Ah, retreat...

(this is a covered garden)

This past week I attended and taught at the Homefire retreat hosted by Radical Homemakers of NM.  The retreat was at a beautiful permaculture community outside of Santa Fe New Mexico, a few hour jaunt from where we live. My husband and I stayed the night at the retreat site, in the guest or "kitchen house" as it's called, a sweet little historical house with a giant community kitchen.

We began our retreat (in front of a historical chapel)  introducing ourselves and discussing what Radical Homemaking is.  It was such a beautiful, thought provoking discussion.

After our intro circle we had our choice of classes, Real Food Kitchen and The Garden in Winter.  I chose gardening. Not an easy choice as the kitchen smelled divine!  I learned so much about winter gardening in the Southwest.  Later there was Herbal Apothecary and my toy making class where we made Leaf Sprite bendy dolls. I enjoyed sharing my passion for toy making. Last of all was a beautiful Waldorf puppet show.

I learned so much this weekend!  To the point where it's all sort of swimming in my head,  a mess of new knowledge, longing, hope & possibility.  One theme that really stood out to me, was not creating our separate little homes in a vacuum but opening ourselves up to community. So, how to put these new thoughts into action? I'm mulling over a few ideas...

Thank you Arina, Kyce, Erin, Brenna and all the participants for making me feel so welcome. 

Until next time...

Homefire Retreat Getaway

Lately, I've been hard at work preparing for my upcoming toy making workshop. We will be making these leaf sprite bendy dolls.  The work shop will be held this Sunday at the Homefire Retreat, given by Radical Homemakers of New Mexico in Santa Fe.  I'm so happy to be presenting but even more thrilled to be attending the other workshops. Workshops such as The Garden in Winter, Autumn in the Kitchen, & Celebrating the Light with Story, Song, and Verse.  

My husband and I honeymooned in Santa Fe, so we decided to make it a weekend getaway.  The kids will be staying with our good friends and we will have ourselves a weekend away!  We'll have 2 nights, and a day together to explore Santa Fe.  Then while I'm at the retreat my husband will be checking out the famous Canyon Road galleries.  We haven't done anything like this since Michael was born (almost 9 years ago) so we're pretty excited!  The boys are excited too, they have been counting the days until their weekend sleepover.

I can't wait to share toy making with this group and learn more about Radical Homemaking.

Until next time...

Garden Update

Those who are following our garden updates might remember our grasshopper problem. Well, I implemented a few things, chile spray the plants, soap spray the grasshoppers & adding a bird bath.  I also put some bird seed down to attract the birds.  My "bird bath" is just a couple of things I already had, a tree stump & clay saucer.  The birds came for a few days but then were scared away by our cats. 

I can't imagine why, can you?  No really, my plan was that the birds would visit in the morning because we keep our cats in until mid morning usually.  That didn't work, you can't schedule birds. They avoid us like the plague.  

However, I soon found out that cats are a great deterrent for grasshoppers!  It seems cats love to catch and eat them.  I've been noticing our little Kiki especially favoring them as her little protein snack.  Hopefully she'll get them all before they completely destroy the sunflowers.  I do plan to buy some Dr. Bronners and revisit the soap spray idea. For now I put our coffee grounds behind the oleanders where they live & rely on the cats.  They seem to be dwindling a bit. 

The tomatoes & peppers are staring to produce, though nothing ripe yet.  

The pallet is happier now with pots on it.  It seems to keep the moisture level inside the pallet more equitable so the herbs planted inside have begun growing better.

I've been super impressed with our workaholic basil!  We've had at least 4 pestos from our one large plant.  So I planted a couple more seedlings.  I'd love to freeze some pesto this year.




The artichoke is recovering from its mysterious bug attack.  If it was a grasshopper attack, why don't they keep eating it? 

And here's a cilantro that finally began growing! The sage is growing well here too.

Vine tomatoes & zucchini plants getting huge!

