Sister Arrival

It's not as if it's my stepmom is coming, it's only my sister, and her 'friend'...but I am still is a panic trying to get my house clean.  Although to be honest, at this point, it's more about getting it straightened up and things put away. There are actually boxes still in the spare room that have not been unpacked since we moved into this house, back in September 2007...but we're getting closer.  My sister has never seen the house, so I want to make a good impression.

She's never seen the house, because 'there are too many trees' up here.  She lives in the city, SF, and loves the city life.  When we were still young enough to be living with our Dad, she had a poster of NY on her wall, said she was going to go there....and she did, at 18, I believe.  The day after she graduated high school, a year early (she's a smart one) she moved to LA.  When it came time for her to transfer from the local JC to a University, her search included only colleges with 30,000 students or more...that's when she ended up back in the SF area, where she has lived for more than 10 years now.  My sister has been up to Humboldt once in that time, before we had the house, for my wedding back in 2005, but that was the last time.

Soon, and I don't know yet how soon, she is moving again, to Chicago this time.  I am sad and excited for her at the same time....Borange.  I'm going to miss knowing that I can jump in the car and a few hours later be at her place.  Although she did not come up here to visit, I went to see her a few times a year.  I often stayed at her place when I came to the city for events and workshops, I'm going to miss that!  I've never been to Chicago, guess I have the perfect excuse to go now!

Ok....off to get ready for work and do more house cleaning!

Entry from Freedom Gardens blog

Entry from Freedom Gardens blog

I bought a house a couple of years ago, yep, right before the bottom fell out of the market.  I've been lucky enough to be able to hold on to the house, but if I could manage to get more food out of my garden and spend less at the stores, that sure would help.  We have a pretty good sized yard with the house on the NE corner of the lot leaving quite a bit of land with southern and western exposure.

Right after we moved in I got "A Slice of Organic Life" edited by Sheherazade Goldsmith....it's a fantastic book full of beautiful pictures and quick, easy tips and directions for projects that help bring one's life more in line with an organic self-sufficient one.  I love it and have read it cover to cover getting all sorts of ideas....4-square gardening, worm composting, bees, water catchment, blueberries and so much more.

Then, through a friend on Facebook, I was introduced to the Dervaes Family and their Urban Homestead.  Everything I read just excited me more.  Another friend showed me the River Cottage website, another very exciting small farm/homesteading site in England.  In addition, we have a very healthy farmer's market with farmers who are more than eager to share tips and advice.

I now have a goal to do what I can to make our yard into our own little urban homestead.

I'm interested in connecting with other local urban homesteaders and folks with hobby farms.

Catching up

I don't really think it's actually possible to catch up on everything..but I'll try to touch on things from past posts at least.

Baby front - we're still not pregnant :(  Perhaps that is really why I've slowed down with the posting...that and knowing that it's really for me, the writing and posting, not one else really gives a shit and well, if I'm busy or unmotivated, no one will care, but me.  We've tried a total of 4 times now, once with the donor from the sperm bank and three times with G, who we've taken to calling Baby Daddy.  Jillian is bleeding now, so in a couple of weeks we'll be trying again.  We are really thankful that Baby Daddy is eager and willing and patient....it helps.  I've almost gotten to a place now that I'm not thinking about it too much...kind a in a wait til it happens, then I'll get excited mode.

Garden - after all the rain and our crazy mouse problem I finally was able to plant a few things in the raised beds outside on Summer Solstice, June 22nd.  We been able to harvest a few green beans, peas, lettuce, cilantro, parsley and strawberries....but to tell the truth, I don't think incorporated enough good stuff, compost, into the used soil I filled the beds with before I planted and now, the garden is looking a bit weak....we'll see.

Dyeing eggs - the natural way.

Dyeing eggs - the natural way.

I learned this egg dyeing method back when I was a kid...if I remember correctly it was from someone in our church group when we had a craft day or something.

Supplies:

Onion Skins - I gather these from the grocery store, pulling the loose skins from the bottom of the onion bins, Winco works well.  I've never been charged anything for them at the check-out counter, I just tell them it's for an art project.

9" x 9" squares of light cotton - We used one of Jillian's old t-shirts and just cut it up.  We got 14 'squares' from one shirt.  The squares do not need to be exact, just big enough to tie around the egg.

Large pot for boiling

Splash of White Vinegar

First, you lay one of the squares flat on the counter and add a handful of crushed and broken up onion skins.  You want enough to form a layer or two around the egg once it's rolled up.

Place an egg in the center of your pile of crushed onion skins.

Next is the only tricky part: The idea is to tie the egg up in such a way that the onion skins are making contact with the shell.  I take one corner and fold it over the top of the egg, placing onion skins around the egg as I do.  Then, holding that in place, I fold the opposite corner over the egg, again, ensuring onion skins are in contact with the egg.  This method leaves the two other corners available to be pulled together and tied, securing the egg and onion skins.  There is no right way to do this.  As long as you've got onion skins next to the egg shell this should work.

After you've tied all your eggs, place them in a large pot with enough water to cover and float the egg bundles just a bit.  I add a couple splashes of white vinegar to the water to help make the magic happen.

Cover the pot and bring to boil.  Once the water starts to boil, remove lid and lower temperature and simmer for 15 minutes.  You'll notice that the water changes color from the onion skins, that's ok.  Since they float a bit, I stir the pot some as the eggs cook, making sure all sides are really getting in the water.

After 15 minutes, I remove the pot form the stove and gently dump out the hot water and start running cold water over the eggs.  It takes two or three cold water rinses before the bundles are cool enough to handle.  Once they are, carefully untie them as they may still be warm inside.....and behold, your naturally dyed eggs....that I think almost look like marble.

Starting the garden 2010 - Part 2 - Wildflowers, rhubarb and carrots

Well, last week, when the sun came out, we went to the yard an worked on another step to getting a nice full garden this season.  It started with planting the rhubarb bulb in the new large raised bed....I put it in the NW corner of the bed and watered it well.  I wanted to plant the carrots right then too, but after reading the directions of the seed package I realized that I needed to soak the seeds over night first...so, they'd go in the next day.

A while back we cleared the two dirt patches on either side of the front porch steps of all weeds, added some soil and treated it with a little Humtea.  And last week we finally added our Black Forest Calla and Emily McKenzie Crococmia bulbs to one side and wildflower mix to the other.  The mix came from several different sources - promotional shwag from Umpqua and Edward Jones, a b-day card from American Spirits made with paper infused with wildflower seeds, commemorative gifts (forget-me-nots) and wedding party favors, and we mixed them all together and sprinkled a bunch in one bed, a few in the other and rest went  onto our little hill.  One day that hill will be landscaped into more garden beds, but for now, I'll be happy with being able to go pick wildflowers out of my yard.


Our little starts in the egg crates started out great...see that's broccoli, winter squash, pumpkin, tomato, basil, peas and beans....after 10-14 days.  The starts that were left inside on the window sill and treated to the heater vent did much better than the starts in the makeshift greenhouse which was left outside.



I don't win very many contests...but a few weeks ago I won a drawing they did at Pierson's Building Center...I won a flowering cherry tree!!  I'm very excited.  Here is Jillian standing next to our newly planted tree.

Starting the garden 2010

This past winter the neighbor across the street from my work put a pile of 'scrap' wood out with a Free sign on it.  My good friend and co-worker Mo, who knew I was looking for some wood to build a new raised bed in my front yard, alerted me to the stash.  I drove around to load up my car and was happy to find out that it was all old beautiful Redwood, and nice long pieces too.    A few days later I rented a circular saw from Don's and and we made this great 10' x 4.5' box on the West side of the house and filled it with soil.  I had a couple of strawberry plants that had outgrown their pots so I transplanted them and waited out the winter.

Here's a picture of Bacon hanging out in the sun next to the new bed.

Finally, Spring is here!!  Well, today is the 1st day and we already have seeds going. A few weeks ago I went to the store and bought some seed.  I decided to try to buy all heirloom, but ended up with some organics and few Squirrel's Choice, which aren't organic, or heirloom from what I can tell,  but are varieties that are suppose to grow well in the West.  I got a few flowers, nasturtium and sweet peas, to plant along the fence and have to for bouquets for the house along with a bunch of vegies for the bed.

Heirloom

Melting Sugar Peas (Chinese)

Early Snowball Cauliflower

Genovese Basil

Fairytale Pumpkin

De Cicco Broccoli

Black Valentine Bush Beans

Bloomingdale Long Standing Spinach

Organic

Sweetie Tomotoes (cherry)

Squirrel's Choice

Sweet Meat Winter Squash

Bush Peas

Italian Flat Parsley

Cilantro

Lettuce Mix

He-Shi-Ko Green Onions

Davers Half Long Carrots

And we got a few bulbs too - a Black Forest Calla, Emily McKenzie Crococmia and some rhubarb.

I used some recycled egg crates and starting mix for the seed starts.

I lined the separated tops with plastic grocery bags and used them as liners for the bottom.  They also doubled as mini green houses once the seeds were planted and I covered the crates with the bags.

I got the bright idea, from something I read on the internet, I'm sure, to use the bed-in-a-bag bag as a greenhouse for some of the starts.



Jillian was a great help for the whole project!  It was a nice sunny day so we sat in the sun and made labels for the starter trays.



So once we got seeds in the trays, watered and labeled we set some up in the window in the dining room where there are four big West facing windows and the other ones in my makeshift greenhouse we set on top of the bed that will soon be their permanent home.



It was a very satisfying day and we really enjoyed ourselves working together on our garden.
It's been a few weeks and we certainly have some growth to be excited about...reports and pictures to come!

Photos - road trip

So the other day we took advantage of the sunny weather and went for a drive.  There are so many beautiful places to see in Humboldt County, trying to decide where to go is always a challenge. I pulled up a map of Humboldt on google maps and took a look...Fruitland. map  Made me giggle a little, so that's where we headed.  I studied the map to find as many 'alternative' routes to our destination as I could.  Found a road on the map that turned off 101 at Stafford that looked good....and another one off the Avenue of the Giants  south of Berlington going into Weott.  The turn off to Fruitland is just south of there.  Truthfully, I really didn't have plans pasted Fruitland, I guess I thought we'd turn around.  I did study the surrounding area a bit on the map and printed out what I thought we'd need, since I was pretty sure the cell phone, and therefore my imap app wouldn't work out there.

It was a great drive...even though we took neither of the 'alternative' routes, other than Avenue of the Giants - which was still great since Jillian hadn't even driven on it before.  The only thing that indicated Fruitland itself, was a sign for the volunteer fire department, I don't even think we saw a post office, but we did come to an intersection in the road and had to make a choice.  Turn around and go back the way we came, or keep going and hope the missing section of my printed out map did indeed connect the road that we were on with the one we wanted to be on to get home.  We bravely adventured ahead.  The condition of the road had gotten worse and worse the further off Avenue of the Giants we drove...and now it was dirt....perhaps we should have turned around?  Keep going, I told myself, still plenty of light and if we have to, we can still turn around and head back the way we came....the road, although dirt, wasn't too bad.  I sure did miss my Pathfinder though, with it's 4WD and all, would have made me feel just a little bit better/safer.  Eventual we came up on a sign that read Road Closed...bummer, guess we were turning around!  However, as we drove closer, we figured out that it was a sign for the road turning East off off the one we were traveling.  As I inched the car forward we looked down the road and Whoa!  We could see a road/bridge across the Eel River and it was all washed out, rather over, the river was flowing right over the road, no wonder there was a road closed sign. 

But it gave me the landmark I needed to find ourselves on the map again...we were at the turn off for McCann on the Dyerville Loop, sure felt good to 'know' where we were again, I love the adventure, but I really didn't want to get us lost.  

We kept driving and around the corner we saw a beautiful waterfall, two actually, coming off different sides of the hill and merging right there at the side of the road.  We stopped and took a few pictures, pretty isn't it?  I just love it here!