Due to some Flickr problems I wasn't able to upload some photos ealier, but now I can. Hmmm.
These are pics of my sweet Itty Bitty enjoying Father's Day with her great-grandpa
These are the big kids while we were camping. Itty Bitty was off playing somewhere and not interested in having her picture taken
Tomatoes are starting to show up in the garden. I'm excited to start canning!
My cucumber vines are over four feet tall now, and have dozens of baby cukes all over them. I use my great-grandmother's dill pickle recipe. It is the best!
Itty Bitty loves being in the garden as much as we do!
The white boxes that I have my squash planted in are old bee hive boxes.
Happy Trails!
Well, the seasons are already changing around here. No, the leaves are not turning their autumn reds and gold. It is a changing of the season of "fortune." Earlier this summer we were thrilled with our new bee hive, and the new queen in our old hive, our sweet little chicks, the new raspberry canes, apple tree, asparagus popping up in its bed, and so on. But the seasons always change.....
A skunk got in to our chicken coop and killed three of our laying hens, and one of the baby Barred Rocks. We are down to one laying hen and are waiting on 9 pullets to start laying over the next few months.
The new queen bee layed some eggs at first, but then stopped, and the eggs she did lay just dried up.
The new hive was a swarm from one of my friends' hive. The queen seems to still be virgin and she is too old (four weeks) to mate now. That's two hives (my only two) gone in one year. I just don't know what to do with all these bees without queens. If anyone has any advise, please advise!!!
Out of the fourty asparagus plants I planted, only 14 came up and then 11 of those just turned yellow and died. That's a whole year lost on the first three years of waiting for the first harvest!
My strawberries just didn't really produce this year. I get a few each day, but nothing like I was expecting. And they are not sending off runners. I was really counting of them multiplying.
Like I said, the seasons have changed. The seasons always change....
This too shall pass.
Happy Trails and a good season to you all!
Just thought I'd share a few pics of Wings Like Eagles, the horse camp I volunteer with. We teach kids with special needs how to do trick horse back riding to help build up self confidence, trust, and "thive".
This is my nephew, who is out here from Florida visiting with us for a couple weeks. Since I'm at camp all day, he gets to come too!
The Stand
The "Dead Man's Flip" (we always work with spotters)
Feeding the bottle babies!
Happy Trails!
I haven't totally dropped off the face of the planet. I've been helping out with the horse camp that I help out with every year. It's pretty much a full time job.
I think I already told you all that I lost the queen to my bee hive and needed to replace it. Well, I finally have pictures.
This is the queen in her box. ORiginally there wer six worker bees in there with her, but you have to remove them before you put the queen in your hive. That was an experience in itself!
Now I have her placed in her new hive.
Long live the replacement queen, Queen Esther! The worker bees will eat the candy plugged that blocking her way out. During that time they get to know her and, in theory, won't kill her once they get to her. For some reason, mine didn't eat the candy, so I had to release her myself a few days later. Just today I saw that she is starting to lay eggs. Yay!!!!
I made some low sugar strawberry jelly using Pamona's Universal Pectin. I used only one cup of sugar to four cups of crushed strawberries. It turned out delicious and actually tastes like strawberries instead of strawberry flavored sugar. I was so pleased.
To answer the carrot question: both carrots are growing and at least one looks like it will go to seed! All in all, the garden is doing very well this year, thanks to the soil in the new raised beds! The potatoes will soon be ready for their third tire, the peas and snap peas are flowering finally and even the strawberries are starting to turn pink! The asparagus is the only thing not doing well, and I'm not sure why.
Finally, here is a pic of our family that my mom's husbands took of us just last week. It's not the best pic of me, but it good of everyone else.
Happy Trails!
I've been ignoring some carrots that have been at the bottom of the drawer in the refridgerator for the last three months. I usually keep a pretty clean fridge, but for some reason I just never felt like going to all the hard work 
of bending down and pulling out those last two carrots (life is sooo tough, LOL) Yesterday, as I was putting the new groceries away I finally got those old carrots out. They were organic carrots and to my surprise they weren't moldy or shrivled at all! In fact, the tops were starting to sprout!
