Squeezin The Juice

What the hell!! I've been buying gallons of organic orange juice when I've got a frigging orange tree in the back yard. For quite a long time, I've dismissed the orange tree as a nuisance, somtheing to be dealt with. The fruit would fall to the ground year after year, requireing clean up. I had never tried to eat the fruit, having been told by more than one person that the oranges from the tree were sour and not fit to eat. What a suprise then, when I finally decided to see for myself! The ripe fruit is sweet, juicy, delicious, hands down the winner over store bought for the financial savings alone!!

I picked up a trillium juicer at Sally's on half off day for $2.50. It looked brand new, in the box and all the parts were wrapped in plastic. SCORE! The master plan was to juice every last orange on the tree. Since then I found this Granny Miller video and realized I should can some of these wonderful oranges. That will be the next task.

All members of the family were enlisted for this job. No one was coerced and no husbands were injured in the making of this juice.

The girls and I picked bushel after bushel of oranges. After picking over 100 oranges, I decided to get through what we had before picking any more. We brought the oranges in from in sacks, about 20 at a time so the girls could carry them. Freya washed and rinsed the oranges while I peeled them. All the peels and pulp went into the compost after we were done.

Bella and Dad put the oranges through the juicer, its not the most efficient juicer but it ROCKS for $2.50! After letting it settle for a while, Freya scooped out the pulp. Or as she calls it, "The Gulp".

We worked all day, the girls were really into it and couldn't wait to drink their own homemade orange juice. At last, after about 4 hours we were done and the girls went out to play while Scott and I did the clean up. I don't think this juice will last us all year, but it will definitely put a dent in our grocery bill!

The big problem we are running into is space. There is not a lot of space in our freezer....and 20 bags of frozen OJ takes up a lot of room. Another reason to buy a deep freeze!!

Can You Dig It?

I am never more content with my body than after a days work outside in the garden and all that tending to it entails. Hard work, physical work, honest work makes me feel......relaxed in my body like no other work can.

Today was coop cleaning day. This job is a process and cleaning the coop itself isn't even the first step.

The first step is to remove the layers of hay off all the beds in the front yard. I have tried planting cover crops for overwintering and it was a serious backfire!

To this day, I am fighting the clover I laid down a couple of years ago. Its called cover crop for a reason! A thick blanket of it grows over a quarter of the front yard. If I want to plant there, I have to spend an hour bent over, pulling scraping and yanking the clover out.

Next, I empty all the beautiful compost out of the bins. This gets spread out over the front yard beds. It is now that my inner fire is really lit up for Spring! The glorious smell of the compost always gets me going! This is a smell I will never tire of...dark, rich, crumbly soil. Throughout my life, in its darkest moments, my greatest comfort and solace has always come from lying on the earth. Soaking up the heat that comes from the black dirt and filling my nose with the scent of it.

Now at last, it's time to clean the coop. All the cedar shavings and manure get shoveled into the wheel barrow, rolled over to the empty compost bins, and layered in with the aforementioned clover. A good soaking of the mixture gets everything going. I will continue to add to it the normal yard waste and kitchen scraps that the chickens don't eat(which dosn't amount to a whole lot!)

A new layer of cedar shavings go down on the floor of the coop and the freshly scrubbed ladders the chickens use as roosts go back up. Now the coop is done!!

Dandelion Tea

I came this close to buying Dandelion Tea the other day. Truly, I was about to pay money for it. Then I heard my Granna's voice in my head. Cussing me for wasting money on buying weeds. So, I came home and looked it up online and made it myself! I get what I want, save money, and Granna's little voice inside my head is happy. I like to make the voices happy now and then.

I felt a little guilty about keeping these prime dandelion greens to myself (the chickens usually get dibs) but then realized that with the copious amounts of of it growing in our garden, there really was more than enough to go around.

After picking and washing, I layed them out on the drying racks (wonderful and beautiful window screens I bought from a demolition sale for $1 each) and let them set for about a week. Along with the leaves, the tea recipe calls for dandelion roots. I looked at about 10 different recipes and this is what I came up with....

1 tsp. dandelion leaves and root per cup of boiling water.

See how simple!!! Dandelion is likely an excellent digestive aid and is used as a tea to cleanse the liver. But I just like the taste and the fact that its FREE!!

Holy Seed Starts!

This is it! March in California is time to start cookin!!! I am a bit reluctant, however, to over do it. Our family will be vacationing in mid-April and I have yet to find a volunteer to feed the animals every day, let alone nurse along tiny seed starts!!

Planning, however, doesn't need any help to move it along. This year, corn will have its own plot. The girls (our chickens, not our kids) will have to relinquish a bit of the backyard so we can grow a nice sized crop of corn. If only they knew they were the intended recipients, they wouldn't mind.

Then, tons of salad greens, collard greens, beets, tomatoes, carrots, peas and beans. I will be trying broccoli again this year. I've not had luck in the past due to aphids. However, I've lost my fear of using DE on the plants and I'm sure this will do the trick.

I'm cutting back on the summer squash but will still plant a couple of patty pan and crook neck.

This should be the year the blackberries take off. With a little luck we'll be making jam from our own berries this year.

The girls are already in full egg-laying mode, we're getting a dozen eggs every 2 days. We've been having a lot of egg white breakfasts!

15 Free Minutes

Time to really get going on the garden! This week has been a lot like spring even though its barely mid-January. I've been working on pruning and mulching lately. Yesterday I cleared out a large area in the back yard that had been filled with rocks and pea gravel. The plan is to surround it with a chicken wire fence to protect it from the chickens and use it to try my hand at corn again.

Last season, it became obvious that the peach tree was affected by leaf curl. After reading from many sources and asking around it seemed the consensus was to spray the entire tree with copper sulfide. I hate to use anything on the plants but compost and DE but I really can't bear to lose my peach tree. Scott bought it form me shortly after we got married and it was the first thing that we planted together. So, I pruned it well and sprayed it down. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will keep it healthy.

One of my goals this year is to grow wheat. I have never grown wheat and I don't know anyone who has grown wheat, but it's really just a grass....right? We'll see how that goes!!

8 Days A Week

Did I say that we took a vacation before the craziness of spring planting???



Every day, seedlings are ready to go out, ground is waiting to be cleared, squash need watering, beds need weeding, wigwams to be made. This is it!! Our long winter is over!!



Last week I cleared some ground in the front yard and set up a new bed. This week I planted eggplant and peas there. Still some room left, cucumbers maybe?



Near that, I planted out the corn seedlings, they are already a foot tall and growing fast. This is my first try at corn. I have read they are nitro-hungry so I'm stewing up some rabbit poo tea. Seamus keeps me in a steady supply of poo!!!



Behind the corn, I have 5 tomato plants. Last year, I tried companion planting with marigolds and it worked very well. I didn't have any pest problems on the tomatos so this year I planted even more marigolds. They are pretty too (which is good for the girls who would have the whole yard filled with flowers).



In the corner I put in an artichoke plant. They're not my favorite thing to eat, but the kids love them and so do the in-laws. Hopefully enough to share, if not this year then next year!! I am excited to have something that will produce year after year without having to be replanted every time.

Vacation!

We took a week off before the madness of spring planting to visit a couple of cities in the area. One of my favorite stops was the lovely and whimsical yarn store in Santa Rosa, http://www.castawayyarn.com/yyarn.com/. The best part? Oooh, maybe the giant magpies nest in the front window, the tray of cupcake pincushions, the little dinghy right inside the front door, or perhaps the huge felted wool tornado complete with cows and other livestock!!

The next best thing for me was our visit to the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens. For those of us who have never heard of Luther Burbank before, he was the great man who brought us (among other things) the Russet Potato! Thank you Mr. Burbank. He made his home in Santa Rosa and it has been maintained since his death by various entities and is currently owned by the city of Santa Rosa. I am envious of his home and grounds but most of all, I lust after his marvelous greenhouse complete with a FIREPLACE!!!! What more can you ask for? We were not allowed inside the greenhouse but I did peek inside the windows. It really is the most wonderful of its kind that I have had the privilege to see in person. It has renewed my hunger for a greenhouse of my own.

We will always remember the time we spent in the Petrified Forest. We were definitely ready to get out of the car and the short (less than a mile) walk through the forest to view the petrified trees was just the ticket.

Something like 3 million years ago, a volcanic eruption felled giant and ancient redwood trees. They were buried in ash and over the millena petrified into rock. In the early 1900's, diggers worked to unearth these behemoths and they are still on display today. If you get the chance to visit a petrified forest, go!!! You will not be sorry you went.

After Santa Rosa, we headed south to Half Moon Bay. This is a town that I have spent lots of time in but never have I had the chance to stay over night. Usually we will go for a day trip and stay for a couple hours so we can be home in time to prepare dinner.

My in-laws very generously paid for our room in Half Moon Bay. We stayed in a wonderful hotel on the beach and spent a whole day out enjoying the ocean. Nights were spent in the jaccuzzi looking at stars and listening to the fog horn. We all had a blast but the girls had the most fun! Truly, all they need is a place with a swimming pool and they are satisfied but give them the beach and they're in heaven!

We try to visit the goat farm when we are in HMB.

Harley Goat Farm http://www.harleyfarms.com/ is a wonderful place for kids, adults, foodies, everybody who has a hunger for exploring and discovering local treasures.

We can buy some of their cheeses at our local Whole Foods market, but our favorite is the Ricotta which is only available at the shop. (I believe they will ship it to you as well).

Check out their website, they have a whole wall of awards and accolades to recommend them.

We had lots more stops on our trip. We were only gone for a week, but it feels like forever. Tomorrow, we are going to Full Cirlce Farm