Its Super Bowl time for gardeners!

Every morning I sort of watch the news; mostly wondering if we invaded Greenland yet. 

Every morning I listen to 5 minutes, mostly for the weather and then exit under the flashing light. 

Ran over to the Feed and Seed with the intent to buy 5 pounds of potatoes and bought 15 pounds of seed potatoes; Norland, Kenebec and Eve.  

Installing 4 new beds and moving way to many concrete blocks for my old decrepit body.  Also installed insect netting over all the brassica and greens beds.  The white cabbage butterfly has already emerged! 

Everyday I try to get up and get moving.  The weather has been start and stop.  One day we have 28F degree windchills and the next day it's 70F degrees.  The ever growing pile of clothes, shoes and boots by the backdoor is alarming!  Garden gloves and seed packets in every pocket.  All the tools are out due to so many projects going on all at the same time.  

I have been at Home Depot so much, shoppers have started asking me where stuff is located in the store.  Happy to say I am still rocking the gift cards.  Currently I have $1 off a gallon of gas.  Just playing the game. 

The hoop house is loaded with kale and lettuce!  

This has been the best addition to the garden in years! 

The cold tolerant plants have all been transplanted, YAY!!

Broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, 4 varieties of kale, chinese cabbage, 3 varieties of head cabbage, more lettuce, onions, peas. 

The 15 pounds of seed potatoes have all been planted too. 

The fence project continues.  Top boards are in place and the bottom vinyl coated fence was trenched in and tied to the cattle panels.  I still need to install a bottom board but it's looking pretty good!  And the gate was installed! 

On the days it was too cold or rainy to work outside, inside stuff got done.

Enchilada Sauce.  This is a great recipe and one that I will make again.  It is in the Ball Canning Book. 

Since I made the enchilada sauce I thought I should make tortillas too.  I will never buy tortillas from the store again!  These were that good and so easy! 

With price of olive oil going up and up due to climate change and mind numbing tariffs I decided to render 10 pounds of leaf lard.  

And just like that Easter was here!  Had a great time with our neighborhood for Easter.

My contribution this year was old fashioned potato salad, dinner rolls and cassata cake. 

I planted a damson prune plum in the back forty to accompany the superior plum planted a few weeks ago. 

There is just so much going on its hard to keep up.  It's been so good to keep a planting diary this year because I get to the end of the week and think; Did I do anything this week?  Phew I did!  

The more I watch the news the more I plant.  The tomatoes and peppers are ready to be moved to the hoop house and I will be happy when I am not lugging them outside every morning and night.  This year I've been moving 22 flats of flowers and veggies.  I'll be happy when they are in the ground! 

There has been time for beach walks too..... weekends are sacred.

And Spring is happening, although it's been a bit chilly.

So stay busy, eat snacks and plant seeds! 

 

 

Imploding..........

 

I would but I can't even find any damn chickens!  Yes, there is baby chick shortage!  It was toilet paper during covid and now it's baby chicks.  I will wait a couple a months and they'll start showing up on Facebook market place. 

Are we buckled up? Buckled in and ready for a ride we have never been on before?  

We have watched the country decline into chaos in 70 short days. Innocent people have been plucked off the streets and sent to prisons in foreign countries. PhD students, the best and brightest, lacking blonde hair and fair skin have been detained, deported and landed who knows where.  The stock market tumbles into sights not seen since before Covid with no end in sight.  Weapons of war are being moved from the Pacific to the Middle East at an alarming rate. Reuters  The Doge kids and their ketamin fueled Overlord, Musk continues it's rampage, although it's rumored he may have fallen out of favor with the orange one.  Threats to social security, medicare, the veterans, the farmers, have I left anyone out?  Oh yes, the oligarchs are standing on the sidelines licking their lips.  As we clutch our pearls looking at our retirement, the regime is doing something even more diabolical somewhere else, pull the curtain back and look!  Congress has become impotent and absolutely no one is coming to save this country so you better get busy, as we are the only ones who will saves us.  This time in our countries history will surely go down as one of the darkest.  Science and education have been kicked curb along with healthcare.  The anti-vaxers are now in charge of health care.  I often wondered how the dark ages started, I could never understand how an intelligent civilization went from the Classical era to the dark ages so quickly and now I now; although the US seems to have set a record pace.  

Where does this leave me, us, anyone living in this country?  How are you coping with the chaos and insanity. 

I have taken to YouTube and launched a channel Sandy Miller - Paine Falls on gardening, kitchen stuff and other helpful tips to stretch your budget.  I was letting pottery take a backseat until I read the tariffs are going to directly impact aluminum cans and glass.  I doubt we will stop drinking so maybe it's time to make growlers and whiskey bottles again.   Fermenting jars are always at the forefront. But for now it's time to get the garden in order, deer proof, raccoon proof, and batten down the hatches.   I know we need to get lean and mean.  Maybe this will stop our consumer driven economy and the earth will catch a break for awhile.  

The back forty is fenced!  There is still quite a bit to do but the posts are done and the cattle panels are up! 

I am rocking the Giant Eagle gift cards for Tractor Supply and Lowe's.  I paid .79 a gallon for gas! 

Ya, I'm playing the game....... le sigh.

I'm working on the raccoon situation......

On cold or rainy days I retreat to the kitchen or the potting bench to divide precious seedlings. 

The Alaskan Sisters asked me how to can taco meat. 

