wallowa county wildlife; brook trout

I found these brook trout feeding at one of the high lakes.  I crawled to the edge of a boulder overlooking the water and zoomed way in.  Then I began waiting for a fish to spot a insect and make a lunge for it.

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

watch the video become a STOUTATARIAN!

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.

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.

we are now powered by a miasma of incandesent plasma!

Imagine My surprise when I found these growing out of the ground at the farm.
My first thought was that  some weird bird food that Bruce put out for the quail went to seed.

once I got calmed down I realized that we where attempting to lasso the power of the  giant atomic bomb in the sky.  These particular arrays move around and track the sun across the sky making power much more efficiently than a fixed direction system.

this song is technically wrong, but sounds way better than the updated one, so deal with it!

wallowa county farmer’s market 2010

Okay, I know I’m lame. I haven’t posted anything in nearly a month. Unacceptable. This is an extremely busy time for me and mine, blah-dippity-blah. Moving on.

I wanted to say hurrah for the Wallowa County Farmer’s Market 2010. It’s over for the year, but it was a splendid season. Some of my dear market buddies are featured here:

Emily Cooper of Short Season:

Emily is rad. She decided to start her own pickle making business and jumped through numerous hoops to make it happen. Our government is very concerned that small-scale pickle makers such as Emily might destroy us all and they make it close to impossible to satisfy all the various requirements needed to sell people pickles. Nonetheless, Emily persevered and started Short Season, which has been doing quite well. Every time I look over at her booth someone is walking away with a jar of pickles. She makes awesome beet, garlic scape, green bean, and cucumber pickles. And she grows all the produce herself. Rad.

Joanie, Mike, Rhia, and Lexi of Fluit Family Farms:

I’m not sure I spelled their names right. Hopefully they forgive me. The Fluit family has a ranch in Wallowa County where they raise free range grass-fed beef. The girls Rhia and Lexi help their dad with the ranch and they do everything he does, as far as I can tell. The girls round up cattle, raise and race horses, do all the ranch chores, drive the forklift, help their mom at the market, etc. They are also the most down-to-earth, nicest teenagers I’ve met in a very long time. They rock.

Wendy McCullough of Sally B Farms:

You will not get by Wendy McCullough’s booth without buying some of her soap. My booth was right next to hers and I was consistently impressed at her ability to sell her (admittedly awesome) soap to every single person who walked by. As I recall, the PH of goat milk is very close to that of human skin, and it creates a luxurious lather which hydrates as it cleans. Most people give up lotion. She raises the goats herself and those goats who do not make the goat milk soap grade are sold for meat. Goat meat is tasty, I had some at a local Goat Roast recently. Goat milk soap is also nice and I use it daily. Yippieee!

Carol Bartlow: Kettle Corn RAH RAH RAH!

Carol and her kids make kettle corn and the smell always wafts directly towards my booth and makes me deliriously hungry. Eventually I end up sprinting across the market to her booth, glancing over my shoulder every 3 seconds or so to see if any customers are waiting, throwing some money at her, grabbing a bag of corn and racing back. She’s used to this. She helps me pack up all my stuff, too, at the end of the market, and is really, really nice.

Me of Arrowhead Ranch Produce:

The intrepid Wallowa County Vegetable Grower Extraordinaire.

L to R: Elsa and Caitlin, apprentices for Beth Gibans of Backyard Gardens:

Beth Gibans started the farmer’s market here in Wallowa County and without her and her farm apprentices there’d be no market. They are the mainstays of the market and entirely reliable in their vegetable bounty, arriving every week with huge baskets of produce. I love them heaps.

There are other market vendors, too, but these are all the ones I know and hang out with. It’s nice to see them every week, find out what they’ve got, talk, endure difficult weather together, etc. We have many, many market stories, all of us.

Bye, market folks, until next year. I will only ever get to see you at barn dances, potlucks. committee meetings, parties, ice skating, skiing, and book club.