Garden Plan 2012

 I finally figured out the garden plan. Our garden is 60' x 150'. I'm pretty sure my scale is off... the drawing should be twice the length...

(Sorry for the poor photo quality. If I had a scanner, or even had my computer plugged in at home, maybe I could make these better.)

After a lot of chicken scratch on several other sheets of grid paper, this is the final plan. After talking with Dad, there are a couple tweaks.

Basically, I want to get the garden set up by plant family so we can rotate the vegetables. There are several families. They are in the following order from the north side of the garden to the south side:
Cucurbit/Squash
Corn/Beans
Root vegetables/Brassicas
Potatoes/Tomatoes

The main change is flipping the tomatoes/peppers/eggplant with the potatoes/sweet potatoes. The south end of the garden gets really soggy and we don't want the potatoes/sweet potatoes getting water logged and rotting.

What isn't shown on this plan is the north orchard area. Mom has some raised beds up there, and we have a partial row of old blackberries and two apple trees. The row that has the raised beds will be finished out with the new blueberry bushes. At some point, we will plant new blackberries, and the apple tree that isn't producing apples (it hasn't really produced apples as far back as I can remember) is getting yanked up.
After all, we have other fruit trees to make room for!

 The south end of the garden where the potatoes/tomatoes will go.

Toward the north end of the garden

The area behind the chicken house where we can put three fruit trees.

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Garden Report 3.9.12

Sunday after church Grandma (Fluegge) and I worked on one of her raised beds. It was a little dreary, but I wanted to get outside and do something before picking out chicks with the other Grandma (Ettling).

After pulling lots of weeds, some of what Mom calls "henbit", a viney plant with purpley flowers, we evened out the dirt with a rake and planted:

Leftover seed from Baker's Creek (packaged for 2010):
Chinese Red Meat Radish
Golden Beets
Chioggia Beets

And new Burpee seed:
Burpee's Looseleaf Mixture Lettuce $1.57

Grandma has one more raised bed that we're going to prep for some tomato plants. I think we can put some Detroit Dark Red Beets in that bed too. Or some radishes. But that will need to wait for a little bit because it rained pretty good yesterday!

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Fajitas over an Open Fire

 This Sunday we decided to make fajitas for dinner. But there's not a working stove at the Shed on the farm where we have our weekly Sunday dinners. (Have I said how much I love weekly Sunday dinners?)
Daniel, my brother, has a huge cast iron skillet, and he used that to cook the fajitas.

A mixture of chicken, beef, peppers and onions with my special spice mix: garlic powder, cumin, chili powder, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper.

We had all the fixins with the fajitas: tortillas, sour cream, guac (homemade by me), cheese, salsa, and pinto beans. With no-mix Peach Supreme and white cake for dessert.

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Music Monday: Rough Boy by ZZTop

At my last job, I was trying to explain to a coworker who ZZtop was. This guy is a good ten years older than me; he should have known this band! I opened up the media player on my computer, and started playing clips of ZZtop songs like Sharp Dressed Man and Legs. I never realized before how much of their songs are just guitar playing. I mean, that's their thing, they play guitar really well. But it wasn't until that coworker said "Are there any words in this song?" before I realized just how few words there are compared to guitar!

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Topless

The chicken house, that is, not me!

This weekend, Dad and I tackled the chicken house. He bought new plywood and shingles yesterday morning, and then we tore off the old roof. Then we put the new plywood on.

Before yesterday, the chicken house was looking a little worn down. The roof had several bad parts, and some of the shingles and plywood were held in place with pipe flanges.

A couple weekends ago, Dad and I shoveled the inside out. I think we had three loads of dirt/composted chicken manure that went to the garden.

  

After we tore off the old roof, we blew the inside of the chicken house off with compressed air. Dad has this attachment nozzle that he made out of copper pipe, that he uses to clean out the gutters. It worked really well for airing out the chicken house! So glad we waited until the roof was off to do this!

At one point, Dad went to the shed to get some brooms for us to brush off the walls with  and I grabbbed the air nozzle and started working. He said something to the effect of "That's not very lady-like" to Mom, and she responded "No, but that's Anna-like". It's impossible for me to be offended by this comment, because my whole life I've been rather tom-boyish. It just made me chuckle!

By the end of the day, we had new plywood in place. It was a little windy yesterday to tackle the tarpaper, and the shingles were a little cold. 

 Ended the day with a rather beautiful sunset on the farm.

Today, Mom and I are picking out which chicks to order with Grandma Ettling!

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They're so Narcissistic.

Did you know it's only March 2, but these daffodils and the purple flowers (Grandma and I have no idea what they're called) have been blooming for weeks now?

On another note. I always thought tornado season was April thru September, but we had a storm cell move through February 29 and the tornado count as of today was 35 tornadoes! Granted, those are spread from Nebraska to Illinois, but that's still a lot of tornadoes!

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Fruit Cake and Lesson Learned

 Remember the family fruit cake recipe I shared awhile back? I finally opened it. A month after receiving it. It's still very juicy from brandy. So delicious.

And I learned that salads are not for playing around with. If you want to stay full for longer than an hour after eating a salad, then eat a bigger salad to begin with. Otherwise you'll find yourself eating a spoonful of peanut butter at 2 pm because your stomach is eating itself. I also added more peanuts; maybe the protein will keep me full longer?

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