radical radishes/ french breakfast style

french breakfast radish, one of the first things other than greens to ripen up in the spring. Very tasty if i do say so myself.

Mulch-a-do about everything

One of the back to the land books that I found in that shed Awhile ago was the Ruth Stout NO-WORK-GARDEN BOOK (secrets of the year round mulch method).  Erica Picked it up, read it and said “why aren’t we mulching?”.

We fed the goats out of the green house and the barn all winter, now we are taking the hay and other organic material from there pen and putting it back on the garden to suppress weeds and hold in moisture this summer. Notice the beautiful spring weather for gardening.

Erica also is trying it in part of the greenhouse.

info about ruth stout here

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Views of Wallowa County; Spring Thaw

 

Late winter is the hardest time to be a herbivore in the county.   Spring is coming, for some it comes to late.  When the temperature stay’s below freezing for several months all decomposition stops and when it begins to warm up we have a stock pile of deer that didn’t make it,  re-emerge from under the snow.   On the other hand this is the best time to be a scavenger/predator.

goat furnitures

The goats were in need of some furniture when the weather started to turn cold.  I built the feeder and shelter from a few old pallets that I have a never ending supply of and decorated them with some salvaged wood to make them fit the aesthetic of the barn yard (because if it’s not worth doing stylishly it’s not worth doing at all).  Winter still is not quite over yet it was somewhere south of 16 degrees last night, Princess Butter Cup and the Triva seem to be enjoying the comforts that the title of most pampered goats in the county comes with.

the house is stuffed with straw occasionally to protect from wind but with both of them wedged in there they seem to stay cozy and warm even on the coldest nights.

All that straw makes really good summertime mulch and fertilizer to put on the garden.

the goats: it’s almost spring dance

winds blow snow

High winds in the mountains have been redistributing this winters heavy snows.  Click the above photos if they are not moving for you.

snobby cows

Being the only beef to be eaten by the royal family of Britain has given our own cows a little bit of attitude. feeding is now done with a red carpet and a gold plated hayfork.

greens in the frozen wastes

greens in march? impossible you say?.   The green house goes a long way towards helping us have this kind of crop in the winter months but the same could be done with a simple cold frame or even a few sheets of plastic.  The timing of planting is usually the important part of the equation. here is a artists rendering of our green house as I see it .

and this is how it looks to normal people.

The temperature inside is somewhere between hot and a billion degrees.  Even on really cold days as long as the sun is shining it heats up quickly and is a great place for naps.  This Shangri-La of growing plants, also attracts freedom haters in the forms of pocket gophers. Example A.

This small looking black box with springs is a type of mechanized warfare that we prefer to giant robots but of course is not as cool as a giant robots.

let sleeping skunks lie, or not

Yes mom I looked up the warning signs of rabies,  as far as I can tell this little guy doesn’t have any of them. Young skunks are on the look out for new territory and food so you tend to see them more in the day time (especially in early spring when their mothers kick them out in anticipation of giving birth again).

I had visions of my self like this.  I would use them much like a falconer uses his birds except to do awful ultimate evil of a stinky variety.

 

you can never be to careful when dealing with the stinkiest of all tiny bears, here is a shot of him cocked locked and ready to rock.

 

I have named him Tony Montana because this is a picture of him doing a huge pile of coke  (he reminded me of that scene in Scar Face ).

pristine book experiences

One of the blogs I look at a lot is the embarrassingly great named Cabin Porn blog.  They just posted the above picture of a book that I recently came to own.  A friend of mine alerted me to a yard sale at a unoccupied home where anything that did not initially sell was free.  most things left over were not all that interesting after all people had been going over it all day at already ridiculously low Wallowa County yard sale prices. I have to explain that digging through old junk piles looking for treasures is one of my favorite things in the world.  In the back of a shed I found piles of cardboard boxes that contained a vast array of books.  The ones that I found most interesting could be classified under the broad category of hippy back to the land type books. I gathered them up and will post about them occasionally.  read more about Living the good life.

speaking of books