Where has April gone?

Busy all the time.. you'd think I'd have time to read or something while I'm nursing my 3 month old... but I generally try to doze.

I've been working on making cheese.. seems lime all I do lately. It's even made it hard to get in the garden (and it shows). This is manchego after its first press, getting flipped, redressed and returned to the press.

It's been pretty dry around here lately. But last night it dumped! And poured! We got 6" of rain in less than 12 hours. Now it's flooded everywhere. Not really how we needed rain. Really would've preferred that over a few weeks. But I suppose that's just how it goes.

I've got sweet potato slips coming along! I'm going to have to plant some soon. There'll be a few slips ready before too long.

Whatever the case I just keep puttering along.

Butter!

My electric butter churn... Today was the first time I ran it off our solar panel. It worked just took all of my panel. That's okay though I just know I might be able to catch up with my cream. I'm nearly getting 1 gallon a day.

Washed, packaged and ready for the freezer.

Apparently I feel like ranting ...

I guess it's been a little while since I posted last... oh well. It's the way it goes some times. I'd say "especially this time of year" but that would be ridiculous because I'm horribly busy year round. There are people who seem to think farmers get the winter off... nope. That's when repair work that was put off gets to occur. If you have livestock you're dealing with a whole host of new problems, frozen water being the first. Anyway, my rant for the day.

We actually had frost the other day and have a possibility of tonight as well. I'm looking at setting out tomato plants today if I get to it. The sun coming in my south window is veritably nonexistent and my starts are showing it.

Later...

Didn't happen. Had to do laundry and deal with pink eye on a cow and bull. The bull was lots of fun... I did get out and do some cover cropping in the garden though.

We do things naturally around here. Well, let's say we don't believe in germ theory. It's fascinating finding out how a lot of problems are generally linked to an imbalance in the body or the soil. The two behave similarly. Germ theory is what has gotten us to the point we are now. Instead of fixing the deeper issue we bandage it with a quick "fix." I personally most commonly get sick after a storm comes through and dumps an unfamiliar toxin/bacterial load from wherever it originally gathered it's energy. I see the same effect in my cows. I'm stressed and overworked so me getting sick is not strange. However, I am Super Mom and don't generally get so sick I can't function... ah well.. most of the time anyway.

Garden Photos

I thought it would be fun to show pictures of our garden for an occasional update of how things are progressing.

We have potatoes starting to bloom in mid-April.

This is our garlic bed. We planted cloves from local wild garlic we harvested last fall.We're curious to see how it will grow in a deep loose soil with some fertilization.

Garden progression.

Building beds...

Laundry Day!

I never thought I'd miss an automatic washing machine and not at the same time. I now have a wringer washer but started with a washboard (used it solely for a year). Ironically, the washer cost me less than the washboard...

What I have learned are these inevitable facts:

1. Cloth will compost.

You put soil, water and carbon you get decomposition. And if you add in poop (I use cloth diapers) it happens at a very high rate. A nice hot compost.

2. Washboarding IS torcher!

I honestly don't know how women kept up on laundry! I sure couldn't! Using a washboard is a very slow process. It probably would've been fine had it just been my husband and I. But we have little boys and diapers to wash.

3. Wringer washers are awesome!

The wringers get a ton of soil out of the clothes that even the automatic washer doesn't. However, you still have to man it to keep it going through different cycles.

4. Keep it dry!

This is actually in relation to point #1. If it gets wet it will compost. So if you don't have an indoor or covered laundry room (which I don't) you have to use other means. For example, a covered garbage can.

5. Don't let it build up.
Trust me. You'll never catch up without extra work. I got a build up and it's taking me forever to get back on track again.

6. Winter time laundry is rough.

Learn how to deal with numb hands. I hate taking the time to start a fire to heat water for laundry but sometimes it's necessary. Drying clothes outside in the winter takes days rather than hours.

7. Rinse your laundry in a separate tub.

I learned this one from a young Mennonite woman. You can keep the washer going and going if you just plunge you washed laundry in a separate tub of water for rinsing. Slosh it around with your hands or a stick and then run it through the wringer. Works great and it halved my laundry time. I'm just too busy to keep on top of mine.

8. Wringers are dangerous.

After I got my wringer washer I heard multiple stories of either themself or a relative whose fingers got caught in the wringers and their arm drug in and tore up badly. Take care and caution! Don't be careless! It could be your arm!

9. You still need a washboard.

Washboards are a useful tool for stain or debris (ie. poop on diapers) removal. So don't toss them aside completely. I use mine in the tub of water I drain out of the washer for prewashing poopy diapers. Seems to work fairly well.

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So these are the things I've learned over the past two years about dping laundry off-grid. I'm hoping that some of my experiences help someone do better than me.

Take care and happy washing!

Water, Water Everywhere ...

Remembering that you can't rely on the attentiveness of a child seems to have to be regularly reminded. I sent my 5 yr old to fill water containers and I'm glad I had to go outside and happened to go past the water tank... he'd left the valve on and ran 20ish gallons onto the ground. You see, we take a 250 gallon tank to town about once a month to fill at the water dump station. Takes about $2.00 in quarters to fill.

This probably raises numerous questions about our water situation. Or maybe no one cares, lol, but I'll share anyway. We don't have a well... yet. It's in the works for this year BEFORE we need to water the garden. Last summer was brutal. We were in the drought area with 100+ temps. The garden didn't do well at all. So until then we have a "water trailer" and a pond. I wash our laundry using pond water. For the first year, I had a washboard. Yup, a good ole washboard. Now I have a wringer washer that I run with the generator.

Whatever the case losing my temper was the last thing I needed to do considering that I've ran water out before as well...

Lost Epiphany

Sometimes your most brilliant ideas come to you when you're wandering around the pasture... then by the time you get back to the house you've forgotten you're epiphany due to distraction... fabulous.

I thought perhaps some one out there may enjoy seeing a picture of my hand crank separator.

My South facing window

So these are my south facing windows. And that is my planting table. Unfortunately, the sun is getting high in the sky causing less sunlight to fall on my seedlings. This is problematic. So a cold frame or mini green house has moved up on my todo list. As has making more Warre hives. The bees are starting to swarm. It's a little early for swarms but everything is a little early this year.

What's the other stuff? 80# of seed potatoes in the paper bags. Some sweet potatoes I'm going to use for slip production. Elderberry cuttings in water to get to root. And pots that I started onions and Jelly Melons. I just seeded the Jelly Melons recently because the onion seed in that pot never germed. It was old seed.