4 Sweet Sisters

Do Monday's get you down? Getting back into the work week whether at home or away can be daunting, especially after a time change. I needed some Powergize to get me going today! Last spring I took the plunge and started purchasing inexpensive indoor plants. I wanted fresh, live green things in our home. I had no clue of what I was doing but I started with two, $1.99 flowering succulents. I then asked all my Face Book friends if they knew the names of my new friends. I watered them weekly and eventually the flowers fell off  and reflowered once. I thought they were on deaths door but I am happy to report a year later they are still alive! I am utterly amazed because somehow I find indoor plants to be harder to take care of than a newborn. Mondays are laundry and watering day around our home. I find that scheduling this activity for when I know I will be home for a large portion of the day means there is more of a chance I will water all the green things! Currently I have 2...

After a busy week of school, soccer games, dehydrating and canning; I'm a bit tired. Fall through early spring is truly the busy season for garden harvesting, pumpkin bread business and holidays here. For some reason every year it takes me by surprise! We've gotten most of the gardens in, had plenty of rain and are now fighting the varmints and the chickens. Don't those chickens realize a third of the garden is for them? If they eat it now they'll never get to taste those big lovely collard leaves! On the subject of chickens this is the first time that we've had almost our who crew molt at the same time. That means we have been getting less than 3 eggs a day from 12 girls in the past month or so. It's been a bit disappointing. We really use a lot of eggs here. I usually keep 4 dozen at all times in my refrigerator. Right now I' have about 8 eggs. I really don't want to buy eggs. Hopefully we are coming to the end. We have a lot of featherless hens out th...

That's right no excuses anymore for why I'm not blogging more frequently ( I'm secretly itching to make excuses but I won't). It's just our life right now. We have been super busy. While everyone elses summer gardens are winding down we are gearing up for our 1st big planting of the season. Fall/ winter here at our home usually starts out our growing season, followed by winter/ spring planting. Next summer I'm hoping to plant our beds full of sweet potatoes as our ground cover. This summer we added a large 3 1/2 x 24 foot bed to the front of our house behind the white picket fence we installed this summer. Lots of little yummy veggies are starting to poke their heads up :) We had intended to use a old work table to make a salad table, but I think it is way past it's prime and would take to much shoring up. So we've decided to either make a new raised bed out of pallets (if we can get our hands on some) or small round swimming pools ($7 a piece). I need m...

Ugh! Can I just say it gain? Uuuugghhhh . This what our garden looked like last fall. If you look at the top of the picture you can see the girlies swing set. The "ladies" coop used to be there. We moved it to the back of our garden now that we have more room. (We bought a section that didn't come with our original lot.) To be fair the area above is so barren because that is where the swimming pool sits. It's back up now but the "ladies" did almost the same thing to the rest of the garden over the winter and spring. Any ideas on what we should do with this site in the fall? I had planned a fire ring, but I really don't think it will be used much. Still thinking this idea through. We purchased this fence almost 2 years ago when one of the do-it-yourself stores had them on sale. The ladies love going onto our neighbors property but they also liked to wander up the next street. We had a long term plan for this fence. We knew eventually our neighbors-to-...

Today over at Smockity Frocks she's asked the question of what mistakes we've learned from in our gardens this year. After you're finished here jump over there and read all the link ups! ( I wish I knew how to put her cute garden picture up.) The biggest lesson I've learned is that our tomatoes need acid! See look at how gorgeous and green these plants are but there are no blossoms or fruit. I think the problem is this from all the research I've done and the soil testing. I mean we did add about 2500 lbs of composted horse manure last fall. We've large tomato plants and out of the 10 plants we have gotten 2 tomatoes. Ugh! Very frustrating..... We plan on adding lime in the next month or so before fall planting in September. Which is like spring planting for those of you who live up north. Are seasons are fall/winter and winter/spring. The other thing I noticed today were the blue jays landing in the tomato bushes. I need to find out if they may be eating the ...

I really enjoy how the English use the English language. My favorite right now is the use of the word garden. It sounds so much prettier than backyard, although I do like a good back yard b-b- q ! If any of you have chickens and live in the city or suburbs you know that they pretty much take up all of your garden space. They love to hunt frogs and lizards , scratch for bugs, worms and dig holes. Oh no one told you of the holes they dig? That's so they can lounge in a refreshing dirt bath. Yah . Know one prepared me for that part. Consider yourself warned if thinking cute fuzzy chicks. In all seriousness we love our girls (the hens and the girlies that live in the house). I just have gotten soooo tired of walking out onto the back deck or anywhere else in the garden and stepping in slimmy poo. So this will be the first installment of taking the garden back. Superman (remember the guy and his shirt from yesterday?) built and put this screened room up for me two Mother's Day...

I joined the link up party over at Smockity Frocks . Unfortunately I don't know how to put up her gardening button. Please go over and take a look. They have been handling a situation in their home amazingly well. Our Spring 2011 garden is coming to a close and I still need to draw a map of what I planted from the past fall in to spring. Our pepper plants seem to be in full bloom so we will continue to let them grow. I always think fresh eggs in a basket look so pretty and country. I found this basket a couple of years ago at a thrift store. Great for collecting eggs. These are actually tomatoes from the plants we planted last fall. Lots of vines with very little fruit. We will be adding lime into the ground come late June or July. We got just over 2lbs of green beans before our plants looked like they had rust all over them. We have some beans left but nothing to speak of. We planted fresh mint and mulched it with straw. I'm hoping it will fill the whole flower bed. We ma...

The garden this past fall looked beautiful. We had lots of green foliage but not as many veggies as I had hope for... The reasons are many, but my least favorite would be the Fruit Rats and Squirrels. Yup, the rats ate every single one of our beautiful Cauliflowers and Brussels Sprouts! We had 12 of each plant growing wonderfully. They ate some collards, beans, and onions. I was disgusted. Especially after I saw the night vision videos of the little beasties. Yuck! We trapped and did every thing else we could think of. When I say "we", I mean Superman. If you'll recall I was really not into trying another garden, but my man really thought we should. So I jumped in. I encouraged, bought, planted, replanted, hoed and pulled weeds only to have those little buggers get the best of me. They didn't even care about the shiny things we placed in the garden to scare them away. No, they waited until night fall to have their feast. As you can see it's been 5 months and I...

Hi Folks. I can't believe it has been so long. The fact of the matter is schooling, girl's groups, play practice and a much needed vacation is kept our family overloaded. All wonderful things, but you know how it is. Right? What's been going on around here? Well unfortunately last night Farm Girl found old Gert ( one of our first chickens) dead. Just before we had a passel of ladies convening on the homestead to make apple pies. Not good timing. She was truly one of my favorites. She had a wonderful life here. Eating spaghetti, hunting frogs, bugs and children. She also gave us some wonderful eggs! Farm Girl was a sad, but seems to be learning the ways of farm life. Saturday she is going to look at about 150 new chicks a friend of ours just got in. Maybe we can persuade Superman to get a couple ;) Our garden is perking along. We are already harvesting collards for the chickens! We put in two rows in just for them. The weather has not been cooperative. We haven't had a...

I really didn't want to do it this year, but Superman is all about it! We are trying a new location for our garden. Gardening in Florida without pesticides is hard stuff. A lot of labor and sometimes (okay most of the time) very little fruit. I really have given up, but there is a small part of me hoping to be proven wrong. The year before last we tilled up a large piece of our backyard just outside our kitchen door. That's what Square Foot Gardening suggested. We blocked off 12, 4x4 foot squares, amended the soil and laid on a thick layer of mulch. I planned out every square and the rotation for each. Superman set up a water system and I fantasized about cutting our coop bill and not going out to the 4-H garden. The growth was exciting. The garden was flourishing until ( dunt , dunt , dunt , dunn ) the winter sun changed position in the sky. Over a week or so we saw the shadow of our house covering the entire garden. Needless to say most everything stopped growing. We were a...

One way I've decided to challenge myself and my family (a bit) is by being creative with all the "funky" veggies we get in our kitchen basket. The first year we belonged to a co-op I did this, but then we got away from it when we got our chickens. They really enjoy chard, kale, beets greens, you name it! I justified giving the chickens these veggies 1) by they didn't get to roam as much as we would like and 2) we would be getting the nutrients in our eggs. So in my mind we are eating the veggies!(not- i know a bit gross) Yesterday was our pick up day and we got 2 big bunches of kale (can anyone say yuck). I decided that night was the night for Kale Chips! Mmmmmmmmm. Okay, I'm still thinking gross! Anyhoo, I got all my dicing of our abundance of peppers, dill and cilantro done and put in the freezer. Then I washed and remove the rib from the kale leaves. It really was a pretty color of green. I then found a couple of recipes online and went from there. Basically y...

We officially ended our 2 weeks of eating out of our pantry. We did it with no problem at all. We could easily do a month, but I really don't want to deplete supplies I keep on hand. If we had gone a month I would have had to buy some milk and cheese. So that being said, we didn't spend any moola on food or other household supplies. We even had fresh produce (i thought i would have to buy) from our garden! Today's topic (if you haven't guessed) is Pantries . Do you have one? Do you want one? Why have one? I think we'll start with the why have it: Plan meals in advance or on the fly. When prices are high you can shop your pantry for deals you've already snagged. Eases your burden in a financial crisis or lean times. Prepared in case of short or long term emergency. This is a short list( it could be much longer). The reason why we keep our pantry? All of the above and I grew up seeing my Mom and Grandmother do it. It makes great sense for any budget conscious ...

Okay, this is a rather silly but (i feel) a frugal tip. Rain. The Lord's water faucet. His way of refreshing the world and giving it a good drink!Errrrrrrrrr a bath? I have to admit I was a bit surprised when Superman broke out the shampoo last Saturday afternoon. See, I look stunned! Everyone thought that was neat and decided to give it a try. I wonder in Laura Ingalls would yell, "Manly it's raining. Get a hunk of soap!" I prefer to think back to the pioneers and what they went through and might have thought. Superman was concerned it was a bit to backwoods, dare He say Redneck! Hey, he started it:) Here on the suburban farm we use a rain barrel. I never thought I would do something so "earth friendly", but being in 4-H has given us that opportunity. We would actually have more if we had gutters! Our barrel stores about 60 gallons of water. You can get them smaller and prettier. We went through 4-H and took a class. The total cost was $35 and hav...

Does anyone remember me talking about my onion woes? Well here is something tasty we do with the tips! When the onions are 1st pulled we take a bunch of them and cut and clean all the greens. I then chop them up and put them in my American Harvester Dehydrator that my parents gave me 16 years ago! (as you can tell I like this machine) Here's what they look like when they are done. Now they are ready for soups, biscuits, dips, you name it. So now I'm ready to make onion dip. Use 1/4 to 1/3 cup of green onions (really to taste). Place them in your coffee grinder and give it a whirl. Add salt and pepper to taste and give another whirl! Mix in about 2 cups of your favorite sour cream or yogurt. Let stand in the refrigerator for about an hour. Dip in your favorite veggies! Yummy! We do this with dill also! Check out more frugal ideas over at Life As Mom ! What are some of your favorite dips? julie

I'm participating in Frugal Friday over at Life as Mom but I always have other things to share. Spices were the topic of discussion over there today. I used to buy in bulk from Frontier but they are a bit pricey for me. So I've switched. Mountain Rose Herb has lots and lots of organic/non irradiated spices for about half of what the other site charges. I also use Costco and I buy the 2, one pound blocks of yeast that work really well. Fresh spices are always wonderful. Certain times of the year my chickadees live on pesto sauce and I try to freeze enough for future pizzas. Yummy! I grow dill for dips and cooking, basil, sage, and garlic. I know, garlic in FL? That's what I've been thinking, but the "books" all say it can be done. For 2 years I've planted garlic and onions. My onions grow, but don't bulb. Still haven't figured that one out and they are the bulbing variety. Garlic, I put it in the ground and it shrivels up...So I decided it must be...