Just beautiful...

Black Australorp/Rhode Island Red cross... look at those colors!

Chickens at Susitna Farm & Fiber!!!

I finally got my chickens! 1 Easter Egger and 5 Black Australorp/Rhode Island Reds!

Herdie says he is NOT impressed.

Fall Vegetables...

I just finished harvesting the last of the carrots from the garden. I got almost 10 pounds this year, and it really didn't take up that much space in the raised beds! I roasted a chicken the other night, and now I have leftover chicken, onions and fresh carrots simmering for chicken and dumplings tonight.

Homemade chicken stock smells AMAZING!!

I also have the carcass boiling away with the leftover onions and brussels sprouts from the first dinner, as well as the stems from the herbs I cut from the herb garden and added to the chicken and dumplings. This stock will go into the freezer to cook with later. I love that I can get 3 good meals (that serve 4 people!) from just 1 chicken and some veggies from the garden!

I also bought my first pumpkin of the season last weekend! I love pumpkin, and I hope that someday soon it will grow in my own garden, but for now I was just happy to see it on the grocery store shelf! There are so many ways to cook it, and the flavor is adaptable to most any dish or seasoning. This one will be roasted and pureed, most likely, and eaten with just a touch of salt and pepper.

Do you have a favorite fall vegetable that you look forward to all summer?

Sometimes Husbands are listening and thinking, just not saying anything!

Last night, for the umpteenth time, I attempted to talk to my husband about getting chickens. He has been adamantly saying no for about 5 years now, but I have been faithfully been pestering him in the hopes that he would at least tell me why. As I said it again, I braced myself for the usual "I don't want to talk about it right now", but instead, he threw back "I am actually VERY interested in getting chickens now, and what do you think about getting a cow?"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A cow! That is not something that would happen any time soon, but my husband has been listening to me after all! Our conversation briefly touched on raising pigs and rabbits as well, and I can say with some confidence now that this IS going to happen. When my Husband has been thinking about something enough that he starts talking about it, it means that he's already weighed the options in his head, and that part of the battle is won. Now lets just hope that Mr. Super Planner doesn't go overboard on the coop!

Nice to see you again!

I know it has been forever since I took the time to post anything more thoughtful than a sentence or two.  For those of you who live in Alaska, you most likely understand already.  This is the busiest season for the gardener, and even more so for me this year as my husband decided to seriously upgrade my ENTIRE garden!  If you look at my posts from last year, you will find pictures of what the garden USED to look like.  Here are some snapshots I took this morning...

The lovely deck that Hubby built for my birthday last year.  I finally got the flower pots planted!

The three pots are planted the same... In about a month these will look awesome!

Cabbage, Swiss Chard, and Brussels Sprouts, patiently waiting to be planted in their permanent home.

The old raised beds have been transformed into flower beds.  This year they are planted full of Alaskan wildflower seeds, which just broke ground yesterday!

My new, fenced in garden area, with raised beds and room to add a chicken area!  

This is the only raised bed that is planted so far... Broccoli, Turnip, Leek, Green Onion, Kale, Spinach, Lettuce and Radishes!!!

The lettuce is VERY happy to be transplanted, finally!

Hopefully the Broccoli will be happier this year than it was last year.  They seem to be doing well!

Starting to get an idea of why I haven't posted much lately?  We actually had some rather sad news a few weeks ago as well.  Boss, our most beloved, and only remaining dog, finally lost his battle to cancer.  He had a different type than the bone cancer that took Lady from us so suddenly a few months ago.  He has been battling it for years, but it got to be just too much.  It was heartbreaking, and we miss him terribly.  I rescued him 10 years ago, and had had him longer than my human children!  There is a big void now, which I can't hope to fill any time soon.

RIP Boss, you were the best of the best.

Today's Garden Notes

Yesterday I transplanted the sunflowers and zucchini into bigger pots.  I made the pots out of recycled newspaper, and they are perfect!  I will post some pictures as soon as I have new batteries for the camera!  The eggplant, tomato, and cucumber haven't sprouted yet, but other than that the seedlings officially have a 100% germination rate!  Amazing!

