A Time To Dream

Tis the season! My entertainment center is again full of tidings and most of the family and friends have checked in. O Wise One is outside burning the christmas trash as I write this blog. A pot of red beans simmers in the crockpot full of onions and smoked sausage and the smell of cornbread baking permeates the house. 

Snow is still on the ground but the sun is shining and it is melting fast. A new storm is predicted for Sunday and we will start all over again. I sit here and listen to the melting snow slide off the tin roof. These are the days here on the homestead for dreaming. A time to plant, a time to harvest and a time to plan and dream. I anxiously pour over the incoming seed catalogs and gardening books. These are the days when I visit my old friends on the book shelf and make new ones. Bookshelves are scattered all over my house. Everyone here is an avid reader. We carry bags of books at a time out of our county library this time of year. Most people go to town for groceries we go to town to replenish our book supplies. 

Bookshelves are tucked in corners all over my house. You can find anything from cooking and preserving to farming, wildlife, trapping, herbs, herbal medicine and insect books. Many we use regularly in our lives here on the homestead, they stand on those shelves waiting for the next dilemma when we come to them looking for ideas and answers.  

A small table sits beside my recliner upstairs and my regulars are waiting there. Mostly gardening books covering everything from passalong plants to garden design. Many of these books and magazines gifts from my own children down through the years.  

And this year I add a new friend to my gardening favorites. Baby O bought me The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners by Herrick Kimball.  O Wise One and I have been followers of Mr. Kimball's various websites for years. He is the only other man I have ever met that skins a deer with a golfball like O Wise One. Not only is Mr. Kimball an avid gardener but also an inventor and small business man. Many of his products can be found on his website. The great thing about his products is that THEY WORK!  

Now I have been a gardener since a small child. In my teen years I was a member of the State 4-H Plant Science Team. As an adult the love of gardening stayed with me and for a time my first husband and I actually owned a greenhouse manufacturing corporation. I have been to many agricultural/horticultural trade shows through the years. There is not much that I haven't seen or heard of gardening wise during that time.  But as you can see by the tabs above Mr. Kimball has managed to inspire even a hardened old gardener like me. Those book tabs in the picture above are all ideas I want to try in some form. O Wise One's spring honey do list has just grown by leaps and bounds thanks to this author. 

Now the author did not provide me with this book but rather I put it on my amazon.com wishlist and Baby O purchased it for me as a Christmas gift. This review was my own idea and I have received nothing for it. I will say if you are looking for a good gardening book with lots of useful ideas on gardening this is the book for you. Most of his projects in this book are inexpensive and utilize either things that are already around your garden or things easily available locally. It covers everything from garden trellising to pruning tomatoes to yokes, soil remineralization, hoe care and planting tips.  If you buy the book there is even a (secret) website provided for additional pictures and information supporting the book.  This book will not let you down. I cannot recommend this gardening book highly enough. If you are looking for a gardening book to curl up with and inspire a new spring project this book will not let you down. Your husband may not be happy with the results : )  

You can find the book at the link below or on amazon

http://whizbanggardening.blogspot.com/

If you would like to read more about the author here is the link

http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/

You can also find his link daily on my sidebar where it has been for years. Many thanks to Baby O for buying mama the book and to the author for a great self published book. 

I would love to know what is your favorite homesteading skills reference book?

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Holiday Tidings From The Holler

Christmas has come and gone again. We again were blessed with a white Christmas and the snow has remained pretty well through the holidays. Temperatures have dropped to bone chilling lows and O Wise One is busy most days keeping the animals in warm bedding and unfrozen water bowls. 

Our holiday was spent at home enjoying a light meal of homemade chicken soup and lots of orange juice because I have relapsed from my recent cold/flu. I have decided that the only way I am going to get better is to quarantine myself away from the grandchildren long enough to totally heal and my doctor agrees. SO I did not get to see the grandchildren for the holidays. I did not want to reinfect them with this bug that I am suffering with and they were preparing to go out of town to visit other family. So instead  we hunkered down and I spent most of the holidays on the couch visiting with O Wise One and Baby O and watching old movies. I have to say it was enjoyable. After the grandchildren get back from their trip I hope to be able to have a holiday dinner and exchange gifts. 

 

But for now I will be a good patient and stay indoors and down. They are saying we may get more snow Sunday night. I have so much that I want to do it is hard to rest but I am trying. 

