Category Archives: Homestead

Catching up

April 10, 2009 Annette Leave a comment

I know, I have been a tremendous slacker of late, not keeping those near and far up to date on the happenings at the homestead. Three birthdays in the span of three and a half weeks, two of which were major affairs, plus work, plus the onset of spring – well, let’s just say that things have been quite busy here at Lazy Dog Ranch. It’s also tax season here, and we won’t even discuss that at all.

Instead, we’ll go back in time a couple of weeks, to the big birthday bash for my nephew: one year, and he’s changed from an always-screaming, never-smiling, quite silent baby to a happy, talkative baby (who still has quite stinky poo).

Given that this was a rather momentous event, much like my sister’s 30th, of course it had to be a large gathering (this time, comprised mostly of people I myself didn’t know), and of course, there had to be food. We decided on no hot dogs for the party, since we really don’t like feeding hot dogs to other peoples’ kids (has no one seen Field of Dreams?). My sister specifically requested pulled pork, and we also settled on chicken tenders (both with and without barbecue sauce), and hamburgers, to round out the carnivorous side of the menu.

Some things can be made in advance. Like a double batch of sauce.

Other things must be made in advance, since they take about 19 hours to properly cook.

The rest is a matter of prep so the day of the event doesn’t absolutely kill you with all the things that need to be done. That means pulling some carrots fresh out of the ground…

…and cleaning them up to go along with the other vegetables that are prepped for the roasted vegetables to be served along with everything else.

This gathering called for a triple batch of rolls, so the beginnings of that had to be pulled out too.

Don’t forget to vacuum the dog.

Be sure to pull the rolls out of the cold room for their final proof before they go in the oven.

Some homemade hummus – very garlicky, by Mom’s request.

A bit of potato salad and some corn pudding.

The big stuff: pulled pork, chicken tenders (with and without sauce), and burgers:

Virginia Woolf said that everyone needs a room of their own, but sometimes a cake of one’s own will do. Especially if you’re one.

For some reason, I just find this photo incredibly amusing – probably because it looks like he has the candle up his nose.

Marie Antoinette suggested it. Don’t blame me.

Oh, and did I mention the focaccia?

The kid cleaned up in the gift department, of course. We cleaned up the aftermath, and declared the big party season over until Labor Day, at which point we’ll do all this all over again to close out the summer.

Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Gardening, Homestead, The Challenge

Clearing

March 29, 2009 Annette 1 Comment

What the back forty looked like in January (and actually, for almost the past two years):

And now:

We had every intention of leaving the back wild, but last season found that weeds had completely overtaken one berm where wild blackberries were growing (not an easy task), that dog fennel and other weeds were running rampant, making it impossible to get to the wild blackberries anyway, and that we wanted, instead, to put the orchard out in that spot instead. At the very far end, somewhat behind that tree dead center in the photo, is another berm where blackberries are still going strong, and behind that is more wild area that will stay that way. For now. We had our tractor guy come out, mow, and then take down the berms and give us some leveling of the ground back there. Thus far, we have two almonds and a peach tree. Next weekend, we’re heading to the nursery for some citrus trees. Toward the left side of the picture, between the pine trees and the neighbor’s fence, is where I envision the bee hives going at some point.

It’s all very much a work in progress, as it always is. But spring is here – finally – and that means some serious gardening. How serious? Let’s just say that today alone, I popped about 50 plants into the frames out front, in addition to what we’d already put out there. More to come…

Cancer, Food, Gardening, Homestead

Another day

February 6, 2009 Annette Leave a comment

Another root canal. One of the rather unfortunate side effects of having your head blasted with radiation, I’m afraid. By the time I’m finished, I’ll probably have an entire mouth full of root canals and crowns. The procedures are quite painful, and not because of the root canals themselves (although those are painful while they’re being done): rather, the pain is in my jaw and the connective tissue in my mouth from having to open as widely as possible so they can work at the back of my mouth. They had someone training today, as well – how lucky was she to get to assist on my appointment? Two hours and fifteen minutes later, part one of the procedure was done. Canals found, drilled, filled. Next time we get to do the remainder of the buildup, and then the attempts begin to get an impression of a crown. On the plus side, the vicodin knocks the aftereffect pain down to manageable levels and after about three or four days, things are back to as normal as they can be.