 After searching through countless canning books I really could not find a tested "taco meat" recipe.  Oh there are plenty out there on there on the internet but unless they are approved by The National Center for Home Food Preservation  or the  Ball Canning website or the Healthy Canning website I am not canning rebel recipes.  Science still works! 

This week it was; Roasted Pork in Spicy Broth.  

The youtube video:  canning roast pork in spicy broth

This is great recipe and super easy.  This weekend we'll try Chipotle Beef Stew.  The more jars on the basement shelves the better!  If the EU is telling their citizens, all 450 million, to stock up and prepare for 72 hours. "We can no longer rely on ad hoc reactions." Fortune    I am not in the EU but as we are getting no transparency from our current government regime, I going with the EU but bracing for 3 months.

The few nice days we had I managed to get the onions and brassicas planted.  Covered with netting to keep the skunks, opossums, birds and other critters from ripping them out.  Frost cloth is on standby and the garlic is looking good. 

The soil was amended, wood chips raked back to reveal wonderful black soil beneath.  I am applying organic alfalfa pellets as top dressing to make up for any nitrogen lost to the wood chips breaking down. 

The pond is up and running again!  The two fish survived the winter better than I did and happy for flowing water again.  No frogs in sights yet.

Planted a Superior plum tree, Fuji and Liberty apple tree.  

Grapes will be going in on the fence line and strawberries around the base for a nice green mulch area. 

Meanwhile in Alaska this happened!  Big Congratulations to Abby!!

So get busy, stock up and stay tuned as we are in for a wicked ride.  

Ferns working overtime and pumping out an egg a day. 

Thank you Fern we are grateful. 

New Projects are gonna kill me........

 

I have been fiddling with my way backyard for decades.  It started as a weedy field, an attempt a huge garden by my parents, back to weedy field, then to ornamental delight and do you know how hard it is to keep those stones clean and white.  Great for monks in a zen garden but I am no monk and this is not a zen garden so away with the stones!  

and now back to garden and fruit farm.  The deer herd is burgeoning far beyond tolerable.  Several trees were plowed over by bucks sharpening Fall antlers.  When I walked around the way back the beginning of March I knew it was time to dig in and start again.  

It began with taking out three large pines and one large serviceberry........ with my trusty Japanese pruning saw.  Amazing the damage one little saw and a crazy person can do in couple days! 

from this........

to this in three short days...... carnage! 

I now need to rent a big ass wood chipper from our local rental place.  So for 4 hours on a Spring day I will slap down $198 and turn brush piles into wood chip piles.  That is pure gold in my book and should get me through the next few months of mulching paths and beds. 

Last year we had the property surveyed and had pins with bright yellow caps sunk all along the property line.  Mostly for a crazy neighbor with aggressive lawn mower habits, constantly taking out my blackberry brushes as if the deer weren't bad enough.  Well I am happy to say he is gone but he didn't take the deer with him when he packed up. 

As I walked around the back 40 surveying the deer damage and winter damage.  I thought why not put in a fence, the markers are there and it's Spring.  NOT: let me pay someone to put in a fence.  Off to Giant Eagle and buy a gift card to Home Depot for several hundred dollars because then I get gas points and right now I am up to a dollar off a gallon!  My van could handle 10 fence posts and three bags of concrete in one trip.  It has taken three and half trips to Home Depot.  I started digging post holes on the south side and sunk ten fence posts.....  these are days 50 looks way better than 70 in this body but then I have those damn eastern european genes.  

So far three sides down and one more to go.  I saved the best to last.  The east side of the fence is all tree roots from old maple trees and yes, that last row might kill me but I have a sawzall and very long extension cord!  I can get 10-11 posts sunk in a day.  And the teenage kid behind us had pulled the marker in the northeast corner 😡.  Had to rent a metal detector to find the original 1865 iron pin!  

Planning on putting 16 foot cattle panels for fencing and thankful Tractor Supply moved in not too far from here! 

Lessons learned this week..... If you do not want to be considered elderly go to Home Depot.  There is no one there to help anyone, you are left to your own devices and I love that.  However if you go to your local bank and take out the funds to the buy gift cards for this project you get a lecture.  OMG are you being scammed, you are elderly and you are the perfect target.  No I'm putting in a fence and paying cash but I'm buying gift cards so I get free gas as I am on a limited income these days.  She dolefully counted out the bills and tucked it into a neat little envelope.  "now were are you putting this?"  (I don't carry a purse like most elderly women).  I slid it into the interior pocket of my coat and said; thanks.  "Oh ma'am please be careful."  As I walked out the door I said; "Not to worry; I'm locked and loaded!"  I patted my other pocket.  Nothing but my phone but she really didn't need to know that.  

Off to Home Depot.  Grab a lumber cart, load 10 timber fence posts and grab three 80 pound bags of cement; not a soul in sight.  Cashed out, dug my heels in and wrangled all this out to my van.  The cart boy was retrieving carts in the parking lot and while I was heaving 80 pound bags of concrete I thought he was coming over to help the elderly.  Nope.  He put his hands on the back of my lumber cart and said; Almost done?  I'll take your cart back....... I still had two more bags to load and 5 more timbers.  He stood there and watched.  WTF cart boy...... I closed the doors on my van and drove away fueled by even more WTF cart boy thoughts.  Unload and start digging post holes...... encounters like this make the day go so much faster.  

After gardening here for over 40 years you see the difference in soil too.  This made me so happy! 

and if anyone is wondering where Butch is....... Florida!