I am not a fan of the landscaping that came with this place, but some of it has unexpected summer joys attached. Like this ever-bearing raspberry sport that survived and thrived in the shadow of the Himalayan menace that stalks our acreage.
Ever-bearing means it was domesticated. It survived unlike the secret rhubarb from a couple years ago, which sadly got shaded out. We failed it for the last time. 😦 But hey, RASPBERRIES THE BIRDS CAN’T FIND WOOOOOOOO.
We’ve decided to pursue fiber sales, but not meat ones. Pursuing meat sales is something we’ll worry about once we’ve made it through enough breeding seasons to have extra lambs at all. And the economics of a fiber flock work out better for the current life circumstances we have going on. With a fiber flock, you can always skip a breeding season and focus on only breeding the ewes that will give great fiber and good-enough lambs for slaughter. Then they eat way less, but still pay their hay bills.
Selling fiber is ok, it just tends to be more of a slow trickle than a burst. And we have to be open to the entire country to get reliable sales. I don’t mind shipping though, and we’ll certainly explore sending fleeces to the mill once we get into 20 or more fleeces regularly. Fiber milling is an interesting field, given that as infrastructure goes, nobody is really taking it up, so there will be lots of machinery available as the mill owners, who are generally like 70+, retire or pass on. Something to think about in a few years, maybe.
Preparing fleece is a lot of work. There are ways to cut down the workload, but sheep grow that stuff pretty long because they need it, so it’s always going to be a bit of work, even if we ultimately send everything to a local mill and focus exclusively on high-value yarns, roving and felting batts.
And next year, since I won’t be growing any babies myself, we’ll go ahead and put in a real garden, finally go back to having poultry (going to go all-in and get ducks, chickens and geese) because the eggs really are Just Better and hopefully have a successful second lambing season.
I hope to post more to this blog and get more pictures up in the new year. It does help to take little snapshots of how things go.
So the Juniper Burn has exploded in ferns!
We had to put Limpy down. There was a congenital birth defect in both legs, so even our splinting efforts were meaningless. Now we have four ducks remaining, and they are in robust good health. We moved them out to a real pen this weekend, including a small swimming container, and they are incredibly happy to have drinking water plus swimming water.
That strip of carpet is in fact rain-proof. The ducks are loving the grass and the insects to be found in the grass. They are already foraging enough to offset feed.
Four girls, it turns out. I eagerly await the eggs in late summer! The blue plastic tub is where they swim and they get anything more out of the gallon waterer.
The girls have a bigger 5 gallon waterer, but it sprung a leak and we’ll have to fix it or get another this week.
The potatoes are ready for hilling up soon. So that’s also pretty cool. And in other news, some neighbors graced us with a playset their kids had outgrown. Our eldest is in toddler heaven.
And it’s blurry, but salmonberries are already ripening. Delicious!
We couldn’t find the rest of the white markers, so we used sticks.
We had about a dozen or so of these, not enough for all the potatoes. The potatoes don’t seem to mind the plastic.
My attempt at a fancy overhead shot of the white marker and the taters.
Most of the taters came in, only a couple plants haven’t sprouted. We are on track to get a decent yield this fall. They look so cute when they are tiny and new like that. Yay potatoes!
We keep deer and not unicorns in the garden of late. This has been your post a pic Tuesday.
We are finally preparing to plant and we are starting with something easy– potatoes. The glory of potatoes is that you can just plant a sack from the store and get back several more sacks even if you forget to weed some weekends. You can also in this climate leave them in the ground if you don’t want to harvest all at once. So it’s a nice break-in crop.
Preparing the ground for taters by digging up clumps of grass
More digging!
We have some native plant life around and about. Out here in more rural Snohomish County, the native plants have not been pushed out as much as is the case in even fairly remote bits of King County. Thus, we have lovely salmonberries that will soon fruit and make for delicious snacking when the kids party outside in the wonderful summers Cascadia has to offer.
Closer look at the salmonberries that abut the taters. Already flowering!
However, there are still a few places where noxious invasive plants crop up, like English Ivy, which can create “ivy deserts” where nothing else grows.
Stupid English Ivy littering some junipers that have to come down anyway.
Conveniently, the junipers in that picture are coming down to allow for enough sun for the taters and other stuff we want to plant, so the English Ivy will be gone baby gone soon enough.
It was nice to start digging in the dirt. Hopefully we can have lots of planting through the late spring and early summer.
That sums it up. I knew there would be interesting obstacles cropping up on our way to some animals and vegetables (and cherry and plum trees), but I didn’t know what specific ones they’d be. Turned out to be various social and work things. Probably a picture post tomorrow or Thursday. We start planting this weekend and go until late May and we’ll get some sheep and ducks in May and June. So we will likely have an eggy summer and fall wool and late fall lamb. And I will take advantage of the recently lovely weather to get back into the swing of things.
Just a bagatelle for now.
Alas, I have no recipes handy, just the plant itself.
That there is some rhubarb.
The previous owners tried to take it down, but a big old rhizome remained above ground and despite twelve whole months alone in the cold and wet, there was enough life in the old rhubarb to come roaring back, as you can see. Pretty cool! Much cooler than when bamboo does that! (I hate bamboo in the yard, it is super uncool and bamboo shoots are just not delicious enough to make up for the rapid growth and headache, as those rhizomes can kick it for up to 18 months).
I have been tweeting around a bit, but otherwise the household’s been far too sick for me to find blogging time, or gardening time. So the pace will slow on all that. This is already a year of challenges. But we get to meet them with RHUBARB!
I cannot take the credit though, it was my lovely husband who noticed the rhubarb had started coming in while taking our oldest sweet child around and about the place. He was thrilled, I was thrilled and now here we are.
This has been post a pic Tuesday.
De-fenceless junipers.
We went out and started taking down a fence so the junipers on the other side of it could be mowed down with a mighty chainsaw. The fairy stroller is one of the many party favors my toddler is known to get down with.
We also dug up enough to go ahead and set up the raised beds Real Soon Now.We’ll also have a tater patch next to some salmonberries. Should be interesting!
Veggie Plot of the Future.
Sprinkler wuz here. Toddler is here.
Yes, that is a sliver of my oldest child, as always pretty in pink. The weather has been so great lately, we’ve all been going out more. It bodes well for planting next month.
Food, Farming and Faith in Snohomish County 