A few signs of spring and the spring to do list

 

These are my plum trees.  They are the first of my orchard to flower.  They are young trees planted several years ago.  Two years ago I had a handful of very small plums form on the the tree in the foreground.  Last year the tree in the rear had a couple of plums and the tree in the front had about a dozen but this is the first year that they have had blossoms like this.  I am excited to see what happens this year.  

My small orchard has two apples, these two plums and two pears.  After hearing about some success in our neighborhood with peaches which I thought were questionable for our zone I am considering adding  a couple of peach trees.  I have been trying to add some fruit each year.  Last fall I was gifted with some strawberry plants from a bed that was being dug up so I am hoping that they had enough time to get established before winter.  The year before I planted some fruit bushes, two elderberries, a gooseberry and four sand cherries.  The rabbits have been hard on the sand cherries but the elderberries and gooseberry are starting to leaf out.  The year before that I planted some cranberries and transplanted my blueberries trying to get a soil that is acidic enough for them to grow but it has been a struggle and I am not sure if they will make it.   

My asparagus is starting to come.  Last year was the first year that we were really able to pick much of it.  I have been adding new plants each year and have some seedlings started for another row this year. 

Spring brings lots of projects all wanting my attention at the same time.  I am rearranging the greenhouse.  In the winter I have the tables away from the glazing but in the spring when I am growing seedlings that will transplant into the summer garden I can set up extra tables closer to the glazing to make room for more plants.  

A while back I was soaking, scrubbing and sanitizing my seed trays and planting seeds.  Now those seedlings are being transplanted into bigger containers and since I reuse my containers those containers are now being soaked, scrubbed and sanitized.  I have a soaking tub, a sanitizing tub and two potting soil tubs taking over my kitchen.  I am still seeding.  I am making multiple trips from the house to the greenhouse hauling pots back and forth.  It's great. 

I am prepping the garden space and have planted a few things.  I put a few rows of sweet corn in, I am hoping that it isn't too early.  I have planted a few leftover potatoes.  I am not sure if they are going to work but I have room so it is worth a try.  

I moved the pea trellis and planted a row of peas.  All of that happened during a week of warm weather.  Now we are having windy, cold, wet weather so right now work on the garden outside is on hold. 

I am also working on some projects not related to the garden.  Two years ago when my sister's daughter was graduating I helped out by making some cupcake wrappers and some paper 'scatter' to add to the center of the tables.  Now that her son is graduating this year I am doing something similar.  Where her theme was girly--flower vases and candles dominated--his theme is camo and blaze orange.  He is a hunter and fisherman as well as an athlete but his tables will focus on the outdoors rather than the sports.   

I blogged about Kaylee's party and shared pictures here.

This is what I am working on for Chase's party.  He will have cupcake wrappers and his name and year, just like his sister, but also he will have small picks with deer mounts sticking up out of bite size sweets and hunting and fishing themed table scatter.    

First garden post of the season

 

I live in zone 4 so we are about a month away from our last frost date but we didn't get a lot of snow and especially we didn't get the big recent snows that parts of our state had so the ground is dry enough to start prepping for plants and planting some of the earliest seeds.  Today, with rain in the forecast Dad came out to till the North half of the garden.  Last year with the battle with the deer the garden was overtaken with weeds and the front half is in permanent raised rows so that will be worked by hand but the back is just one large area and so that can be tilled and today dad came out and tilled it.  The brown parts are the left over dead weeds from last year.   Dad suggested that we till it again in a week or so and I think that sounds like a great plan.  

On the south half of the garden, I have started to prep rows.  The first few rows are turned, I am applying composted manure to the rows and I have planted two rows of potatoes and a row of peas.  The pea trellis is installed.  The potatoes are ones that my sister had from last year and I am trying them to see if they will grow.  If not there is still time to replant with new seed potatoes.  

I am hoping to get some deer protection up before the plants are up and providing temptation for deer and rabbits.  And dogs.  I have been finding big holes dug in the yard and garden.  I have not caught any of our dogs in the act so I am not sure who to blame but it is getting annoying so I am hoping to figure it out and figure out a way to put a stop to it.  I am suspicious that it is Codie because when we just had two dogs she would bury her bones and Sadie would watch where she went and dig them up.  

