Happy Holidays from The Wilson Family!
busy bees
Hello! I’m overdue for another update here. We have been busy bees. This has been the most productive year we’ve had on the homestead, I don’t think we’ve ever accomplished as much in a single year. Spring is always busy getting all the garden planted, summer is busy keeping it all alive and watered and starting to harvest things, and then autumn is busy getting it all harvested and processed. It’s been a lot to keep up with processing everything, and we sure appreciate having food to harvest and put up for the winter. By the time the harvest season winds down, Jeff and I are always full of gratitude, and ready for things to slow down.
Usually I post pictures of the garden throughout the season here on the blog. This year I took pictures here and there, but have yet to sort through them, we’ve just been so busy. I’ve been asked about the garden, and I plan to do a garden post for the year instead. I’ll fill you in about the garden then. Jeff did set up a watering system for a portion of the garden and it made such a difference in reducing the amount of time he spent watering out there.
As for the animals, they are a big part of our days now. Jeff and I are not the only ones happy to have goats here, B absolutely adores them. He helps me with the animal chores every day, and I always appreciate it. We were grateful to find a source for buying hay locally from some wonderful people. Most of the options from the feed store are sprayed, so not only were we grateful to meet new friends willing to deliver it by the truckload, but also grateful it’s unsprayed, providing clean food and bedding for our animals.
Oh, and the duck eggs hatched. Ducklings are so adorable! We had them separated from the larger ducks until they were big enough. We are getting ready to introduce them to each other and have them all together. They are big enough now, and it will make daily chores much easier. We’re also thinking about other ways to make the daily animal chores more efficient. At this point, it’s taking quite a bit of time and I know we can continue to make things easier and smoother.
We did a new set up for our worm compost bin. Jeff and I are pretty happy about that. Most food scraps from the kitchen go to feeding the goats, ducks, and quail, but the rest goes to the worms. Our outdoor compost is for animal bedding and garden clean up, but we don’t put food out there because it attracts unwanted animal visitors. The worm compost bin is a great solution for that. I’d like to share more about it at some point. Do any of you have any experience with composting with worms?
Besides being busy with all the homestead things, Jeff is alway busy fixing what breaks around here. He was able to prolong the life of our washing machine, but we knew it was on limited time. We were having issues with our stove as well, but were working around it. Finally though, we had a bunch of things go out simultaneously- the washing machine, the stove, and the fridge. That was a bit chaotic during a busy time of year. Jeff cooked on a propane camp stove and I did laundry in the bathtub. It sure made us grateful to have a working washing machine and stove again! We’re still waiting for a part to arrive for Jeff to fix the refrigerator, it’s been taking forever. Luckily, we have more than one fridge so we’ve been able to get by without it but it will sure to be nice to have it working again.
Family came to visit. My dad and stepmom came, and then my mom. We were grateful to have time with them, and Jeff always loves to feed everyone meals from the garden. We do love to express our love with food around here! I had a birthday in September, and then B turned 12 in October! He really is such a wonderful human being and I feel beyond grateful to be his mom. Jeff and I are constantly amazed at his creativity, imagination, and all the things he invents. I also appreciate how kind he is towards others, and how thoughtful he is. He has such a zest for life and is interested in so many things- always insects and plants. Most recently he’s been learning about creating bonsais and has a new fascination with carnivorous plants.
We discovered that one of our neighbors shares a birthday with B. She turned 88 and he turned 12. They had been friends for years, exchanging plants and flowers, and then finding out they had the same birthday I said no wonder they were such kindred spirits. That was a fun discovery. In September, more of B’s homeschool activities started back up again. Jeff has been splitting and stacking firewood. We have rain in the forecast so Jeff and I have been busy in the yard this week getting all the things done we want to finish before rain comes. Yesterday I cleaned out the goat house and was really glad to get that job done. I’ve got a long list for today. We’ve had the push of getting food processed, all the harvest brought in, all the things done before the rain comes… it feels a bit like squirrels filling up their stores for the winter, or getting things all snug and ready before a snowstorm.
I do love this time of year. We have had some of the most beautiful, golden, warm fall days. Part of me wishes these gorgeous fall days could last forever. But the rain is coming, and a change of pace will be welcome too.
the new additions
Hi there! I’m overdue for an update. I like to write a blog post once a month at the least, but now it’s the 22nd of July and my last post was at the end of May! Every time there is a gap between posts I say how busy we are. So you’ll hear me say that again… we’ve been really busy. This time we’ve been busy in new ways (and the pictures above give you a clue.) 🙂 In my last post, I said we had been working to get projects done in time for some homestead deadlines. Well, those projects were to finish building a goat house and yard, as well as put up a structure that we would use to keep our friends’ ducks in while they were on vacation (and then after use for animals of our own.)
On Mother’s Day we brought our new goats home, and what a great gift that was! Long time readers might remember that we had goats here many years ago. I can honestly say that Jeff and I have missed having goats here ever since. If you are a goat person, you get it. Goats are just the best. We are very glad to be raising goats here again. We also knew what we were getting into this time, and fully understood what a responsibility the milking routine is on the homestead. I went from minimal animal chores each day (with just the quail to care for) to hours per day when we brought home two goats in milk and started the milking routine that very first night. It’s a lot of work, and also very rewarding (not just because of the delicious milk.) I plan to share pictures and introduce you to each of them at some point, but for now wanted to give an overall update and share the joy we feel at having goats in our life again.
Not long after we brought the goats home in May, our friends brought over their ducks. We took care of their five ducks while they were on a trip, and really enjoyed having them here. They gobbled up garden greens like crazy, as well as slugs and snails, which we appreciated. Years back, Jeff and I also raised ducks here, and considered raising them again at some point. Having our friends’ ducks here made us miss having ducks so much that we decided not to wait, and contacted a local farm about getting some duck hatching eggs to put in our incubator. Before we left to pick them up, we found out the farmer also had some ducklings for sale so we ended up bringing home ducklings and eggs to hatch. So, we’ve had a lot of new additions to the homestead this year!
It seems like it has happened all at once, but it has been years in the making. We knew as soon as we stopped traveling for work and our goal of working from home was a reality, we wanted to get goats again. It took time to get to that point. In 2019 we wrapped up the traveling, and were so excited to finally be able to put more time and energy into our homestead endeavors. In 2020 we started buying lumber and materials to build a goat house, but decided to prioritize quail first (and all that goes with that- like building pens, setting up watering systems, etc.) and also focused a lot of energy on expanding the garden that year. We were really busy with work, and projects always seem to take longer than you think they will. (What we intended to create for a simple goat house did not turn out to be simple at all.) We thought for sure goats would happen in 2021, but in the end the goats that were meant for us fell into place in 2022, and the wait only made us appreciate them all the more.
Speaking of new additions, I wanted to add more layers to our flock, so we hatched out more quail eggs in April. The first two times we hatched out quail eggs, we had good hatch rates as well as a good experience with the farm we purchased them from. In April (the third time we hatched out quail eggs), we didn’t have a great experience with a different place we purchased them from and we also didn’t have a great hatch rate either. We ended up with 16 chicks, and out of those we only got 5 girls! So we ended up with five new layers. Not what I was going for, but still grateful for more eggs for our family each day. In other quail news, we lost B’s special quail named Trooper. We were all fond of that sweet little bird, and she is missed.
What is the weather like where you are? I mentioned how soggy our spring was, it went into summer as well. I kept hearing from locals that they thought summer would never come. It sure seemed that way. Then summer hit suddenly with a heat wave. Then rain again. Then intense heat again. Back and forth. Not like our typical dry summers. The temperature extremes were quite shocking to the garden. Through it all the garden was hanging in there, though, and while some things are behind, they are growing like crazy now and seem to be catching up. In our usual fashion, we expanded the garden, just like we do each year. Jeff has been working on setting up a watering system. It’s a lot of work, and time consuming, but will save a lot of time when it’s done.
A lot of my energy this year has been going into physical labor, rather than anything screen-related. I feel like I’ve worked harder physically than I ever have before- hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of soil, compost, woodchips, gravel (that kicks my butt)… hauling straw and feed, and setting posts, and putting up fences… and the list goes on and on. I like seeing progress and getting so much accomplished, it’s what keeps me going even when I’m exhausted. I’m grateful that Jeff and I are both fulfilled by this homesteading life and are on the same page about what we want to create here. I look around at all we’ve done over the years and though we sometimes wish we could make progress faster, I’m proud of all the work we’ve done.
When there’s so much to get done in a day- dishes to be done, meals to make, laundry to put away, animals to feed… it’s hard to find time to write a blog post, which is why this space was quiet for so long. But also, I felt pulled in another direction- giving my energy to my immediate world around me. It felt good to be more unplugged for awhile. The noisier the world gets, the more my soul needs quiet. My soul wants time in nature, and physical labor, and to listen to the birds and the river while I milk goats. I do want to keep writing posts here, though. I’m also craving connecting with kindred spirits.
We’ve always loved the feeling of having food in our backyard. It’s humbling how much work it takes to grow and produce that food, and at the same time that is exactly what I feel guided to do. I also feel guided to keep encouraging others to connect to their food, and grow it if they are able and inspired to do so. (We’ve sold many plant starts over the last few years and I have a not-so-secret mission to get as many people gardening as possible.) I’ve spoken to so many people this year who tried gardening once and gave up, or felt too busy to give it a try, or who were discouraged by the weather or all the bad news. I want to tell them to not give up, to keep digging and planting, and if one thing doesn’t work to try another. Sometimes I feel my voice will be drowned out amidst all the noise, will it matter what this one voice says in this quiet corner of the internet? If one person reading this feels some encouragement, then my time spent writing this today meant something. Every step we take matters, even if it feels small in the grand scheme of things…
soggy spring
When I last wrote, at the end of last month, I said “We’ve been working on projects outside until the downpours get too heavy, then take breaks, and resume again.” Well, scratch that. We didn’t do that method for long before we realized we wouldn’t finish projects for some homestead deadlines unless we worked in those downpours too. We have worked in a lot of downpours over the last month! There has been quite a bit of rain here- it’s been downright soggy. The other week we had more hail, followed by some cold, stormy days. There was a small break with some sunshine, and then the rain was back.
Part of me wants to complain about the nonstop rain, as my body and the garden feels ready for sunshine and the warmth of spring, but the other part of me knows that come summertime (when things are so very dry here) we’ll be wishing for more. I had a good reminder about that the other day when I met someone who moved to Oregon from New Mexico, and told me about how terrible the fires have been in New Mexico and Arizona (my heart goes out to everyone there!), and that we should all be grateful here for the abundance of rain. Yes! I appreciated the reminder.
I wanted to mention that this website was down for a period of time this month. A kind blog reader wrote to me to let me know and to make sure everything was okay, and I appreciated that. The https expired without my knowing it, and I was able to contact the hosting company for my blog to get it renewed. It was a quick and easy fix, but I was so busy for awhile there that it took me quite a few days before I was able to take the time to sit down and take care of that. I apologize if you tried to visit this space and weren’t able to, or were worried. The blog is still here, and I appreciate you coming to visit, even during the periods where I only get a chance to update once a month.
What are things like where you are? Lots of rain? Dry? Any of you been busy with garden plans?
warm spring, cold spring
The trillium flowers have finished blooming here. I had to share a picture with you, like I do every year, because they are such a magical sight to come across in the woods. The first time I ever saw them was when I moved to Oregon, and I have been delighted by them ever since. We admired the little, yellow wood violets on our walks too. Usually we see a few in the woods this time of year, but there were so many more blooming this year than we have ever seen before. They must be happy with the weather combination we’ve been having. The frogs are happy as well. There’s a whole group of them in the small pond out front and hearing them sing every spring is one of my very favorite sounds!
I have been craving greens, as well as bitter and spicy, which perfectly aligns with the spring offerings around our yard. My body is so grateful this time of year for the fresh greens coming in, I can’t get enough of them. Jeff and I have both harvested several colanders of watercress and nettles. The watercress is so delicious on salads, and I like a handful of it, fresh, on top of stir fries too. What a zest of flavor it has. Jeff broadcasts watercress seeds all over the place so we can enjoy lots of it every spring. I made our family a delicious soup with homemade chicken broth and the fresh nettles we harvested. I drink nettles tea regularly, with the dried nettles, but the fresh nettles are a treat this time of year. All our garden beds are full of greens, and I’m also loving the red mustard under stir fries so it’s slightly wilted, but still has it’s spicy flavor. It’s beautiful too.
Spring is so busy. There has been lots of seed planting, lots of transplanting, lots of harvesting (so many greens!), and lots of projects around the place. Our spring was warming up (we had a day that got to 79 degrees here), and then earlier this month we had a cold snap with temperatures similar to the cold snap we had in February! Yikes. That was a huge temperature change for the garden in a short period of time! We were nervous about the blossoms on our fruit trees, as we had a few days getting pummeled with hail, but thankfully they all look like they managed just fine. (Some of the apple blossoms are pictured above.) As I write this, there is rain, rain, rain outside. This rainy spring means we haven’t had to start watering the garden yet, the rain has been doing it for us. We’ve been working on projects outside until the downpours get too heavy, then take breaks, and resume again. What’s your spring weather been like? Busy with projects? Planting anything?
tips for planting peas
I don’t know what it is about seeing peas coming up in the spring, but the little pea shoots just make me so happy! I love the curly little tendrils and I love seeing the shoots growing so quickly day by day. Everything else likes peas too, which is why my first tip I wanted to share about planting peas is to always plant extra! Our friends planted peas this spring. The mice ate them. They planted again. That has happened to Jeff so many times over the years. Mice, chipmunks, birds, people… we all love peas.
I like to write down on the calendar when we plant things. (Sometimes Jeff and B plant so much though, I can’t keep track of it all.) I wrote that on Sunday, March 13th our family planted peas together, in pots in the greenhouse. [The pictures above show B’s busy hands planting the peas. He’s been helping his dad plant peas since he was just a little thing. Recently I shared a post from 2015 about Jeff & B collecting seeds together. Well, I also just came across this post from 2013 about them planting peas together when B was three. He’s eleven now, and seeing those tiny hands (and watering can) just melted my mama heart. Jeff has definitely passed on his love of gardening to B.]
Besides planting peas in pots, we also planted peas in the ground. We hung remay cloth from the trellis to discourage the birds from digging up the ones we planted outside. The ground looked disturbed and we thought the birds got them, but luckily they didn’t. The remay did help protect them. The ones we planted in pots, though, got too hot in our greenhouse, and sadly those got cooked. (It was cold outside that day and we didn’t realize how hot the temps got in the greenhouse with the sunshine, and didn’t open it up for enough ventilation to cool things down.) We planted more. Always plant extra peas!
On April 6th we transplanted some pea starts from pots into the ground outside, and made some wood trellises for them to grow up. The first batch of peas we planted outside are growing along the cattle panel trellis. We always put a trellis up for our peas, but I’ve heard that if the pea variety you grow is supposed to get over three feet to put up a trellis or plant them along a fence they can grow up. There are snow peas, shelling peas, and snap peas. We love to grow snow peas, and use them in stir fries. We don’t eat peas raw so don’t bother growing varieties for that purpose. The variety we planted this year is the Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow Pea from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
Another tip Jeff taught me about growing peas, is to soak your seeds overnight before planting them because it helps get them germinating more quickly. (Also, you may or may not want to use inoculant. Jeff tried it once, it depends on what bacteria your soil contains. Though we don’t typically use it ourselves, it’s worth mentioning, particularly if you are planting peas for a cover crop. This site shares three reasons why you might want to: “If legume seed being planted has not been sown in the grow space for 3-5 years and the soil may be lacking essential rhizobia. If sowing legumes in a field or grow space that has never been tilled or cultivated. If legumes have been successfully sown prior, but the crop and subsequent yields did not seem to have benefited much from the legume cover crop.“)
The other thing I wanted to mention is to plant your peas a little deeper than you would smaller seeds. A good rule of thumb Jeff taught me for seeds in general is to plant the seeds as deep in the soil as the size of the seed is! I have loved that tip so much over the years because it really makes things so much simpler, and it’s easy to remember. That rule works in most cases, but with things like squash seeds he likes to plant them a little deeper. Also, peas are one of the things that can be planted deeper as well. They usually say to plant peas 1/2″ – 1″ deep.
Plant peas early, they like the cool of spring rather than the heat of the summer. “Plant peas as soon as the ground can be worked” you often hear people say. We usually plant our peas in March where we live in western Oregon. In southern states of the U.S., it would be earlier. If you’re in a place where peas are best planted in March to mid April, there’s still time to plant your peas (and more time than that in cooler places.) I thought we’d share a few of these tips with you today in case you’re planting some in your garden this year. Soak your seeds, plant at least as deep as the peas are big (or deeper), give them something to grow up, and always plant extra peas!
Happy Spring Everybody and Happy Pea Planting!
a note from the gardener
My husband, Jeff, above, holding a winter lettuce harvest. Today is Jeff’s birthday. He is such a huge part of this blog, and though you hear about our life and business and homestead through my words here, he is behind the scenes growing food and building and creating things and making it all happen. Everything I know about gardening, I learned from him. He inspires me with the beauty he constantly creates all around him, and I consider myself blessed each and every day to be married to my best friend. Happy Birthday Jeff!
Recently I asked him if he would like to write something to share here, and this is what he had to say…..
I’ve had my own garden since I was Seven or Eight years old and living in Japan. Iraguchi, a man that did odd jobs around our house showed me how to plant some bean seeds and radishes. When I saw the plants coming up in just a few days, that was it, I was sold for life. I’ve built myself greenhouses ever since I was a kid, and I have learned a fair amount, mostly by trial and error in that time. And every year I am still learning. But now it’s Spring and people start getting the Bug to get their gardens planted. For a lot of years I did my planting by when the plants showed up in the stores…..WRONG !….Or I’d just plant my seeds as soon as it started getting nicer outside, thinking that the sooner the better, I’d have a longer cropping time. I’d maybe make little greenhouses over plants, or a dark mulch to warm the soil….and these helped…BUT, the reality is you are way better off to wait. Now the way I finally figured this out was that, in all these years of planting out early I would notice Volunteers coming up from seeds that fell to Earth from the previous years crops. I could have a foot tall tomato out there in the garden that I set out earlier, but a Volunteer that came up a month later, would very quickly out run it, and produce so much better…..I mean, No Comparison.
Now of course there are cool season crops that you can put out early, lettuce, peas, greens and cole crops can go out early…But if you try to rush Beans, squash, tomatoes or peppers….. no matter what you do to make it easier for them…… you would be better off to wait. Now generally I just go with my gut as to when to plant, but this year we are planning on supplying some of our friends with starts so I decided to do it a bit more scientifically. Now the thing about peppers and tomatoes and squash is, they don’t do all that well with diverse weather changes. Temperature variation, Light variation and water variation, makes em irritable. And when they get irritable they just kind of hunker down and don’t want to do much. So a good idea is to go online and Google average temperatures for your area, then find when the temps get up above 60 degrees (or more depending on the length of your season) ….. and plan to put your starts out then, or put your seeds in the ground. I always use a dark mulch early in the season to help warm the soil….then when it gets much hotter, I switch to a lighter one. A nice dark compost works early on, and light colored wood chips, or maybe Perlite….I’ve even used Christmas tree tinsel a few times, it reflects light up under the leaves, while cooling the soil some. It makes em Jump.
