Little Patch of Tilled Earth

May 20, 2013May 20, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

This past weekend was a rather productive one considering it rained most of Sunday. I made my way to the Shelburne Farm and Garden early on Saturday morning picking up a few plants, mostly for the newer perennial garden. I completely weeded out the raspberries and the garlic patches plus planting all of my new plants by noon. The dock growing in every bed is beginning to get to me since I have to use a shovel to get each one out. The roots are all about a foot long now. Dandelions everywhere, but when there are so many of them it’s rather pretty.

Cleomes were planted in the perennial bed, my all time favorite annual. The garden center had some nice ones so I planted them in with the Echinacea . I was disappointed with things not coming up but I think I’ve just been impatient. Everything in the perennial beds is up as I remembered it being planted and it’s beginning to fill in. I have been checking for the jack-in-a-pulpits on the north side of the house for a couple of weeks now and hadn’t seen them until yesterday. They have been there the entire time we’ve been at the house so I would be disappointed if they were gone.

I bought an eggplant because I had never even seen one grown before last summer. It’s been planted in a flower bed. I will be putting asparagus into the north end of the vegetable garden this year, probably planting it on Wednesday. I either had to plant it there or start an entirely new bed. I couldn’t figure out where to put a new bed and figured committing space in the garden for the asparagus was worthwhile (it’s a 20 year commitment). I’ll just have to till the rest of the garden with that in mind.

I tilled the garden on Sunday morning in between a couple of showers and swarms of black flies. I had to get it done. I also did a little soil test to see where the ph was and was pleased to see it was in a tolerable range. I’d been worried that I was trying to grow plants that were just too unhappy with the soil conditions but it would appear that things are much better than I had thought. I’ll hit it with some composted manure before I plant and continue rotating my plants every year. Rotation works well for me because I bore so easily, each year feels like a new garden (well it is but I try to make the layout completely different). Last year I had mostly rows going east/west, this year I will probably have more of a pota ger type. The new, experimental crops will be a dwarf popcorn and some purple string beans. For pole beans this year I will be interspersing Scarlet Runners with Kentucky Wonder I think. I love the flowers and so do the birds, bees and hummingbird moths. Sharing my garden with these creatures is really what it’s all about for me. Of course ask me again right after the raccoons destroy my corn. Still unsure if I will do teepees for the pole beans or do a long trellis like I did a few years ago. I will have to see what kind of saplings I can find in the woods.

The only things that will planted in the next week or so will be the asparagus, potatoes and onions. Everything else will wait until the weekend of June 1st. I’m always so over-anxious to get things into the ground I often put seeds in earth that is just too cold. One more week won’t make that much of a difference. I will be starting basil and nasturtiums in pots to scatter around the gardens. I usually plant the nasturtiums in the garden but have found that they are difficult to weed around as they get going and they look great cascading over the sides of pedestal pots.

The photograph really makes my garden look rather small, in reality it is about 20′ x 50′, so it’s a pretty good size. I haven’t put up the fence posts yet for my caution tape fence. Chester spent a good deal of time yesterday in that fine tilled soil – he loves it. You can imagine what he looked like after rolling around in it while it was raining. And once again he has photobombed my pictures – he sincerely thinks he should be in every shot.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

May 17, 2013May 17, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

Sunrise on Bear Island, Lake Winnipesaukee, NH

Copilot

May 17, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

Sadly, this is true for my copilot as well . . .

Gnawing the Bone

I was crawling through traffic behind a bumper sticker that read, “God is my Copilot.”

I looked over at Nut Breath, sitting in my copilot seat, and asked what he thought about this. He was far too busy with his personal hygiene to answer.

View original post

Food Rant Friday

May 17, 2013May 17, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 5 Comments

Okay, so there are a few friends and relatives that know how pissed off I get when yet another article crosses my path about Monsanto and their GMO’s. This week was the motherload in reading about various lawsuits that Monsanto has brought against everyone in the world from the small farmer to the state of VT. Apparently the money stream is so important to them they are willing to take on any state in the union that would try to label food as containing GMO products. Hmmmm, doesn’t it make you wonder what they are trying to hide? I believe in informed consent.

There are now apps available to help you boycott all kinds of products as you peruse the groceries in the store, just scan the barcodes and voila you know what subsidiary that food is coming from and can make your choices with a little more knowledge. I’m thinking that’s all well and good if what you are eating is processed but it’s really not going to help you in the produce section. I read today that one of the country’s leading suppliers of French fries is asking the federal government to approve genetically modified potatoes. This is to prevent those unsightly brown spots. Really?

You know that lawn that you hate mowing every week? Why not use part of it to put in a raised bed and plant some tomatoes ~~there she goes talking about those tomatoes again~~? Put a few potatoes in your little plot or grow a few carrots to eat right out of the garden. I promise you the seeds that you grow will surprise and delight you. You will have such a feeling of accomplishment and be astonished at the money you save over the summer on some of your favorite things. It’s also FUN.

I baked a batch of cookies the other day, shared them with sister Sue. They are a delicious soft molasses cookie encrusted with course grain sugar, crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy in the middle. Spicy and delicious they are the ultimate comfort food for me. Then I started to think about the ingredient list – what’s gmo and what’s not. Yeah, I know, but I’m always thinking about where my food comes from or what’s in it. That doesn’t mean I don’t eat what’s put in front of me but I’m always aware – so is my sister. After she ate those cookies with me and brought some home I texted her about all the potentially bad things that were in them. Today in the interest of science and my guilty conscience I decided to actually look up what went into them. I was pleased to find out that the things that were a little sketchy for me were all within my tolerance level for food weirdness. So I’d have to say that if you are going to eat cookies bake your own and source your ingredients. Now I can email Sue and tell her that those treats were really much more okay than I had led her to believe (and maybe she’ll stop sending me all that email about Monsanto).

Gardens

May 16, 2013May 16, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 1 Comment

The first edible plant to arrive in my garden is rhubarb. We eagerly look forward to it thinking about pies all winter long. I have found no really effective way to preserve rhubarb that allows me to bake with it in the off season so we enjoy as much as we can while we can.

This particular rhubarb came from Bill’s grandfather’s property. After he died and we were cleaning out the house for sale I walked the yard to see if there was anything I could transplant. His back yard was very shaded and there was a very anemic patch of rhubarb in the back corner of the garage. I dug it up and brought it to Rowe. I planted it in front of a huge rock – it faces west. The plants are shaded until noon during the growing season and I’ve found that really works well, it keeps it from bolting early in the season. Last year I made a rhubarb pie in September and it was awesome. I always thought if you didn’t get it in the spring that was it.

Being able to go out and pick something edible this time of year is a blessing. Gives you hope for the rest of the season even if you haven’t planted anything yet. I have garlic that looks amazing this year but I know I didn’t plant enough. I will be tilling the garden this weekend barring any bad weather. I will set it up in anticipation of the ground warming to a temperature where I can plant most of my vegetables. We had three nights below freezing this past week so I make it a rule to never plant before Memorial Day.

I’ve had a vegetable garden for about 8 years now in varying sizes and layouts. I’m getting a grip on what grows and what will not and have had gardens through summers dry and hot, cool and rainy. I think everyone should have a garden where they can grow something of their own to eat. Our healthy choices are being taken away from us at a breathless pace. I don’t believe if you go into a grocery store right now that you can have any clue where your food comes from or what goes into it. You are being lied to on a daily basis about what’s organic or natural. I figure if it says that on a package than it’s probably not. Start using your farmers gardens. They are springing up everywhere this time of year. There may not be a lot of variety but soon there will be. You’ll know that your veggies and herbs haven’t spent days in a truck coming to you from parts unknown.

The other thing I would add is if you plan on ever growing any of your food now is the time to start. Gardens are slow motion works in progress, they can take years. What works one year may not the next but those experiences are what help you to be a better gardener. So many people I talk to think they can just put one in one year and it’ll be fine so they wait until they think they “really” need it. Don’t wait, do it now, even if it’s just pots of tomatoes and basil.

Weaving Wednesday 7

May 15, 2013September 11, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 2 Comments

Pam, our instructor, lashing a warp for a Navajo rug.

I left early yesterday thinking that with an extra hour I would be able to finish threading it and possibly sley the reed. Ahhhh, the best laid plans. Last week when I started threading my warp I was on fire. Everything went in order, no mistakes, perfection. I only had time to thread the first half so with the extra time I figured this should be easy. I threaded, rethreaded and threaded again the last half of that warp. Three hours into it I had 25 to 30 threads left over at the end. Count, count, count, rethread, count, count count, thread again, still wrong, ugh. Sometimes your head is in the game, sometimes it’s not, last night it definitely was not. I got there at 5:00 and by 8:30 I had the reed on ready to start that but really didn’t have enough time so it will be waiting for me next week. Bummer.