P.S. Thanks Dad!!

Willow-her mom is missing her

 

maple syrup

This year for the first time I am trying to collect maple sap and make syrup.  I bought some minimal equipment to see if it was something that I wanted to do before investing in everything that I would need to make good use of my couple of huge maples that are in my yard.  According to a booklet I purchased to get me started my trees should be able to support three taps each but I bought one to start with and then a second.  I am not sure how long our season will go but so far it has been fun so I am thinking that I will expand my operation for next year.

Collecting sap is dependent on the right weather conditions and this year I have had my sap stop running when it got too cold during the day and too warm at night.  There is a formula for cool nights and warm days that causes the sap to run.  Right now it is too warm so there has been no sap for  a couple of days but there is a cooler period coming so I am not giving up yet.  In the meantime I am cooking up the sap that I have.  It takes a lot of sap to make a little bit of syrup.  My first attempt, the first sap that I collected before the cool spell, cooked up to make perhaps a cup of syrup.  It tasted great.

I started cooking some of the second batch of sap and discovered that it requires close supervision at the end and my syrup ended up being maple brittle.  Still tasty, but it won't work on waffles.  My set up for evaporating the water from the sap is fine for a small batch but to make syrup on a larger scale I might need to consider a way to cook larger batches.

sap bucket

first syrup

maple brittle

Sharing at BNOTP here.

two blacks...two browns...two babies...two--wait a minute

Whenever I do farm chores I repeat the following sentence:  "Two blacks, two browns, two babies and two others".  It is my way of getting a headcount and making sure that everyone is present and accounted for.  The 'two blacks' are our black goats. Monte Carlo is our buck.  Gemma is a a female born a couple of years ago when Caitlin was still in college.  The 'two browns' are our brown and white goats.  Belle Etoile is the goat that Cait showed at the State Fair in high school..  Cache-Cache is Belle's daughter.  Cache-Cache is the mother of Gemma. and the mother of two babies from last year.  They are brown and white like their mother and grandmother but still noticeably smaller so still easy to pick out in a crowd--the' two babies'.  The 'two others' are Sneaky, a sheep, and Holly, a horse.  The herd. 

A couple days ago I went out to the barn to do chores and the herd was out on the pasture.  The barn is always open and they can come and go between the barn and pasture and usually when the weather is nice they are only in the barn to eat and sleep.  So when they saw that I was doing chores they slowly trickled in.  Holly was first, of course, and Monte was second, of course.  Neither of them is likely to miss a meal.  Sneaky was next and while I was still throwing hay down and filling their water Gemma, Belle and finally Cache-Cache wandered in.  I started my little verse and realized that the babies were not with their mother.  Now, these babies are a year old but they still stick pretty close to mom.  I headed out the door to see if they were coming and Elke, the youngest of our three dogs and still pretty much a puppy, took off for the gate that leads to the pasture.  She shimmied through the gate, quite a feat for a 70 or 80 pound dog.  She ran barking onto the pasture and collected the babies who were at the far edge of the pasture and herded the missing babies up to the barn.  The babies were pretty surprised and they hustled right along.  They are never herded.  The dogs are rarely inside the pasture.  They will follow me in, but for the most part they stay outside the fence.  The dogs sleep in the barn as well, if they want, but there is a wire enclosure that separates them from the herd.  They know each other but have their own space.

Elke is a Great Pyrenees.  Our other dogs, Sadie and Codie are each half Pyrenees.  The breed is a natural livestock guardian dog and they instinctively keep our herd safe.  Elke is very watchful and learns from Sadie and Codie but herding the baby goats was something that she did all on her own.  I see her maturing into her role as protector.  The day after the herding episode  while I was working a bit in the big garden she found and caught a rodent that was in the weeds.  Later that day she chased up some large birds, probably ducks or geese that were in the ditch across the road and followed them halfway across the field to make sure that they stayed away.   It is a joy to watch them working and they love it.  I will hear one bark at some real or imagined danger and then immediately all three will be barking and they will have fanned out in different directions, spread out but working as a team.

Holly

Sneeky

Monte

Gemma

Belle

Cache-Cache

The babies

Elke

Sadie

Codie

. Sharing at BNOTP here.

A little catch up on projects at the farm.

Maple Syrup

A couple of posts ago I shared that I was collecting maple tree sap in order to make syrup.  Well predictably about the time that the post was published the weather turned cold and the sap stopped flowing.  I decided that the sap that I had collected should be cooked down even though there was less than 2 gallons so I set to work evaporating off the water.  I did get a bit of finished syrup.  I think it tasted pretty good.  I divided it between two small jars and took one to my parents to get their opinion.  I will share the second jar as well hoping to get some feedback as to whether we should expand and add more taps to my trees.
 

French Macarons

A weekend ago we had a party celebrating the upcoming wedding of my daughter and her fiance.  I helped prepare some of the food and two of the items that I made, several batches of homemade rum raisin ice cream and two kinds of flan, required egg yolks but no egg whites.  As I was going thru a couple of dozen  eggs I saved the whites and they have been aging in my fridge and I have been attempting macarons with the saved and aged egg whites. I have wanted to learn to make them for a long time.  I have read that they can be fussy with lots of places that they can fail.  I found a website with troubleshooting tips that was a couple of pages long.  Pretty intimidating even for a person who likes food challenges.  I am not terribly proud of my macarons but I am not out of saved egg whites yet so I will keep making them and hoping to improve.  Here is a picture of a few chocolate and a few plain macarons in a cute silver bonbon dish that was a thrift store find.
 

Spring seed starting

I have been getting prepared to start seeds for the summer garden.  I moved the metal shelving out into the dining room which required some rearrangement of furniture.  I have been sanitizing the seed trays that I will be using by soaking them first in soapy water to loosen any stuck potting mix followed by a rinse and then another soak, this time 20 minutes in a mild bleach solution.  It was kind of time consuming.  I had a big tub on my counter where I soaked the trays in the soapy water and there was only room for one at a time.  The bleach water container allowed for three trays to be soaked at a time but they stood on one end in the bucket and had to be flipped to do the other end.

The last couple of years we have ordered all of our seeds from one mail order company and it worked out well.  Last fall I decided to try saving seed from my plants and so this year I need to sort what I have and what needs to be ordered.  Last year we had our order in our hands earlier than this.  I am trying to plan what is the best plan of action for seed starting.  The upcoming wedding is a destination wedding so I will be away for a few days which means that all those little seedlings will be needing a babysitter.  Quite a few of the seeds can be started after I return and at this point my plan is to wait with as many as possible.  I have heard that often with an El Nino weather pattern that produces a mild winter often is followed by a cool, wet spring.

Asparagus

 I did start some asparagus plamts from seed that I saved from last year.  Asparagus is kind of slow to germinate and it is usually the first seeds that I start.  My trays are really inconsistent at this point with how they are doing.  So far about 1/3 are up.  All of our asparagus has been started from seeds instead of plants but last year is the first that I have saved the seeds from our plants in order to grow more plants. In the past we have always ordered seed.  This is the first spring that we are staring plants from our own seed.

so ready for spring

I can't complain as our winter has been pretty mild but I am so anxious for spring to get here.  Our little bit of warm weather last week when it got to be 60 has got me unpacking some Easter and spring decorations.  I have to admit that for quite a while I haven't decorated much for the holidays so for many years the Easter decorations stayed in their boxes.  I won't probably get everything out this year either but a few things for the center of the table will be fun.

A few weeks ago when going thru my fabric stash--it has been a few years since I have done much sewing too-- I found some fabrics in pinks and blues.  I cannot even remember what it was intended for but I decided to make a table runner out of it.  The runner is finished.

 It holds the kids' bunnies, made by their Grandma Rose when they were small.

It holds the eggs.

New this year is a tiny banner that says SPRING.  The eggs are plastic, but if the kids are home and we color some eggs I will swap them out for real ones.

It holds the tea set.

And stacked at the end of the table the Easter dishes.

 I am pretty sure that last time that I used these there was the right amount for the number in my family.  Now the family is bigger and if everyone was at the farm we would need more.  I will have to keep a look out for more of the same or something that coordinates.

I have four egg cups.

And four plates, each a different color with a different bunny in the center.

blue

green

yellow

pink

   Linking to Tablescape Thursday at BNOTP here.