Well, as I've posted before, I'm trying to do all my own seed harvesting for my garden. If any of you collect your own seeds, you know that carrots are biennials and therefore don't produce seed until their second year. The chickens scratched out all the carrots I had let winter in the garden, so I was at square one again.
As I saw those newly spouting carrots, I thought to myself, if they grow it would save a whole year of waiting for this years carrots to go to seed. So I planted them!
I don't know that they'll actually grow, and if they do, I don't know that they'll go to seed. I don't even know what kind of carrots they are! But here's to an experiment!!!
Happy Trails!
For the last year or so I've had a recuring day dream. The dream changing a bit hear or there, but the basic idea is the same. I imagine that it's just hubby and me (the girls are off and married perhaps) and we have a couple of acres in the mountains. Here's the part that I love: we live in a tiny house. By tiny, I mean tiny, about 15' by 15'. I could just lie in bed for hours designing it - the cupboards, the built in shelves, the sleeping loft, etc. I just think it would be fun. I know almost what it would look like and how everythin would work. I would have a solar water heater, solar and wind power, and a composting toilet. It would be perfect!
Then I was reading a book call The Urban Homesteader and ran across a website in it called TumbleweedHouses.com . I guess I'm not the only one who thinks it would be awesome to live in a tiny house. The guy who started Tumbleweed houses lives in one that's only 89 sq. ft.! That's a little too tiny for me. But check out his site. It's pretty amazing whether or not you want to live in a shoe box!
Happy Trails!
I was at the garden store today picking up some more broccoli seeds (my transplants aren't faring too well) and I couldn't find any that were heirloom. Finally I picked a variety and took to the checkout. I asked the cashier if she could tell me if the seeds were heirloom even though they weren't labeled as such (I have found this to be the case in the past with other types of seed). So we went on a little hunt. And sure enough, we found out that they were indeed an heirloom variety, even though it did not say 'heirloom' anywhere on the package ( a marketing scheme, I think). In fact, we found a little pamphlet listing many different heirloom types of seed. I thought that maybe some of you would be interested in this as well
BEAN
Broad Windsor Fava, Burpees Stringless, Golden Wax, Kentuck Wonder Pole Snap, Royal Burgundy, Romano, Triomphe de Farcy
BEET
Chiogga, Detroit Dark Red
BROCCOLI
Calabrese, DeCicco, Raab, Romanesco
CABBAGE
Red Acre
CARROT
Chantenay Royal, Danvers Half Long, Nantes Scarlet, Touchon
CORN
Golden Bantam
CUCUMBER
Lemon, Marketmore
EGGPLANT
Black Beauty, Long Purple, Rosa Blanca
ENDIVE
Green Curled Ruffec
KALE
Italian Lacinato Nero Tosana
KOHLRABI
Early Purple Vienna, Early White Vienna
LETTUCE
Bibb, Black Seeded Simpson, Buttercrunch, Cos/Romaine, Great Lakes, Tom Thumb
MELON
Charentais
ONION
Evergreen White Bunching, White Lisbon
PEA
Alaska, Green Arrow, Thomas Laxton
PEPPER
California Wonder, Habanero, Jalapeno, Red Cayenne, Serrano
PUMPKIN
Big Max, Connecticut Field, Jack B Little, New England
RADISH
Black Spanish, Cherry Belle, Crimson Giant, Easter Egg, Watermelon Mantang Hong, Wihte Icicle
RUTABAGA
American Purple Top
SPINICH
Bloomsdale Long Standing
TOMATO
Ace, Beefsteak, Bloody Butcher, Brandywine, Jubilee, Marglobe, Mortgage Lifter, Roma, Tomatillo
TURNIP
Puple Top White Globe
WATERMELON
Moon and Stars, Sugar Baby
I know there are more varieties than just these, but it was interesting to note that some of them are heirloom when they are not generally sold as such.
Happy Trails!
It is a cool and overcast day today. It rained all night last night!!! Maybe things will start greening up now. I remember a summer about 15 years ago when the foothills were so green that it looked like we lived on the east coast some where. Today our mountains looked like this
We ran errands this morning and then after lunch we bottled the choke cherry wine. I was so pleased that it came out so clear
Afterwards, we went out side and I transplanted some broccoli (they're a little leggy, but I think they'll be ok)
And some brussel sprouts
some purple cabbage,
and some Brandywine tomatoes in the hoop house
Hubby chopped some pallets up for fire wood.