But the important thing is to check your seeds or plants to see what soil temp they like…..and wait. It might seem logical to plant out earlier to get a Bigger plant, and get it done sooner, but it doesn’t actually work out that way. Do just a little research and put them out when they would be coming up on their own, naturally….and you will have quicker, healthier and more bountiful crops. It drives me crazy when people say, “I just don’t have a green thumb”. Well guess what, it has nothing at all to do with the color of your thumb, and EVERYTHING to do with getting in the Plants groove. Think of it as you are growing the plants to make them happy, to give them the optimal life….by simply giving them what they want and need. And they will thank you by Thriving, and feeding you, or making beautiful bouquets for you… The fact is plants are extremely aware, they know when you are nervous…it makes them nervous. So garden Joyfully.
our quail friends
In 2020 our family introduced quail to our homestead for the first time. Jeff was the one who was interested in raising quail, mentioning it from time to time over the years. It was an idea I didn’t give much thought to. We had always raised chickens here and I wondered why we’d want to raise quail that lay such tiny eggs when we could just raise chickens instead. Later a few friends told me about how much they loved raising quail, which made me curious to learn more about the little birds. Jeff was glad to hear I was becoming open minded to the idea. We started watching every video we could find about quail, became inspired, and definitely felt we wanted to give it a go so we decided to order some quail eggs to hatch.
I wrote a blog post last summer about our experience hatching out quail eggs. (Where I also mentioned the breeds we ordered.) Quail quickly found their way into our hearts and we were hooked. From the moment we opened the package of quail eggs we would be putting in the incubator and marveled over each perfect, tiny egg… to the the first quail chick hatched out… the feeling of a bundle of soft feathers in our hands… the amazement at how quickly those little birds grew each day… the excitement over finding the very first egg laid and cradling it carefully in our hands… to the absolute delight of getting to know the quirky personalities of each of our little bird friends. Simply put, we love raising quail. For me, from the very beginning quail gave me the feeling of “where have you been all my life?”
When I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed, finding myself needing to decompress from a long to-do list, a hurried pace in town running errands, or from listening to the news… I head to the backyard to do my daily quail chores and I can instantly feel my stress melting away and my worries lifting. What starts out as needing to “do a chore” and get a task crossed off my list, turns into a quiet, nourishing time for my spirit. I make sure all the birds have water, visit them, and talk to them. Every time I give them fresh bedding, I just love watching them nestle into the wood shavings. They sing to us when they see us nearby, and every single time they sing to me when I go to feed them it just makes me smile and delights me to no end. It never grows old. (The girls have a gentle cooing, that is the most soothing sound. I love the sound the boys make too, but wouldn’t describe it as soothing, more of a trilling sound.)
I’m not the only one who adores the quail, Jeff and B adore them too. The three of us always want to have quail on our homestead now. I wanted to share some of our favorite quail friends with you. I have many adorable, blurry pictures of the quail we adore… I picked out a few of the best, clear photos to share with you.
This is Grandmother. She is such a love. She is very curious and likes to come look at us when we visit her. I love when she tilts her head to one side to look up at us. There is something sweet and wise about her presence, which inspired us to name her Grandmother. (She is my favorite.) I love her coloring, she blends right in with the forest. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, she lets us pet her and we gently stroke her back until she moves away.
This is our very handsome, and favorite boy, Berbachan. B named him, the sound he makes sounds like he is saying “Berbachan!” Golden body, brown speckled head, his feathers are so beautiful. He watches over his ladies. We tried raising a few quail in the greenhouse for awhile (it didn’t work out, but was a fun experiment) and Jeff fed Berbachan treats and got him pretty tame, he would come over to us to get something good to eat.
This is Trooper. This is B’s special bird because he saved her when she was a chick. If you look it up, everywhere says not to interfere if a bird doesn’t hatch out of their shell properly or all the way. Well, Trooper had mostly hatched out and we waited for her to finish, but it didn’t happen. B carefully removed the rest of the shell from her legs. She didn’t walk right in the beginning and didn’t look like the other birds, but slowly over time she caught up with the rest and her legs healed and she was able to walk normally. Jeff had the idea to name her Trooper, she just kept getting up and going no matter how hard it was to get around. B says her coloring is one of his favorites of all the quail. Also, she is Berbachan’s main lady.
This is Princess Frou Frou. She has quite a hilarious personality. She lived with Berbachan and Trooper for awhile, and then we tried having her live with another group of quail. She didn’t get along with anyone. She was very territorial, very fussy, and would spend all day chasing everyone away. She was very high maintenance and somehow the name Princess Frou Frou came to us and just seemed to fit her perfectly. In the picture above, with B holding her with his gardening gloves, she is full size (I wanted to give you a reference for how big they are.)
One day we had a quail get injured and had to separate her from the rest. Her beak was hurt and we ended up calling her Beaky. We decided to try putting Beaky and Frou Frou in a pen together. They ended up being best friends and they still live peacefully together. Beaky is the only other quail Princess Frou Frou has ever liked. It was really amazing to suddenly see her become calm, and not in a state of high strung frenzy. Since then, we’ve tried moving around other quail to find well suited matches for roommates as well.
There are many other quail friends we love who are not pictured here, and I told B I would dedicate this post to them all. So here are a few others to mention: Sugar Maple (with the most beautiful, warm coloring with a reddish hue), Obsidian (with the most soulful, deep colored eyes), Owl and Hawk (the boys whose coloring reminded us of an owl and a hawk), Ms. Beak (not to be confused with Beaky, Ms. Beak had a super long beak that we had to carefully trim, which can happen sometimes), Sunflower and Marigold (sisters, both golden in color), Killer (the quail who made Princess Frou Frou look laid back in comparison), Brownie and Spot (two sweet girls who are buddies), and last but not least- Speckles (who looks like Frou Frou’s twin sister, and lives with Grandmother and Sunflower.)
I’ve been asked so often about raising quail, and feel inspired to share my love of quail with you all. I hope you enjoyed today’s introduction to our feathered friends. Next up- health benefits of quail eggs, and the pros and cons of raising quail.
winter into spring
I’ve been meaning to write about what we’ve been up to around the homestead over the winter, and now it’s going to be spring in a couple of days! We’re in that in between time now where we’ll be working in the sunshine in t-shirts during the day, but still need to start a fire in the woodstove to warm up the house on cold nights. Today Jeff and I finished unloading a whole truckload of soil. Garden season, here we come!
You would think that the homestead would be quiet in the winter, but there’s so much to get done in the wintertime. It’s not the whirlwind of fall with so much to harvest and process all at once, but it’s an important time for building infrastructure on the homestead and preparing for the next growing season. While not busy with dehydrating, canning, and freezing everything coming in from the garden… the food preservation continues as the marathon applesauce making of the fall turns into the marathon sauerkraut making of the winter. We’re always fermenting something around here.
We started a project in the fall that went into winter, and continues still. We had a few trees on the property removed, and the clean up from it was a huge job. (With more to do still.) My dad and stepmom came for a visit and brought their wood splitter, it was immensely helpful for that project, and we were very grateful. We had snow in December, which was an exciting event around here. We had winter storms and Jeff prepared by getting our generator under cover and better set up to use whenever it was needed.
Some storms were pretty crazy and one day we went to town and the road flooded behind us (with the back way also being flooded and blocked with downed trees), so we couldn’t get home until later that day when the water level receded. Another week there was a landslide between us and a nearby town. I wondered what crazy road closures were going to happen next.
We did our annual winter bonfire, and got a lot of clean up done around the yard. Winter is our rainy season, the only time it’s safe to have a bonfire in our area. Bringing in firewood, taking care of the quail, and doing projects around the yard kept me getting outside no matter the weather which I always ended up appreciating. Jeff and I moved one of our quail pens to a different location and built a new roof for it. Then we worked on our watering system for them. We’ve been busy with another building project that I look forward to sharing with you soon.
I did a much-needed pantry organization project, and we set up some more shelves in there because we always need more storage space. With all the food preserving we do, it needed to be better organized so we could more easily see what was there without things getting buried and forgotten about. We’re pretty good about eating up what we work hard to set aside, but it’s easier to navigate when there’s some sort of system to where everything goes.
We’ve had a good homeschooling rhythm this winter and every day I’m so grateful to be able to homeschool with B. He and Jeff discovered a new hobby they love doing together- cloning plants. They cloned all kinds of flowers and fruit over the winter- lilacs, figs, hydrangeas, goumis, seaberries, geraniums, and thornless blackberries. I might be forgetting some. Now we just need to build another greenhouse so we can start a nursery business. 🙂
What else were we up to this winter? We worked out in the shop a lot. I won’t elaborate on that because I’ve shared regular updates here so you could see what we were up to, and what was newly posted in our handmade shop online. Let’s see… I got the hardy kiwis trimmed back! (There’s still plenty that needs pruning, but I’ll celebrate each thing that gets crossed off the list.) Our friends came to lend a hand one day and helped us with so many things around the place- trimming fruit trees, clearing blackberries, and removing some trees. We also dug up our dahlia bulbs and got them separated out. It was amazing to Jeff and I how much we could accomplish with help, and made us want a group here all the time.
Jeff had eye surgery in February to remove a cataract. He was relieved to have that over and done with. For Valentine’s Day we gave B an orchid flower. He had really been wanting an orchid plant and it was Jeff’s idea to get one for him. (They are my plant guys.) I heard orchids were hard to keep alive and felt a bit intimidated, but currently B has two orchid plants and they are doing well. Well, this is turning into a book and it’s past my bedtime, so I’ll wrap things up. It’s March and lots of seeds are being planted, and we’ve been busy in the garden. This space has felt quiet and I look forward to hearing what you’ve all been up to! I’d love to hear if you feel like leaving a comment. Thank you for joining me here.
fermenting mustard greens
We have fermented so many different foods around here, why not mustard greens too? You all know how much we love fermented foods. Last year Jeff fermented mustard greens for the first time and they were delicious, but the ribs/stalks were too stringy. This year he grew a different kind of mustard, with very succulent ribs, and the resulting ferment ended up being amazing. (B is crazy about it and keeps requesting Jeff’s homemade “kimchi” with every meal. We all call it that, even if it might not fit the technical definition.)
It wasn’t the first time we’ve fermented greens before, though. The fermented Chijimisai greens I wrote about before, were one of my all time favorite ferments. (To ferment the greens, we chopped them up and submerged them in a salt water brine. I wrote about Pickle Pipe lids and glass weights in this post, along with the book Fermented Vegetables as a good resource for fermentation and salt water brines. If you’re interested in learning more about fermenting foods, there’s also a lot of information in my post Making Sauerkraut.)
The new (to us) kind of mustard Jeff grew over the winter is called Vibrant Ultra Violet Mustard from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. The ones we grew outside were a beautiful, deep purple color like it shows on the seed packet, but the ones Jeff grew in the greenhouse didn’t get cold enough to turn purple and had white ribs instead. We thought that was so interesting. Have any of you been doing any winter gardening? Or getting ready for your spring gardens? I’d love to hear what you’re up to. We’re inspired to keep expanding our winter harvests. If you’d like some winter garden inspiration, here are some posts from before: Cold Frames for Winter Gardening, Winter Harvests, and Cold Snap.
P.S. From my Instagram post today: “Speaking of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds… did you see the fundraiser they did, donating all seed sales to the people of Ukraine? They were able to send 1.6 million for humanitarian aid for Ukrainians displaced by war. I have a friend from Ukraine, whose family still lives there, and hearing from her has made it all feel more real. My heart goes out to everyone. I dream of a world with no war.“
cold snap
We had a cold snap here last week, with temperatures much colder than we are used to. We shut off all the hoses outside, stocked the house with firewood, and kept water running to keep pipes from freezing. Jeff and B covered a lot of plants in the garden, and I made sure the quail had drinkable water each day (that wasn’t frozen.) The first picture is one that B took of the pond out front. It was so beautiful, I asked if I could share it. The second picture is from water that was dripping and formed a really neat shape in the ice. The days were bright and cold, and the night skies looked extra amazing and crystal clear. Some of the uncovered plants outside were not too happy about the cold, but luckily everything in the greenhouse did well…
This was one of Jeff’s lettuce harvests from the greenhouse. I took a picture with the frosty grass in the background- a lettuce harvest on a very cold February day felt pretty special.
This week the rain is back. We’ve had downpours and much warmer temperatures. I haven’t been getting up in the night to feed the fire, but rather letting it go out because our house starts feeling like a sauna. I’ve had so much on my mind, I’m grateful for the tasks each day that keep me grounded in the present moment, and keep me moving forward bit by bit. One foot in front of the other my friends.
beekeeper cowl kits!
We are so excited to share with you these new Beekeeper Cowl Kits in our shop! I want to tell you a little about how these kits came to be. Bear with me, I have a lot to say about these. They’ve been a long time in the making, so to finally have them out in the world is such a good feeling! In 2018, Marie Greene, of Olive Knits, published her Beekeeper Cowl pattern featuring WoolyMossRoots toggle buttons. It was such a lovely pattern, and I was so delighted to see our buttons on there. I was inspired. I reached out to Marie asking about creating kits for the pattern and she said yes. Yay!
Then I reached out to Brooke Sinnes, of Sincere Sheep yarn, to ask about providing the yarn for the kits. (Any of you longtime blog readers have surely heard her name here before since I’ve shared quite a few projects I’ve knit with her yarn and written about how amazing her naturally dyed yarn is many times.) She also said yes, and had a new yarn base that would be perfect for it. At that point I was getting pretty excited about these kits, already dreaming up fun yarn color and wood button combinations. Brooke had a Beekeeper Cowl knit up with her yarn and our buttons, I was in love. I asked my fiber friend Valerie (who is incredibly talented by the way, she makes her own clothes, spins, a true maker extraordinaire) if she would be interested in being my model and she said she would be happy to. We had a lot of fun doing a photo shoot together.
Jeff made a handful of sets of beautiful toggle buttons for the cowls, and in 2019 we brought our first-ever kits to a fiber festival to sell, hooray! 2019 had other plans, though, and after some health stuff that came up in our family (long story), we decided it was time to stop traveling to fiber festivals and start working from home. (Which was our goal anyway, we just upped the timeline.) I was organized for the kits to be sold in-person, so tweaked some things for selling them online. Our business kept us busy at home, which was a blessing, and the kits got put on the back burner for awhile. In between orders, Jeff made a big variety of toggle buttons for the kits and bit by bit things came together for us to have the kits ready to sell online. And now, finally, here they are!
