Inventory

We're getting close to the point where we need a more concrete garden plan, so this afternoon I hauled out all our seeds from last year, rounded up the new arrivals that have been deposited all over the house, and printed out the order confirmations for the stragglers that haven't shown up yet. I grouped everything roughly by type and started making lists.

The end result of all this is that we're slightly more organized, and we've also realized that we have accumulated a hell of a lot of seeds.

Below is a complete list of everything we've got going on this year; there are about 90(!) varieties in all. Varieties in bold are new to us, and those with an asterisk behind the are things we acquired randomly and don't know the names of. We still need to get corn, a red potato, parsnips, and some more carrots.

Garlic: Georgia Crystal
Garlic: Russian Giant
Garlic: Music
Garlic: Italian
Garlic: German Extra Hardy
Garlic: Bogatyr
Garlic: Chesnok Red
Garlic: Spanish Roja
Garlic: Emmaus Farmers Market*

Onion: Sweet Yellow Spanish
Onion: Red Burgermaster Hybrid
Leek: American Flag

Celery: Utah

Broccoli: Green Goliath
Brussels Sprout: Catskill
Cabbage: Golden Acre
Cabbage: Ruby Perfection Hybrid
Chinese Cabbage: Wong Bok
Kale: Dwarf Blue Curled

Potato: All Blue
Potato: Yukon Gold

Lettuce: Red Velvet
Lettuce: Oakleaf
Lettuce: Red Sails
Lettuce: Buttercrunch
Lettuce: Black Seeded Simpson
Spinach: Pinetree Garden Seeds Mix
Chard: Five Color Silverbeet

Bean: Good Mother Stallard
Bean: Cherokee Trail of Tears
Bean: True Red Cranberry
Bean: October
Bean: Rattlesnake
Bean: Jade Green
Cowpea: California Blackeye #5
Edamame: Butterbean
Pea: Green Arrow
Pea: Oregon Sugar Pod II
Pea: Mr. Big Pea
Pea: Cascadia
Pea: Amish
Pea: Capucijner

Hot Pepper: Lemon Drop
Hot Pepper: Hinkelhatz
Hot Pepper: Beaver Dam
Hot Pepper: NuMex Joe E Parker
Hot Pepper: Cayenne
Hot Pepper: Jalepeño M
Hot Pepper: Tobasco Greenleaf
Pepper: Red Bell

Tomato: Brandywine
Tomato: Grandpa's Mystery Big Tomato*
Tomato: Grandpa's Howard German
Tomato: Amish Paste
Tomato: Red Heart-Shaped*
Tomato: Matt's Wild
Tomato: Black Tomato*
Tomato: Green Sausage
Tomato: Small Green Tomato*
Tomato: Yellow Peach Tomato*
Tomato: Yellow Brandywine Tomato*
Tomato: Yellow Plum Tomato*

Cucumber: True Lemon
Cucumber: Bushy
Summer Squash: Lemon
Summer Squash: Striata D'Italia
Pumpkin: Connecticut Field
Watermelon: Mickylee
Winter Squash: Waltham Butternut
Winter Squash: Burpee's Butterbush
Winter Squash: Table King Bush Acorn
Winter Squash: Delicata
Winter Squash: Sweet Dumpling

Carrot: Tochon
Carrot: Danvers 126
Turnip: Purple Globe
Radish: Sparkler White Tip
Beet: Gourmet Blend

Basil: Genovese
Basil: Thai
Rosemary
Parsley: Giant from Italy
Cilantro: Santo
Oregano: True Greek
Thyme
Sweet Marjoram
Russian Terragon
Dill: Mammoth
Sage
Chives
Stevia

umm, onions?

Considering that our previous attempts at onions resulted in bulbs roughly the size of superballs, we don't consider ourselves experts on this particular aspect of the garden.

So when, in the comments of some recent posts (here and here), Frances and Mia both asked whether we cut the tops of our onions off and El said, "Don't forget to cut them," we became totally confused.

Cut what? The flowers? The green parts? Not while they're still growing, though, right? Cut the green parts off before we store the onions? Cut the flowers off, cut them into bits, and feed them to the chickens? It's clear that we should be cutting something, but we're not sure what.

Onion growers, help!

Edited to add: We got answers! El wrote, "You need to get the roots to grow, so, when they get to be about 3-4" tall, you cut an inch off. Otherwise you'll have the things devote all their energy to producing its leaves. You'll be doing this a couple of times before you plant them." And Mike added, "At the other end, when you're harvesting to store 'em for a while, you should cut them quite high up, 2-3", in that part where it naturally dies out and flops down. Then when they cure, the neck can dry out and seal, so bacteria doesn't get into the onion and spoil it. So your storage onions have a dry neck sticking out. I leave 'em like that, but maybe you can trim more later on."

There's Hope

We love onions. A gardening book of ours suggests that the number of onions to be planted should be around 40 per person. We're guessing that no less than 100 per person will do.

A total of 200 is being very optimistic. We have yet to have any harvest worth weighing. Past plantings were done with sets. The greens looked promising, but the bulbs at harvest time were either rotten or only slightly larger than the set that was planted. This year we are planting from seed as opposed to sets. I've gotta say that this little onion sprout has me about as excited as the first time one of our tomato seeds sprouted. Our goal this year is to make a few big batches of vegetable stock with every ingredient coming from the garden. We've had every part going except for the damn onions; but this little fella's giving me hope.

Purple Cabbage

Hello, beautiful.

We're going to eat you.

Let there be light

This is one of two grow tables Meg and I built for last year's seed starting. The materials were pretty cheap (wow, imagine that). We raided the dollar-wood bin for the lumber and I lifted the milk crates from my then place of employment. The lights were the pricey parts of the project; I think they were about $10.00 a piece (two for each table). The dimensions are 18"D x 48"W x 36"H (sans crates).

Where we have the tables stationed in our house has almost as much impact on the seeds as the actual table's construction. They are snug against a white wall with a radiator running beneath them. The wall color and its close proximity help to intensify the brightness and uniformity of the light (I guess). The milk crates and spaces between the bottom boards allow a good deal of airflow from the radiator to the bottom of our heat hungry seedlings. The heat isn't so hot that it dries everything out; this is an old house, the heat sucks at best. However, there is just enough warmth to get things going.

The lights aren't on just yet. We read somewhere that we should wait for the first couple of sprouts to emerge before we turn on the tubes (regular fluorescent). Once the lights are on, we'll lower the chains so they sit about an inch or two above the sprouts and raise them a bit at a time as the plants get taller.

Under Construction

Don't mind our mess; we're playing with our template. Hopefully we'll be looking shiny and new pretty soon.

Scarlet Begonias

I went to my first Grateful Dead show in the summer of '92. I was sixteen and highly impressionable. Needless to say, after that show, I was hooked. For the three years that followed, I went to see them any chance I could until Jerry's body finally had enough.

Now I'm not the kind of Dead Head that holds a vigil every August to commemorate Jerry's death or goes to Rat Dog shows just to keep the dream alive. No, I'm not that guy, but I collected some experiences from those three years that will always have an effect on the person I am and will continue to be.

(Holy shit. I'm sorry, I don't know what the hell just happened there.)

I like to sneak in my appreciation of the Grateful Dead's music from time to time with a subtle sign here and there. A few of the posts I've put up were titles to songs or albums, our chickens' names are Dead tunes, and one of my favorite plants in our house is a scarlet begonia.

This particular begonia is my third attempt (forth if you talk to Meg) at growing one of these things. I thought I would never be able to keep one, but this one has been in our home for almost two years and for the first time buds have begun to appear.



In celebration, I've been playing the Dead off and on all day. Why not all day? Well I'm a hockey fan too and there was a game on.

105 Days Until Onions

Tonight we dusted off the trusty grow tables, cleared the spider webs out of our trays, and started some seeds. We used up some bags of crummy old seed starting mix that have been hanging around here for a while; on our next round of seeds we'll go fetch some compost from outside. So far, we've got onions, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and some sage and dill.

It's Here

Kelly got home from work to find our 500 page Seed Savers Yearbook waiting for us on the mail pile. This thing is intense. There are no pictures, just long, long lists of available plant varieties. We have no idea what we're going to order from it, but there are quite a few Pennsylvania gardeners offering seeds so we might go with something from one of them. One guy has 250+ varieties of tomato seeds for sale! To choose anything I think we'll just have to close our eyes and point to a spot. Here's a photo from one of the 200 pages of tomatoes:

Full Moon

Tonight a total lunar eclipse will be visible over most of Europe and North America. It will start around 10:00 EST and continue until just before 11. We don't get another total eclipse unti llate 2010.

It should be nice and clear in our neck of the woods. If you can, get out and see it.

Memes! Awards!

Due to a half million tutoring appointments, two torturous car rides, a wedding reception, a presentation, an online training class, and all-around general laziness, I've been negligent in my blog reading. Yesterday was relatively calm, though, and I managed to knock around 500 unread blog posts (yeah, pathetic) off my Google reader, and I also poked around the blogs of people who've left comments here recently.

Imagine my surprise when I saw little ol' Future House being talked about all over the place (okay, five places).

°°°°°

First up, that other Meg from Vintage Flapper to the Rescue gave us the Thinking Blogger Award. Dude! That means we're way smart. Right?

Also, it means that we get to pass along the award to five other bloggers who make us think. Hmm.... How about:

One Straw Revolution
Sugar Creek Farm
Bifurcated Carrots
GardenPunks
Fast Grow the Weeds

°°°°°

And then, Frugal Mom and Melinda of Elements in Time gave us this super sweet Excellent Blogger award:


Oh wait, not that one. This one:


So now we have to pick ten people to pass this one along to. Here goes:

Green Gringa
In the Toad's Garden
Hedgewizard
Life at Dogfight Cove
Vegmonkey and the Mrs.
A Thinking Stomach
Her Able Hands
The Back Forty
A Homesteading Neophyte
Dirt Sun Rain

Of course we think you're all excellent, but we did intentionally exclude blogs that we know have already gotten this thing. If we missed you and put you on our list even though you already have one, tough. You're getting another. Or, you can take the Mr. Burns version.

°°°°°

Angie of Children in the Corn tagged us for the Archive Meme. This one is tricky since we haven't been blogging for that long, and pretty much a full third of our posts have been about the chickens. I'll do what I can.

The family post: Gotta go with Grandpa's German Tomatoes, which we've since learned are called Howard Germans. Either way, it's kind of cool that we can personally trace our seeds back a few decades.

The friend post: Is there a better garden related friend than Steveo? He mows, he digs, he babysits the chickens and cleans the pool. He helped us put together the rain harvester, he lets us borrow his kickass tools, and he chopped down this damn tree.

The post about us: Hmm. I guess this one fits the bill well enough.

The post about something we love: Pasta for me, and hot peppers for Kelly.

And the random posts: Those damn chickens.

Now I'm supposed to tag five people, but I'm too exhausted. So you're all tagged. Please tell us in the comments, too, so we can check out your posts.

*Archive Meme Instructions: Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you've written. ... but there is a catch: Link 1 must be about family. Link 2 must be about friends. Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are... what you're all about. Link 4 must be about something you love. Link 5 can be anything you choose. I think this is a great way to circulate some of the great older posts everyone had written, return to a few great places in our memories and also learn a little something about ourselves and each other that we may not know. Post your five links and then tag five other people. At least TWO of the people you tag must be newer acquaintances so that you get to know each other better....and don't forget to read the archive posts and leave comments!*

°°°°°

That was rough.

My Favorite Room

While the weather tries to make up it mind, Meg and I are forced to spend the better part of our days indoors. If we're not in the kitchen, we're in the library. This wasn't planned, it just kind of happened. Since we both majored in English, we have accumulated a shit load of books (there's another couple book cases around the corner). Subsequently, we needed a place to store them and when they were all put together, voila, a library was born. 

Homemade Energy

In a prior post Meg and I had said a word or two about the windmills we see off of the Pennsylvania turnpike. During these gray and chilly winter months I think wind powered energy is probably the best way to go as opposed to solar. Let's face it, from November through March, we get a lot more wind than sunshine. Actually if we had our way I think we would try to harness the sun and the wind to provide our energy needs, but those are much bigger projects than what I'm about to unfold here.

Solar and wind power can be had by anyone willing to make the pricey investment. Right now in Pennsylvania the financial incentives for the installation of an alternative energy system are none. Some of the folks we've talked to who want to make the switch are deciding to wait for the commonwealth to make the first move.

We too are in the middle of a waiting game. Before we can make a move on buying land and building Future House, one of the many colleges that I've sent applications too needs to realize their English department will be vastly improved with my superior teaching skills. While we wait for one of these schools to come to their senses, we want to see if we can bring renewable energy to our chickens.

Yes this is ridiculous, but so is calling a two-party system a democracy. (Wow! That came out of nowhere.) What we have in mind is something we can take with us and also make with used or found materials. The reason we'd like to add power to the coop is that we'd like to be able to provide heat for it in the winter and vent it in the summer. In addition to the chicken's level of comfort, we think a wind powered coop would be kick-ass.

Right now we are strictly in the planning phase. While we visited with friends and family this weekend, we picked Dan's (my mother's wicked smart husband) brain about what it would take to make and store energy from a windmill. Aside from the actual windmill the scrounging list would go as follows:

• alternator - attached to the turning blades will create the charge
  
• contact ring - allows horizontal rotation without the wires getting tangled
  
• deep cycle battery - usually found in boats; it can take and give an even charge
  
• inverter - will change the DC current of the battery into a usable AC current

I did some light searching for some of these items on Craigslist and eBay and they are out there. Before we make any purchases though we need to come up with some concrete plans. Our chickens have been quite happy without a heated and vented coop, so we would also have to find some other uses for a power station to make the endeavor a lot less ridiculous and a bit more practical.

Three Rivers

Thirty years ago this view would have been hidden by a thick fog of pollution from all of the steel mills.

On the Road Again

We're in Western PA for the weekend, visiting and going to a wedding reception, so posting won't be very substantial for a couple days. Have a good weekend, all!

Anatomy of a Chicken Photo

In the comments of this post, Danni (farmgirl_dk) asked if the chicken on top of the compost heap is our dominant chicken, asserting her place in the pecking order. She's not. In fact, the opposite is true. The chicken in that picture is Bertha, the most easily bullied and generally compliant chicken. We initially tried to take the photo with Stella, the dominant chicken. It didn't go well.


It was a pretty typical chicken photo shoot, actually. For every funny chicken photo we post, there are approximately 137 awful and blurry chicken photos languishing in my iPhoto files. Essentially, the chickens can stand only a few minutes of interaction before they spaz out. Here's a sample of what you've been missing:

The Sap is Rising

The other day I had the privilege to acquaint myself with a new blog on the blogosphere called Life at Dogfight Cove. They started the site this month, so this is a great opportunity to read it from the start. The writing is great; it's got a good home grown feel.

Polarbear's (she's the blogger) last post mentioned, amongst many other projects, pruning her fruit trees. This has been another reminder that the sap will be rising soon and the season for growing will soon be upon us. One of the projects that we really need to focus on in the coming weeks, like Polarbear, is the pruning of our adopted apple tree.


To be quite honest, we're feeling like our resources for this project may be a bit slim. Probably the most useful source I've found is a section on fruit tree pruning in the American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening. I think we have a pretty good idea of how to do the cuttings, but which ones to cut is still a bit foggy.


Let's remember now that this tree hasn't been pruned in at least seven years. If we were to cut all of the branches suggested by the books we've read, we'd be left with nothing more than a stump. I know we should take it slow, so what branches should we look for to absolutely remove? I think we're leaning towards cutting all the branches that are rubbing and maybe just a spike or two from the middle. If you have any experience with this, please send it our way.

Cheers

Doin' whatcha can

When Meg and I started doing this whole quest for sustainable living thing, our primary mission was to live simply and be happy. As we began to explore the blogosphere to resource like minded folk, we were encouraged by the diversity of all the homesteaders, backyard gardeners, tiny farmers, and kitchen witches. There's a polyculture of knowledge out there.

For a bit there we were under the terrible misconception that what we had to strive for was some sort of collection of the whole. Thankfully we learned real quick that logic like that has no logic at all. What we've learned is that if we all do what we can, collectively we're making a big difference.

There have been a lot of posts floating around lately about what compromises and sacrifices people make in their personal quests to be a little bit greener. However, beyond the personal, the collective has been providing some creative solutions that are certainly making our world a better place. Maybe because there's not a lot of outside planting going on right now, many of these posts have been focusing on non-botanical environmentalism: using cloth bags, recycling plastic bottles, and salvaging sinks. I'm salivating at the thought of what inventiveness this new growing season will bring and how much better we will all be for it.

The Refill

As promised, here are some photos of the chicken composter refill.

With the leaves already bagged, the process was a snap. There was no raking involved, because the leaves had been confiscated from a neighbor who already had them bagged. Each of the bags I'm emptying here couldn't have weighed more than 30-35 pounds; and it took maybe eight of them to fill the pen back up. I'm guessing that once the leaves break down we will have over 250 pounds of compost from this one round alone. Multiply that by three batches (There are about ten more bags waiting for the next load which will hopefully be in about a month) plus the stuff we made at the end of last year and you've got yourself a shit load compost.

I can't even begin to express how easy this whole process has been. With the two of us working together, each flip took only a few hours. After everything is said and done, I'm figuring that we will probably invest only a day in labor. Hmm, over 1,000 pounds of compost for one day of work; it feels like we're cheating.

What's in your sink?

Kelly has a theory: If your household generates an insane amount of dishes, you're probably eating well. I think that's probably true, and have a few hypotheses to further this theory.

1. If your sink is full of dishes, your trash can is empty, and your compost bucket is full, your food is probably pretty healthy.
2. If your sink is empty and your trash can is full, you're probably eating takeout a lot.
3. If your sink is full and your trash can is full, you either need to get a compost bucket, or you're eating takeout but putting the food on real dishes to appear classy about it.

For the record, those dishes are only from this weekend. And Kelly's washing them now.

Al Fuego

What do you do on a 40° February night after you've spent the day finally cleaning the remaining crap from around the garden?


You gather everything into a big pile.


And you burn it.

And you get some beers and you set the camera's shutter speed real slow.


And you take some trippy photos.

Adventures in Composting

Today was the day for rotating the leaves in our chicken composter. With the aid of our feathered friends we were able to collect all of the scratched and shat upon leaves into an impressive mountain of rich compost. As we said in the last update, we're guessing that the first string of warm weather to roll through will roast this stuff into black gold.

We thought that we may have lost a lot of mass from the months the leaves spent in the pen, but the material we gathered today was able to heap over four yard cart loads. Once it was all out, the pen looked a bit barren. I can't wait until we plant rye in there; it should grow like crazy. In the mean time, we have about twenty bags of salvaged leaves to fill the pen at least two more times. We'll probably post on the refill tomorrow. With the weather warming, we shouldn't have to keep them in the pen as long as the first go around.

I must say that the cache of compost from this first haul was impressive. We have five compost bins and all of them were filled to where it was running out the front. I'm sure we'll use it all once the garden gets going this spring. The compost we get from rounds two and three will serve as a refresher for the garden in the summer and fall.

What's for Dinner

I recently learned to enjoy eating mushrooms. I've always liked the flavor of them—in soup broth or whatever—but I could never get over how they squish and squeak when you chew them. Recently something clicked, though, and I figured out how to eat them without grossing myself out. I have problems, I know.

So anyway, since this discovery we've been putting mushrooms in everything, including the super tasty pasta we made this evening with our very own pasta sauce.

The sauce was already loaded with onions, garlic, and herbs, and we threw it together with some mushrooms, butter, cheese, and cream. Yum.

We saved enough food that we can eat from-the-garden dinner three or four times a week for the rest of the winter, and eating pasta sauce that is far superior to what we can get at the store is a great motivator for putting away even more food next summer.

Still Growing

While the garden layout is being planned and garlic is still sleeping, believe it or not, we still have some veggies growing in the garden. As last year's garden petered out, we planted some more carrots and parsnips to share a covered bed with the already established chard.

With the worst of our winter over (it barely came at all), we still have a little green going on under the row covers. Granted, the life under the cover is only a small amount of half-assed root veggies, but we should be able to harvest enough to soupify some of our bean crop. We also have some thyme, sage, and chard to throw in the pot, which should make for a hearty bowl of backyard goodness.

Get Thee to a Polling Place

If your state is up on Super Tuesday, go seek out whatever church or elementary school basement they set up the voting machines in and vote! We're largely irrelevant here in Pennsylvania--though all the races are close enough that we might acually count for something by the time our primary rolls around--but if we lived in one of the states that vote today, we'd definitely be at the polls.

Linkity Links

Kelly and I both have super long workdays on Monday, so instead of a real post, I present you with a bunch of other people's posts that I've been mostly too busy to comment on for the past week or so:

Rob at One Straw Revolution built this very cool sustainable Victory Garden and plans to get suburban Wisconsinites growing some of their own food, composting, and collecting rainwater—all for under one hundred bucks! We're all about that.

Katie from Garden Punks has a nice discussion going on about The Omnivore's Dilemma; catch her thoughts on Part Two here.

Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots is blogging about Hawaii's attempts to ban aspartame and asks for help contacting various officials to show support for the ban. For anyone who's interested in fostering greater consumer choice when it comes to food, this is certainly worth taking a minute to send a couple of emails.

I'm going to dinner at El's house, because she's got a freezer loaded with good stuff.

And then I'm going to raid Ali's pantry, which she show off in her addition to the What the World Eats photo essay that's been making it's way around the 'net.

Deconstructing Venus has got some new goat babies! They're friggin' cute.

Your regularly scheduled blogging will resume tomorrow.

Growing Our Own Herbs

As we all know, any part of good cooking is usually accompanied with the use of fresh herbs. I love how a little fresh cilantro can make simple scrambled eggs seem gourmet.

Plans are that this year's harvest will result in a massive canning and freezing frenzy. One of our goals is that very little, if anything, will come from anywhere other tha