This morning it was 18 degrees when I left the house, with ice all over the car. There are reasons I don’t live up north. This is one of them. I checked out the new pea sprouts, and they appear to have made it through – atleast, they were all standing, frozen – but the beans didn’t like the hard cold snap at all and I didn’t see a single sprout left. Luckily, I have a large bag of bean seed, since my uncle requested some, and we want to do a lot of canning of beans and peas this spring before the weather gets too hot and it’s time to yank them out. Tonight, with any luck, will be the final freeze of the season, and work can begin in earnest outside. The flats return to the great outdoors tomorrow and will stay there, basking in the glory and heat of the sunshine.

Several of the heirloom tomatoes have sprouted, but I can already see one that has snapped at the base of the stem. Since they’re inside, there is no real reason for that to happen, and I’m afraid that some of these varieties don’t want to work for me here. That’s fine: I’ll just replace them with somthing else. This weekend, it will be time to pull the original pea sets and take some photos of what’s going on out there in the garden. The brussels have little sprouts on their stems, and about time, at that. There should be some broccoli for harvest, and the garlics will be coming into the end of their season, ready for pulling and hanging.

We are coming up on spring, and that means spring cleaning – of the cages at the NOC. I forced the boy to come along for the ride, and we pulled out a dozen old servers and old hard drives that need to be destroyed. My goal for the weekend: scavenge the servers for spare parts, replace the drives in a couple that are fine but need larger drives and more memory, and get the dead/replaced drives ready to go to that big bit bucket in the sky.

What a life. We still need to go through some of the cheesemaking projects we have planned. We did a round of mozzarella, which was quite delicious, and worth another round for our homemade pizzas. Next up, some simpler items, like cottage cheese (we made this in my AP Chemistry class, back in the day, and I recall only myself and a couple of others were willing to eat it) and ricotta. Then, some more ambitious plans, like our own cheddar, with a homemade cheese press. That’s going to be something, and yet another experiement to document for the blog here. I wouldn’t mind trying some parmesan, too. Eventually, our raw milk supplier will be able to provide some more milk, or we’ll just go get some elsewhere, because mom found an old fashioned butter churn that we’re anxious to try. Plus, that milk will be better for cheesemaking than the ultra-pasteurized stuff in most cases.

Gonna be a good year for all these sorts of things. I can feel it. And I don’t think that’s just the pain meds talking, either.

Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Gardening, Homestead

Hunting chicks

February 4, 2009 Annette Leave a comment

The hunt is on for a few chicks of the two legged variety.

What, you thought that meant something else? Sickos.

We’re trying to find another five or six chicks to go with the lonely girl out back. The group with which we ordered the chickens last year don’t need any more, got rid of theirs because of complaints from the neighbors, or are out of town (turns out one of the group is the daughter of the founder of Habitat for Humanity, who died this week). The problem with chickens – or, rather, chicks – is this: most hatcheries will not ship for orders fewer than 25 assorted chicks. Like my tender seedlings, curently sitting inside on the table here, they need to stay warm. More peeps equals more heat, and a better chance of all of them making it through the shipping process.

So, we’re looking locally to see if any of the more rural supply and feed stores will have chicks available. Eggs for everyone!

(Short interjection here to complain about people who send frivolous legal threats to us about a site we host, where said site has zero content, claiming that we are somehow infringing on their rights. Engage your brain before you fire off nonsense like that, people. Or at least engage an attorney.)

I thought today would be a good day to get out and do some maintenance outside – specifically, putting down mulch between the frames. Mild weather, coolish, perfect for that heavy lifting job. The problem is, the weather was much too mild, barely reaching 40 degrees here, with windchills in the 20s. That is not, to me, a “good day” to be outside. My pea and bean plants out there are probably going to bite it tonight, since it’s supposed to be around 18 here inland. While peas can take a bit of frost, I don’t know if they can take that kind of hard freeze – although the peas did come up out of the ground after a couple of nights of hard freeze, so there may be hope for them. Everything else will have to take its chances as well: the original batch of peas are due to come out of the frames to make way for the corn that will go in that spot in March. The broccoli and brussels should be able to handle the freeze without cover. Carrots and parnips? Fine in place in the frames.

Gardening, Geek stuff, Homestead

Soothing

February 3, 2009 Annette Leave a comment

I am officially giving up trying to figure out why people have to be douchebags. Not just that, actually: why they have to be lying douchebags, about things that are so easily checked that it would be laughable if it were not so insulting. For instance: don’t try to tell me that you get “thousands” of pieces of spam a day that you then have to clean from your mailbox. We can check the logs, you know. We can see exactly what has been delivered and exactly what is sitting in that mailbox and exactly the time that mailbox was last checked. We know you receive maybe – maybe – 30 pieces of mail a day, almost all of which is spam and which we can see is deleted by the scanner, with the other three to six pieces of mail delivering because they are not, in fact, spam. Don’t try to tell me that you’re missing our billing invoices because of this supposed spam problem you’re having here when the billing address is at another provider entirely – can’t you see the failure of logic in just suggesting that? And don’t tell me the responses you’ve received to the very, very infrequent tickets you’ve opened have been short with just a “sorry – server’s busy” answer. We can look at the tickets you’ve opened and see that there’s nothing of the sort in them, and there are some very lengthy responses from us with quite a bit of detail about various things in there, almost nothing of which is related to this supposed horrendous spam problem you have. Beyond that, you haven’t opened a ticket since February of last year. One would think that for such an issue of such importance would have resulted in a ticket or ten in the span of a year. And finally, don’t try to keep changing your claims on subsequent emails, to things even more absurd. It won’t make you look any less foolish. Nor will informing us after three rounds of long emails that you’re not going to “waste” your valuable time doing our job – which, by the way, we haven’t asked you to do.

And that was my tipping point today. Yet another asshat who apparently knows more about running servers and networks than we ever will, lecturing me about a massive and entirely nonexistent spam problem. So for them, I say: fuck it. I will reserve my caring for the people who don’t pretend to know more than they actually know and/or who genuinely need assistance with something. Like the guy who needs help resetting his email client to pick up his mail because he managed to delete it somehow and the woman whose forum was attacked by porno spammers. For those occasions – rare though they are – when assholes like the lecturer appear, bitching for no reason whatsoever, they’ll get an answer to whatever the actual issue is (if there is one), and we’ll move on without even bothering with the nonsense they’re spewing. There’s gardening to be done. Menus to be planned. And there are these guys.

Best buddies.

All of which is much more enjoyable (helping people who need it is really my downfall, gardening brings good things to the table, food keeps people filled, and the animals are darned cute) and much less stressful (well, maybe beyond picking and squishing hornworms, which can be rather icky) than exerting any energy on miserable people.

Tonight begins what will hopefully be the last cold snap for us. I’m also hopeful that the new round of peas and beans, getting a very nice start out there, will make it through (especially tomorrow, which is supposed to be around 20 or so, and then the crazy kicks back in by the weekend when it’s supposed to be 70 here). March is just around the corner, and March around here means time to plant corn. When even Mom is over the cold, cold weather, you know it’s time for spring.

Gardening, Homestead

Guessing game

January 30, 2009 Annette Leave a comment

The seedlings are making good progress, and with a couple of days out in the warmer air and sunshine, even the peppers are coming up. Of course, Mother Nature has decided to turn down the heat a little, but only to just freezing at night – that still means bringing in the flats during the night, but does not mean rigging covers for the plants currently out in the flats. Next week, we’re forecast to have another hard freeeze, into the 20s, which will probably finish off our freezes for the season if that holds true. That, in turn, brings us to the guessing game: when will it be safe to begin direct sowing certain things, like cukes and melons? I could start them in three inch peat pots, I suppose, but for these, I really like to start them direct in the frames in which they’ll live out their lives – plus, I won’t have to tote them anywhere, and watering out there is much easier than watering a bunch of flats and individual pots (right now, that is: next season, I expect to have the greenhouse up, which will make a lot of this much simpler). The beauty off all of this is that gardening itself, once everything is in place, is a cheap hobby with great rewards and in almost every case – like the sungolds last season – the return is huge. Those leggy flats I had? All reseeded, for less than five bucks in seed. The most expensive seed I have is for the corn, and that only because there’s five pounds of it.

I suppose this will, in the end, be much like anything else in life: you make a decision, and you take your chances. Assuming that everything (or almost everything) in the flats comes up in the next couple of days, the first couple of weeks in March is the target date for transplanting outside. With any luck, we’d then have the first tomatoes appearing in mid to late April. That would be something for planting that is done without the use of a greenhouse.

Homestead

Associations

January 26, 2009 Annette Leave a comment

Last week, a sign popped up on our property, out by the roadside. From the rear, it was a sign for some home builder. We were going to take it down, but on the front, saw a message about a home owner’s association meeting, with a number to call.

There isn’t a HOA right now, at least not officially. We knew, eventually, there would be one, as this is a private road, with a gate, and there are lights out at the public road, all of which must be maintained. I’m not a huge fan of HOAs, personally, as it tends to bring out the fascist in certain types of people (that is, small-minded, tiny ego type people who want a drink of power, no matter how tiny). We’ve all heard the horror stories about some HOAs: can’t put a line in your back yard to dry clothes. Must keep your lawn green – even when there’s a freaking drought. I even read one blog where their HOA forbade the growing of vegetables, period, back or front yard. These are the types of things with which I disagree: they’re energy savers, economically and environmentally friendly, and should be ENcouraged, not discouraged. Other things I have no problem with – people shouldn’t be leaving rusty old cars on blocks in their yards, for instance. My other concern is that we would be wasting time debating things that are already covered by existing county-level statute: no trailers here, as an example. This is already in the zoning from the county, as this is a houses-only neighborhood. Having to discuss things like that when the laws are already codified is a waste of time, and we all know how much that appeals to me.

The number on the sign was our immediate neighbor’s cell. It turns out that the builder has been paying the light bill and the gate maintenance, and our neighbor has been paying him back (as a side note, our neighbor and the builder owned all the parcels that are now built on, and still own the vacant parcels – about 50 acres’ worth). So, it’s no surprise to me that now that there are about ten lots taken in a development that totals sixteen, it’s time for everyone to pony up to pay for these things. When we spoke to him, we told him we figured that was the main issue, and hoped that everything else would be kept to a minimum: short and sweet, with no weirdo rules. His response: “Hell, no, I don’t want nobody telling me what I can and can’t do.”

So it looks like it won’t be that bad after all. Which is good, because I’m putting in my corn up front this year. And I don’t want to hear any bitching about something you can’t see from the main road in the summer anyway when all the trees and shrubs are back to full leaf.

Homestead

Death by drowning

January 24, 2009 Annette 2 Comments

That’s my official pronouncement, and I’m sticking to it.

Mostly I’m sticking to that because I pulled this creature from the bottom of the deep end of the pool. Obviously it wasn’t one of those freakish water spiders I’ve seen on the nature shows that drown their prey before sucking the gooey parts out.

Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Gardening, Homestead

Test veg

January 23, 2009 Annette Leave a comment

There are some things you really can’t tell a thing about until you pull one out of the ground. A parsnip, for instance.

Coming along nicely. Another month-ish, and this batch should be ready to pull completely. I have some seed soaking for the next round, to be planted tomorrow. Along with the potatoes and peanuts. Not all together, of course, no matter how alliteratively that would work.Tonight, flat five: more tomatoes to replace the seedlings that are much too leggy, and more peppers.

About a week and a half ago – just before the frigied cold snap – I had planted more sugar snap peas (shelling peas) and some bush snap beans. I’d been waiting to water them, figuring that we’d pass through the freezes and then start convincing them to pop out of the ground.

As it happens, they had other plans.