Overdue

Now that the one-year anniversary of the worst day of our lives is here, my mind is free to think about other things...and there are lot of other things going on!

Our garden is finished, and man, oh man, is it productive! We've eaten a few zucchini and heads of cauliflower already, and lots of lettuce. We currently have three ginormous broccoli awaiting picking and a pile of zucchini and yellow summer squash on the kitchen counter awaiting processing (mmm, zucchini bread!!). The dahlias my mother-in-law gave me are almost ready to bloom, and we have tomatoes on every plant. The winter squash have started setting fruit, too. Our beets are almost about ready to pull and process. Yay!

The garden hasn't been without issue, though. We've had a problem with cabbage aphids in the Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. The Brussels sprouts are growing well and I'm not terribly concerned, but the cauliflower has been a pain. Nothing says "ick" like raising a forkful of steamed cauli up to your mouth and seeing a bunch of previously hidden, dead brown aphids. Soaking the heads in strong salt water does help, but it's not getting every last aphid. I bought some neem oil to spray, but even though the label says safe to use up to harvest day, Paul's skeptical. We've only got a few of the 12 cauliflowers left before that bed is emptied. We really need to start thinking about success crops or cover crops, because our summer veggies will probably peak quickly, and even though summer has FINALLY arrived (93 yesterday, 90 today, in the 80s most of the week), we awoke to a heavy ground fog this morning, so I know fall is right around the corner. (As an aside, it's amazing how quickly formerly gorgeous petunia baskets can look pathetic, isn't it? Ugh.) We're also not loving the evening watering chores...next year we hope to get water to that side of our property and install drip irrigation and/or soaker hoses to make life easier.

On the farm front, our newest female Highland, BEM Xaralyn ("Sara"), was confirmed bred via Biotracking and is coming home this morning! She was AI'd 67 days ago to a lovely dun bull named LEA Raleigh from LEA-White Farms in Michigan. The pictures of his daughters make me drool!! Sara should calve around March 4th, giving us our third calf of the season after a very, very long dry spell. The rest of the herd has been delightfully peaceful. Paul helped clean out the creek and fix the fences so Roxy, Xoe and the steers could go to the hay field by the road. We plan to repair fences across the driveway in his main hayfield so we can let them over there, too. That land hasn't had animals (or fertilizer) on it for several years and could really use it. The boys are looking good. They're scheduled to go to the butcher on September 29th. (If you're local and looking for beef, we only have two quarters left!)

Summer chores have been put on hold, but some things - like replacement of our rotting (and ugly as sin) pump house - are starting to feel urgent, because we know winter will be here before we know it. (It was in poor condition when we bought this place in 2008, and hasn't been helped by our first calf T-Bone's remodeling [a.k.a. punching holes in the sides] and a wicked, windy winter storm that ripped part of the tin roof off. It's a hot mess.) I've given up on the weeds in the flower beds and driveway (they got too much of a head start), but I've got plans for next year! (I'm also trying to get ahold of a woman who organizes an amazing permaculture-for-home-gardeners project to see if she'll come down to Tenino, so there may be bigger plans in the making!) Other than that, there are fences to replace, some home winterizing to undertake...sometimes the list seems overwhelming. Repainting the barn (or adding metal siding) will have to wait for another year, and so will getting power and water out to the barn. Oh, well.

It's been one heck of a year, one that we do not ever want to feel the likes of again. Here's to moving forward...

We got our hay in...

An amazing evening sky...

Mmmm, fresh growth!

Clyde: "Do you have treats?"

Practicing patience

Patience is a virtue, but it's not one of mine. I've had so many lessons lately where patience was the required (and missing) element, and I think I'm finally getting the message.

This is a little thing, but a perfect case in point: I'm itching, aching, to plant flowers - annuals - in all of my pots. I'm equally longing to put the gorgeous, huge petunia baskets Paul bought me for my birthday back on their hangers on the front porch. However, doing either would be disastrous to the plants involved. The average last frost date for Tenino is a long way off yet. The weather forecasts for Saturday and Sunday promise at least partly sunny skies and highs in the 50s, but lows of 30 and 31 degrees, typical for April (and even May!) in my little town. So why am I so impatient?