The countryside outside my windows has been beautiful and with new gardening books that Baby O bought me for Christmas and seed catalogs rolling in daily I have been catching up on my reading and dreaming up lots of new projects.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas and will have an equally happy New Year. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter, O Wise One and Baby O

Whispers

By turning down the noise of my life, I was able to hear those still, small whispers of a loving God, whispers that filled my heart and never failed to refresh my soul.

Mindy Starns Clark

Frozen Seeds

 After weeks of the saved seeds drying on baking sheets it was time to put them in the freezer.  They will stay there until the ground warms enough in May for them to be planted.  I have started saving such large amounts of seeds that I have gone to freezing them to help preserve them for longer periods of time. These have been drying for over 8 weeks. 

They include Jade bush green beans, French horticulture beans, Lina Sisco Bird Egg shell beans, Cajun Cowhorn okra, Golden Bantam corn, watermelon and yellow crookneck squash. This is the last of the seeds to be put away for the winter.  

Soon it will be time to order any seeds for the coming year and I have already started reading up on all the new varieties offered. I wanted to put a good word in also for a new (to me) company that came very highly recommended last year. I ordered several different times throughout the year from the above company and they were wonderful. They offer USDA certified organic and non-GMO seeds and most are open pollinated or nonhybrid. I had great luck with their seeds, germination rates were high, shipping fast and the packets were larger than many companies offer and for less money. I see several of the gardening forums also have good things to say about them. So if you get a chance give them a try.

http://www.everwilde.com/

And just to let you know I am not getting anything to plug them and as a matter of fact they do not even know that I am. Just a heads up on a good company with good merchandise for a good price. 

January 1st I will be starting my onions to give them time enough to get large to set out come EARLY spring. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Finger Tighten Only

Saturday grandson Hank came over and helped Grandma decorate the Christmas tree. He found in the bottom of the ornament box a container of tinsel that had been in there for 20 years. Oh my Hank had never seen tinsel. This beautiful shiny silver stringy stuff that went on the tree. He insisted we had to have tinsel on our tree. Lots of it too! What the heck you are only grandmaw for a short while and they grow up so fast. Hank says we have the most beautiful tree EVER! Prettier than even batman's..... 

Grandmaw will be picking tinsel out of everything for months : )

While Hank and I decorated O Wise One packaged the frozen turkey we butchered last week. 

Lots of ground turkey, cutlets and loin

Legs for smoking too!

And O Wise One even canned the broth for me. The reason I wanted to show this is because many times I tell you when explaining canning techniques to finger tighten your jars only. If you crank down your jar lids too tight before you put them in the pressure canner then the lids will bend or kink on you.  

Now O Wise One belongs to the "Get A Bigger Hammer Club". In other words his answer to everything is tighten the heck out of it or just get a bigger hammer or wrench if that is what is necessary. So needless to say I have several jars of broth that have dented lids. They did seal anyway but I will put them in front and use them first. So be warned FINGER TIGHTEN ONLY!!

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

The Glory Of The Season

Even though the winter season here on the homestead brings extra work for us we still take time to admire the beauty all around us. In between trips to the sheds and animal pens the glimpse into the world of ice and snow all around us can be breathtaking. 

Hoar frost can make things look like a winter wonderland almost. It turns simple twigs and branches into works of art. 

And bushes into magic forests of ice crystals

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

In Winters Grip

Again the view from the front porch reflects the changing of the seasons. Long gone are the beautiful colors of the autumn leaves replaced by the freezing rain and snow of winter. Days are filled with providing warm bedding for the animals and clearing ice from their waterers so that they have plenty of non frozen water. The seed catalogs have started to trickle in and I have begun my yearly mooning over the beautiful pictures and descriptions inside each catalog. Christmas cards are mailed and the presents are stacked in the spare room waiting to be wrapped. 

The venison is safely tucked in the freezer and O Wise One killed half a dozen turkeys yesterday from the flock of spring hatchlings. 

A portion of the meat was ground into ground turkey for chili, tacos and spaghetti.  

The breast and loin was sliced into turkey cutlets. Add a salad and a few vegetable sides and these become nice lean winter meals.  

The bones become broth that I will can into jars tomorrow. With a storm moving in tonight it will give me something constructive to do while it snows. 

And O Wise One's favorite, the legs, will be frozen to eventually go into the smoker. 

We have about 10 more birds to be butchered out there but it will have to wait until we eat some more from the freezers because our freezers are still packed full. 

I have been babysitting the grandsons several times this week because Fred has had finals all week. She has been taking some college courses online and giving her time to work on her school work also gives me a day or two a week with my grandsons. 

