Spring Seeds

Look at what the mailman brought me today!

These are the first of several shipments of seeds that I'm expecting, from no less than four different companies. The trouble with having strong preferences for particular varieties is that it seems that no one seed company carries them all. Add to that that I wanted to grow a few new-to-me varieties recommended by my local Slow Food chapter and you have... a very piecemeal seed shopping experience. ;)

This is my first order from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I'm particularly excited to try growing the Rat's Tail Radish since having tasted them at a few different local foods dinners. They look like a green bean, but taste like a mild radish. Neato! I'm looking forward to using them in a few pickling recipes this Summer.

As for the rest of our chosen varieties, so far we have planned -

*Radishes - Rat's Tail, Purple Plum and Watermelon

*Poppies - Hungarian Blue Breadseed

*Ground Cherries - Aunt Molly's

*Carrots - Atomic Purple, Red Cored Chantenay, Little Fingers

*Sunflowers - Giant Greystripe, Honey Bear

*Peas - He Lan Dou snow peas, Clarke's Beltony Blue-podded shelling peas

*Parsnips - Turga (a short-rooted variety)

*Peppers - Pimento (sweet)

*Pumpkins/Winter Squash - Small Sugar, Oregon Sweet Meat

*Beans - Robert's Royalty Purple Snap (bush-type)

*Corn - Dakota Black Popcorn

*Cucumbers - Addis Pickling

*Greens - Bear Necessities Kale

*Beets - Lutz Tall-Top

*Cilantro - Standby (slow-bolt)

*Chamomile - Bodegold (German-type)

*Calendula - Resina

*Pollinator-friendly and Cutting Flowers - Anise Hyssop, Gloriosa Daisy, Rocket Larkspur, Love in a Mist

We still want/plan/need to lay hands on the following seeds/starts - potatoes, tomatoes, hot peppers, lavender, elderberries, a short-season melon or two, basil, more salad greens, more cutting flowers, Phacelia (for the bees!), maybe wasabi and a few others that I'm probably forgetting.

We intend to really make a real go of our little farmstand this year. Let's hope that the weather and our backs hold up to our ambition!

Summer's End Harvest, Early September

I haven't been diligent or scientific in my tracking of our farm and garden's productivity this year, but some preliminary numbers for food harvested and put by so far are-

Apple Cider - 3+ gallons
Hooker's Sweet Corn - 1 bushel (so far)
Poppy seeds - 1/2 cup :\
Cucumbers - About 4 gallons (pickled - does not include what we've eaten fresh or fed to the bun-buns)
Carrots, tomatoes, radishes, beets, peppers, beans and peas - no idea! ;\
Sugar Baby Watermelons - 2 (so far)
Pumpkins - 4 (so far)

The garden was somewhat feral this year. With everything going on in our lives, it was really a miracle that we even had a chance to plant anything at all. This is the very first year ever that we didn't have any summer squash at all. The ducks that live in our garden ate our squash and sunflower starts multiple times. We ended up with ONE sunflower! For all their cuteness, ducks can also be selfish little jerks...

This week or next I hope to get out and forage for apples, pears and hawthorn berries. I haven't made hawthorn jelly in a few years and I think that it's about time to remedy that. ;) I'd also like to start putting up some food for the critters, in the form of dehydrating some corn, seeds (pumpkin, mostly) greens (beet tops, bolted collards, kale, etc.) and herbs to dole out sparingly over the dark months. I'm no longer working full-time plus, and am absolutely relishing the reprisal of my full-time farm-wife role.

Tentatively slated for early October - harvesting our Muscovy ducks. Based on the horror stories I've heard about cleaning and plucking ducks, I'm pretty nervous about the process. Oy...

Baby Goats!

Chardonnay has her babies on January 6th - one boy and one girl. And I was so sure that she had at least three in there! D'oh!

At 2 days old - the dark kid is the doeling, and the tan fella is our lone buckling, Cocoa.

After fooling me several times, Chardy finally, actually went into labor right around dinner time on the 6th. Farmer Bill was up the hill to feed and came scrabbling back to tell me that Chardonnay was delivering her 2nd babe. We all trucked back up the hill to check on everybody, help Mama dry everyone off, iodine their cord stumps and give them their first dose of colostrum/vitamin supplements. Chardy came through like a champ and her babies are healthy and beautiful!

