Spring Gardening Photo Tour

I really wish I had more time to write about all the awesome garden stuff going on and about all the ways that gardening has brought me back to life after such a long, grey winter.  But I'm reading Joel Salatin's book "Folks, This Ain't Normal" and I want to get back to it.  (Not to mention my Mac is telling me that my "startup disk is full" and is acting up.  I feel like screaming, "PC LOAD LETTER?  What the ^(^&&(*^% is PC LOAD LETTER??!?!?")  So this will be a "pictures with captions" kind of post and I will call it good enough for now.  Stay tuned for more in-depth garden posts as the season progresses and I figure out what is up with my computer.

Seed potatoes (ordered from Fedco) are sitting in this box growing eyes.  They will be ready to plant in my Jumbo Potato Grow Bags this weekend.  This is a first for me, so we'll see how it goes.

Oregano after a long winter.  I have serious plans to start harvesting and drying more of my herbs in my dehydrator this year. 

An unusual variety of sage.  I think it's called Striped.  Also struggling after the long winter, but will be full and bushy soon!

Peas already planted and coming up.  This picture is 5 days old, and so the plants are even bigger now.

Kale that survived Hurricane Sandy blowing the hoop house off.  I can't believe how hardy this stuff is.  Good thing we love kale chips around here...I have five kale seedlings ready to plant as well!

With the rain and warm weather the Hairy Vetch and Winter Rye beds are exploding.  This stuff is not going to be easy to till in when it's time.  I might be renting some serious power tools.

Spinach that also survived Sandy.  

The garlic, onion and shallot bed is flourishing.  

This is a game.  It's called "Find the Osaka Purple Mustard Greens Sprouting."   (The dirt in this bed and the pea bed has not been de-rocked very well, so we go out and pick rocks and sticks out as time allows.  The beds I'm prepping for the major plantings are getting a much more thorough clean-up!)

A view of the whole garden.  Split rail fence will be installed in a week...Just in time for planting out my first set of seedlings.

From death to life.  The rosemary.  

And the mint and lemon balm box.  This is my favorite place to come, pick off a leaf and smell.  It's heaven.

Strawberries have been weeded and are gearing up.  Along with greens, strawberries are the first things we get to eat after the long winter.

Compost system and two helpers.  

Sweet potatoes cut, stuck in water with shishkabob sticks, and ready to grow roots and vines.

The kale, brussels sprouts, and cabbage seedlings are doing awesome, even after I burned the kale with a little too much fertilizing.  It has rebounded nicely and I made a note to self not to fertilize kale.  :-)  Also started already are peppers (they are TINY) and eggplant.  Starting seeds has been a really wonderful way for me to start "gardening" and getting back to what I LOVE even while the weather is still cold.  Thank you to Annmarie for all her encouragement and advice and to Ken for assembling the most awesome seedling system in the downstairs bathtub!

These are the chard seedlings.

SPRING IS HERE!  HOORAY!!!

Diamonds In This Rough

It has been a rough couple of months.  Between my over-employed husband, bouts of a stomach virus (and its reprise), and trying to plug away and finish out the school year, it has been really tempting to throw in the towel....stay in bed...throw the covers over my head and write the rest of the Spring off as a total loss.

But there are always "diamonds" in any rough.  I admit, some of these things are really mundane, and most of them have to do with work and schooling, because I tend to throw myself into work when I want to feel better.  Whether it's the little curriculum gem that brings a new dimension to our dwindling school year, or the joy of finally getting something done...it's those little things that can make all the difference. Sometimes it's just those little moments or small things that ease a burden and make it possible to keep on keepin' on.  

#1: Homeschool Movie Diamonds:  Liberty's Kids and City of Bees

The Liberty's Kids series on Netflix has completely saved our study of the American Revolution.  It isn't that I gave up on my own plans (all the books and timeline work continue) but these videos make the entire time period really come alive for the girls, and they have become our daily soap opera!  They girls literally BEG for the next episode, and we end up discussing issues from the movies quite often.  I know they are really learning and internalizing this stuff more than they would otherwise.  Not to mention, it just gives me a chance to sit and relax with them, which I've needed lately.

We also checked out a movie on bees called City of Bees for our gardening unit.  (The link here is for the newer version, but check the library for the original!)  While the quality of the movie is certainly a deterrent (it's obviously old, and the narrator has a very thick European accent), the girls and I learned more about bees from this ONE movie than ALL the gazillion books we've read about bees since Caeley started Kindergarten.  It basically follows a bee keeper (the European man) through a year of bee-keeping, and he gives a detailed description of the bees, the hive, the activity, etc.  We kept pausing the movie, exclaiming, "I didn't know THAT about bees!" or "So THAT'S what the propolis is!"  Great, great, great, random library find!  Through all the yuck when we were sick, having these two bright spots in our week was really a God-send.

#2: Homeschool App Diamond:  Mental Case

I have my friend Alexis to thank for this one.  It's called Mental Case and it's sheer genius for homeschool parents that don't want a million piles of flashcards around.  (I hear it is also a huge hit with college populations as well!)  Basically it's a flashcard App that allows you to either take pictures, type in, or use voice prompts to enter the data for the front and back of the flashcard.  That means you can either make your own flashcards, OR if you already have flashcards that come as part of a curriculum, you can take pictures of the front and back of the card with your iPad or smart phone and make the cards that way.  Apparently you can also use it on your desktop to enter data, but I haven't used that feature yet.  I have over 500 flashcards for Caeley currently entered in the App, and I can't imagine what these cards, all over my house, would look like.  Using Mental Case prevents you from becoming a mental case.  For sure.

Here's a bad picture, pulled offline, of what the flashcards look like in one "case" in the App.  You can see it is being used to study anatomy.  This is just the view of the case--when you "study the cards" in a case, they flash on the screen one at a time, just like you see a flashcard in real life.

#3: Homeschool Random Book Diamond:  The Story of Salt

It sounds horrifically boring...an entire children's book called The Story of Salt.  But it's fascinating.  I checked it out because it was listed in my favorite book about books, and almost didn't read it because I thought the girls would hate it.  Not so!  There is so much history, so many fun facts, so much cross-curricular connecting that we were hooked.  Get it.  You won't be disappointed.

#4: Day Date Diamond:  How My Husband Rocks

I got a Facebook invitation from Ken to go on a date.  While this sounds utterly unromantic, it was actually super cute.  It was the kind of email I remember getting during the courting phase of our relationship.  Utter sweetness.  It was also special because the reality is that we have seen very little of each other the last couple months due to circumstances at work that have provided him with not one, or two, or three, but really four jobs.  In an effort to make time with me, he recruited some students to babysit, sent his invitation, and we got to go see The Avengers.  What a great movie!!!  And how wonderful to think that Ken can still rock the day date.

#5: Spanish Diamond: Salsa Spanish Movies

Now it's just starting to seem like my kids have been sitting in front of the TV, but I have to mention this one, because it really has been filled in the missing piece of our Spanish curriculum puzzle.  (And I have Alexis to thank again for this gem!)  It's a series of Spanish videos put out by Georgia Public Broadcasting for FREE on their website.  The videos use puppets, familiar stories, and repetition of certain vocabulary words and structures to teach children Spanish.  Not only do the girls love it, but they are using the phrases and words on their own in real life, so the mission has been accomplished.  In another life, I'd be writing an elementary homeschool Spanish curriculum using these videos...

#6: Work Diamond: Finishing Schedules for Next Year

I can't jinx myself and say I'm done...because I am constantly altering and changing our school schedules up until the moment we begin school, but for the most part, I think I'm done with planning for next school year.  Caeley will be in 4th grade, and Meara will be in 1st.  I'm thankful that I did a lot of work cementing my philosophy (in my head and heart) and schedules (on the computer) when Caeley was young, so that each year I just need to "kick it up a notch" and make adjustments based on the girls'  current needs.  But because the framework has been laid, each year gets easier and easier to plan.  All that's really left for this summer (aside from minor tweaks) is a massive book order in July and planning our actual course of study for the Middle Ages.  

#7: Friend Diamond: Loving My Neighbors

I would not be making it through these days without the friends I'm so blessed to have.  Whether it's laughing through Saturday morning Bible study (affectionately known as BS) or ranting during tea time of the challenges of living virtuously, or discussing curriculum and educational theory during play dates, I've been lifted up mentally, emotionally and spiritually in so many ways these past couple months.  I'm encouraged to grow more, think more, and love more through this little circle of women, and for that I'm truly thankful.  

#8: Abundant Harvest Diamond: Eggs and Garden

When all else fails, when the ca-ca hits the fan, you'll find me picking slugs.  Because no one comes out to the garden (they are afraid I'll ask for help) and slugs don't talk back.  When the whining doesn't stop, or Ailin pees on the floor or in her pants for the tenth time in one day (just because it's "funny"), or when the noise in my head is too loud...thank you GOD for the quiet time I get to spend in the garden.  The strawberries are coming in, the tomato plants have shot up with the rain, and the greens just keep coming.  The chickens are doing their thing...our egg count for April was 255 eggs.  I can't believe it.  Where did all those eggs GO?  It's nice not to feel quite so tied to grocery shopping, but more than that, it's nice to see the tangible blessings of the "harvest" when life's other blessings can be so much harder to recognize.

I am really, really looking forward to summer!

Chickens and Easter Eggs

There's lots of news down on the "farm!"  Too much to write in detail about all that's been going on in terms of the garden and chickens.  But I have planted some seeds in the ground, have eaten my first of many salads (please someone come help me eat these greens!), and have played the "just kidding" game with Jack Frost.  (For those who don't know this one: This is the game where you think he's left town for the season,  so you put your hoop house in the shed, plant all sorts of stuff that's not supposed to be planted until after the last frost, and then out of the blue one day, he screams, "JUST KIDDING!" and you're scrambling to get the old sheets and the hoop house out of the shed to cover EVERYTHING.  I'm only a little bitter this year thanks to the hoop house!

Greens in full force.  (The white stuff is to try to keep the slugs off the new plants coming in.)

Other side of the bed from the greens.  New lettuce seedlings.

Garlic coming in up top of the other bed.  Should get about fifty heads in July.  No problem with vampires around here.

Haven't put anything here yet.  Waiting for peppers, tomatoes, and other things that like hotter weather.

The best news though, is that during my break from blogging, our chickens began to lay!  Conveniently, we got our first egg on March 1st, a full two to three weeks earlier than I anticipated.  I was not shocked, though, that our first egg was white.  I included the Leghorn breed (the all-white with red combs) in our flock because they are known for their lay rate and their great "feed conversion ratio," meaning they don't eat much but they lay a lot of eggs for how little they eat.  One of our Leghorns is also laying HUGE eggs.  They are consistently double-yolkers and one, which really looked like an ostrich egg, was a triple-yolker.  Fertile Myrtle!

The ostrich triple yolker.  I didn't want to eat it, but it wouldn't fit in a carton!

It has been amazing watching the whole flock "come into lay" as the number of hours of daylight increases. (Did you know that lay rates are based on how much light the chickens get?  During the winter we will get fewer eggs.)  The Auracanas started laying their blue-ish eggs next, and slowly the two brown(ish) layers revved up at the end of the month, after lots of shell-less eggs dropped under the roost bars.  I can't believe how many eggs we are getting.  Some days we get six, some days seven, and today we got NINE!  There's a lot of quiches in our life right now, and I can't wait to make some homemade mayonnaise and have the luxury of baking with my own eggs.

Our March egg count: 115 eggs. 

Leghorns: 60

Auracanas: 35

Silver Laced Wyandottes: 13

Speckled Sussex: 7

The very first egg.

 

Today's "harvest."

 And the last piece of farm news---ALL the chickens finally have names.  It took a while until they were fully grown, with fully developed combs and feathers, to decide on names and to tell some of them apart, especially the three Leghorns.  We are also starting to see how some of them are different in personality.  Cocoa is the sweetie who loves me even though I think she's the one whose leg I crushed under the coop wheel.  We bonded after her incident because I was giving her treats out of sheer guilt.  Now she thinks I am treat lady, which I am, and is the most willing to sit in my lap.  She's also been voted "Most Likely To Wander From the Pack and Become Hawk Bait."  She's really stupid.  Big Red, originally given that name because she was the first Leghorn to develop her large red comb, is the most precocious of the bunch...the first to come over and see what you're up to.  And "Floppy" (whom I prefer to call "Flopsy")...well, it's kinda obvious why she got her name.  And she's constantly brushing and shaking that thing out of her face.  The little debutant.

Floppy.

On the nicer days, we let the ladies out to dust bathe in the mulch.  Clockwise from the top: Double Stuff, Elizabeth, Oreo (Double Stuff's slightly-more-black sister), Penny (aka: Reed), and Henny.

This is half of the nesting pair of hawks we have in our front trees.  They were much easier to spot before the leaves came in on the trees.  I think they remember the chicken dinners from last year and came back thinking they were going to feed their babies.  