I think I am finally getting over my cold but it sure was persistent. Baby O also has had tests all week and is working hard on her schoolwork as well. As I type this tonight I can hear freezing rain hitting the tin roof. Sometime tonight it is supposed to change over to snow. We are all stocked up here though and ready for whatever mother nature may throw at us. 

Things have been exceedingly quiet here on the homestead and I hope for all of you as well. We ignore most of the holiday silliness and choose to buy presents early, online or make our own. Christmas dinner is safely tucked away in the freezer and pantry. So as the weather turns bad and the madness that surrounds the holidays increase we simply do as we always do and enjoy the simpleness and serenity of our lifestyle.  We keep busy with our farm chores and stay out of everyone's way. I did go to the grocery store a week or so ago and swore I won't go back until after Christmas no matter what! I have plenty powdered milk and several loaves of bread in the freezer. I am making a strategic withdrawal for my own safety and sanity. 

Don't know where all that "Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men" went but it aint in the Walmart. 

So for now I will leave you all I just wanted to check in. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter  

Winter Growing

I'm still answering questions from my post on Monday and will try to get around to most of them. They are calling for the weather to worsen and we got a dusting of snow this morning. Our first snow of the season.  I thought I would continue to answer your questions. 

AnonymousDecember 2, 2013 at 11:06 PMI've learned so much from you and I want to thank you for your recent post on canning turkey broth. Do you grow anything indoors during the winter? I just started a flat of microgreens. I would also like to see your quilting. :)

I finish up with my fall garden usually about the middle to the end of October. After that the gardens are disked for winter unless they are no till and then I rest. I have freezers of food and pantries of food that we consume. I include canned greens and frozen salads such as freezer slaw which satisfies our need for greens most years. During the winter months from November to the end of March we consume preserved foods and I buy the occasional head of lettuce from the supermarket and I buy citrus in season because I cannot produce my own in this climate. Our fruit consumption consists of frozen blackberry, strawberry and rhubarb dishes. Canned peaches and canned applesauce round this out. 

I do not use row covers and such to extend the season because to be honest by October I am tired and ready for the season to end. I own a small greenhouse but took it down several years ago because it was being shaded by a tree that had grown to shade it over the decade it had been there. It was dismantled with the intentions to move it to a sunnier location. As of yet we have not done that. 

In January I will start my onions indoors to allow them 3 months growth before they are set outside. We like to set them out with the potatoes and peas around St. Patrick's Day.   

My other seeds are then started around March first such as cabbage and broccoli. By April I am usually picking asparagus and lettuce. Other than seedlings I rest during the winter and enjoy the fruits of my labor. Hope that answers your question. 

Leslie FergusonDecember 3, 2013 at 12:22 PM

A question for you on putting your gardens to bed until next season. Do you ever burn leaves or debris as a way to "help" your garden soil? For the past couple of years we've layered our garden spot with leaves in the fall and then turned them under in the spring. A friend suggested burning the pile to "help" the soil. I would love to have your opinion on it!
By the way...I'm working on my first quilt top and loving every minute of it!

To answer the first part of your question as my crops come out I plant green manure or cover crops. I have lots of field pea seeds and they grow ell. I plant them after a crop and let them grow until they bloom and then mow them down and disc them into my soil to rot over the winter. 

I also add lots of compost and natural straws and manures. 

As I pick an area sometimes I also will throw some straw or even plants down and allow them to rot into the soil until winter smothering out weeds and improving the soil. Any large stuff that does not rot I use a pitch fork and pick up and move to the compost and disk for the winter. 

On my no till gardens I simply mulch. As you can see in the picture above with both straw and leaves. The green grass in the picture is wheat that has sprouted from the straw which we pull and feed the chickens. 

As to your question on burning leaves lime and ashes both raise pH, reducing acidity. I think people get confused because lime the fruit is very acidic, while lime the crushed stone is just the opposite. It used to confuse me, anyway.

Lime (calcium carbonate) also adds calcium, which could be beneficial to calcium rich plants like tomatoes and broccoli. Ashes add potassium and phosphorus, two other important nutrients. (Most commercial fertilizers are a mixture of nitrogen, potassium, and

phosphorus.) So ideally, you'd want to apply both, or get a soil test and see which one would be more beneficial for your soil.

Soil generally becomes more acidic over time, especially when nitrogen fertilizers, including manure and green mulch, are used. So you're much more likely to need to raise the pH of your soil than lower it. I occasionally add lime to my soil in the spring. 

