Winter Blues

My new lettuce grower!!!

Kryp the rooster keeping a watchful eye on everything in the garden.





I am not fond of the winter months. As a child I think it was due to having a summer birthday. Now in adulthood I have really tried to embrace winter for all the togetherness the cold months thrust upon us, but by mid-January I am ready for spring. I really am not sure I could make do any further north than Atlanta, at least not for long. One of the brighter spots in my winter doldrums is all the spring garden planning I get to do. I love looking at seed catalogs and old gardening magazines. I know realistically living in zone 8 Georgia I could have something going in the garden year round and this is one of my 2009 goals. It seems as though we are always so busy in the fall and we also normally take our vacation that time of year that I just never get around to planting fall crops.
This year I hope to get a jumpstart on some plantings. Allen built me a small greenhouse for one of my raised beds and I will be starting some romaine lettuce just as soon as the seeds arrive. I have also ordered some other cold season seeds such as spinach, turnips, carrots and sugar snap peas. I know there are other things I would like to try but I think this is a good start. Another goal for 2009 is to get an asparagus crop going, a farmer friend, Nicolas, is digging up some of his this year and I am counting the days until I can get those crowns in my hot little hands. I LOVE asparagus!!My farmer friend's wife, Madeline, introduced me to the art of roasting the spears and I was in love (with the spears). You have to wait a few years after planting before you can harvest but its so worth it- your asparagus patch if properly maintained is suppose to give you as many as 15 years of service. Yum!!!!!

Ponderings

I had planned to sit down and blog about something interesting- like our trip to the city today. The boys and I had a good time making puppets and learning about Jim Henson at the Atlanta History Museum. We also had a great time in the Atlanta Olympics exhibit. But, since it took me 20 minutes to realize I had put the Wii disc Jared wanted to play in the DVD player I will have to be short and sweet, I need to cook dinner now. Maybe if I don't burn down the kitchen in my dinner attempts I will post pictures later.

Starting Fresh

Into the woods

The chosen tree

Timber!!

The inoculated dowels before being hammered in the log

Wax on!



I have titled this post "Starting Fresh" because that is what I'm doing with this blog. My original idea for starting the blog was to look appealing for a farming grant I thought I was going to apply for. It turns out I didn't feel ready for the commitment to the grant- although I am still committed to really getting serious about homesteading. This has always been our plan anyway, to grow and raise our own food. I am ready for the challenge. I know nothing will happen over night so to keep me from getting discouraged I am going to blog about our accomplishments and successes and also our failures and mistakes. I am also blogging so I will have a way to remember all the cute things my kids say and do along the way.
Today has been very windy- I mean scary windy. The wind has blown the cover off our well house and loosened a few nails in some metal roofing on the top of the well house so that it makes this loud noise every few minutes. Our power was even off for about three hours, which was very hard for my plugged in kids. They survived and actually had some fun making music and playing with playdoh.
This past weekend Allen and I inoculated eight oak and one sweetgum log with shiitake mushrooms. It was fun -kinda like building instead of gardening. First we cut down the oak, then cut it into 4 to 5 foot long sections and then we hauled the logs to the barn- which was difficult only because the lawnmower cart we were using came apart. Once we finally got the logs back to the barn we cleaned them with a scrub brush, just to remove the moss and dirt, then we drilled holes about 4 inches apart. In the holes we hammered in wooden dowels(I ordered online at Oyster Creek Mushroom Company) that were inoculated with the shiitake spores. Over the holes we "painted" melted canning wax. Lastly we found a good shady stand of pines and laid the logs on a pallet cabin style. Now we wait if all goes well we should have shiitakes this spring and fall for the next few years.