I still love my coop.  Probably more and more each day.  I've been moving it around 2 or 3 times a day now that the girls are bigger and pooping more.  It's the best thing ever.  Really.  I'd give up my iPad before I'd give up this coop.   And the hawk babies will be hungry.

Slug Eyes

I've spent the last week slowly picking baby slugs off of my baby greens.  The worst part isn't that they are slimy, or TINY (almost impossible to see), but that you can only do it in the early morning or late at night because they hide during the day.  So, before our school day begins, I've had to devote time, in the fog and almost rain, to slug picking.

This is a FULL grown slug.  Not a baby.  And not my picture.  I stole it from Google.

While drinking cold coffee with slug-slimy fingers is far from ideal, I've gotten rather good at it.  I've developed my slug eyes.  I can spot those suckers a mile away now.  I was struck this morning, as I often am when I'm gardening, by a strange thought:  God has the best slug eyes.  He can see the tiniest black spots within us...those spots that, left untended, will eat away at the beautiful greens of virtue in our souls.  And He will sit there, and pick every single, nasty, slimy slug off of us, if only we let Him.

Today, my thirty-three day consecration to Mary has ended.  In the process, I have learned that I have slugs I never even knew I had.  God saw them, but I had to want to see them before I could.  Taking the time to really examine myself, give up the world (okay, Facebook and blogging), and let God pick off some slugs, has drawn me closer to Him, His mercy, and His Mother in a way that I didn't think possible.  And while the official consecration time is over, I am more inspired than ever to continue trying to grow in my faith, to listen to the plans that God has for me, and hopefully to give Him less slugs to pick from my garden.

Happy Spring!

All-in-One Update

I've been finding it terribly hard to get to blogging lately.  We're getting over one wave of the bad cold with Baby A, and now it seems that I'm getting it.  I'm also beginning a large computer project that I take on this time every year, and so any free computer moments have been given over to that.

While we've had our fair share of annoying, cranky, sick, and tired days, there has also been a lot of fun fun around here.  I thought I'd break this post into a quick update in the following categories:  Chickens, Home, Garden, School.  (If I had a "U", I'd make a cute acronym like CHUGS, but alas, I lack a "U".)

Chickens

The chicks are heading into their 4th week.  They have gotten so big, and their true feathers are coming in. I placed a wire/mesh covering over the top of the brooder because they love to practice jumping and flying.  I found one on top of the waterer the other day, which is just way too close to "flying the coop" for my taste.  The girls are as helpful as ever with them, and Ailin has finally started to enjoy interacting with them.  

Giving the chickens some time outside.

I love how their feathers blend in!

You can see how I've raised the feeder and waterer, both to make it more comfortable for the chickens to feed now that they are taller, and also to keep them from kicking so much of the pine bedding into them.

A chicken.  On the playset.  Ailin finds it amusing.

Happy girl!

I think the one on the right is Runty.  But I can't tell anymore!

Home

My Soup on Saturdays plan has been working marvelously.  I should mention that I usually double the amount of onions, garlic and seasoning in pretty much every soup I make.  :-)  These are the soups we've had so far:

1.  Quinoa Minestrone (I use a version of the recipe from Whole Foods, which I alter depending on what is in season, what grain I want to eat, and what I have on hand.  It's a great starting point for whatever Minestrone you feel like making!)
2.  Cheese and Broccoli (Super secret family recipe.  With one gigantic Velveeta brick.  'Nuff said.)
3.  Black Bean (Already wrote about that adventure!)
4.  Sweet Potato with Pear
5.  Italian Sausage with Cabbage
6.  Lentil and Swiss Chard Soup

My favorite has been the Italian Sausage with Cabbage.  All three girls loved it, and I couldn't believe it when they were stuffing their faces with CABBAGE!  Hooray!  It's similar to another one of our family favorites, Sausage, Kale and Lentil Soup, but it was lighter, simpler, and just as delicious.  The best part about this whole "Soup on Saturdays" plan is that I have had instant lunches for myself, since I'm really trying to eat less wheat and more veggies these days.

I've also tried making a couple new recipes this past month or so.  I tried a new Stuffed Shells recipe, which was super yummy.  I also tried my hand at Beef Empanadas for the first time.  I left out the olives and raisins in the recipe, because who puts olives and raisins in something with beef and expects kids to eat it?  (I would've done it if I had been making them for myself...)  Empanadas are a LOT of work.  I doubled the recipe, and had some leftover to freeze for dinners this week, but I'm not sure I approve of how much work they were for how much you actually get.  Perhaps taking a shortcut and buying pre-made refrigerated dough would help.  They were delicious, though.  My goal for November is to get all the squmpkin we harvested this summer cooked and frozen.

Outside the kitchen, we celebrated Halloween and All Saints Day recently.  That was a lot of fun.  Caeley put together her own St. Rose of Lima costume this year, so that saved me from having to worry about it.  For Halloween she was Robin Hood, which she had decided as soon as we started reading the original story for literature.  (It is a pretty fantastic story.  I had never read it, and am really enjoying our Wednesday afternoons with the merry men of the Nottingham.)  Meara was Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha for All Saints, and a black cat for the millionth Halloween in a row.  I can't believe the leotard part of the costume still fits her.  Ailin was Raggedy Ann for Halloween, and melted down when I tried to put her in the angel costume for the All Saints party.  A fallen angel.  Literally.  

Robin Hood + Black Cat

Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Man

Coolest Pumpkin Ever.  GO RAVENS!  (No, I didn't carve this--we saw it out trick-or-treating.)

Kateri and Rose of Lima

St. Joseph Joe and Ailin

Musical Chairs is always such a hit!

Garden

Helping harvest the turnips.  

Garlic is in.  Turnips are out.  The girls helped me harvest them yesterday.  We still need to cut the greens off, wash them, and figure out what the heck you do with turnips.  I was clearly feeling adventurous when I planted them, because I have, in fact, never eaten a turnip.  Nor do I have any idea how to cook one, what one tastes like, or whether my husband or children will even like them.  Caeley is super excited, though, because apparently in her "Little House on the Prairie Cookbook" there's a recipe for mashed turnips, so I guess we'll give that recipe a try with a couple of them.

CHEESE!

Picking turnips

Greens, Carrots, Sage and Thyme

The hoop house is really serving its purpose.  My mesclun greens are flourishing under it, the oregano and rosemary are still alive, and if it weren't for the slugs, my spinach would be doing much better.  The slugs have given up somewhat on the kale, so that's finally coming in nicely.  (Directly behind Ailin in the picture.)  The real pain in the butt was the surprise October snow.  In the middle of my Saturday morning Bible study, I had to run outside and clear all the snow from the plastic because it was getting completely weighted down by that wet, heavy mess.  I had to find garden tools and sticks to prop up the plastic in the middle of each hoop so that the snow would run off it.  Next year, I will fashion some poles cut specifically for this purpose, which will work much better than what I had to throw together on the spot.  In spite of the "work" involved,  I am pretty excited to still be picking my salads out of the garden well after our first frost.

School

We organize our school year into three twelve week trimesters.  There's so much I could say about how our first trimester is going.  I will need to do a longer post at the end of the trimester, but overall, I am happy with our progress.  I think I might need to cut down our work load slightly, as it seems like we never really finish all I want to do.  And I realized that I planned too much "extra" stuff for Meara, and that my focus this year for her needs to be basics--math and reading.  I think I'm going to let her be more self-directed about what she wants to learn for "science" this year.  I might have over planned, but I'd rather overplay and feel free to cut back than vice versa.  Caeley is loving grammar, Meara is starting to read and is more motivated about the whole process, and Ailin knows most of her letters.  (No, I don't purposely teach her anything yet.  She has this set of Sesame Street books with letters on the front.  Since she's obsessed with Sesame Street, she has learned the letters from reading these books with us over, and over, and over, and over.  Today at Panera, she saw the "EXIT" sign above the door and shouted "X! Over there!"  It was a pretty cool moment!)

The homeschool group on a tour of the
Historical Society of Frederick County

Aside from the "book learning," we've been taking a nature class every Friday, which is awesome, and on the other Fridays there are things like Little Flowers, Little Saints, and field trips.  There always seems to be something going on, which has made our days fly by!

The homeschool group at the nature center class. 

On a hike, thinking of words to describe nature for the Hiaku poems later.

 I do know that I am gearing up to push through these next 2 weeks until Thanksgiving break.  We are ALL (Daddy included) taking time off to rest, recouperate and decompress from the first trimester.  I'd like to take a field trip day to the Native American museum in DC to round out our unit on Native Americans, and hit the art galleries to hunt for the Fragonard pictures we studied this term.  I am so looking forward to it.  It is during that break that I will probably reemerge to do a more proper blog post. :-)
PS: I'm too sick and tired to preview this for grammatical, punctuation, or any other errors.  Pardon me if there are any. :-)