If you plan to grow acid-loving plants like potatoes, you may want to leave a section of the garden un-limed or -ashed, so those plants can have the acid soil they prefer.

My parents always threw their fireplace wood ashes in the gardens occasionally for that purpose. Wood ashes are also useful when placed in the chicken pens as the hens will dust in them keeping down mites. 

 By the way Leslie that quilting stuff is addictive! 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Your Questions

Sometimes the hardest part about blogging everyday is thinking up things to blog about. So yesterday i opened up the floor to questions. Oh my goodness I love all the questions and  I'm gonna tackle this one first!  

Denny144December 2, 2013 at 6:31 PMDo you cut a fresh tree from your property? My in- laws, who live in Missouri, would go to a friend's farm and cut the rattiest looking cedar tree and that's what my husband grew up with. My family always bought a fir/spruce. One of our biggest newlywed fights was over what kind of tree to have and I won mainly because the lots where we lived didn't have cedars.

Oh my gracious Denny you bring back such memories for me that I could just cry. Maybe I will go cut me a ratty cedar Christmas tree. 

You see this is the house I grew up in not long after my parents bought it sometime around the early 50's. Daddy had gotten out of the merchant marines after the war and he and mama had traveled the country in a travel trailer. Daddy was working the pipelines and such as an iron worker and they were saving money for a home. Initially they bought this old cypress Acadian style home and 30 acres. They sold the travel trailer and settled down and started accumulating kids. 

And a mule!

Daddy worked during the day, mama stayed home and gardened and canned. Milked the cows, took care of the stock and the house and daddy worked nights and weekends on the farm. We lived off that garden and what the land provided. Fruit from the trees, fish from the swamp and game from the woods. Cedar trees grew plentiful and who was going to throw away good money buying a dead tree? Like everything else it had to come from the farm.  So my father bundles up his children and we all helped to pick out that ratty cedar. And to a child the cedar was 20 feet tall and plated in gold and my Dad was the greatest man of all time. 

To this day I can close my eyes and see the interior of that old cypress tongue and groove ceiling. The smell of fat pine lighter over by the fireplace and smell the twang of cedar from the Christmas tree. It may have been lopsided but to us it was the most beautiful tree God ever made. It always set in the window there right by Mom's treasured shiny white World Book encyclopedias because her kids weren't gonna grow up to be no dummies! Seems like everything we owned back in those days came from the Sears and Roebuck catalog if it didn't come off that land. 

Time went by and Mom and Dad bought more land, and finally built a shiny new red brick ranch home complete with turquoise tile bathrooms and asbestos floor tile. And that ratty old cedar Christmas tree was still beautiful

It was an exciting time of colored television and talking dolls. Mama dressed me up to match them and my hair was permanently kinked now with those new fangled home perms every year just for Christmas.  New dolls called Barbie and Ken, and Chatty Kathy dolls that talked.  Electric trains that you dropped little white pills in and they puffed smoke. I still have many of my Christmas presents from then. Sapphire birthstone rings and music boxes, and probably my most treasured posession is my white leather King James Version with my name engraved on the front in gold. A present from my parents that has lasted a lifetime.

Then Mama decided we needed to get modern and the old ratty cedar was no more. It was the 60's after all and we had to have a shiny new silver tinsel tree complete with color wheel. And while to a child still beautiful it just never had the appeal of that old ratty cedar dripping with mismatched glass balls and peppermint canes.  

Years ago when I lived in the city as a young woman we bought a tree every year, like you, usually a fir or spruce. Then my oldest daughter developed horrible allergies to them and I had to go to an artificial tree because of that. So I invested in a huge and expensive artificial tree. The oldest daughter has since married and left home. Now that she has little ones of her own I have given her the big tree for her family and now have a small artificial tree. I have started passing some of the family ornaments that belonged to the children on to them for their own trees. 

And that little farm girl in all these pictures grew up and moved to the city.

And like that tinsel tree with the color wheel I sparkled for awhile.

And then I realized that like that old ratty cedar I belonged back on the farm. That deep down the season is in the message and not the trappings. 

 And perhaps it is the most simple that shines the brightest and the purest of heart that receives it. 

Ya know what though. 

Maybe I will see if I can find me a ratty cedar for old times sake and load it down with crocheted ornaments, popcorn strings, candy canes and mismatched balls. 

Your turn! 

I want to know about your childhood Christmas memories too!

What kind of tree did you have and how was it decorated? 

PS Keep those questions coming!

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter