Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Yesterday turned out to be a much busier day than I thought and by the end of the day I was exhausted!

I spent part of the morning working outside and getting the area where we plan to put a food forest all prepared. Right now the space covered with wood chips that were delivered last fall, and then later spread by the chickens.

At the time I didn't have the thought of doing a food forest, I just let the chickens have something to do while they were in that space. A couple of weeks ago or so I had an idea - because that's what I do - and asked Tom what he thought. Well, what else can he say? He thought it was a good idea too.

For the longest time he has wanted some sort of berm, so this would fit the bill. I never understood what the purpose of a berm would be, as I don't have any sort of landscape designing skills. A food forest berm would do though. I can think of all sorts of stuff that we can place in the area - which is actually a good size space.

Last fall I ordered a fig tree that will need a new home at some point. Right now I've got it in a pot, but that will do for now - especially since I will continue to transplant it into bigger pots until we are ready to start planting in the new space. I am also envisioning berries and perennial flowers as well as some herbs. I also have Crocus Sativus on order. That would be the variety of Crocus that Saffron is harvested from. Those will be coming in September so I'll have to get those into a temporary spot until they can be transplanted to the food forest.

My plan is to add some more grass and get it all watered in then pull one of the tarps over it. To be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing, but that's the beauty of experimenting. Just do it. If it doesn't work out, rethink the project and try something different. No harm, no foul...hahaha.

I also got the ice cream maker out for the first time this season and made a salted caramel ice cream with nuts and chocolate mixed in. It's pretty rich and caramel is not a favorite of mine, but Tom seems to like it and he is the ice cream lover in our house anyway. Just for something a little different, I got some ice cream cups on Amazon, so we have some individual servings. It's a little more waste, but this will work fine since the ice cream freezes up pretty solid and can be hard to scoop out. 

Once again I worked on dinner. Since I have limited time during the week cooking during my vacation time is a welcome activity. So what was for dinner last night?

Risotto!! One of my favorite things to make!! 

Vacation time has been great! Farm Life is the Best Life!