When I first arrived at the studio I went around and took a few photographs of the other weaving projects going on. It’s all fascinating to me and there is just so much you can do (although the just gives me weaving ADD). Since my loom looks almost exactly the way it did last week I’ll share some of the other weaving – without description since I’m not sure of the proper terminology.

I have my class on Tuesday evenings so there are only a couple of other women that I actually weave with.

We do have weaving “theory” classes once a month where all of Pam’s students get together to learn about drafting, structure and color. Now I can put the names and projects with the faces.

It has been an amazing experience playing with these women who are all at different places in their weaving education.

All of the weavers that I have met are very generous people. They are open, honest and giving. It’s like going to therapy every week. We are all around the same age with wildly diverse backgrounds but we come together to create beautiful things. You see everyone’s tastes are so different in their color choices or even their projects. Pam steers people in the direction of their capabilities and gives direction when needed. She encourages each of us to work on our own so when we leave we can go home, warp our own looms and weave without her assistance. It’s nice to know that she’s only a phone call away though, I’m not all grown up yet.

The photo above is of a double weave rug (I know this much). It is one of the most stunning things I have ever seen. Makes me think a rug is in my future.

Bed and Chicken Dinners

May 14, 2013May 14, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 2 Comments

During the early 20th century Fort Pelham Farm was a bed and breakfast of sorts as well as serving home cooked meals. This is a brochure that Olive had in her scrapbook and I thought I’d share it.

The brochure itself is small, maybe 3″ x 5″ on a textured yellow stock and gives quite a bit of information on a small space.

As I was reading it this morning I was thinking how nice it would be to have a view of the hopper from the house. It is completely grown in now so the only view we now have is trees. Although I have noticed that part of the view just down the road (when the leaves are off of the trees) includes the windmills in Savoy which I can’t say that I’m a fan of. So maybe it’s better that we have the trees that way I’m not angry that someone has invaded my space albeit from afar.

The back of the brochure probably fascinates me the most. “Modern electric power plant”? Need a little more research into that. Running water, modern bathroom? Hmmmm . . . Then there is the way the entire upstairs is set up. You have to be pretty comfortable with strangers to all be staying in the rooms upstairs. There is no hallway between any rooms so you need to walk through other peoples bedrooms to get anywhere near the stairways. I’m making an assumption that what is now the upstairs bathroom was once a bedroom. I do remember my father talking about a water holding tank in the attic over the ell which they used for water pressure. Their water was spring fed and there was a huge cistern in the cellar as well.

Then there are those dinners. We donated a sign for chicken dinners to the Rowe Historical Society a number of years back. I have photographs of what is now the living room set up for dining. It’s difficult for me to imagine cooking for a crowd in the kind of kitchen they were using at the time. And what kind of flock of chickens did they have? Must have been substantial unless they bought dressed hens somewhere else which I’m kind of doubting. I also looked up the value of $3.00 in 1900 just to get a little perspective. It amounted to $79.10. They were making fairly good money with their little endeavor – almost $400 per person per week. You just have to consider that it was a seasonal retreat for people.

The photo above is of the dining room. The floors and layout are still the same and I have to tell you that I wouldn’t mind having the rocking chair in the foreground.

I look at these photographs and am amazed at how little the house has changed. When we do something to it we try to keep within the character of the house. It’s really too beautifully built to mess with. We have returned to eating in that room, dividing it into different living spaces. It’s a wonderful place to entertain friends and family. Now I just need to figure out how to charge $26.27 for a creamed chicken dinner.

Homeowner’s ADD

May 13, 2013May 13, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 1 Comment

I’m not fond of this time of the year. I’ve come down with a bad case of homeowner’s ADD. I have a theory that everyone has Attention Deficit Disorder but for me it’s really apparent at certain times of the year.

Part of the problem with the home owning part is the house in Rowe does not have heat upstairs (or power for that matter) so any projects that I want to do have to be done in spring, summer and early fall (or just bundle up while you’re doing it). Last week I had a conversation with brothers-in-law Mike. He’s working on a house just up the road from ours and swears that whoever built the one he’s in built ours. There is the same intricate woodwork. We talked about stripping paint. I have used all kinds of methods of stripping paint, all involving some rather harsh chemicals but he’s been using a heat gun. Hmmmmm . . .

I had Bill get a heat gun because I have a small room that once had carpet glued to it. The carpet was removed years ago but the mastic stayed. This room is above the living room and I had visions of using a chemical remover and having it leak through the floor onto the new ceiling below – not good. I tried using this head gun to get the mastic off and it was BRILLIANT. You can only remove a little at a time but once you’re rolling it goes fairly quickly. The disadvantage is that I have to sit on the floor in order to do it. It’s hard on the back so I can only do it for an hour or two before I have to give it up.

