Spring?

I looked out the window this morning and saw a couple inches of white stuff blanketing everything. Ah...spring in Illinois! It's days like these that makes my southern heart depressed. So, with that feeling overwhelming me, I got up and got dressed and trudged out into the white oblivion.

Collecting sap in the snow is okay, especially when it is a little warm. Today wasn't very warm but it was pretty anyway. The worst part is having to chip ice out of the bucket in order to pour the sap out...then getting my gloves wet. My nose was running with the cold and I refrained from wiping it on my sleeve. Not because my Mama told me not to do that as it is nasty, but because I was afraid of my nose freezing to my sleeve.

We collected about 150 gallons of sap today. Another couple of days of boiling to go. If the weather warms up a little it might run again and give us another day of collecting. We have some helpers coming on Tuesday so we hope to have something fun for them to do. But, we just have to see what Mother Nature provides.

Now we are back inside in the warmth, tea brewing and wool socks on my feet. Marty, who is still blowing his nose and coughing from his cold, is downstairs planting tomatoes in flats. I look at my little cacti in the window sill and try to be patient for warmth outside. It is hard sometimes.

view from the window this morn

Spring Update

It's a calm winter day out today. The snow is gently falling and melting in some places to form puddles for the ducks to swim in. The guys are down in the woods trying to fix our broken tractor. And, I've been playing garden in the basement, setting up the grow lights and seeing how much soil we need for starting our seeds.

We have pepper seeds in moist paper towels in ziplocs on the radiators to start them. We are starting about seven different kinds, some rare and requested. All in all, if we get all the plants we are trying for, we will plant almost 1000 pepper plants in the field this year. Crazy sounding, but it still probably won't be enough. We are trying a couple of new ones from Mexico this year and hopefully they will do okay so I can save seed from them. Some day I hope to have a fancy dancy seed starting contraption. But, the ziplocs work okay for now.

Yesterday the guys rearranged the pigs. They brought Tea (real name is Swee Tea, daughter of Swee) into the barn as she is due to have piglets around the 13th. But, in order to move her in to the best stall for farrowing, we needed to move Maggie (our new sow) and her babies out. We weaned her babies from her a few days ago even tho they aren't eight weeks old. They were eating on their own, really plump, and it was straining the mom and making her too skinny. So, they were moved to their own stall inside the barn with Maggie in a stall next to them. I like to keep them in just in case of a cold snap again.

Syrup is on hold and that is why we are catching up with the seedlings and the tractor. The sap ran for a few days, then stopped for 10, then ran for a few, and now stopped again. We have bottled around 21 gallons of syrup so far, into jars and gallons. But, we ran out of sap on Sunday at noon so are awaiting the weather to warm up again so we can get some more collected. It has barely been above freezing today so far, but maybe it will flow some. We hope for another couple of weeks at least and one great big flush at the end. The guys were
hoping for over 100 gallons. I'm more critical so just want over 50.

Well, good news! The tractor is fixed. We really rely on that old girl. This time of year it is good to have her for hauling sap across the woods and pulling the trailor to get firewood. The truck will work, but the tractor turns in tighter spaces between trees. Then it is always nice to have something to pull our truck out of the mud! And, mud season is here!!

Hopefully I can have some more pics later. I have found that the picture loading and the writing is all depending on signal...and unlike most of you - we hardly have a signal here. Yes, we live in the boonies. So...all for now! Happy Spring to you!!

Springtime flowers

Spring is always a delightful time here on the farm. Chickens are laying colorful eggs,

Little banty hen, Peng (short for Penguin) has been
on the nest being broody lately. She lays beautiful tiny eggs.

the wheat and alfalfa are greening up, and the trees and flowers are all in bloom. Ah. (That’s a very small rendition of the roaring winds we hear every day…that’s Central Illinois for you.)

Lilacs smell incredible right now!

Our hoophouse plastic is hanging in there, barely. It is still windy most every day but we keep patching it until we get the quotes for the new plastic. Inside the hoops everything is going pretty good. We’ve been harvesting quite a bit of spinach for chefs, lettuce for ourselves, and sold all the early green garlic. The potatoes that Marty planted between the garlic are looking good and we’ll be mulching those this week. Can’t wait for our regular potato order to come in so we can start them sprouting in the sun!!

We were having baby rabbits in the hoops eating all our bok choi. Argh!! Needless to say, we relocated them (not to the oven tho as they were too small). We mulched around the hoops in hopes of keeping the rest of the bunnies out! Also in the hoophouses we have some cilantro and arugula that we harvested the leaves from. Now they are setting flower heads so we hope to harvest the flowers soon.

