Shade in the Desert

In the desert when the temperatures are 100 degrees plus tomato's won't flower to top it off direct sunlight is hard on the plant and can make the fall crop an iffy proposition.  With that in mind we decided to give the tomato's some shade this year.  We didn't want to spend a lot of money on it so we put our thinking caps on what we came up with was an old trampoline that was unassembled that I had insist we saved. Trudy, Jake and I assembled it yesterday and we waited until this morning to move the trampoline and put it in place so we had Ashley's help.  It was all hands on deck for this job, it was a pretty daunting task.   Below are some pictures of what it looks like.

The frame, that has been laying around for something to do.

The Tomato's with no shade

The frame assembled

The Trampoline assembled

Two people who really needed shade this thing probably weighs 200 lbs.

We're relaxing in the shade of the house, I snapped the pictures through the tree.

God Bless!!

Government Thugs, Rapists and Pedophiles

I apologize at the beginning, because the topic at hand gets my blood boiling.  I won't go on long.  I read this article today and it re-affirmed that I will not fly nor will my family.  If travel is necessary it will be by automobile through and in states that have reciprocity laws concerning concealed carry.  Otherwise it's a no go for that state.

The article linked above angers me to no end because we as a people have allowed our government to become a government that scares children, not just any child but a cute, four year old little girl.  Our government terrorized her, and her family.  After terrorizing the child our government in the form of a TSA spokesman then has the audacity to say, 'TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that our officers followed proper current screening procedures in conducting a modified pat-down on the child.'

We the people need to understand then act accordingly that thuggery, rape and pedophilia in the name of safety is wrong.   

 

Or is it OK to terrorize children as long as you're safe?  Think about it...   

Garden Update

We have had another busy week with work, the elections, Jake not feeling 100% and of course caring for the garden and the animals.  Trudy planted more strawberry plants and we're afraid they died.  We're going to give them some time to come up properly before we order more plants.  Below are some pics of the garden, I didn't take pictures of the two new raspberry bushes, the grapes or the newest blackberry bushes.

This is our little strawberry patch.  We're getting strawberries from it almost daily, but they are little.  We're amending the soil to fertilize them better to help the fruit grow.

The small plants are currently small but if our squash produce we're going to have a big harvest.

These are volunteer sunflowers.  We dried last years flowers on the fence and apparently dropped a bunch of seeds.

Beans, more than a third of this side of the garden have bush beans started.  Love me some fresh beans to eat and some to can.

Tomatos: They look small but they are buried deep to make a deeper root and keep them in the cool soil.

The tomatos on the pallet fence are roma's

We decided to see if we can use pallets to support our tomato's without damaging them.  We'll see if it works.

We use onions in almost everything we cook.  These will be moved over by the tomato plants once they get a bit bigger.

This blackberry is a bit over a year old. 

The biggest of the two elderberry bushes.  hopefully it will get really big this year.

Trying something new

We cleaned the shop today, while we were cleaning it I was kind of half way working on rebuilding a failed nest box that I built when we first got chickens.  I was kind of brainstorming how to remake the nest boxes and make it work in the space we have.  Below is what I came up with.

Garden Mid April

Yesterday we had to cover all the plants in the garden.  We were scrambling to find enough things to cover the plants and we didn't make it.  The beans, corn, yellow crook neck and zucchini that didn't get covered seems to have come through the frost alright, we had the tomatos and peppers covered, we also covered the grape plants with sheets.  Below is some pictures of the garden that Trudy took today.

The tomato's are here, we're trying something new and supporting them with recycled pallets.

Over here are beans, corn and summer squash.... there's a bunch growing but they're not showing up in the picture.

I don't even know if I like artichokes, but I want to try to grow it.  Did you know potentially you can get 50 chokes off one plant?

Sharon, we took these and posted these pictures for you...

Have a good day folks.

Saturdays Breakfast

Saturday was cold and rainy, it was in the forties and felt like winter especially with the wind.  My wife whipped up a delicious baked oatmeal and apple cinnamon breakfast from scratch.  It warmed you up and tastes great!!

Hot out of the oven.

Add a bit of cream, I like it with a bit more cinnamon so I added more as well.

Gardening 2012

There's a lot going on around here.  I'll try to show some of it in pictures rather than a wordy blog post.

We had to renew our flock, because a predator carried off our original

 

 

Compost piles are getting started and/or turned

Jake helping turn a compost pile.... I need to get him off the pile, the boys growing like a weed.

 

 

 

Seeds are started and tended to by my lovely wife.

Meat is being canned, this is hamburger.  In the canner tonight is both turkey and ham.

Sauerkraut is being fermented.

The garden is being prepared.

Strawberries are growing, and there's a tone of berries growing on the plants.

Seedlings are being hardened off.

This is a blackberry plant I thought was going to die.

Elderberry, the coffee can was used to keep ants out of it.

Onions in a temporary home.  We'll replant some of them around the tomato and pepper plants to try to keep bugs away.

The watering system is going in.  We lay the soaker hose down, sow the seeds or plant the plants then mulch to keep weeds down and moisture in.

In this picture you can see that I moved the tomato supports to the west side of the garden.