The weather this past weekend was really not conducive to working outdoors. When the sun came out I tried to pull weeds in some of my flower beds but the black flies were so thick that it wasn’t pleasant at all. I would come in out of the clouds, both rain and flies, and run down my mental list of the wants and needs indoors. Most of them run into the wants like the floor upstairs but then there is the matter of turning what was once a bathroom into a pantry. This involves removing the toilet and sink and all respective piping (after removing all of the junk that’s accumulated in there for the past year). That little project is rather pressing at the moment because we will soon be coming into preserving season and I want that finished before it starts. I need an inventory of canning supplies as well as making sense of a large closet that’s been used for a pantry for a number of years. Making sense of it is being kind, I can’t find anything in it and every time I cook something I waste a lot of time digging around looking for that special something I KNOW is in there somewhere.

The wood shop has been cleaned up in the past week and I was thinking about that side table that I really need to make for the living room. That sounded like more fun than stripping floors and moving toilets. I restrained myself because I knew if I went out to the shop I would never come back in and those inside projects would be still calling my name.

The thing is that I also spent a good deal of time weaving and rug hooking this weekend – going from one to the other. I think I need medication.

But does this look like fun to you? Good thing it’s a very small room.

A Love Letter

May 12, 2013May 12, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 4 Comments

I’ve been given time alone for Mother’s Day. Doesn’t sound like fun to many people but sometimes being alone can be quite an awesome treat.

I remembered these two photographs earlier this morning and wanted to share. They were taken in 1990 by a dear friend of mine. I think I had her take them for a Father’s Day gift. They are also two of just a handful of photographs taken of me with the girls over the years. I treasure them, they speak of the happiness that was ours all the time they were growing up.

They’ve turned into wonderful, brilliant, kind women. I’m more proud of them than anything else in my life.

On Mother’s Day children come together to celebrate the woman who brought them up. I’ve never had a real fondness for Mother’s Day only because I’ve always felt that my children were such a gift to me. For years they were my photographic muse. They grew up in costumes, in studios, at parks – always with a camera in front of them. The yearly Christmas card was what I strove for each year, anxiously waiting for the reviews.

I watched them go through their childhood, teenage and young adult years with joy and trepidation. We all know how hard life can be and you silently hope that your kids won’t ever go through some of the things you’ve been through. You try to guide them in a direction that will make them happy and content adults. You encourage each one of them in their interests, nurturing those little sparks.

I hear many of my younger friends with small children of their own now talk about the annoyances of day to day life and I remember it was hard balancing everything in your daily lives. I want you to know it’s all worth it, it may not seem so now, but it is.

So my children are now adults, I’ve been through the empty nest, I am growing in a different direction. My life is actually the accumulation of many smaller lives, I think we are all like that. I see mine as sort of a pie chart sectioned off, it’s not a whole yet but I can see each section as a different phase – who I was with, what I was doing. They are all in different colors. The biggest part of my pie chart at the moment is motherhood and it’s bright red. It stands out. It was the best thing ever.

So this mother’s day I’m not celebrating mothers, I’m celebrating children, my own. For without them this day would not exist.

Pear Blossoms

May 11, 2013May 11, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

I wait eagerly for this each year. The pear tree blossoming in the back forty. It is always so beautiful, this year more so because I finally got down there to prune it. Bill and I drove the tractor down next to the tree and took turns lifting each other in the bucket at different angles to cut off the suckers. This tree has never been pruned and was rather overrun. I used the lopping shears and he used his smallest chain saw. It was more than a little scary being 15+ feet off of the ground and moving into a tree. I think Bill’s ride was probably a little scarier since I don’t drive the tractor that often. My ride was fairly smooth backwards and forwards, up and down. Bill’s on the other hand . . . let’s just say next time he’ll probably opt for a ladder. At Old Sturbridge Village they always said to prune your fruit trees so a cat tossed into it wouldn’t hit any branches. Fruit trees like a lot of air. With any luck we will have more than the one pear we got last year. The spring has been more “normal” this year with a more gradual warmup so the blossoms didn’t come out too early. As long as we get some pollinators out there we should be okay.

The patches of what looks like white in the field are bluets. We always put off mowing the field until these have gone by, the patches get bigger every year. They are like clouds in the grass.

It’s a drizzly, rainy day today but everything is looking wonderfully green and lush. Something about it just soothes the soul after such a long, cold winter.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: