Sally's GF3 thread

[Sally PB]

I thought I'd have plenty of time to have a blog when I retired. HA! Three years in, and like a lot of retired people, I have so much to do, I wonder how I ever had time for a job.

So I think I'll start a thread here.

GF #1 is Garden Fresh. Nothing better than fresh fruit and vegetables from your own garden. Like the asparagus we had with dinner.

To me, chickens are a part of my garden routine. Their poop is "the other gift" they give. My compost and soil got a lot better after I got my chickens.

I have two gardens. One, "The Downhill Garden," has loose, sandy soil. The other, "The Uphill Garden," has heavy clay. They are about 100' feet apart, east to west, and close to the same vertically. Why are the soils so very different...? Dunno. Fortunately, the treatment for both is the same thing: lots of organic matter. Dry leaves, wood chips, compost, and of course, chicken poop!

The downhill garden can get frost later in the spring and earlier in the fall. It has the potatoes, onions, garlic, greens, and peas. I also plant green beans (but they might be purple beans) and have asparagus down there. This year, I'm trying sweet potatoes. I ordered them from The Maine Potato Lady. If they can grow in Maine, they should be able to grow here.

The uphill garden gets the tomatoes and peppers. This year, I planted four grapevines up there. I'm also planting spaghetti squash, and hope I can keep the squash vine borers from killing it. Oh, and four loofa plants. If they do their thing, I'll give everyone their own sponge for Christmas.

We have two sour cherry trees, and maybe.... we'll get a few cherries this year. They're 4 and 5 years old now. Our "orchard" also has three apple trees that we've planted and a couple of wild trees that are decades old. They're blooming now, and the smell is heavenly.

 

[Sally PB]

Brome grass, o brome grass!
How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways....
A big, fat ZERO!

If all the brome that is invading my gardens were gone, I wouldn't have any problem with weeds!

I just spent about 3 hours digging the brome out of my blueberry bed. Brome puts out stolons that can grow under thick mulch, send shoots up through or out on the other side, and just laugh at my puny attempts to get rid of it.

But on the brighter side, I took my MP3 player -- yeah, so out of date, I am -- and sang along to lots of tunes. That makes just about any weeding chore almost fun. It's good exercise for the lungs too. None of this la-la-la stuff; I belt it out and too bad if anyone can hear me.

 

[Sally PB]

I get my bees tomorrow!

I've been watching for bees on dandelions when walking the dog. I have seen VERY few! We used to see a lot more. Something is getting the job done, though, because I see a bazillion white seed fluff balls out in the field.

And, speaking of fluff balls... my chicks are arriving Tuesday or Wednesday. Oh, yeah, there will be pictures. Of the chicks; bees look pretty much like, well, bees.

 

[Sally PB]

Bee pick up has been pushed back to this afternoon, instead of this morning. It's an hour and a half drive each way, so was hoping to get them this morning and have the afternoon for the install and watching them. We'll be getting home around 3:30. So it goes.

I watered the garden, since it hasn't rained in several days. That should make it rain, right? Please?

So far, I have about a pound of red onion sets planted. I have about as many to go, and should have planted them by now, but other projects have gotten in the way. Unless the weather is really crappy tomorrow, I'll plan to do that.

I have about 85 pots of starts sitting out hardening off.

Most of them are sheltered in a couple dog crates. I cover them with bed sheets:

That keeps them warmer at night, and from getting sunburned when they're first set out to begin hardening off. Sunday, we could get down to 39 degrees. I plan to cover the crates with sheets as above, and also some plastic tarp. Or maybe carry them all back to the green house.

Most of my starts are tomatoes. I planted seeds March 27 in the green house. The green house is only passive solar heat, so if no sunshine, it doesn't warm up much in there. Fortunately, it doesn't take much sun to warm it up. An hour or so will do it.

I need to reread my notes on what varieties of tomatoes I planted. Some didn't sprout and needed to be replanted. Thus the differences in size of the plants.

 

[Sally PB]

Long live Queen Charlotte! Long live the Queen!
My husband named her...

 

[TwoCrows]

View attachment 3504295Long live Queen Charlotte! Long live the Queen!
My husband named her...

Oh I love bees! I've often thought about keeping them but I'm not sure with all the Africanized bees we have here. They are so aggressive. Keep us posted on your bees!

 

[Sally PB]

In 2020, I went to a bee keepers meeting, thinking I'd like to get bees. The next Monday, everything shut down due to Covid. Where I worked (photo lab) wasn't deemed "essential," so we all went home.

The next day, March 23, I got chicks. Getting bees was sidelined, but not forgotten.

On FB Marketplace, someone listed their bee stuff, as he was trying to downsize and selling it all. So I got a hive, suit, smoker, honey extractor, and a bunch of other bee stuff for $400. (Bees not included.)

I bought a nuc (short for nucleus colony) for $165 from Great Lakes Bee Company. Yesterday was long (3 hour drive, round trip), but the bees are in their new home.

Now I have to get ready for my chicks, who are shipping from Mt. Healthy today! Gonna be a busy week.

 

[Sally PB]

They're on their way!!
3 Bielefelder and 1 Blue Australorp pullets!

To celebrate, I had Hagen Daaz chocolate peanut butter ice cream with caramel sauce for dinner.

The caramel sauce doesn't seem as good as it used to. Of course, nothing compares to home made. Which leads me to...

 

[Sally PB]

GF #2 is Gluten Free.

I don't have celiac, THANK GOODNESS! but I am gluten sensitive. Really throws a monkey wrench into any baking. Non-wheat flours just don't work the same, and you lose the elasticity. Buh-bye, stretchy, chewy stuff like pizza crust. Still looking for a recipe for that.

It really surprised me how many foods have some wheat flour in them. Like licorice! I loooove black licorice, and have only found one brand that doesn't have wheat flour: Gimbal's Licorice Scottie dogs.

So from time to time, I'll post some recipes I make that are GF. Please feel free to post any recipes you like, too.

Here's the home made caramel sauce recipe. Waaaay better than store bought.

1 ingredient: sweetened condensed milk, 14 oz can(s)

You need a pressure cooker; I use an Instant Pot. You also need a pint canning jar, lid, and ring for each can of condensed milk. You can do as many as will fit in your pressure cooker; I can do 3. Wash/sterilize the jars, wash the lids and rings. I use wide mouth jars so that I can scrape every last bit of caramel out of the jar.

Pour the milk into canning jar, put on the lid and ring. Tighten the ring finger tight. Put a trivet in the pressure cooker, put the jars on the trivet. Pour in enough water to be above the milk level in the jars, but below the rings. High pressure, quick release. Remove the jars (they will seal) and let cool.

How long to process...? I do 20 minutes, and it's pourable, like what you'd pour over ice cream. Or cake. If you process it longer, it gets thicker. I haven't tried doing that, since I like the results at 20 minutes.

Ok, I'll confess. If I made it thicker, I'd eat the entire jar with a spoon.

 

[Sally PB]

I meant to post more pictures of the bee install. Hubby is doing the handling, I'm taking the pictures.

We had the nuc box in a mesh bag in the back seat of the car. "Nuc" is short for "nucleus colony." It's 5 frames of drawn comb. There's brood of varying ages, some honey, the queen, and lots of bees. 6000-8000 bees.

It's important that the 5 nuc frames go into the hive in the same order they were in the nuc box. I have 8 frame boxes. Then when I have a box full of honey, it'll only weigh about 60 pounds, instead of 80.

All nice and snug now.

There were a few bees still in the box, so we left the box sitting on the ground in front of the hive.