And that leads me to flower season. We harvest a lot of “wilds” on our farm. They are some of the specialty items that we are known for. Wilds include some “weeds” that are highly nutritious and edible, wild plants from the woods, and also the wilds in our yard which include redbud blossoms and violets.

Redbud blossoms

Also edible are the apple blossoms. All of the apple trees are loaded. We taste tested them and found that each kind of apple had a different flavor of blossom also! The red delicious were somewhat sweet. Some of the others weren't as sweet but had more of a floral taste.

Red delicious apple blossoms are sweet.

Every tasted a turnip blossom? Tastes a little like turnips. How about making dandelion tea? Or trying some colorful tulip petals on your salad? There are lots of edible flowers. Make sure you know which ones are edible and which are poisonous tho! Some...like asian daylilies are NOT edible. They are Poisonous! However, the other kind that are in our yard are.

Daylilies we harvest the flowers and buds from.

I love harvesting the flowers. I get to spend time with the wonderful smells, beautiful colors and textures, and also with the little bee ladies that hang around. The bees are busy on all the trees and flowers in the yard. They are working on the apples and even on the weedy Creeping Charlie in the grass. It’s nice to see them so busy. And they never sting me as we are friend harvesters.

Harvesting in the woods right now gives us some early mushrooms and wild onions. We have some sweet cicely coming. It has sort of a licorice flavor.

Sweet Cicely

Lots of work to do outside, and it’s good to go out and enjoy the great springtime weather (except the wind!). We’ve  all our spring root crops and many of our leafy crops in. Now for some rain so they germinate!

Super dry for us lately. The rain has been skirting around us. We are really hoping we get a good shower tonight…really need it!!   Well…off to work outside!!

Augh! Computers!

   This is obviously NOT a good computer day here at the farm! I've had to restart mine three times, been kicked off, restart again, it stole my homepage and I had to reset that, and it won't let me go where I need to!! So...if all of a sudden I disappear - you know why!
   I'll try to keep it short and sweet...or salty...depending on the pics.

Here's the smoke house that we smoked the hams in...

They turned out a little salty - okay the bacon is WAY salty for me. But, Marty assured me he can fix that. I haven't had any strips of bacon with my eggs yet tho. Not sure about the ham yet. The smoking went really well tho. The guys smoked them for two days and the smell and flavor of it is great.

Ducks are loving the spring weather...

Chickens are roaming far and wide into the fields to get the worms. Suzy the Sussex and Della the Delaware are really out there far. Then, of course, they convince Top Top to go out too. She is the goofy looking one with the white top hat hair do that can't see anything. I worry about her getting scarfed up by the hawks. So far she's still with us.

Syrup season is closing down. We boiled all the sap we had left yesterday. Today, since it is warmer again, we'll check the buckets one last time and try to get another two gallons before shutting down completely. Our year was really patchy - cold, hot, cold, hot - so we got less syrup this year. We are at 30 gallons right now on the chart. Last year we had 53. Each year is different and we never know what to expect. But, that is farming!

After we boil the rest down we will go thru the clean up process, washing buckets and lids and taps, cleaning up the evaporator (no small feat), washing the floors, and putting everything away for the next season so the mice don't get into it.

In the growing room in the basement - wow! Stuff is really tall and gangly this year. We are trying to figure out why. The peppers are looking good. We will start seedlings of tomatoes, eggplant, and other fruiting plants next week (14th) which is an ideal day on the calendar for it.

This next couple of warm days I'll be cleaning out the "south greenhouse" and repairing the plastic...

then I will move the colder loving plants from the basement into it on the shelves across the back wall. These will include the kale, brussel sprouts, and bok choi. When the bok choi are big enough I'll plant them in the ground in that same greenhouse (actually it's a hoophouse as it has no heat added to it). We lost our bok choi that were planted into the big hoophouses, not sure what happened but might've been that cold snap last week.

Spring work is also starting. We planted onions last Wednesday in the field - 500 feet. Will has been checking the wheat field, waiting for a dry stretch so he can till. We are fixing tractors in anticipation of using them soon. And, building work is beginning now that the weather is getting warmer (I love that job!).

We have heard the news about bad tornadoes in southern IL, IN, KY, TN, AL. Wow. Our hearts go out to all of those who have lost so much.

Oh well for short and sweet...