*I want to say a big thank you to the people who helped make this happen! We are grateful to Marie Greene, of Olive Knits, for featuring our toggle buttons in her Beekeeper Cowl pattern, and also for giving us her blessing for creating kits with her pattern. We want to thank Brooke Sinnes, of Sincere Sheep yarn, for providing the amazing yarn for these kits and for all the love and care that went into each and every skein. We also want to thank Valerie, beautiful inside and out, for being our model in these pictures, for her patience and for making me laugh and smile so much throughout our photo shoot.
And now let me tell you about the kits themselves…
Each Beekeeper Cowl Kit comes with two skeins of yarn to knit the cowl, and 5 handmade toggle buttons. *Also, the first 10 people to purchase a cowl kit will receive a free pattern with their order! We ordered the patterns directly from the company that sells them to yarn shops, each pattern is printed on high quality cardstock and we put each one in a page protector. Each pattern has a Ravelery PDF Download Code on the back also. (If you miss the chance for the free pattern included, you can simply purchase the pattern at Olive Knits here. We wish we had one for each kit, but that’s just how the numbers worked out. If we had planned to sell them solely online originally, I would have just had people purchase the pattern digitally, rather than sending the actual patterns, but the patterns on cardstock are really nice to have!)
About the pattern: The Beekeeper Cowl is such a lovely pattern, and is so cozy to wear. Here is what Marie wrote about it: “Beautifully textured cowl – a companion to the Beekeeper Cardigan! The ultimate multi-season accessory, the Beekeeper Cowl is both playful and refined. With decadent yarn, vivid textural details, and a button closure, this quick cowl is the perfect weekend project. If you love the Little Bee texture in the Beekeeper Cardigan, this will give you another way to play with it!” “Skill Level: Intermediate, Sizes: One size fits most, Finished Measurements Approximately 11 in/27.5 cm tall, 30 in/75 cm wide (buttoned).” (P.S. Here is a link that includes videos on how to work the little bee stitch.)
About the yarn: Let me just tell you how amazing this yarn is! Brooke’s Covet (DK weight) yarn is a blend of Rambouillet wool, Huacaya alpaca, and silk. It’s so soft and such a joy to knit with! Add to that, Brooke uses natural dyes to dye each and every skein. I love all the colors she has created, and had so much fun picking out a variety of colors for these kits. Here’s more about the yarn from the Sincere Sheep site:
“Covet is our luxurious, custom-spun DK weight California yarn made with 60% Rambouillet wool from Double R Farms in Marysville, CA, 25% Huacaya alpaca from Alpacas of Marin in Nicacio, CA and 15% silk. It has a lovely hand feel, with some variation that lends a little rustic quality in appearance.
We had the Rambouillet wool blended with black and gray Huacaya alpaca to create a lovely, heathered naturally gray yarn that we then over-dye. The colors that are listed “over gray” are dyed on this naturally gray Covet base as opposed to the white Covet base.
Double R Farms consistently raises award-winning Rambouillet ewes and rams on their ranch in Marysville, CA and won Supreme Ram at the 2017 Mendocino Co. Fair.”
About the buttons: These wooden toggle buttons were created by Jeff in a wide variety of woods. Our handmade buttons are truly a labor of love! He sands and polishes the buttons so smooth, you’ll love the way they feel. All the sanding and polishing also brings out the beauty of the wood, and makes it glow. Full of handmade character, these unique toggles make a fun addition to handknits. So much love goes into making these buttons for you to enjoy on your special, creative projects!
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We have six yarn colors for you to choose from: natural grey, yellow, burgundy, light blue, blue, and green. It was so much fun pairing the yarn and buttons! Anyone else geek out on the yarn and wood combos? I’m really curious to hear what you like most.
The kits with green yarn come with toggle buttons in Oregon myrtlewood. So fresh, earthy, and beautiful.
The kits with light blue yarn come with toggle buttons in cherry wood. This combination has a gentleness to it that I really love.
The kits with natural grey yarn come with toggle buttons in reclaimed purpleheart wood. I don’t know about you, but I feel like the purple and grey really suit each other.
The kits with burgundy yarn come with toggle buttons in reclaimed mahogany wood (that wood has a fun story, you can read about it at that link.) When I saw the rich colors of the burgundy yarn and the mahogany wood together, I felt like they were meant to be.
And finally, the kits with blue yarn and yellow yarn have two different wood button options because I liked them with both so much and wanted each of you to be able to choose. The kits with the blue yarn come with the option of either toggle buttons in Oregon madrone, or toggle buttons in a mix of woods. (I did a few mixed sets, I think they are so cool. The woods are: sustainably farmed leopardwood, Oregon myrtlewood, reclaimed purpleheart, cherry, and reclaimed mahogany.)
The kits with yellow yarn come with the option of either toggle buttons in cherry wood, or toggle buttons in reclaimed mahogany. The cherry and mahogany give different looks depending on whether you are wanting the buttons to blend in and be more subtle, or you want them to stand out and pop more.
You still with me? I know I’m writing a book here. The price of these kits is a really good deal! And you get free shipping too. Your purchase of these kits supports our family’s handmade business, as well as other artists’ work, and we are so grateful for your support! Thank you all & Happy Knitting!