Those lovely flowers in the medians or around businesses in Olympia are perky and bright on the same mornings where even tough daffodils at my house are hanging their heads in frozen resign. Paul dutifully, as if nurturing a child or someone housebound, carries my petunia baskets out from the garage to sit in the waning evening sun, for just a little TLC and fresh air, before bringing them back in to sit on the floor in the diffused light from the windows.

My plant pots are sitting at the ready, all in a group, waiting for new occupants. The pansies that barely survived the winter in a few other pots are struggling to rejuvenate themselves, and may make it through another season.

But my longing to putter and make things pretty outside will have to be satisfied by weeding, for just as the cold is too hard on my delicate annuals, the weeds laugh heartily and grow like, well, weeds. I'll try out my new garden tools, especially the strong-looking hand rake with its beefy tines, in the choked sandy bottomed paths in the raised vegetable garden, putting a little order to the chaos. I might even clear out a bed and plant (late) peas!

In all, I'll have to hang tight and admire Mother Nature's own hearty plants while I resign myself to practicing patience.

Sheila looking out during a brief sun break.

Happy Spring!

Now, if only it would warm up!


In the spring,
at the end of the day,
you should smell like dirt.
                                 -Margaret Atwood

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So many things can change in a week's time, can't they?

Our pasture lease deal fell through, much to our disappointment. Our neighbor thought to check with his homeowner's insurance agent - always a good idea - and discovered he would not be covered if anything happened. He technically can't have more than two head of cattle on his land, and they'd have to be his own. Otherwise, he would have to purchase agricultural insurance, which his current company doesn't offer and he doesn't want. We plan to ask our ever wise Highland breeder friends about their insurance and leasing experience, and perhaps we can find a policy that would adequately cover us and our neighbor. He brush hogged, or mowed, his pasture yesterday to keep it from getting too tall and seeding everywhere, which actually weakens the existing plants. This was the right thing to do, and honestly, even if we could have built a fence this weekend and moved the cattle over, the grass was probably already overripe and something they wouldn't have enjoyed eating. Perhaps we can get insurance in place for fall grazing, or wait until next spring. Or maybe it's just not to be...it certainly wasn't a perfect arrangement, but something we had hoped to try. Now we're back to Plan A, which is experimenting with management intensive grazing on our own land. Our grass isn't growing well (so far), and we've probably left the cattle in each area a little too long with each rotation (so far). Currently they're in the paddock with the barn, eating haylage. Poor Bridgit has such a hard time keeping her weight up when nursing we decided to provide this extra nutrition, plus give all of our grass a break. And who knows, with everyone confined in a smaller area, maybe we can even work with Natalie and the calves some!

In other news, my broody chicken experiement went haywire, big time. On day 3 I checked and discovered all but five of the 12 eggs were missing or broken. Someone (her? the new rooster?) was eating eggs. I cleaned out the nest box and put the cleanest three original eggs, plus five new ones, back under her. By the next day, they were all broken or missing. Grr. Now, I and my arrangement are partly to blame, since technically I should have moved her somewhere else with her nest. She was nesting in the "favorite" nest box, a cardboard Costco box with a cut-out. Still, egg eating is B-A-D, and I really didn't want chicks right now anyway, so I decided to put an end to the broodiness. Into a wire chicken crate she went, with food and water, for two days. Like magic, she came out on Day 3 with no desire to set. Yay. She was shaky and acting weird, though, and was also pale in the comb and wattles (those hangy-down fleshy things chickens have). It's been several days and she's back to normal now. Egg production is down, and the disappearing egg trick continued for a few days, but seems to be coming to and end. Perhaps I'll let her go broody some day in the future...but not now.

Meanwhile, the perennials and weeds in the front garden are going nuts, the vegetable garden is tilled and looking marvelously fluffy-soiled, the cows have "mowed" our back yard twice for us (thanks, girls), the calves are growing like little weeds...so much goes on it's hard to document it all!



Natalie mid-mow.

Cowboy, 1 month and 5 days old.

Someone's been in the freshly tilled garden! Clyde, 1 month old today.

Colors of Spring

Never mind that it's only March 16th...I'm ready for spring NOW! I know, I know, it's not far away, but I'm remembering last year's very long winter and very late last frost date. Some of the trees and shrubs are showing their spring blooms around here and it has me excited!

The ornamental plum smells divine and has been showering the front perennial bed with petals since the big wind storm we had late last week. Behind it, close to the house, the forythia is ablaze in gold little bells, looking less motley than last year with the help of some careful pruning. There are more daffodils blooming around the place, too. The header photo is of the tiny daffodils near the front walk, which I could swear didn't look so fuzzy-flowered last year. (I swear I didn't hit them with herbicide.) They are happily bobbing their little lion heads next to a tall pair of orange-trumpeted white daffodils, and out by the road, the bulbs I bought but didn't plant until January (oops!) are forming buds, too. There is even a clump of daffodils on a high spot in the pasture, looking healthier and slightly larger than last year's.

Now, if only the grass would grow strong and lush! The cattle are tired of their muddy paddocks, as am I. The chickens don't seem to mind, though, leaving behind chicken footprints in the muck as they head in from their two-hour free range time in the paddock. Their egg yolks are more brightly colored with the addition of fresh grass, weeds and bugs to their diet, a sure harbinger of spring!

Blurry blooms.

Pasture daffodils. They've multiplied!

Wishing for access to greener pastures. Patience, girls...the grass isn't ready!

A turn in the weather

Fall is definitely approaching here at Skookumchuck Farm. The mornings for most of the past week have been ushered in by heavy fog, which obscures the hills behind us and sometimes even our own property! Cows? What cows? Oh, there they are!

This morning felt especially chilly. The outdoor thermometer confirmed 47 degrees, although this afternoon is supposed to reach a high of 78 degrees in the Seattle area (which means 80 or slightly above for us). I am starting to wonder if our tomatoes will make it. The little yellow ones provide us a handful or so of fruits ripened on the vine every day, but the reds aren't ripening so well. A few plants have yet to produce a single rosy fruit. I suspect I'll be housing a bunch of hard green tomatoes again at the end of the season, hoping to ripen them in the garage.

The change in the air reminds me of other chores that will need to be accomplished soon: planting spring-flowering bulbs (I didn't get around to it last year), ripping out spent vegetable plants and mulching the beds, layering old hay over some of our tender perennials (although I'm starting to think tender perennials just don't stand much chance at this house!). Indoors, our ventilation system needs desperate cleaning, some drafty spots new caulk, the slip-inducing moss removed from the sidewalks so no one breaks their butts coming to visit. :) Fall is my favorite time of year...sleepy, cozy, breath-seeing, sweater-wearing, cider-drinking. YAY! Gone will be the blistering days when I wish I lived in Alaska (or an air conditioned house). During the height of winter, when I'm sick of breaking through crunchy snow to take buckets of warm water to the cows' troughs, I'm sure I'll long for the sunshine of summer, but for now, cooler weather seasons are right up my alley!

What do you have planned to get your home, garden and/or farm ready for the cooler months?

Shear Delight

Ah, perennials...the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap, or so goes the adage. I have no idea how old the plants in our front garden bed are, but let me tell you, "leap" hardly describes the explosion I've witnessed over the past several weeks. It's so funny to think back to moving-in day, when the bed seemed to contain only a plum tree, a lilac and a somewhat pathetic-looking dusty miller relative. I thought I'd have lots of planting to do. Fast forward to mid-May, and all sorts of new things were popping up here and there, lovely perennials like euphorbia, lupine hybrids, hardy geraniums, forget-me-nots, a few tulips, centaurea, and what I think is soapwort (although not sure). Lots of room for the eye to rest in between each of these plants, and some room for me to plant more in the future.



Well, here it is the end of June, and that same perennial bed - in fact the entire front garden - is to the point of overwhelming me. Everything has exploded, that same bed is crammed full of all sorts of things (some I like, some I don't), and is a great big mess. Couple that with the arbor leading to the front door, which has four different plants growing on it, one in each corner of the arch: wisteria and grapes in the front, and hops and a climbing rose in the back, closest to the front door. There is also a humongous spirea behind a lattice fence in the breezeway separating the house from the garage, and that thing was so massive and overgrown all I could think about yesterday was pruning...so I stopped at Ace Hardware in town on my way home and bought a pair of giant hedge pruners (you know, the scissors type).



Today I'm paying for it. I sheared and pruned for over an hour straight. I truly only intended to attack the spirea and the mystery shrub between our side fence and well pump house, and believe me, I went nuts on both. But I also got carried away, attacking the 7 foot tall forsythia, the 6+ foot tall rhododendron in front of the kitchen window (I want my views back), all three butterfly bushes (I don't even care if I don't get flowers this year; they should have been cut to the ground last fall), the expired stalks of lupine and kniphofia, and the upper reaches of the climbing rose and hops on the arbor.



I know I didn't do justice to any of those plants; I'll have to go back in later with hand pruners and do the job right. Now, though, there's space, breathing room if you will, in the front garden. There are also signs of massacre everywhere, the amputated plant parts laying where they fell. I'll clean up the mess later. When I can use my arms. I came out of my rampage with a huge broken blister on my writing hand and arms so sore and tired I can't even properly hold a pen! How sad...seems like I should maybe do this more often, huh?

(Further garden work will need to wait until another weekend, as tomorrow we're bringing Rustler's Bridgit and Sheila of Valhalla home!)



I keep meaning to post photos of the front garden's progression through the season but haven't gotten around to it. For now, enjoy the "before slaughter" photos I took a few evenings ago.





View down the front walk. Butterfly bushes on both sides, and check out that arbor! You can't really tell, but there were roses and hops on top of the roof.



The largest offenders in this view: butterfly bushes, rose campion, lupine and the monster rhodie (far right).



Oy. What a mess. The foxgloves just showed up this week. You can barely see the violets and lamb's ear in the foreground...both grow everywhere outside the broken-concrete-lined flower bed.



My winter project: trimming the massive Japanese maple. It's actually larger than my Subaru Forester, and has hack marks where past owners have cut it out of the driveway.

Poppies!

I am astonished to discover what I thought was a giant hollyhock is actually a pompom poppy! I had no idea these even existed; then again, I've never grown poppies on purpose. There are tons of little steel gray poppy plants popping up everwhere (that's a lot of p's, not peas, which we also have a lot of). Now I'm considering letting each one grow where it is just to see what I have!



I'm glad I decided to check out the "hollyhock" again last night during my before-bed quest to retrieve Tom the cat from his outdoor adventures (no kitties outside after dark...there are scary creatures in the night - owls and coyotes). The largest bloom is starting to fade, revealing the only-a-poppy-has-it pepper-shaker shaped seed head. Woo hoo! I'll be sure to cut these off so I can sprinkle it's seed babies in places I actually want to grow these giant poppies.


The giant buds make more sense now.















What an unglamorous home for such a beauty!

Garden Delights

So much to write about, so little time. This week finds us wrapping up cow preparations...the girls come home on Saturday!



To tide you over until I can write a "real" post, here are some photos I took yesterday evening around the gardens.

In order:
Volunteer double (triple?) hollyhock (about 4 feet tall! I can't believe I've been yanking these "weeds" out of the ground everywhere else!)
Lovely rose against garage wall
Volunteer poppy coming up in back patio
Kniphofia and snapdragon montage, front garden
Spruce tree
Blueberries
New apples on tree in pasture (almost all the 20 trees have tons of apples)
Volunteer peas (yummy!)
Our vegetable garden (corn/beans/broccoli/cauliflower/spinach/beets/onions/cucumbers)

Welcome!

Hi, and welcome to my (first ever) blog!


When my husband and I moved from our busy South Tacoma corner lot home to our dream property in rural Tenino, Washington just over a month ago, I never thought I'd fall so in love with my new surroundings and the promise and peace this new life brings me. I decided I'd like to remember my daily musings and share them with family and friends, and so this blog was born.

Here are some topics I'm sure I'll post about as time goes on:

• The wild apple trees dotting our pasture.
• My first flock of chickens and the fabulous eggs they lay every day!
• The antics of our three dogs, his (Maggie and Gravy) and mine (Honey).
• The explorings of our two cats, Tom and Zoe (who until the past couple of weeks hadn't been outside since she was born to a stray momma cat ten years ago).
• Life and death on the farm...from the painful loss of my sweet old Manx cat, Simon, to the easier to take (why?) death of Buttless, my little tail-feather-missing, eggbound Easter Egger hen.
• Preparing and planting our first "real" garden together.
• What's new in my existing perennial bed and herb garden (every day brings a new surprise!).
• Discovering life and living in Tenino, Washington...a town with no stop lights (not even a blinking light!).

Enjoy!