each 4″ pot has dozens of seeds.  I’ll divide them and pot up separately once they germinate and grow a bit.

• Broccoli, Calabrese Sprouting:  1 flat
• Cabbage, flat Dutch:  1 flat
• Wonderberry:  (3) 4″ pots
• Pink Banana:  12 cells
• Ground cherries, Aunt Molly’s:  (3) 4″ pots
• Aronia? (Ilene’s mystery):  13 cells
• Pomegranate, Orange Master:  14 cells

Sweet Peppers

• Ancient Sweets:  (1) 4″ pot
• California:  2 cells
• California Wonder:  2 cells
• Chinese Giant:  (1) 4″ pot
• Colossal Sweet:  2 cells
• Giant Aconcogua:  2 cells
• Giant Marconi:  2 cells
• Golden Bell:  2 cells
• Golden Marconi:  (1) 4″ pot
• Gypsy:  2 cells
• Jimmy Nardello:  (1) 4″ pot
• Margaret’s Sweet Hungarian:  (1) 4″ pot
• Mohawk Patio:  2 cells
• Mystery Bell:  (1) 4″ pot
• Orange Bell:  2 cells
• Purple Beauty:  2 cells
• Red Beauty:  2 cells
• Red Marconi:  (1) 4″ pot
• Redskin Patio:  2 cells
• Sweet Banana:  2 cells
• Sweet Chocolate:  2 cells
• Sweet Gourmet:  (1) 4″ pot
• Tolli’s Sweet Italian:  2 cells
• Valencia Orange:  2 cells
• Violet Bell:  (1) 4″ pot
• Yellow Bell:  2 cells

Chile Peppers

• College 64L:  2 cells
• Big Jim Legacy:  (1) 4″ pot
• Big Jim Heritage:  (1) 4″ pot
• Cajun Spicy Bell:  2 cells
• Cayenne:  (1) 4″ pot
• Chimayo: 2 cells
• Conquistador:  (1) 4″ pot
• Espanola Improved:  2 cells
• Fresno:  2 cells
• Guajillo:  2 cells
• Hungarian Yellow Wax:  2 cells
• Jalmundo:  (1) 4″ pot
• Joe E. Parker:  2 cells
• Lumbre:  (1) 4″ pot
• Pepperoncini Calabrese:  2 cells
• Pizza Pepper:  (1) 4″ pot)
• Sandia: (1) 4″ pot
• Sunset, Sunrise, & Eclipse:  (1) 4″ pot

Tomatoes

• Absinthe:  2 cells
• Ace 55:  2 cells
• Arkansas Traveler:  2 cells
• Aunt Gertie’s Gold:  2 cells
• Aunt Ruby’s German Green:  2 cells
• Azoychka:  2 cells
• Banana Legs (determinate):  1 cell
• Beefsteak (hybrid):  1 cell
• Black Brandywine:  2 cells
• Black Cherry:  2 cells
• Black from Tula:  2 cells
• Black Krim:  2 cells
• Black & Red Boar:  1 cell
• Black Sea Man:  2 cells
• Blue Streak:  4 cells
• Box Car Willie:  1 cell
• Bradley:  2 cells
• Break O’ Day:  2 cells
• Burning Spear:  2 cells
• Campbell’s 1327:  2 cells
• Chapman:  2 cells
• Cherokee Purple:  2 cells
• Chocolate Cherry:  2 cells
• Cowlick’s Brandywine:  2 cells
• Crimson Cushion:  2 cells
• Cuostralee:  1 cell
• Dana’s Dusky Rose:  2 cells
• Diane’s Landrace, main tomatoes:  (24) 4″ pots
• Dix Doights de Naples:  2 cells
• Dora:  2 cells
• Dr. Wyche’s Yellow:  2 cells
• Earl’s Faux:  2 cells
• Egg Yolk Cherry:  2 cells
• Ernesto:  2 cells
• Estler’s Mortgage Lifter:  1 cell
• Eva Purple Ball:  2 cells
• Galina’s Yellow Cherry:  2 cells
• Gary’O Sena:  2 cells
• German:  2 cells
• German Johnson:  2 cells
• German Red Strawberry:  3 cells
• Goji Faranji:  2 cells
• Golden Jubilee:  2 cells
• Granny Cantrell:  2 cells
• Great White:  2 cells
• Heart’s Delite Black:  2 cells
• Hillbilly:  1 cell
• Hoy:  2 cells
• Indian Stripe:  2 cells
• Isis Candy cherry:  2 cells
• JD’s Special C-Tex:  2 cells
• Japanese Trifele Black:  2 cells
• Juane Flammee:  2 cells
• KBX:  2 cells
• Kang Bing:  2 cells
• Kardinal Tshyornyi
• Kellogg’s Breakfast:  1 cell
• Livingston’s Paragon:  1 cell
• Ludmilla’s Red Plum:  2 cells
• Marianna’s Peace:  2 cells
• Matt’s Wild Cherry:  2 cells
• Nepal:  2 cells
• New Big Dwarf (dwarf):  2 cells
• New Yorker:  1 cell
• NOT German:  2 cells
• OSU Blue:  4 cells
• Out of the Blue Cherry:  2 cells
• Pink Floyd:  2 cells
• Pruden’s Purple:  2 cells
• Prue:  2 cells
• Red House Free Standing (dwarf):  2 cells
• Rose:  2 cells
• Tasmanian Chocolate (dwarf):  1 cell
• Tigerella:  2 cells
• Tommy Toes Cherry:  1 cell
• Hawaiian currant:  2 cells
• Peacevine Cherry:  2 cells
• San Marzano Redorta:  2 cells
• Sandul Moldovan:  2 cells
• Snow White Cherry:  2 cells
• Speckled Roman:  2 cells
• Sungold (hybrid):  3 cells
• Tess’ Landrace currant:  3 cells
• Wes:  2 cells
• White Princess:  1 cell
• Wisconsin 55:  1 cell
• Woodle Orange:  1 cell