We've had 3 lovely zucchini's from our just starting to produce zucchini plants.

We've had just two cucumbers from our two cucumber plants, one each.   But I see we have a couple tiny ones here. 

We were super impressed with the flavor & crunch to our cucumber.  I guess I've never had a truly fresh cucumber.  They are so crisp & yummy!  Here's Owen putting a hat on Mr. Cucumber.

My Mother has always said I have a weird decorating sense.  She laughs at my bowl of river rocks on the kitchen table.  How about vegetable paint color, Mom?  Wouldn't cucumber green be pretty on this wall?

And I think I'm most excted about my compost.  It seems to be working!  I'm using a 5 gallon bucket w/ drainage & air holes.  I already had to dump it out and let it dry once because of a putrid smell.  (Too many coffe grounds?)  And now it has a very pleasant smell & color.  Yay!

We're very happy with our small garden! & can't wait to expand!  A couple more square foot beds are in order for Fall.

How's your garden growing?  Linking up with Ginny from Small Things.  

Until next time...

Projects, Projects... & Garden Update

I have not been in this space for a little while, life has been happening!  You know how that goes. We have been so busy this Spring doing much needed work in our yard.  This is the ugly yard we had at the end of this winter.  The shrubs had all died in the unusual multiple snow days we had, so they needed to be chopped back to make room for new growth.  Plus the grass that we've been trying to grow for three years never really took.  Then the wind blew in all sorts of weeds.  I had wanted to have a dirt pit lined with tree stumps in the back corner but my boys & their friends enjoy bug hunting and would never leave the stumps in place.  Not to mention I hadn't thought about them digging up sprinkler pipes!  Yikes, our tiny yard was a mess!

So we decided to cheat and put in sod.What a difference it has made.  The whole family now gravitates to the backyard. 

 

The oleander shrubs have been chopped and new growth is coming up beautifully.  The chicken wire fence is not finished yet.  Hopefully this will help with our garden pests, toddlers & cats! 

My seedlings didn't do very well, so I bought plants.  We've been having very hot days and they just never took.  Mental note, start seedlings earlier next year.  Here we have bush type tomatoes, a Patio vine type tomato in the back, sweet cherry peppers, "Big Jim" green chili, lemon Cucumber, cucumber, cinnamon basil, nasturtium & french marigold seeds.  

The pallet garden has been very hard to keep wet for seeds in our hot climate.  So except for two herb seedlings I've given up. I'll get plants here & there to fill it in.  In the meantime its providing a good spot for the yellow squash & cantaloupe to rest upon while our grass establishes.  I'm not a huge fan of the edging but we put in an invasive kind of desert grass that eventually will try to find our garden. We may put in another square foot garden bed here this fall.    

Here we have vine type tomatoes, basil, zucchini and we just added some french marigold seeds along the edge.  The buckets are a small compost system I'm trying out.  Hoping it works, I haven't been very successful in this area and my husband is not hopeful.  

We made a sandbox too! We're hoping to surround it with some terracotta tiles & fill it this week.  The kids are getting excited for it, but they've had something else to play with out here.  

  

Our fairy garden! We're still working on it so more on that soon!

Until next time...

My Voodoo compost bin

Summer Projects

Summer is upon us. Michael and I are home bound right now, with one working car that Artistdad is using. So we are having fun together and enjoying our home, patio and yard. We usually have breakfast outside on the patio and I encourage him to play while it’s semi-cool. We are blessed to have a mostly shaded backyard, but even in the shade, the afternoon sun is not so comfortable at 106 degrees. Michael and I love to watch the hummingbirds, he calls them “honeybirds”. We also love to watch the many other birds that nest in our beautiful, old Mulberry tree. All sorts of grackles, or as Michaels calls them, "krackle birds", robins, doves, mockingbirds & numerous finches. Michael is enjoying watching the ants activity around the dripping hummingbird nectar. He loves to touch pill bugs, or "pillow bugs" and watch them roll into their little protective ball. He calls mosquitos, "bosquitos" and examines every fly, "fwy" he sees. Right now he's in love with a 5" rubber fly named Frank that Daddy bought him. Mommy, not so much. I'm just thankful Daddy didn't buy the 5" cockroach he saw.

Anyway, I love our patio; it’s so peaceful to be there. Anytime I’m upset about anything I can usually cure it with a few minutes sitting outside and contemplating our beautiful tree.

I’ve always dreamed of having a garden, but we’ve lived in apartments or houses not exactly conducive to gardening. I now have space, but a cranky landlord who would probably flip if I dug in his precious yard. So, I have a tomato plant in a large pot, rosemary and basil and lots of potted flowers. I’m happy with what I have right now. And maybe next summer I’ll have my garden. Until then I have a lot to learn on the subject, because my tomato plant is being eaten by something and looks a tad scrawny.

Another project I’m excited about is my new composter! I’ve wanted to compost for a few years now but never have had the extra money to buy a composter. They can be expensive and shipping expensive as well. I recently found a simple alternative to buying a composter. So we’re trying it. We bought a plastic trash can on wheals with a lock on lid. Then we drilled 14 ½” holes in it. Voila, a composter. Yesterday I chucked a bag of vegetable trimmings I’d been saving and a bit of cardboard and it smelled nasty. But then later on I added old mulberry blossoms, leaves and small sticks. And today it smells earthy, so I’m hoping this means I’m on the right track. It’s making me see trash very differently. I found a list online of all the things you can compost and it’s much, much more than I realized. Every time I go to throw something out now, I think wait, no I can compost this. I’m concerned about attracting flies and roaches. If there are any composting pros out there with advice it’s very welcome.

Another fun project I’ve tried recently is fermenting vegetables. I've read fermented veggies are a great source of digestive enzymes and probiotics. They help detoxify and fight infections. They are a great source of amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Here's how I made them if anyone wants to try it.

I bought a bunch of veggies at our local Farmer's Market, cabbage, carrots, zucchini, squash and onions. I added garlic, peppercorns, oregano and celtic sea salt (can use other sea salt or pickling salt- no iodine). Everything I've read has said to try anything, so I did. Next I cleaned the veggies really well in water, vinegar and salt. I chopped up the veggies in bite size chunks and let them soak in a bowl of salted, filtered water. Then I cleaned my jars really well in baking soda and vinegar and hot water. Then added the vegetables and salted water or brine. I used a small amount of salt. You're not supposed to have any air bubbles, so the first jar I tried I had to re-do. You add the veggies and the brine all at the same time, packing them in tightly, I used a metal meat tenderizer to pack them. Leave 2" of space at the top of the jar or the fermenting process will create it anyhow and it will spill over. I made this mistake. I made one other mistake that I won't duplicate. I poured boiling water into my jars to sterilize. The first jar was fine but the second jar's heal broke, sending boiling water onto my legs. I don't recommend it. Luckily or intuitively, I had also bought shea butter at the Farmer's Market.

The most important thing is to keep everything clean. I had a spray bottle filled with vinegar and water and cleaned all surfaces and utensils before I started and throughout the process. Also, you're supposed to use filtered water, not chlorinated, city water. The chlorine can negatively effect the good bacterial growth. You leave the jars in your pantry for 3 days. Check them after 3 days and taste. You can then put them in the fridge to slow the fermenting process or you can leave for 3 or 4 more days for stronger flavor. Once you put them in the fridge they can last for months. This was a really fun process, very inexpensive, and tasty.

So my next project is growing wheat grass to juice. If anyone has a juicer they're not using, I'd love to borrow it. Until later, Happy Summer!

To make a composter. http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/airwaste/wm/recycle/Compost_bins/garbage_can_bin.htm

List of compost materials. http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm