Last Friday of September

This past week has been a bit of a whirlwind, but then at the same time very slow. Work has been a little quiet, kind of. Home life is always go-go-go. Let's get these five things going...

Pokemon Go - Last Sunday was Pokemon Go Community Day and the featured Pokemon was Porygon. Yay! Since last months Community Day we decided that we would do all future Community Day events at the WSU campus around the corner and down the road from us. Last month was pretty quiet and there weren't many people. This month was different because of the fires and it was the first Sunny day with no smoke in over a week! There were all sorts of people enjoying the campus and the trails and everything. It was fun to get out and move a bit. We ended up walking the trail that leads to the entrance off of Salmon Creek Avenue and put our pokemon in the gym that is new at the WSU sign. Our pokemon are still stuck there and it might be a while until we get kicked out. Oh well. During our walk we passed this cool sculpture - 

New Book - A couple of weeks ago I placed an order for a new book with canning recipes. It came highly recommended by Living Traditions Homesteader Sarah. I've been enjoying her and her husband's YouTube videos and she had mentioned this book a couple of times. So I took a look on Amazon and read through the reviews to get a feel of what other people's thoughts were and went for it. I was excited to see that it would be delivered earlier that I thought and now I'm keen on starting to plan next year's garden while going through the recipes in this book!

Cabbage - few things worked in the garden this year. So to find a cabbage that was worthy of harvesting was a nice surprise! This variety is called Filderkraut and I had grown it once before with excellent results. So I was hoping for more than just the one head this year. There might be another one out there, but if there isn't I'll just have to try again next year. Next year's garden is going to be so much better, I can just feel it!

Baby Magpies - This week we have been enjoying watching the little Magpies developing. Unfortunately, the runty one of the trio got into a bit of a pickle yesterday and it didn't look like he/she would survive. Evidently it was all drenched and not able to walk very well. Tom set up the heat lamp and tried to dry it off as best he could and put her under the lamp. When he went to check on her again this time she was in the middle of the garage, all wet again and laying lifeless on the floor. Again little duckling was put under the lamp and Tom didn't have high hopes that she would make it. After hearing from Tom a couple of times I said a quick prayer for the baby to be strengthened. Miraculously, he/she perked up and appeared to be doing well. Today after I left for work the baby took a turn for the worst and even after a little help from Tom ended up passing away during my lunch break. The little one is the one at the bottom of the photo. We still have the other two and we are sure that Betty will continue to raise them up. She was made for this! I am sad, but since it's hard to bond with these little ducklings the loss isn't that huge. We still have two and they are a blessing. 

Silly Turkeys - We spend time with the Meaties and the Turkeys after dinner most days - weather permitting. Last night was a nice evening so we started making our way out there when I heard the familiar sound of the turkeys chirping. Then I saw them...

Seriously, never a dull moment with these two. I was able to surmise that these two were Cindy & Mindy. Just exploring the future pig palace. They are a couple of goofballs and we never know what they will be up to at any given moment.

Building Up A Library

Books, I have always liked having books...novels, non-fiction, how-to's you name it. For awhile we would go to the local bookstore on Friday night to hang out and thumb through the latest magazines, bargain books...new releases and everything in between. Ever since our two favorites closed - Barnes and Noble and Borders we don't really go out on Friday night anymore - Amazon Prime Video has filled that void now. That in addition to the fact that we are both early risers, which means bedtime comes early too.

The one thing that I have been thinking about is creating a space that would be specifically for researching, planning and looking at a variety of literature on gardening, animals and homesteading. I don't like homesteading per se, but the books I have looked at have excellent information on a variety of farmy things.

Once all evidence of Christmas was packed up and put away, I decided it was time to get my space put together. I've got an okay set up: a couple of easy chairs, the coffee table and my bookcase. The bookcase was emptied of all the books that were not related to gardening, animals and homesteading...and then the few books that I do have were put on the shelves. There are a few special issues of Mother Earth News that could also go into the bookcase instead of in the magazine rack on the floor.

The library is looking sad....

This just makes me want to go and look for more books whether they are instructional or just have a good story...I might have to start checking out the second hand stores for gently used books. At one time I did have more garden books, but eventually got rid of them. For awhile it appeared that my dream to be a flower farmer wasn't going to go anywhere. So anything remotely related to gardening was donated. That also included an early edition of Eliot Coleman's The New Organic Grower book - sadness. 

OOP - just ordered Welcome to the Farm by Shaye Elliott of the Elliott Homestead. She's a "local" living in north central Washington state. She was also featured on the Great American Farm Tour so you can check that out...

While I sit in my new space and dream about the future and what we need to accomplish this year, I'll be waiting for my book to arrive ~ it should be delivered Sunday.

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!