To those who get seedlings from me, consider this your early list from which to choose.  I seeded enough of most everything so that there shouldn’t be any no-shows.  I tried to note which are cherries and currants.  The rest are mostly slicer sized with a couple of smaller saladettes tossed in.  Only one is a determinate since I just do not care for them.  There are only a couple of hybrids and the rest are OPs so that you can save seed if that’s your thing.  There are some of most colors — green, white, yellow, orange, pink, purple, red, black, and even blue, along with some spotted, striped, and speckled.  Give me a holler if there’s anything special you’d like reserved for you and I’ll mark them as I pot them  up.

Most of you already know but, for those that don’t, here’s the nutshell: I boogered up my ankle this past week. I’m hobbling around on crutches right now (thanks to Debbie for the crutches!) but at least I can do that. I’ve been icing & elevating as much as possible. Yesterday morning, I sent one of the kids out to dig up some comfrey so I could make some salve — seems to really be helping. (Simmer a cup or so of finely chopped comfrey root and/or leaves in an equal amount of olive oil until it’s all mushy. Strain and add some beeswax to make a goo. Slather on a few times a day. Easy peasy.)

Needless to say, my personal garden progress has slowed way, way down. But before the drama, we headed down to Stark Bros with Susan again. I had two trees from last year’s trip die so they replaced them. One of the pears was replaced with the same. The other one that died was a Japanese persimmon and I had it replaced with another apple tree, a Grand Gala, I think it’s called. My receipt is in the other room so I’m going from memory here. They also replaced my failed Starkrimson rhubarb. I cannot recommend Stark Bros enough. They are so friendly and they sure held up their one-year replacement guarantee with a smile on their face. So nice to experience.

Also, Susan forced me — forced me, I say! — to bring home 50 strawberry plants (Ozark Beauty and Honeoye) and some citrus. Now, the citrus, I blame fully on Anita. You see, a couple of weeks back, Anita sent me some seeds for Calamondin Orange — and three tree seedlings: Calamondin Orange, Key Lime, and Meyer Lemon. How cool is that? I grew a Meyer Lemon and Key Lime a few years back when some friends from Florida (Hi, Alan & Diana!) gifted them to me. Those eventually died, however, due to the rough environment in our Oklahoma house. Anita’s gift set off some sort of citrus craze in me. When I saw more citrus at Stark Bros, I couldn’t help myself. I bought a Tangerine, a Valencia Orange, a Key Lime (which actually had three in the pot) and a Meyer Lemon (which had two in the pot). My kitchen and living room are now filled with citrus! And it’s all Anita’s fault.

Steve has kicked butt in the last couple of days. He’s managed to finish building Charlie’s raised bed in the front yard, along with three more beds for perennials in the back yard. I got the raspberries from Stark Bros planted in the first one before the ankle incident. Oh, wait. Did I not tell you about the raspberries? Yeah, I’ll have to think of someone to blame those on… I planted those six raspberries, along with the one surviving one the ones my mom bought me last year, into that first new raised bed. The 100-ish strawberries, I got planted yesterday by crawling around. They include not only the Stark Bros ones but also some WalMart ones: Jewel, Allstar, and Quinault.

I started a few more seeds BA (before ankle) but can’t remember which I planted then and which were from the first seed starting session a while back. Whatever they are, there’s a pile of plants out sunning themselves on the front walk again this year. Potato pulls, TPS, celery, rosemary, parsley, cilantro, etc, etc.

I’m late with the warm season veggie seed starting. All of my seed starting things are in the basement so I’ll have to see if I can crawl down those steps in the next few days to get tomatoes, peppers, ground cherries, and that sort of thing started. Better late than never, right? It’s not terribly late, as far as averages go, but this warm weather we’ve been having makes me feel so late on everything!

Side note on the bees: They’re doing well and enjoying the warm weather along with us. I’m afraid of early swarming before we know it so I was going to get out there and reverse the brood boxes and see if they might want a super on. But then the ankle… (I’m starting to sound like a broken record, aren’t I?) So, along with Steve’s thousand other honey-dos, I’ll have to ask him to get out there and do that soon. Poor Steve. He’s burning the candle at both ends right now plus having to listen to me whine about my ankle. It’s a wonder he’s not yet insane. He does have access to ear plugs — that might be his secret!

One more note: A bunch of the fruit trees are blooming now! So gorgeous!! I tried taking a pic of the peach tree but I kept falling over just leaning on one crutch. Doh. Maybe I’ll get some pics before the blooms are all gone. For now, just imagine a bunch of gorgeous fruit blossom pics scattered throughout this post.

I got several things seeded this past weekend and wanted to make a quick note of them here for my records.

Potato tubers:  Good gravy, I can’t remember how many I planted now.  Maybe two dozen-ish?  Just a mix of small tubers planted in milk jugs so that I can pull sprouts.

TPS: Land Races, Suytu Vilquina, La Pan, 9 Dings, Yungay, Gold Thumbs, Tollocan Fiesta, Pokhipsie, and Kern Brot.  All of the preceeding were from Tom Wagner’s New World Seeds.  From Joseph, I planted Ella’s and Bountiful.  I’m very excited about Joseph’s TPS because they’re good fruiters.

Onion seeds:  Stuttgarter, Ailsa Craig, Juane Paille Des Vertus, Valencia, Australian Brown, Giant Zittau, Southport Red Globe, and Yelow of Parma.  Also Red Welsh.

Miscellaneous Greens:  Wild Garden Kale mix, Dinosaur Kale, Stem Lettuce, French Sorrel, Orach Aurora, Mache, Corn Salad, and Good King Henry.  GKH went outside in the wintersowing since it needs stratified.

I also planted 40 2″ blocks of Tango celery.

Did I tell you about my new soil blocker?  It’s so cool!  I don’t know how I lived without it this long.  Mega coolness.

Ah, yes, and an addendum to my 2012 Garden Plans:  I’ve ordered a half pound of mangel seeds for the far end of the garden.  They should do a good job of breaking up the horribly compacted ground on that side of the garden and provide food for the chickens (and goats?) through part of the winter.

The excess roosters from this spring’s chicks were finally butchered late one recent evening.  After stuffing the skinned & gutted birds in a cooler for an overnight brine soak, we completely forgot about them.  Oops.  Today, we discovered that they’ve been frozen into one giant chicken ice cube ever since.  Lucky.  Now we’ll have to have one big chicken cooking day and put them in the freezer already cooked.  I’m cool with that.

Wintersowing finally began this past week.  In jugs are landrace tomatoes, cilantro, brown mustard seed, dill, orange star calendula, mystery aronia, Aunt Molly’s ground cherries, wildflowers, zinnias, marigolds, and chard.  Charlie also wintersowed several jugs for his garden.  There’s more to wintersow but I’d better get on it quick.  It’s almost March!

Steve got one of the raised beds (4′ x 40′) along the front walk built.  This one has sunchokes and a few mints in it from last year.  I’m not yet sure what its permanent use will be.  There will be another one between the sidewalk and the house when he gets to it.

Another bed going up, this one the first of six 4′ x 40′ in the front yard.  These will give each of the kids a garden bed of their own to do with as they wish.

So we did a quickie check on the bees a while back and concluded that the Carniolans were toast.  Then the $%@&@&$ snots decided to make fools out of us and come back to life right after we announced our conclusion to several folks.  Really, I just do not get these Carniolans.  Not that I get any bees but still…  Anyway, so I felt sorry for them being such a pitifully small cluster and yet impressed that they’d made it so far into winter.  I decided I’d make them a treat — some Bee Candy!  Only, like much of my cooking since moving here, things went wrong.  Terribly wrong.  Being a heartless SOB, I made the kids take it out and feed it to the bees anyway.  That’ll teach them for faking death

A couple of weeks ago, our homeschool group got a chance to hang with Hannibal’s mayor & city manager in the council chamber.  They even got to do a mock council — very cool!  That’s Charlie there to the mayor’s right and Duke & Isaac to the mayor’s left.  (The mayor is the fell in the center of the council seats.)

And just you wait until you see what I’ve been up to today!  Messes made & pics taken…

This will just be a spewing of swirling ideas as they fall out of my mind.  I’m trying to make sense of the craziness in my head so I can begin seeding & layouts soon.  Here we go!

Random Thoughts:

I’m going heavy on the landraces from here on out, as you’ll notice.

I’m beginning to feel my way around cooler weather crops, such as the hardy greens.  I’m even experimenting with perennial greens a bit this year.

I wasn’t sure how Tomato Henge would end up, if I would be happy with it or not.  I was.  I was thrilled with it.  We were prepared (and still are) to put supports in midway each row but it wasn’t needed.  I thought maybe that nylon would have too much stretch but it was perfect.  I’m really, really pleased with it.  I do want to do something with the ends of the rows, maybe little mini-beds there with climbing somethings up the braces.  And it still needs painted.

Raised beds.  This is still a major work in progress.  We need to redo most of the main garden before we add the permanent raised beds so who knows when/how that will get done.  The raised beds in other areas, where there is grass between them such as for the herbs and perennial beds, are easy to do and will likely get completed in time.

We’re also making each of the kids their own raised beds… somewhere.  They may be in the front yard or they may be  in the back next to the perennial beds.  Need to get that decided.  A few of the kids will be selling produce out of them so it should be a good experience.  Each kid will have complete control of their bed as well as space in the main garden for huge things like watermelon.  I think each bed will be 4′ x 20′.

Since we’re getting goats this year, I need to take their chomping along the fencing under consideration.  I like to plant vining things & various perennials along fencing wherever it is but, obviously, that won’t work alongside the goat fences.  I think, in the end, we’ll end up with one big fence around the yard in which the goats, dogs, and chickens all roam.  That means whatever trees are within the fence will need protected from nibbling as well.

Speaking of fencing for all of this, we need to leave access to the house doors, the water meter in the front yard, the electric meter in the back yard, and room for a roadside veggie stand.  That all plays a part in the garden set up because of the aforementioned fence-planting issues.

Peas:

I’m definitely planting a bazillion peas — but only Sugar Snap or Super Sugar Snap.  I also need to make a mental note to save seed from them this year since they are now a family favorite.

Beans:

I’m going to start a landrace of beans this year.  Only those that work well as green beans — and freeze well — will end up in my final landrace selections.  I’ve only got a small selection this year but, now that I’ve decided upon my goal for these, I can begin collecting other varieties with that in mind.  For now, I will plant Cooper’s Running Snap (our favorite from last year’s grow-outs), Rattlesnake, Red Striped Greasy, and Olde Timey Long Cut.

Runner Beans:

I will plant Insuk’s Wang Kong Runner beans.  This is my first time playing with runner beans so we’ll see how we like them.

Cucumbers:

I’m going to start a landrace of these as well, beginning with a couple of old favorites of mine and adding in a new one.  Double Yield is the new one.  My favorites are Boston, National, and Homemade.  I believe I read somewhere that two of those are actually the same variety but it makes no difference to me.

Spinach:

Again, I want to start a landrace but, as of right now, only have one variety:  Monster of Viroflay.  I may not get around to finding more varieties until next year.

Lettuce:

Another beginning landrace.  I saved seeds from a couple of mixed sections last year to which I’ll add seed from my entire stash this year.  I want a good mix of colors but only leaf lettuces.  I have no use for heading lettuces.

Swiss Chard:

I don’t know a whole lot about chard.  I’ve grown it.  I’ve eaten it.  But I don’t know about the various varieties.  Are the different colors the varieties or does it go beyond that?  Must read on it a bit.  In the meantime, I have a couple of packets I’ll toss out together.

Kale:

Beginning landrace.  I have two separate varieties and one mix with which to begin.  I’m a complete novice to kale.

Miscellaneous Annual Greens:

Stem Lettuce is a new thing for me this year, as is Aurora Orach.  We’ll see how they do before I commit to them.  Same for Corn Salad/Mache.

Perennial Greens:

Good King Henry and French Sorrel are new to me this year.  They’ll each be getting some space in one of the perennial beds.