Spring is great!
Happy Trails!
This is my mom, sister, niece, and nephew. I miss you guys soooo much!!!!
Here is some fun with all our chicks!
These are the Buff Orpingtons and toward the bottom are the barred Rocks
The homestead was pretty quiet this last week. I didn't do any planting. The snap peas are starting to push their tiny green leaves through the soft soil. No sign of the radishes yet, but hopefully soon. I have onions, carrots, and asparagus all trying to make their way to the surface as well - at least I hope they are! The strawberries are doing well; I haven't lost a single one! I finally got my apple tree planted too! It had only been sitting in IttyBitty's closet for the last month!!!
We put the Buff Orpington's out in the chicken house with the Black Star hens. It's funny how they react with eachother, or rather avoid it. the poor lilttle Buffs (who are only about 6 weeks old) are rather terrified of such giants, and the "giant" Black Stars don't particularly like such little twerps invading their domain. On occasion the Black Stars will get a little mean to show the Buffs who's in charge, but all in all, it's gone better than I'd hoped.
The only reason we moved the Buffs in with the hens so soon was to make room in the brooder for these
New, day old Barred Rocks! They are soooo cute! They had some Bantam chicks at the feed store too, and I was ever so tempted to pick up a couple of them simple because of how much smaller they are than even the Rocks! But my better judgment won out.
It's a cool day and completely overcast ( a rarity in Colorado). It's is reflecting in the girls' (and I'm afraid my own) mood. Maybe a little craft of some sort will help out the day.
Happy Trails!
As of mid March our official moisture measured was .62 of an inch! We have been in a terrible drout for four years now. The last time we recieved even close to so little moisture was in 1910 with .66 inches of moisture in March.
However, it has been snowing and raining on and off for two days now! This is just the kind of moisture we've been needing! Next week is supposed to be in the upper sixties, and I can just imagine how quickly everything will be turning green. I only wish we already had rain barrels in place!
The hens are getting used to their new coop, even though ony one of them will use the nesting boxes. The others just keeping making a nice nest in the straw on the ground. Oh well. Hopefully they will learn soon.
Not much else going on here at the homestead. Just waiting out the weather.
Happy Trails!
Doing what, you might not have to guess. It is spring, after all. Most nights are staying above freezing and so I have been able to put in a few seeds. I planted about 175 sugar snap peas and about 150 english peas. I planted 50 strawberry plants and 40 asparagus plants as well. I will be pleasantly surprised if I get any strawberries this year, and I know that I cannot harvest the asparagus for two more years, but I'm glad to have them in the ground! The first of their harvests will taste all the better after such a long wait!
We had a chicken die completely unexpectedly a few days ago. She was fine and healthy one day and dead the next. Now we only have four left and one is lame, so we have to butcher her. She is still laying eggs though.
Because of Red's (the chicken) death, we decided to build a new chicken coop. The old one was three feet by five feet and only three feet tall. The roof was on hinges and I would just open it up to collect eggs and change food and water. I'm afraid it was rather too small and I know it was drafty. We went through all our scrap lumber and had half of the materials for the new coop on hand. Our "Tafoya Homestead" envelope had enough cash to cover the rest. Now I have a five foot tall, four foot by eight foot coop with three nesting boxes and plenty of roosting space! We still have to put shingleson the roof, put windows in it, and paint it, but I love it already! The girls want to check for eggs about twenty times a day!!! I'll post pictures of the new coop when it's all finished.
When we moved the old coop we found a rat's nest, literally. There were two of the tiniest rats I have ever seen. They were each about one and a half inches long. They were still pink with no fur - their eyes weren't even open yet! They really were cute, but we still had to kill them. We don't need any rats around. Little One was upset about having to kill them and compared it to a big bear coming and killing my babies. I tried to explain how it's just not the same. Anyhow...
Tomorrow I hope to get the onions in the ground and pick up three new chicks from the feed store. I think I buy Barred Rocks this time. Them with the Buff Orpingtons and the Black Stars will make a cute little flock I think.
Happy Trails!
Yesterday I went outside to let the chickens out and noticed the bees were flying. I was a little surprised because it was only about 45 degrees out. But there was quite the flurry of activity...from both hives. And that is what concerned me. My new hive doesn't even have as many bees as I saw flying in and out of it, and they never use the main bottom entrance, only a hole in the side. Bees were flying in and out of every place they could. My first instinct is that my bigger hive is robbing the new, weaker hive.
I will have to open up the hive soon to see if my assumptions are correct. I'll keep you all updated.
Happy Trails!
As I sit curled up in my favorite chair with a nice cup of hot tea I look out the window. It's starting to snow again. Not the big fluffy flakes that were fallling this morning, just little tiny ones which indicates that the temperature has dropped considerably since then. Not that I needed to read the snow flakes to tell me that - I've already been out in it a few times today. We had such unseasonably warm weeks last month that the ground is thawed, but I wonder, now that I just planted some raspberry canes, if it will have time to freeze again before spring. After checking weather.com, I think the raspberries will be ok.
The rest of the garden is still pending, of course, so I thought I'd give you a tour of my indoor garden - that is, all the seedlings I have started, all of which are heirlooms for seed collection purposes.
These are my Brandywine tomatoes. I think they are interesting because their leaves do not look like traditional tomato leaves. Instead, I have heard them called "potato leaf". They are growing well in my sunny window, but are a little leggy-er than I would like.
These are my brussel sprouts and purple cabbage. I have never grown brussel sprouts but have a friends who grows them very well here in our climate, so I thought I'd give it a go.
Here is one of the three containers of broccoli. It's a little crowded right now, but I am hoping to move them each into their own 2" pots, if I can find a window with enough room to put 100 little broccoli plants!
And here are the Marglobe tomatoes. They are much more traditional looking, but again, a bit too leggy.
Next week I get to plant my peas - OUTDOORS! I'm eager.
Well, as I said, I planted stricly heirloom seeds this year so that I can harvest the seed to save for another year. My goal will be to have three years worth of seeds in long term storage. I've been doing some research as to how I can store them longer than the typical 2-3 years. The best method I can come up with, without buying special heat sealed foil pouches (which are rediculously difficult to find), is to 1) make sure that me seeds are good and dry before I package them, 2) package them in paper envelopes (marked with the year from which they were harvested and any directions that go with them), 3) place all the seed envelopes into a canning jar along with a dessicant (silica packet) for moisture control, and 4) store with the lid screwed on tightly in a cold, dark place. If the seeds are kept dry and at 32degrees, they should keep for 20 years.
Happy Trails!
I thought there was no hope of gardening here when we first bought this house three and a half years ago. The ground was hard packed clay and, in the words of the soil analyst, our soil is so alkaline that it is like "gardening in Draino." It looked like this
Discouraging to say the least. So we started adding everything we could to the soil. We started by bringing in a truck load of top soil we bought from a landscaping company. Very expensive! and it covered only about one fifth of our garden. We knew that buying in good dirt wasn't a feesable option for us. After that, we just starting turning in freshly cut grass clippings into the dirt, which I found out wan't a good option because the decomposition process robs its surrounding of nitrogen. Then I tried using a compost pile. I decomposed everything seperately from the garden and then added it in later. That worked well, but didn't produce enough. I'm only on a little city lot and can't use half my yard for a composting pile.
Then I read about lasagna gardening and decided to give it a try. We had some dear friend who were tearing out their deck and offered us the deck planks to build up our raised beds. Then we begged grass clippings, leaves, and manure off our neighbors and friends (actually, we didn't beg. Most poeople were so happy to get rid of the stuff they had it on our doorstep before we had even finished asking for it!) We just kept piling it up in our new garden beds. Now, here is were I must confess I went wrong. I was cheap (broke) and didn't buy enough black plastic (that stuff's expensive!) to cover all the beds. The beds that we did cover now look like this
You can see the other beds in the back ground - the ones we didn't cover - didn't decompose. They are just beds of dirt with leaves and manure mixed it. (We have no humidity here and nothing decomposes naturally.) But this, THIS is SOIL!!!! I can't tell you how excited I am to plant my garden in this bed. I may even have time, if I can scrounge together the cash, to cover the other beds. With the warming weather, the other beds might decompose nicely in time to plant!
Happy Traiils!
New bees! Ok, they're not new, they are my second hive that I got last year. I had left them on a property with my friends bees. Long story short, we had to move all the hives off the property because of a sink hole and now I have two hives here in my garden. The hive I moved here last summer is "hive # 4" and the new hive is "hive # 7" (the order they were in originally at the other property.) The reason I moved hive # 4 here last summer was that is was a very small hive and I knew I would need to keep a close eye on this winter. Hive #7 was thriving, so I left it where it was.
Now hive #4 is almost doubled in size! It still only covers about 5 frames in one super, but that's a big improvement. The queen is laying and they are really doing well.
Hive #7, on the other hand, didn't fare the winter so well. There are barely enough bees to cover two whole frames. And they have mites. I put a jar of crystalized honey in their hive, but they haven't been eating it, so I also put in a 1:1 mixture of sugar water. I check how they like that today. I need to make a screen board, and I bought two drone frames. When the frames come in, I will dust the bees with powdered sugar to put them into a cleaning frenzy. During this they should clean off most of their mites which will then fall through the screened bottom, which I will have put between the bottom board and the bottom hive box, and be unable to get back up to the bees. I will also put the drone frames in three frames in from each end. Mites like to lay eggs in droce cells because they are bigger. This should draw the mites from the rest of the hive. Once they are capped over I'll freeze them to kill the mites and then clean out the frames and put them back in. It probably won't get rid of the mites entirely, but it's an organic method of control.
Another idea I came across for mite control is to not use foundations at all. Appearantly the foundations we typically use cause the bees to build cells that are 50% larger than they would build naturally. Mites like the bigger cells. So, if I let the bees draw comb to their own specifications, it should make the hive quite inhospitable for mites. I think I just may try it out. I found this and much other great information at http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm. I scrolled down a little and clicked on "lazy beekeeping" on the left hand side.
Happy Trails!
I found this article on a website that I frequent. I thought it was so wonderful that I just had to share it. It's about "The Frugal Home"
http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2009/03/learning-how-to-be-frugal-homemaker.html
I hope you all enjoy it!
Happy Trails!
My seeds came in today! I was so disappointed when I checked the mailbox on the way in from going to the library and my seeds weren't there. Then I opened the gate and saw a package by the front door! The seeds!!! I ordered Blue Lake bush green beans, Homemade Pickles cucumbers, Casper pumpkins, Butternut squash, Sweet Potato squash, Dark Green zucchini, Golden Scallop squash, Sugar Baby watermelon, Early Frosty peas, Sugar Daddy snap peas, and they threw in Ebony Acorn wiinter squash for free! I ordered them from the Heirloom Seeds company. The rest of my seeds I either had left over from last year or harvested from last years' garden. It's always fun to get the seeds out and pour over them. My fingers almost tingle!
The weather has been beautiful lately. In fact, it was in the seventies for most of the week. The trees are starting to bud and green is showing itself from under last fall's layer of yellow grass. It looks and feels like spring is on its way. But here in Colorado, that's a bad thing! It's only the beginning of March. March and April are usually our heaviest snow months. No chance of fruit on any trees around here this year. The early buds will be frost killed. I have honestly never seen spring show up so early! And I've honesly started to worry. So far this year we had only recieved .03 of an inch of moisture! It's been terribly dry. And there have already been two major fires this month. Summer is going to be brutal.
Then.... could it be? Yes, snow flakes! This morning was winter again as if nothing was amis! We only got about a half inch of snow, but it was very, very wet. What a blessing!
As I was in the kitchen filling up a pitcher of warm water to take to the chickens, IttyBitty came running out of her bed room yelling, "Play snow! See, boots, gloves, and suit!" Sure enough she had her winter boots on and was running as fast as she could to the door with her mittens and snow suit bundled in her arms. I couldn't resist. I bundled her up and out we went to water the chickens and check for eggs.
I don't think I've ever been so excited for winter in March! Usually by now, I'm just itching for spring. But this whole winter really hasn't been.
Happy Trails!