Husband and I had a talk about chickens last night.  We decided that we really need to wait one more year, because we need to have the coop set up BEFORE I bring them home.  I am moving/changing my whole garden this year, and that will be the main spring project.  I am a little disappointed, but it only makes sense.  He promised to help me get the new raised beds all set up, so that will be nice to have the help. 

I am absolutely itching to get into the dirt now.  The temperature has gotten into the 40s for the last 10 days here.  Dare I say, spring has arrived?!?!

Uh oh, its early, but I've got the itch!

It is official, I have caught it. That seasonal disorder whose symptoms include sketches of chicken coops and garden plans, seed catalogs and hatchery fliers. I catch this bug every year about February or so, and this year is no exception. It all started with 4 seed catalogs arriving in the mail. Now I have to really plan out my garden and decide what I want to plant this year. I say I am going to take it easy this year and just grow a few things I have success with, and one or two that I need to learn about, but that plan never seems to work.

My husband thinks I'm crazy. He got home from work last night to find library books about raising chickens and building chicken coops spread all over the bed, with sketches of the new garden layout and chicken coop, all enclosed in a nice chain link run (that I used to use for my dogs, but don't really need now that I'm down to just one mellow old friend.) I even have it designed to have a door between the chickens and the gardens so that I can let them in every fall to fertilize the dirt for me! I'm fairly sure that Rob is going to build me said coop this year, and I need to make sure I know exactly what I want for the day he says its time to build it!

I'm glad that my husband humors me, even if he thinks I'm just a little bit nuts!

Goodbye to 2009

Hard to believe it is the last day of 2009 already. My baby boy turned 6 years old yesterday and my newborn is going to start crawling any minute. Its always a little startling to me when I reflect on how fast the year passes by.

I'm not one to really set "New Years Resolutions", but I figure I could outline where I see myself at the end of 2010...

1. Out of debt
- this means all the credit cards and the doctor bills, not the house or vehicles

2. Chickens
- those who read this blog regularly know that this is one of my biggest goals this summer

3. SUCCESSFUL garden
- I see my gardening endeavors as somewhat of a failure up to this point, with a few exceptions... I want to grow an edible cabbage dammit!


These 3 things are top of my list... wonder what I'll be saying this time next year!

Winter is definitely here!

Wow! What a sudden change! Winter is definitely here!

It is -24F at my house this morning. Cold enough that I have the water trickling in the bathroom sinks so that the pipes don't freeze. Every time I think about getting chickens, this is the one drawback I come up with. What about in the middle of winter? I know that they can survive quite comfortably with the right setup, but am I really going to want to go collect eggs at 40 below? The answer, of course, is no, but I would do it anyway! I just need to think about this when I determine how far from the house I decide to locate the coop.

Stephen has expressed an interest in vegetable gardening and raising chickens, so I recently requested some information from our local 4-H folks. The packet just got here, so I need to read and see what they have to offer. We wouldn't be joining until summer at the earliest, but I think this will be more of a next-year project. At any rate, I'm glad he's interested. That means that he is listening to what I am trying to teach him!

Now that there is real snow on the ground, I am really starting to think about Christmas. I have about half of my gifts made, and I need to decide what type of preserves to make. I want it to be something festive, so maybe something like pear/pomegranate jelly? I'll have to start flipping through my canning cookbooks for ideas.

We had an early Thanksgiving dinner with some close friends of ours last weekend. Today I am making turkey soup with the leftovers. The house will soon be smelling warm and delicious, which is perfect for a cold day like today. I love turkey leftovers!

Brrrrrrr!

It is most definitely getting colder outside. Earlier this week, the air changed. It went from cool summer air, to cold crisp fall air. You can smell the snow creeping down the mountain, and it is getting downright COLD at night. I still haven't turned the heater on yet. I've been baking every day and the heat from the oven is still enough to keep the house warm enough. I have turned on the fireplace in the bedroom the last 2 nights, but that's more for being cozy than for being cold. I am really a cheapskate when it comes to heating fuel. My husband hates it, and secretly turns up the heat when he thinks he can get away with it, but I always turn it right back down! I figure, especially with fuel prices the way they are these days (gasoline is running $3.36 a gallon right now, and heating fuel isn't far behind...) our pocketbooks will thank us if we just put on a sweater. Lily has lots of cute, warm footie pajamas that will keep her warm, and Stephen likes it a little cooler like I do.

I have been letting the dogs stay in the house for most of the day now. Boss is almost 10 and has cancer. The cold last year nearly crippled him. I honestly don't think he will make it through another winter. That's a hard thing to come to terms with. I rescued Boss when he was 8 months old, and he has been the best dog I have ever known. I'll just keep him comfortable as long as I can, and know in my heart that that old dog had a good life because of me. He used to go on sleep-overs to Stephen's cousin's house. I have pictures of them in bed with Boss snuggled up under the covers, happy as a clam, and twice the size of the kids!

My husband mentioned that we might get another dog when Boss passes on, but honestly, I don't think I want to. Lady is quite a handful, although she is getting more mellow as she gets older (finally!) I do need a dog for protection around here, but Lady is 140 pounds, and can do the job quite nicely on her own. She is quite fond of scaring the crap out of tresspassers! She is not mean at all, but they don't know that when she walks up to them and looks them in the eye, and is the same size as them! She has the intimidation thing down nicely... she gets about 3 feet away and just stares! (We don't have tresspassers all that often any more, but it was a real problem last year... mostly punks on four-wheelers or snowmachines tearing up the driveway, with no concept of private property or respecting the rights of others.)

All in all, life is good here at Woodside Gardens. We are content and happy, and ready for the change of seasons. Lots of stuff to do around the house still before the snow flies, but that seems to be a never ending chore, and sure to get worse once the chickens are here. I have all winter to convince Rob to build that chicken coop in the spring!

Ewwww... cattle poop!

I'm going to be adding aged steer manure to my raised garden beds and to my compost pile today. My husband thinks I'm nuts... he's such a city boy! LOL I just amazes me the differences between him and myself, him growing up in big city California and me growing up on a little farm in Alaska. When Rob's parents were here last week I served scrambled eggs with fresh eggs, and they (my husband included) actually complained that the eggs were too yellow! Can you believe that?! They are so used to old store bought eggs that they thought the yellow color meant that there was something wrong!

I'll be getting 3 chickens very soon. I don't have a chicken coop yet, so they will be living at my mother's house with her 3 new hens, while I work on my husband a while longer. He thinks that chickens will be a big pain in the ass. We are also going to be raising a turkey next spring for thanksgiving dinner. I'm really excited!

Sooner or later Rob will let me do this here, but for now, at least mom is only 6 miles away!

Today's Garden Happenings

My one Lily is happily blooming away, while the rest sit and think about it.





Spinach and Kale are officially in the raised beds now, and they seem quite happy with their new living arrangements.

This years compost pile.

Last years compost pile.

The main event in the garden today is the compost. I finally got around to turning and watering last years compost pile, and I was pleasantly surprised! There is still a lot of dried garden waste (mostly last years tomato plants), but there was lots of earthy smelling dirt as well! This is the first time I have turned this pile, so I expected to find a lot of organic matter that hadn't really started decomposing yet. This is my first attempt at composting, and I have a 3 year plan in mind.

Year 1) Start a fresh pile each year, in the fence to keep the critters away, no turning, just piling.
Year 2) Turn and water (occasionally)
Year 3) Turn and water (occasionally) and turn into the raised beds in the fall

I figure this plan will give me compost with a minimal amount of work or attention, and give the organic matter time to fully decompose even though it freezes every winter. This means that starting next fall, I will begin to incorporate my compost into my garden. I want to garden exclusively organically, and I figure this is the best way to go about it. I am contemplating adding aged steer manure in year two, but I haven't decided on that yet. Eventually I will also be getting my chickens going, and I will add their manure in year one or two as well. Give me a few years, and my garden should show a marked improvement... I have nothing but time!