And then again last night, Sidney did practically the same exact thing. Bill noticed two little new, wet babies at feeding time and came back with the report that we had two new pretty little girls.

The twinses!

Sidney and her darling doelings.

It is highly anticipated that Blue is also expecting shortly, but as she tends to be rather rotund on any given day, who knows for sure?

Three girls and a boy so far. YAY! :)

Brrrr!

Note to self: The first HARD freeze of 2013 was yesterday, November 21st. Today was even colder. The growing season is officially, completely done!

Puttin' it Up

My boo had the day off from work. The plan was for him to go salmon fishing in the Sound, just down the road a piece. Well, some bozo's boat had come untethered in the night and blown ashore at the boat launch, preventing Bill from putting in until the tide came back in, allowing the bozo in question to move his errant boat back where it belonged. And so, the day meant to be spent slaying fish was out. Instead, he came home and helped me do some serious catching up and putting up re: our garden landslide.

Socked away/made today -

Chelle -

Processed (washed, cut and froze)
*5 gallon bags of carrots
*6 gallon bags of summer squash

Picked and thrown in the dehydrator
*1/4 cup +/- bread poppy seeds
*1 cup German chamomile
*1 cup calendula blossoms

Bill -

Made
*1 pound goats milk mozzarella
*1 pizza dough
*1 beautiful Apple Pie (with our apples, of course)
*1 gallon apple cider (fermenting now)
*1 loaf white sandwich bread

Bill's homemade apple pie, bread and pizza (with his mozzarella)

Tomorrow I need to make a decision about what I want to do with our 10(ish) pounds of rapidly-ripening pears. Maybe jam, cider, pear sauce or ???

The pumpkins and tomatillos cometh SOON so I need to get ready for a wallop.

Carrots!

Sixteen pounds of them!

Among them, this... er... showpiece -

You're welcome 

The Indelible Taste of a Fish Lost

"The Longest Silence" is one of my favorite books.  The writing is fantastic, reminding me of Schweibert and Haig-Brown in it's practical love of fish, the places they live and people who they meet while chasing them.  I especially though love his months long description of trying to catch a permit, one of the hardest to catch fish on a fly.

I read that section again and again sometimes because it reminds me of learning to fish.  For whatever reason I seem to find the hardest way to figure it out.  Fly fishing was like that, salmon were like that, steelhead were like that and now Puget Sound is like that.  What's weird is that I can remember the first one of those fish hooked and lost as easily as if it was yesterday.

My first big fish on a fly was on the little Deschutes where I clambered down a steep bank into a slowly deepening run with overhanging alders.  I roll cast a Clouser Minnow into the current and let it roll along and then pull up tight and stripped it back.  I had about decided to leave the run and had just let the fly dangle in the current when a big Cutthroat took it.  My line ran off of my little reel and the fish jumped twice and was gone with my fly.  I can still remember the sun shining on the fly right before that trout decided to kill it.

My first hooked steelhead on a fly was in a very very long run of cobblestone.  I had recently started tying spey flies and had landed a dandy 19 inch Cutthroat on a Lady Caroline and had switched to a homemade contraption of copper colored dubbing and a duck flank.  Steelhead fishing makes your casting better over time and I remember casting about 45 degrees downstream and thinking that was a nice cast.  Bam, Tug, Tug and it was gone faster than it took me typing those words.

I've been trying to figure out Puget Sound since I got my boat.  I've fished for Kings off of Lilliwaup and Bald Point, Chambers Creek and everywhere else I could think of.  I've caught a few Chum and Pinks so I know how to pick them up at times but the big Kings keep eluding me.  This morning I went out, armed with some new knowledge from a friend of mine and started fishing not long after first light.

I was trolling in shallow water with a cut plug herring and a 4 oz weight.  I don't have a fish finder so I had to check for bottom by holding the rod every now and then to feel for bounces.  I had just done than and put the rod back in it's holder when it started bouncing back and forth like mad.  I killed the motor and got the rod out of the holder and set the hook in time to see my line taking off of the reel and the fish splash on the surface.  I started playing it in and then reached for the net to make sure it was handy.  Right then the fish ran straight for the boat and by the time I reeled up tight, no fish was there.

Like those other two fish, I will never forget this.  The astonishment at seeing the rod bounce after getting it in the rod holder and the gutting disappointment when I reeled up to a 4 oz weight with no fish.  The quiet hum of my trolling reel when it's letting line out and the solid head shaking weight of a big king.