Herbs:

I’ve got quite a few perennial herbs already out there and will  have to see what has survived the winter.  It’s been a very mild winter so far so I’m not expecting losses.  For annual herbs, I’ll be planting a mix of dills, a humongous bed of cilantro, brown mustard seed, and Orange Star calendula.  Maybe hyssop, too.  Herbs, I never seem to commit to until the last minute.

Melons:

Again, landraces.  My watermelon landrace is teeny-tiny but I’ll add to it each year.  Last year, I got started with Joseph’s (Most Diverse) landraces for both muskmelons and non-muskmelons and was hooked.  In the chaos that is our life, they were mixed so now it’s one big happy melon landrace and I’m cool with that.  I’ll be adding more to that as well this year.

Miscellaneous:

I’m broadening my horizons in the miscellaneous department this year, too.  I’ll be growing out some mystery seeds from Ilene, maybe Aronia but who knows?  Just for fun, I have some Pink Banana and Orange Master Pomegranate I’ll be starting this year and overwintering inside.  Aunt Molly’s ground cherries were a huge hit last year so will be back.  Podding radishes will be making their first appearance in our garden this year.  I’m still not sure on broccoli, cabbage, tomatillos, and Brussel sprouts.  I tried some Wonderberry seed from Ilene last year but it didn’t do well, I’m sure due their poor location (and the fact that Steve ran into them with the skidsteer a couple of times early in the growing season).  I’m giving them a second chance this year in a better spot.

Onions:

I’ve got a variety of OP bulbing onions I’m growing from seed this year.  (I have been buying onions from Dixondale but decided to switch things up this year and learn how to start them from seed.)  I also have seed for Red Welsh (perennial) bunching onions to add to the perennial onion bed with Ilene’s walking onions.

Peppers:

More landraces here.  I’ll be starting landraces of jalapeno types, NuMex types, and miscellaneous chiles, along with a landrace for sweet bells and a separate one for other sweets.

Tomatoes:

I already have a good start on a main crop landrace for tomatoes.  This was my main push for last year.  I’ll add more in this year and likely start one for cherries.  I do think I’ll keep Tess’ Landrace separate because I’d hate to lose that one in the mass.  It’s a different type of tomato and it outcrosses easily, if I remember correctly.  (I crammed too much info into my head over the winter and some things I used to know have been pushed right out.  I hate when that happens.)

Root Crops:

I’ve never been much of a root crop gal but I’m diving in deeper this year.  I’ll have a mix of carrots, plus try my hand at parsnips & rutabagas.  I’ve grown turnips before but only infrequently.  They’ll be back this year to break up some harder ground in the back corner of the main garden.  I’m still undecided on whether beets & radishes will be planted this year.

Potatoes:

I’ve got some tubers that I’ll be pulling sprouts from since I liked that method so much last year.  As for TPS (true potato seed), I’ll be growing them again this year but, I think, I’ll do so in pots this time — or at least some way/place where I have a bit more control.

Ornamentals:

I saved seed from sunflowers, marigolds, zinnias, hollyhocks (both mini and large), and a mix of other flowery things I’ve dubbed my “wildflower” mix.  I’ll pick up a few packs of each as I see them on the seed racks to add to the variety.  I’m am so very jealous of Ilene’s zinnia mix!  My aim is to get a gorgeous mix like hers when I’m done.

Other Perennials & Assorted Stuff:

Sunchokes are still in place along the front walk.  They did well but I need to come up with a place for their permanent home at some point this year.  The garlic is at home in its permanent bed in the back yard.  In the wheel beds in back, there are chives, garlic chives, wild onions, oregano, sage, asparagus, rhubarb (although, I have no confidence it has survived), and whatever else I’m not recalling at the moment.  The blackberries recently met with some good intentions that likely set them back quite a bit but, knowing how hardy blackberries are, I’m sure they’ll end up fine.  The raspberries did not do well so I’ll have to buy some replacements this year.  Most of the fruit trees did fine but a few died.  Those will be replaced for free by Stark’s so no worries there.  While at Stark’s later this spring getting those trees and rhubarb replaced, I’ll also get some strawberries for a permanent bed and maybe some grapes if we have a place set up for them by then.  The mints from Susan have, of course, done well.  My comfrey start from Susan thrived last year but I think I’ll end up moving it this year, from the front yard to the back.  Another gardening buddy gave me several divisions from yellow flag which I planted around the lagoon overflow.  I’m hoping they go nuts this year but I’d also like to put a couple more things in there so soak up the excess water.  It stays pretty soggy in that area so I’ll be on the lookout for water-sucking plants.

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That’s the end for now.  I’ll have to do some refining, obviously, but I had to get some general thoughts down on “paper” to get me started.