New Years Morning

This how I spent my New Year's morning!  

Cup of coffee in one hand, catalogs in the middle and list in the other.  

We are going to try a couple of new varieties of vegetables and will be trying lettuce one more time.  In twenty years of gardening I haven't been able to successfully grow lettuce without it bolting on me.  Worst case scenario, I will tie up some garden space a few dollars worth of seeds -  best case, I might have learned something after twenty years!

Happy New Year!

A toast to everyone for the New Year - Wishing all of you prosperity, abundance and good health for the year ahead.  From all of us at Wandering Moose Farms!

What to make for dinner?

Post was written on 12/30/17 & posted the following day:
I have made several attempts at meal planning and I am successful for a month or so at a time and then I fail miserably.  This weekend is no exception to the latter.  Most of my day was spent off the farm and while exceptionally productive, not much got done here.  Once I returned, Little man and I spent an hour crossing one item off my ever growing to-do list and then he came over and said, "Mom, what's for dinner?"

"I don't know, buddy, but I will figure it out?"  

Fortunately we have a wonderful problem - the freezers are full with both freshly frozen and leftover frozen meals, components, vegetables and other assorted combinations of the above.  I manage to stock the basics - onions, potatoes, spices, celery - most of the time, this week was of course an exception.  I had two potatoes, three onions - one of which I could use the tops for a salad, six mushrooms, and about three stalks of barely salvageable celery.  

I opened the freezer and stared at various packages of un-identifiable frozen proteins.  While I am pretty good at marking whatever I put in there, Little man's father isn't so diligent.  He was playing cards with Little man at the kitchen table so a pop quiz ensued while five packages of unknown proteins (I am pretty sure they were proteins) were placed on the table in front of him.  From those packages, a three ounce leftover grilled steak and a six ounce portion of roast beef were identified and placed in warm water to defrost.

The mushrooms, celery, and one onion were sliced and added to a pan with some butter.  Minced garlic from the refrigerator and the two potatoes, diced were added.  A 2-cup bag of stock was removed from the back freezer and added to another pan to return to liquid form.  A little salt, pepper and some dried oregano were added to the simmering veggies.  The beef, still semi-frozen, diced easily and was set aside.  In the meantime I threw together a pie-crust, and after five minutes of looking for my rolling pin because I didn't put it back where it belonged, I lined the pie plate that my mother gave me when I moved into my first apartment now almost 25 years ago.  The chicken stock, beef, a few ounces of mixed, frozen vegetables and some cornstarch were added to the mix.  About that time, Little man's father came into the kitchen and asked me what smelled so good - I must have been doing something right.

From a combination of sad looking ingredients I managed to pull a beef pot pie out of the oven with some filling left over to go over bread or biscuits for lunch tomorrow.  I could have called the pizza place twelve miles away, I could have gone to the store the same twelve miles away and gotten some ingredients for dinner, but a little ingenuity and some sharp knives yielded a pretty yummy dinner for no added expense.

We are working on organizing, cleaning out and pairing down for 2018.  One of the items we have unearthed is a bottle of Dom Perignon that we were given for our wedding ten years ago.  Tonight's dinner cost less than $5.00.  Tomorrow night's adult beverages will be worth significantly more.  Sharing both this meal and tomorrow night's beverages with a happy, healthy family - priceless!

Bath Time for the New Ducks

We rescued eight juvenile ducks earlier this week.  They will get a new coop up by the ponds in the next couple of weeks.  Little man is having a great time watching them grow.

Weed control, landscape cloth

I have tried all manner of weed control on the farm - tilling, mowing, rotation, mulch, spraying, and last year it was landscape cloth.  A section of old pasture was tilled in and the landscape cloth was carefully rolled out.  When performing this task, be sure to choose a day with little to no wind - much easier that way!  Rocks were collected from various piles put on top of the cloth at the end and on each seam.  It wasn't until later in the year that I was walking through the hardware store and I found out they make 'staples' to secure this stuff to the ground - I bought those for this season.

When we finally got the cloth down, it was a little late in the season and my transplants were getting root bound so not as much care was taken with the rocks to ensure that everything stayed where it should have.  The wind got underneath one section during the summer and over the winter, it took up two more sections and wrapped them around neighboring trees.  Where the cloth stayed down, the weeds are pretty much gone, although there is still some stubborn grass.  Areas without cloth are definitely covered with weeds.

The cost of this stuff can be pricey when you start talking about acres, but I am thinking that I might run each section of new field through a season or two with the cloth to help eradicate a lot of the weeds.  Long season or set it and forget it crops might get landscape cloth all the time.  It worked really well for our squash patch last year.

This section will get tilled this week and the old landscape cloth re-applied.  Some people say that you shouldn't bother rolling it up but the cash flow is meager at the moment so I will re-use and recycle it for another season.  Now I have to find the seeder that has the big holes for the squash seeds.

Ear scratches

Little one loves her some scratches behind the ears!

She isn't so little any more with a weight measurement of just under 250 lbs.  I will be watching this weekend for signs of heat from her and Sally.  Late last month Zeb appeared to be on his game so I am hoping...

Seedlings ready for transplant

I have been watching the weather with an obsession for the past two weeks; that was the day that the seedlings moved from inside the house to the greenhouse.  After being carefully protected while inside, watered carefully, turned so they received even sunlight, these tomatoes had grown up enough to move into their own pots.  Like a mom whose kids were moving from their crib to their toddler or big kid bed, I was a little sad to see them go outside.

The greenhouse is not heated, it is more like a giant cold frame with some heat retention characteristics built in.  There are bricks in the floor by the door, there is a large raised bed with dark boards to help hold any heat collected by the sun throughout the day and there is the compost experiment in the corner.  But it was late March/early April in Northern Vermont, the risk of frost remains very real for another month and a half.

For the first night, the transplants were fine.  The following day was cool, rainy and snowy.  At only 224 sq. ft., it doesn't take much to keep the temperature above freezing, but it does require action on my part.  Into the garage to find the small propane tank and the little buddy heater.   Little man's father got it all set up while the temperature inside was well in the fifties, no need to waste the propane.  I went out later to turn on the valve and light the heater - NO HEAT!  Moving over 750 transplants back into the house was not going to be a fun experience, especially with it snowing.  I closed the valve, took the heater off the tank and looked inside to fine one ticked off spider.  I grabbed a pencil and evicted her then put the assembly back together, turned on the valve, and poof - HEAT!

We have used just over 20 lbs of propane (a standard grill sized tank) over five nights.  This coming weekend is forecast to have some upper 20 degree nights.  I will watch carefully and decide whether supplemental heat will be needed.

During the day, the temperatures inside the greenhouse have to be watched as well.  If I leave the house in the morning with outside temperatures in the upper 30's and overcast skies, I would consider leaving the door closed.  If the sun were to come out and shine in earnest for the better part of the day, the poor little transplants could cook before someone else arrives to open the door.

Spring brings renewed life and a longer to-do list to this small farm.  It is hard to be off the farm when the sun is shining and temperatures are above 40 degrees.  Soon enough this farmer will be able to be on the farm full-time.