Catchin' Up

It has seemed rather quiet around here but behind the scenes things have been happening. I just didn't have the energy to post anything about it. But , without further ado... here is a picture montage...
A baby quilt I'm working on for a friend's baby . She is having a baby shower in 2 weeks and I still have to get the binding on. This is just the top piece before my sister Violet quilted it all on her machine.

Field peas blooming.

Lettuce greens in one of the new beds .

Kale and more lettuce... the kale seems a little more eager to come up than the lettuce... but that side doesn't get as much sun so maybe that is why... or the seed was old .

Mustard greens.

After I made all those soil blocks I planted tomatoes and peppers. They sprouted in only 4 days!! I was amazed. Maybe it was where the moon was or maybe they really liked the heating mats or the soil mix they were in... who knows. But I don't think I've ever had things sprout that quickly before.

Onion sets... I need to plant more.

A couple weeks later and look how big they are!

They get watered every so often with a diluted tea from the fermenting nettle tea. It smells really really bad but they seem to like it. The boys seem to love it.. they still try to drink it whenever they can .

Someone has been pinching my field peas!!

He grazes... I guess I don't need a sheep.

Here is my noxious brew.. these are the killer wild nettles we got up in the foothills (Urtica dioica).

These are the common "domestic" or lesser nettle (Urtica urens. ) . They stink just as bad though.

When you stir it they foam!

Jean.. from Jean's garden. I don't know why but when we got this statue years and years ago and put her here, she just reminded me so strongly of the character of the same name from Keeper of the Bees . A Gene Stratton Porter novel. So that is what we called her. The Little Scout keeps guard over things while she is reading.

The Banks rose is blooming already.

The roses are leafing out.

The peach is blooming. Looks like it survived the rain we got a few days ago.

They smell so sweet .

Comfrey is pushing up.

Dew is on the peas.

And the ladies are back into the full swing of laying. Well, almost full swing.

My quilt top got quilted and I just thought this bubbling pot of cauliflower and tomato stuff was interesting. That's it for now.

Fishin'

We decided to head to the hills this past weekend to gather those killer nettles for more tea and go fishin'. There is still snow on those far mountains. We're following that silver truck up ahead. That contains the people who do the fishing. Our truck held the people who did the nettle collecting , fish gutting and cooking . Certain people are too squeamish to touch the fish they catch so they leave that to the girls. Is that right? Actually, we don't care really... the gutting is the fun part. Fishing takes too much patience. You have to wait and wait and wait for the fish to bite. Gutting just requires whacking the fish on the head and going at it with a knife. No patience necessary!!! Always a plus in my book. I don't exactly ooze the virtue of patience. In case you were wondering.

Elly May with the first fish..

Whack it sista!!!

I know you wanted to see what was inside..

My fish... dad caught him.

So I get to gut him. After whacking him of course. But I don't have a picture of that. I have video... but I'm not posting that. So there. I really don't mind the feel of fish so I'm not wearing gloves because of that. Just that water does nasty things to my hands so I try to stay out of it as much as possible.

Look at the slime!!

Ve scale de feeesh

The deer are so bold there...

And the frogs are out!

Now that we are home comes the cooking part. Well, first, we must tease the dogs. Because they go bonkers at everything.

I will bite you!!. Jesse was really curious and seemed to be okay with the thing until he brushed his nose up against the fish's teeth. Then I guess he thought it had bit him and that was that. He knew he didn't like it. Frank licked it at first.... then went ballistic.

Okay, now on to cooking. We rinse the suckers again and put them on tin foil. I hate using tin foil but .... well.. I didn't have any alternatives here . Maybe if I lined it with parchment....next time.

Can't get any fresher than that.

We salted and peppered them inside and out, tucked in lots of butter, onions and parsley. Then buried them in the same.

Then Elly May made a cute little packet for them. It still leaked butter....We baked them for 40 min in a 375-400F oven.

Look at the steam...

Help ! it is hot in here!!

They were fall apart tender.

I am dead.

But I am more dead than you! These suckers have very sharp teeth.

Mmmmm, nothing like a meal that can look you in the eye. It was incredibly tender and flavorful and fresh. Very very very good. And not at all fishy . I've had some very fishy trout before but I think what they eat has a huge effect on what they taste like. Well , that is true with anything. Anyway, it was a fun if not exhausting day full of , nettle stings, mushroom throwing, bug bites, fish slime, fish teeth and good eating.

Garden Stuff

Someone around here had a birthday this past week and there were a few roses left in the yard and some blooming field peas (from the cover crop put in last fall) to decorate the cake with... I don't have a picture of that but I do have a picture of the flowers .

After all the flowers were ripped off and the candles blown out. ... Yes.. it is really tall. Elly May thought it would be grand to combine all these layers to make one giant cake. Kind of ironic since the birthday girl isn't really supposed to be eating sugar.... ahem.... but she did taste a little....

And it was very very good...

The Nut Brown Ale in the second fermenter. After it ages awhile here we will have to bottle it... Oh the joy. My favorite part.

Here is a giant block of Grow-Coir or coco peat. Coconut fiber . It is a less acidic alternative to peat moss. I'm going to be making a soil mix for starting seedlings and coir holds an amazing amount of water and lightens up the planting medium . It comes in bricks or bales and you have to expand it with water. Supposedly you just pour water on and wait an hour. But we aren't that patient and had to start poking at it to make it happen faster.

It gets so fluffy.

Didn't think it would get that big did you?

Then we have another wheelbarrow full of sifted compost and then some sand. It was moist and it had been so long since I played in a sand box I couldn't help myself . We spent a ridiculous amount of time playing in it before we finally got around to mixing it in . My sand fish. I want a sand box again . People have those zen rock garden things that they rake through for relaxation and meditation or whatever they do with them. I want a sand box . Is 26 too old for one?

After I mixed all my ingredients together (which consisted of a hefty amount of compost, some plain garden dirt, coir, sand, vermiculite, volcanic pumice, dolomite lime, kelp meal, guano , and some bone meal ) , I added water and started making soil blocks.

I had some very interested observers who kept trying to be participants. They liked to eat my dirt. Guano is very tasty I hear. Or maybe it was the bone meal.

On a roll here

Those messy ones had been molested by various dog noses.... Thanks a lot guys. I now have 100 tomato plugs planted and 50 with chili peppers. Some of the tomatoes are already up! Yay!

And what have we hear? This is brewing nettle tea. You combine nettles and rain water (ideally) and stir every day til it stinks really bad . That is a few weeks. Then you dilute the mixture about 1/10 with water and foliar spray your seedlings/plants etc. Or use on the compost pile (it is really high in nitrogen) . It is very high in nutrients .

For some reason the boys LOVE to drink this stuff. Every time I uncover it to stir it they are right there chugging it down. I guess it is kind of like vitamin water for them. I just hope there is enough for me to use by the time it is ready.

These are sissy, domesticated nettles . They still sting, but nothing like the ones you find up in our canyons and mountains along streams. We went and collected some of those the other day and the stings went through my gloves and I had welts on my hands 24 hours later and they were still stinging. Those were some serious nettles. Next time..... I'm taking gauntlet gloves... all the way to the elbow. Anyway , those are now in a much larger barrel and stewing in more rain water. There are more exciting things happening in the garden but I'll save that for another post.