This poor old blog. I actually really miss it. I'm not sure where to start so I'm just going to upload some pictures and go from there and try to do a little catch up. 

This picture is telling.  Isn't it pretty?  This was taken on one of the very few cold crisp winter days that did not have a valley inversion.  Of the roughly 60 days that make up January and February, over 50 had horrible horrible air quality, like pretend you smoke-a-pack-a-day air quality that makes national news.

But this day? This day was striking and beautiful. The twiggy arch was my summer therapy creative session, and it proved to be a pretty winter statement.

But notice the gate?  It fell off its hinges in the snow and was stuck open for some time.  Last week a mystery pooch/beast came in the night and killed 8 of our chickens.

See the bridge in the background?  The siderails have been a scratching post for goats, to the point that they are detached and slowly inviting the decay of our cute bridge.

See the chicken coop?  It is sturdy and well, perhaps just in need of some new paint. 

By some measures, the farm has fallen into the "disrepair" category, what with the adjusting, mending, and painting that clearly is in order.

But the snow melted last week, and the grass is in plain sight! There are outbuildings to paint, weeds to pull, garden beds to till, flowers to plant.

I worry that I am lacking the drive I had a year ago.  There was a freeing throwing-of-the-hands-in-the-air-gesture of "still got that baby fat but I'll just work it out in the garden" shrug.  Well guess what?  I just got fatter.  Apparently working in your garden all day is quickly cancelled out when you eat ice cream late at night while watching Portlandia.

I suppose nothing great comes off without a detailed plan, but I feel like my body is contradicting my words of responsible agriculture, raw greens, and living off the earth.



 We're still looking at these winterscapes as I whine about not being beautiful and twenty years old anymore.
 Seriously, why is everyone running marathons?  Why is success, drive, goal-setting, ambition, and success constantly compared to whether or not you go to the gym every day?

One of my goals in 2012 was to lessen the garden waste due to end of summer burnout.  Are you familiar with this?  You have buckets and buckets of corn and you take the time to pick it, haul it, shuck it (*ahem, this taken a few days in years past) and by the time you're ready to process it for the freezer it's starchy and gross.

In July, I spent 2 weeks to find the perfect shade of aquamarine for the farm.  Red, White, & Aquamarine--kind of Americana with a twist.  I priced a high quality paint, swept in during a one a year rebate, then brought it home with big plans to freshen up some outbuildings once the kids started back in school.

But the thing is, once the kids started back in school the garden was unloading harvest after harvest upon us.  It was a frenzy.  So the bucket still sits in the garage, and August, September, and October I was in the kitchen canning garden produce!

Here are a few long overdue (I don't think I updated much about our own garden last year) pictures from Our 2012 Garden.
Prepare to do the scroll dance.

Here the 3 sisters near harvest time.  This bed we planted sugar-pie pumpkin which are the perfect size for steaming, pureeing, then freezing for pumpkin muffins throughout the year.

I feel quite passionate about providing fun creative avenues for the kids to play in the garden setting.  I was enamored with the idea of a labyrinth (labyrinths are different than a maze! I won't elaborate to spare the boring details) so I found a pattern I liked and roughly shaped it out with flour.  Then we added new compost to the pattern and planted in that. 


 Here's the Labyrinth shortly after planting.  Eventually I laid down layers of cardboard in the paths to suppress weeds and it did a great job!  I planted a hybrid corn called Optimum Sweet because it is a very tall corn (and more importantly, a very sweet corn).



This shows the teepee a little better, along with my best garden helper last year, Gideon.  He loved to be outside with me while I worked in the garden.


Blurry!


Here was another addition last summer.  We took cattle panels and bent them.  They act as a support to peas, beans, while shading the cooler crops like spinach, salad, and broccoli.  Here it is pretty early on when our peas were starting to take off.
 Prior to a weedfest, my little orphan child in the hoophouse.
  A little later we got some mulch down to help with the weeds.  This is my favorite picture of Leif in the garden.
 I strung lights around the opening, it was so magical at night!  But darnit it didn't last with garden sprinklers hitting it 3 times a week!  Baby + Baby Rake = Happiness.


At the mouth of the hoophouse is the sandbox.  I wanted to clean it up a bit and bought lots of wooden alphabet letters, sea shells, and glass coins.  Here's my two blondies having fun!
This is my favorite picture of the hoophouse.  I took some old sheets to keep the shade coming.  Boy did we have a HOT summer.  

Also, did you know it takes about 8 hours to shell enough peas for a big pot of creamy potatoes and peas?  I had so many, and they were so intensive to shell, that we did have much go to waste in the pea department :(


After trying to grow a plethora of items in this top tier, I finally broke down in July and just planted the drought tolerant Portulaca flowers.  They filled it up nicely and could handle the HEAT.


Tomato guy!


We planted a cover crop of Clover after harvesting fava beans.  They will enrich the soil, suppress weeds, and provide happiness for our bees in the spring. 


The Mister of the House was cute.  I would stack a box of completed jars and ask him to take them downstairs, but instead he kept stacking them in the piano room.  He wanted to keep seeing our progress and take a picture when we were done.  

Although I know there are many awesome woman who canned more produce than I did, I was happy with the progress we made.  We still have lots of food preserved and it is serving our family well.



 Sadness = roasting peppers and garlic for a tomato sauce, only to ruin the entire HUGE patch with too much parsley for the garden.  Lame!

 The pears came to Idaho with me and my mom helped me put them up.  Thanks mom!


Green tomato relish, peach jam (sweetened with honey), and peaches!


I love this jar of salsa with a mashed avocado and fresh cilantro.  Also good on it's own!

Here's our parting shot.  We took some trimmed branches and made an arch leading from the garden/yard to the "farm" area.  I love it!  Looking from the farm into the garden. Stay out chickens!

Earlier this month we sent our pigs to the county fair.  After 3 years of raising pigs over the summer, we finally figured out:

A) How to get the pigs from the very back of our one-acre lot- through the farm gate, past the garden (which they could destroy in point-five seconds)...and between the yard gate into a waiting trailer.

Lucky day Grandpa Anderson visited the pigs (and the Olsen's) at the farm.  It's fun to ask advice from my dad.  He grew up on a farm and fled fled fled for a better and cleaner life.  I'm sure he wonders where I came from when I run to the dirty germ-infested farm life (wait, that's my mom).

While looking at tractors with Chloe, he laughed when she saw a small tractor and exclaimed "Oh that tractor is A-dorable!".



Here's Olsen's-Don't-Know-What-They're-Doing Part II.  We sold 7 goats a month before fair, just wanting to get them off the property and be done. 

Lo and behold we see one of our goats showcased at the fair, with a purple grand prize ribbon.  We wanted to yank it and put it on OUR chest, after all we bottle fed these goats for two stinkin' months.  Give me that ribbon!



Here's Chloe in the last-place stall with Petunia the Pig.  We're just starting to realize that there's a good chance that the fair will be during Leif's birthday every year.  So this little trooper hung out at the fair while everyone puffed about sister and her pig.  She got $11 for showcasing her pig, and little brother couldn't believe it!  I know he was calculating what Legos he could buy if he had that money.


Here's a little reminder at the fair.  Leif's holding up 7 fingers so we know that this fair year, he turned SEVEN.

Leif is great.  Here's what makes him an awesome part of our family:

He loves his baby brother twin.  Every morning he gets him out of the crib and brings him to me.

He is quiet and observant, but surprisingly confident.  I was afraid he would be sensitive about things (friend troubles, or ?) but he is always quick to laugh.

He and little brother Isaac play together all summer.  Isaac's friends are all Leif's buddies, and Leif lets him tag along without a complaint.  They really are best little buds.

He is an awesome reader, the best in his class.

We had a party for him before the fair, so we made sure he felt special on his day.  Buenos Dias folks!

This past Monday, seven (Count them seven!), friends and neighbors that don't live in my house saw me:
*Bed-Headed
*shuffling in my nightgown
*viewing my very personal and triumphant competition with The Mister of the House as to who could get the hairiest legs (that would be me) as my nightgown stops about the middle of my shins.

On Sunday, I was literally on my back with insane lower lumbar spasms initiated by an early morning sneeze in the shower (lame right?). It's now Friday, and I'm up and going again (although very gingerly and with the aid of copious amounts of muscle relaxants).

One of my first acts performed after getting a back that could bend was to shave my legs. Today marks the ability to sit in a chair. I'm celebrating by updating this here blog.



I wanted to give a waning garden tour, even though I failed to get pictures of the garden in it's full glory. I can't believe it's harvest time already. Here's the baby steps we made in the garden this year.

Remember this dead patch in the spring?


We edged it with railroad ties, had some composted manure hauled in, and planted this.


This was our big heirloom year. I'm going to have to admit that I might be on the fence about some of this. Mostly because we ate approximately two ears of corn from our garden. I'm not sure if it was because of spring-time medical trauma, an insane wet and snowy spring/summer, or the fact that our corn was planted too late, but it wasn't a huge success in the corn department.

I did have a pretty garden though. I transplanted my teepee right in the middle, seeded a winding cosmos path to the teepee, and gave it privacy on three sides with the corn. On the south edge I planted heirloom zucchini, spaghetti squash, pumpkin, and peppers.



I thought it was a little ironic that I had pretty foliage but NO FLOWERS as of the first day of school. But now with half the plants zinged from frost, the cosmos is high and proud. I love to wind down the path and find an invitation to sit Pocahontas-style in the teepee.



Here's the view from both angles. As a weed barrier, and bug deterrent, I seeded marigolds all around the border. The pops of orange have been a delight this autumn (mostly because that's practically when they showed up too...I guess snow on Memorial Day will do that to you).

Here's that cute baby. He's six months old! He's like a cancer patient all hairless and pale. Isn't he adorable? He is off the charts for his heighth BTW.



Around the edge of the teepee we planted pole beans. About 3/4 of the way around I ran out of our heirloom seeds, so I pulled out leftover pole beans from last year. This is when I really started to wonder (and I have yet to fully research) about hybrid seeds, as they clearly outperformed the heirloom in terms of germination and growth. GMO seeds - lame! Heirloom - necessary and very cool. Hybrid - not sure if I'm going to categorize that in the lame department just yet.

I threw carrot seeds inside the teepee and treated it like groundcover. I wanted it to keep weeds out, and thought that perhaps it would be alright and keep rooting into that dirt even if the kids were playing in the teepee.



This kid is at the stage where he puts everything in his mouth! Ah I just love him!

Chomp. Chomp. Who me? What? Yes stupid goat. I'm staring at you! Our goats got out of the fenced area and went to town eating our...orchard! Out of 9 fruit trees, about 7 were chomped to bits! Damn goats.


Our Mellow Wood Pond experiment this year was Muscovy Ducks. Last year we had a ton of fun with the trout, but that pond dried up lickety split and we didn't have a fishing party before it happened.

The Mister of the House researched Muscovy Ducks and how they are AMAZING bug eaters. Love mosquito larvae and start munching it when their still little ducklings. What with flooding of the rivers and a HUGE mosquito year forecast, I was prepared to get eaten alive. But these ducks (we have 7) really did a great job. The mosquitoes were not bad in our yard or the pond. Plus look how gorgeous they are!



Baby has a drool rash, and older brother has a window in his mouth!



Happy Harvest everyone!

...the pigs and chickens got some new neighbors!

Last week, while still detoxing from hospital baby trauma, we had some exciting developments on the farm. Betty, our miserably pregnant goat, surprised us all by birthing triplet baby kids. Unlike last year's birthing, we didn't even aid (or even cheerlead) the birth. The Mister went in the back to check on the animals, and 3 little baby goats were scrambling for their first steps.



Little Rainbow Girl got stuck hanging out with the goats for a couple hours to make sure all the baby goats were nursing from their mother. Because one thing is for sure, Mrs. Olsen already has her own kid to feed, and didn't want to be stuck on bottle duty with a furry kid.



Wait a second...how did that get in there? Only machinistic institutions tag human kids. Who did that?

Back to the furry kind...



Betty on the lookout. Our other goat, Millie, tries to head-butt these baby's against the wall. What is her deal? But seriously, she is asking for it. Betty will quickly put her in her place.

Later in the week, we tackled (by "we" I mean The Mister) our new farm project of 2011. Here's a hint...



We ordered these back in February/March, and they finally arrived! There were 2 packages of bees, each 3 pounds. Nothing quite like hearing the pitter-patter of thousands of bees getting dumped into their new home. I was a little nervous.



Our neighbors got a hive last year and harvested 16 pounds of honey. We'll see how productive these guys are...and if we happen to get 30 pounds of honey, we will be more than pleased (and possibly so will anyone getting Christmas goodies this winter).



And lastly, our rooster. This guy's got it out for Rainbow Girl. He has attacked her a couple times while she was unawares, flying and pecking her knees and causing her to bleed (through her clothes. punk!).



So I've got his number:

it's

1-800-HEAD-OFF

happening later this summer.

So much has been happening here that it's almost a relief to have them done before the baby is here. Correction: it's a relief that The Mister has these projects done so Mrs. Olsen has him for few days after kiddo arrives to boss him around, change all the diapers, and get pampered.



Check out all our beautiful eggs! The speckled egg is from our blue slate turkey, who takes forever to become Thanksgiving worthy.

Our goat Betty is due any day! There is a birthing kit ready in the garage for the moment she goes into labor. I tease The Mister that his first love is having a kid soon, and his second love had a baby due yesterday. This is just my super effective methods of getting extra sympathy for harvesting his exploding seed in my gut.

And check it! We have pigs again. This time we're trying to raise them for the fair, which means Rainbow Girl has to become their buddies and be able to lead them around an area with a tap of a stick. Should be interesting.

Also, coming soon to the farm and for the first time: HONEYBEES. I can't wait!

This week I am 35 weeks prego. This new kid is coming up, and I have the energy level of a sloth. Which brings me to this: women are the fabric of communities. They reach out, connect, remember, and cook 10 pans of food when you are a sloth.

If you are a true woman, when you stop being a sloth and become a honeybee, you return the favor with a smile. Here's a honeybee from high school, Tonya.

The bottom pictures are with Stephanie during our spring break when we got snowed in at Jackson Hole. I wish these pictures could detail how fun that trip was "back in the day".

This past week she stung me in the bummy with her stinger and actually forced me to get to the higher branch I've been thinking about for the past 2 months.

Here's the thing about Tonya that I really admire, and think you should love too. She's dealing with a lot but never complains and is always out helping other people. Mother of FIVE BOYS, and has nerve damage from her last pregnancy. I call her granny cause she limps around while still helping out neighbors, family, and friends. There's lots of medical issues in her family, but she's always looking forward.

That's something I need to work on and I love her example!

So she calls me up and states: "We need to get you some freezer meals for when the baby comes!"

Me: "That's a good idea" (inside: I need a nap)

Tonya: "Okay, I'm emailing you a shopping list and then we'll pick a day and put everything together".

Me: "Okay"

And the thing is, like so many things...I thought it was a great idea but had no energy for execution. She emailed me the list, I looked at it and admired it, and then took a nap.

A week later she called me back and forced me to schedule a day. So I got off my butt, took the list to the store and spent a day cooking some of our homegrown meat stacked in the freezer. Ready for the cookoff!


I seriously needed to take a picture of everything we hauled out to my chest freezer.

-3 pans of shepherds pie (with goat meat...more on that later)
-3 pans of chicken enchiladas
-2 chicken pot pies
-1 honkin' fat lasagne pan
-7 batches of beef/veggie tikka masala

I'm sorry let me do the math for you: that would be 16 pre-cooked meals! that I won't have to dirty dishes to make and can throw in the oven when my bambino arrives.

Yipee!