Update after a long hiatus

It has been over 6 months since I last posted.  I give no excuses; it just happened.  But here’s a bit of a catch up.

One of our llamas died in the spring.  She ate some hemlock.  That left us with just Serendipity – and a lone llama has a propensity for getting into trouble.  Serendipity kept finding ways to escape our field.  One day a woman pulled into the driveway to tell us our llama was in the park that borders our property.  It took my husband, this woman, and 3 more passers-by to herd her back into the field.  She had so much fun!

And then the first day of school she did it again.  I got a call from the high school principal telling me he’d let my son out of school to help wrangle the llama.  She clearly needed friends (and we needed to upgrade the fencing).

The fencing was upgraded and my husband found a local llama farm that needed to downsize, and that is how we ended up with Acci and Cheetah.

Acci and Cheetah are older than Serendipity.  We don’t know for sure, but think Serendipity is about 4 years old.  Acci and Cheetah are 8 and 6 years old.  All three get along quite well, not super chummy, but they hang out together (but also spit at one another for the slightest offense).

No pictures of the flower or vegetable gardens.  We had a severe drought and very hot temperatures and everything was just fried.  Finally, in September, the tomatoes started to fill out and ripen – but not at anywhere near the rate we are used to.  We still have plenty of tomatoes, but also occasional frosts; we eat what we can.  Tonight, my husband made some green fried tomatoes for dinner, and oven roasted potatoes (also from the garden).  Mmmm.

The honey bees had a time of it too.  I obtained two swarms in May.  One I put in a Langstroth (the rectangular boxes) with some old comb from previous inhabitants, and one I put in the topbar hive.  Those bees, though, had to start from scratch, with no comb.  The drought was too much.  The couldn’t bring in enough nectar to both build comb and store honey, so eventually they left in search of better digs.  I hope they found some. 

The other hives, however, are doing quite well.  My husband and I put mouseguards on the hives today (so mice don’t winter in the nice warm hive) and rearranged boxes as we saw fit.  I like to have the bulk of the bees and their honey start at the bottom of the hive so they can work their way up during the winter.  I also moved a box of honey from one very strong hive to a weaker one.  I’ll feed the two weakest hives also so they can store more honey until it’s too cold for them to move about.  Fingers crossed this will get them through the winter and early spring.

That’s the short version of the last 6 months.  I’ll try to write more before another 6 months slip by.  Until then, enjoy the Autumn!

What’s Growing?

The vegetable garden is about 80% planted (thank you, dear husband) and the harvesting has already begun.

We’ve been eating asparagus almost daily for a few weeks now.  Last night my husband pickled a couple of jars because we just can’t keep up. 

We’ve been enjoying fresh spring greens this week.  There are 2 20 foot rows of mixed lettuces. 

Looks as if we can start eating spinach now too.

We have more onions than usual this year.  I ordered some and then we forgot so my husband bought some starts and then a friend (thank you, Susan) sent some genuine Walla Walla starts from Walla Walla, Washington.  But really, can you ever have too many onions?

 

 

And then remember that pathetic little garlic from back in March?  The garlic patch is going great!

 

 

I have flowers growing too.

I love the alliums and so do the bees.

Below are the flowers you can just see behind the alliums.    Silly question – I know a few of you are very into flowers and this will probably be obvious – but does anyone know what this flower is?

 

 

 

 

My favorites – irises.

 

 

We mostly have phlox – lots and lots of purple phlox.  Talk about invasive!  I used to have columbine everywhere – but I think it has been overrun by the phlox.  It may be time to take control of my garden again.  Maybe – I have such a hard time tearing out pretty flowers.  Still, there is a fine line between lush and overgrown and I may have crossed it.

There is more growing that I just forgot to photograph.  Violets and violas and purple cranesbill geraniums too. The chives are in bloom also.  Hmmm, I seem to have a purple theme going here, except for my columbine (of course it was the purple ones that have disappeared). 

More things are yet to bloom of course – bee balm (a pinkish purple), clematis (purple), Echinacea – purple.  What can I say….

Garden Planning – First the Seeds

It is January, it is cold, there are 9” of snow on the ground and the kids have had a four day weekend thanks to 2 snow days.  It is time to think about the garden.

My friend at Nyack Backyard woke me up with a reminder to consider the source of my seeds; in particular, I might want to avoid seeds from companies associated with Monsanto, the fertilizer, pesticide, genetic engineering giant.  If you want a reason to be concerned about Monsanto, check this site, Millions against Monsanto. Nyack Backyard also pointed me to a list of seed companies that sell seeds free of ties to Monsanto.

This isn’t an anti-Monsanto post, or an anti-big-business or anti-business done the American way post.  This is just a post about getting seeds I’m happy with and realizing that maybe my usual source isn’t 100% consistent with my values. 

So what do I want from my seeds?  Organic and untreated.  Actually, options are pretty good.  When I googled “organic seeds” there were plenty of places to go.  I settled on Natural Gardening Company for no good reason other than they claim to be the oldest certified organic gardening nursery in the United States.  That’s not really a great reason, but I didn’t have the gumption to comparison shop and I wanted a one-place and get it all nursery and this seemed to fit the bill (almost).

Actually, being the oldest certified organic gardening nursery made me think they might be from back east – perhaps somewhere near Monticello – Jefferson was a big gardener.  They’re not – they’re in California.  Doesn’t matter.

So my husband and I spent an hour or so this morning picking seeds and seedling types for the garden.  It won’t be cheap, but still less expensive than not gardening.  Most everything we’ve bought is an heirloom variety and described as being able to withstand a variety of weather conditions.  We do not baby our plants.  They get mulched and that’s it.  We don’t even water. 

Because this year is more expensive than previous years we are hoping to make a project of saving seeds.  Why buy more seeds each year when our plants make millions on their own?  Check back and see if we carry this out.

Meanwhile, we wait for the seeds to come and the snow to melt.  I don’t want to wish time away, and I do enjoy the winter – but it is fun to think about the spring too.

Carrot Update and Other Garden Thoughts

I harvested the last of the carrots today.  We had planted 3 rows (about 15 feet long and none too neatly – that is it wasn’t as if there was a nice neat row of single carrots).  This last row, like the first, yielded about 6 gallon bags of carrots.  The middle row gave us about 3 gallons.  The first row had a lot of amazingly huge carrots – – the 2nd and 3rd had more reasonably sized individuals.  They were Danvers Half-Long carrots – most are about 6 – 8”. 

We have given carrots to relatives this fall as we saw them.  Friends are next.  I’m also planning on carrot corn bread sometime this week (it was on the plan for today but got bumped by laundry).  If I get some raisins I’ll do a carrot raisin bread too – – and maybe carrot cake, with a little cream cheese icing…. yummy.

I have some plum tomatoes drying – I hope they’re done before I want to go to bed… I was a little late to get them going.  There are still plenty on the vine – my husband says he’ll freeze them.

My husband is still finding green beans in the garden for his Sunday lunch (he’s the only one in the family who likes green beans cooked – he pickles them too though – and those are great).

Otherwise, there are a few eggplants still in the garden, a few beans, maybe a banana pepper or two.  That’s about it.  This evening I ordered garlic (our crop wasn’t very good this year so no big bulbs from which to plant cloves).  We’ll plant the garlic when it arrives in a couple of weeks – – and the cycle starts again.