What To Do

While we are pretty content with the current plan growing a garden and raising chickens (for eggs right now) I am wanting to make a change and get other people interested in growing food for themselves. A couple of years ago my friend Mary started to garden on our property and it has been pretty cool having more plants growing in the yard along side our own plants.

THEN our neighbors directly across the street from us walked over with their puppies (so cute!) to visit and they were saying how they would like to create a small garden bed to grow tomatoes and other veggies.

Because I don't think very quickly on my feet - a couple of days later I was thinking about what they were hoping to do and it dawned on me that we could offer to let them grow on our property - it would be easy and close for them. Especially since they could just walk over with their kids to tend to their garden.

THEN I started thinking that we could do a small-ish community garden space and rent out space to the other neighbors. How great would that be?! The people that would like to grow food could do that and those who would like to buy our surplus could do that. I have yet to have surplus - and the way things went this year this year won't be very abundant either.

Good ideas right?

THEN I thought, besides having a community garden space we could have a space to use for ministry and see if the church youth group would want a project. If that were to happen, then we would need to figure out a purpose for them to grow veggies (a charity or for youth group fundraising).

Oh...a farm stand at the church!

I'm the Queen of ideas!! Too many to keep track of and actually to make into reality.

So, while I continue to figure out what the heck I am dreaming of - the dream changes often - I will be doing a lot of reading. Especially this book:

My ideas seem to come to me when I feel dissatisfaction when I am at work and being a surly not-very-old woman. Yep, I'm feeling that this week.

How about this face though...

How can it be...

that we are in the middle of  AUGUST?! I swear we JUST went to the Mother Earth News Fair...JUST. And now it is the 17th of August! Just wow...

Besides having gone to the Fair at the beginning of the month things have been pretty much the same at home. Not a lot going on except - planning the fall garden! Last year was the first time that I EVER grew stuff outside of what is considered the "normal" gardening season and it worked out pretty well. Even with all of the snow and then all of the rain for several months after.

Everything grew last fall/winter which was a huge thing for me! Being very intentional about getting the seeds started and nurturing the plants until it was time to get them planted.THEN making sure that the critters weren't taking advantage of a free buffet.

This is from earlier this year when it was raining like crazy! We harvested some of this, but I think I was  more enthralled with the fact that I had grown these from seed. Also, it's not much fun walking out to this spot when it is literally pouring down rain. You just gotta love the Pacific Northwest! Anyway, I was in so much awe that these plants just grew and grew that I wondered why I never tried to plant stuff in the fall before.

So, this year I am being a little more intentional and planning what will go into the garden this year. The only problem I have is WHERE should I put this garden. Meh...we'll figure that out when we get there!

I have some  seeds in tray right now and as of this morning there were some sprouts. Of course, I can't remember what I have in the tray...Filderkraut, Gai Lan, some bunching onions for sure. I'll have to look later.

Another fun thing - I used the egg cartons that we have been stock piling for when we finally have eggs from the chickies. I found out recently that egg cartons are meant to be used for eggs once. Huh...who knew. Then I decided that instead of recycling the cartons that we had stored (which wasn't THAT many) I could repurpose them. After a little more research I decided to try them out as seedling trays.

It's really not the best photo, but hey - Got to use 5 of the cartons that were trimmed down to fit in the tray. I'm optimistic that this will work and that I'll be able to transplant little plants in a month or so!

So yeah, the summer is just moving along a little too fast and pretty soon we'll be planning NEXT year's garden and other projects.

Seriously, I can't take it anymore...

TBT to when Lenny was a wittle bittle goose...hehehe...

Book Collection

Not gonna lie, I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to books. I LOVE books! All sorts too, but my favorite right now would be ANYTHING that has to do with gardening, homesteading growing things to eat etc. Here is just a sampling of what I have added recently...

The book that I had when I thought I would be a flower farmer. A dream I had after a couple of years living on our property:

My original copy was a soft-back book that I probably purchased soon after it was published. There was a time that I thought that maybe I wouldn't do a flower farm so I think the book was given away or donated or something. I now have the Kindle version which is handy. 

Now that we are doing chickens for eggs I am thinking of raising chickens for meat. So, the next book that I have on my table and on my Kindle:

This is a nice little book which is a pretty quick read and includes all the instructions on how to get one of those chicken tractors built. The author, John Suscovich, also includes all sorts of tidbits about chickens and raising them.The other great thing is that there is a lot of good stuff about farming. Really, just reading the book makes something than can be so daunting into something that is totally doable. Even if you were to just grow veggies and some fruit/nut trees and raise a few chickens for eggs alone. John Suscovich can be found on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and his website of course.

My latest book is by Rebecca Thistlethwaite titled The New Livestock Farmer. This is one of the speakers that we stumbled upon at the Mother Earth News Fair last weekend. We were looking for a place to land for an hour before the presentation we planned to sit in on.

Her talk was called: From Hoof to Plate: Business Essentials for the pastured meat farmer. So much information packed into an hour. So much that her talk peaked my interest and I decided that I MUST get one of her books...a signed copy of her book no less!

One of my all time favorite gardening shows that I would try to catch on the weekends was Gardening Naturally with Eliot Coleman. I didn't realize at the time how much of a gardening icon he really was until recently. I think that I may have had his Organic Gardening book, but I don't remember. A couple of years ago I was looking around for new books to add to my gardening "library" and came across this on Amazon.

Four-Season Harvest?! Whaaaat??? Even though I added this to my collection of books, I didn't refer to it as much when I decided to plant veggies early last fall. For me it was all about trial and error. Learn as you go and if it doesn't work then go to the books. Seems to work for me :)

The last book I want to share is by a French Canadian dude - Jean Martin Fortier. His gardening style is very much non-mechanized. No loud machinery, no gas powered anything - except for his BCS tractor - which he uses for specific purposes other than tilling check that out HERE. To see a video that was featured by Justin Rhodes on his Great American Farm tour go HERE.

There are so many books out there, but I need to figure out how to store what books I do have - which reaches to other things unrelated to gardening/farming. Seriously need to figure out how to incorporate a library-ish area in my house!