Changes are coming



Year One Seed Starting



Over the past three years, my husband and I have become very interested in living closer to the land, living simpler-more cretive and fullfilling lives.  This started when we moved into I's childhood home and promptly began planning a garden.  If you look back through this blog, I have a few entires where we go through starting seeds in the basement and if you check out our Flickr page you will see what we have been up to the past few years.



Year One Garden-just finished

 We are also in our third year of investing in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share through Hazelfield Farm in Kentucky. It has been so enjoyable to be able to pick up a bag-full of fresh produce grown locally and sustainably by the same people we interact with on a weekly basis at the farmer's market. We enjoy the challenge of using what is available, creating less waste and becoming more self-sufficient. Iz has begun to realize that horticulture, gardening, sustainable agriculture (whatever you want to call it) is indeed a passion of his. We have discussed the idea of buying property and turning it into our dream permiculture farm and have begun looking at property in ernest. Taking a step further, Iz began to look at farming interships and apprenticeships. We realized that if this was going to happen, Iz would have to leave his current job and commit 100% to his passion.  Through luck, devine intervention or whatever you want to call it, Smaller Footprint Farm contacted Iz and asked if he would be interested in applying for their internship in Yellow Springs, OH.  We thought, why not check it out? After a few agonizing weeks-debating back and forth-weighing the pros and cons, a visit to the farm and an interview, Iz was offered an apprenticeship with them.  By this time we had discussed the subject to death and were ready to take the plunge. Iz accepted the offer this weekendand turned in his letter of resignation at work today.



Some seedlings from last year

 It is still a little scary to think about living with one income, being away from home etc. but this is something that we both believe in and believe that it will all work out. The education Iz will get during this apprenticeship will be invaluable. It will indeed be an interesting year and we are looking forward to the challenges. I thought I would take this opportunity to use this blog to talk about our experiences and about sustainable agriculture, small farms, plants and beyond. I hope to visit the farm often to take lots of photographs and report back here.
We are still getting a full-share CSA with Hazelfield Farm this year and we will still have plans for a full garden at home as well. I hope to be able to talk about what we are doing with all of the beautiful produce and how to preserve the surplus.

Largest Raised Bed we made last year

This is still all very new and exciting! I hope I will have a lot of information and ideas to pass along as this spring and summer progress. Of course, I will be posting photos of our garden as it grows this year. I love to see the transition of empty beds to a profusion of flowers and vegetables! I am also going to try and reorganized our Flickr page into collections and sets that are relevant to eachother-probably one for each year for the garden at the house. Since this is the third year, we have a lot of photographs and perhaps they can be of better use if more organized.




 Stay Tuned! Izzy & Lizzy

Photo a Day and Garden Update

Here are a few to make up for lost time...

Check out our Flickr page for updated photos of the garden. We are starting to get more tomatoes which is exciting. The peas are there but we are waiting for more of them to grow before picking.  We have melons but they are smallish still and need to ripen. The beans have finished. We cleared out the plants and will probably plant a cover crop there. We harvested the garlic (as you can see above) and the potatoes. In their former bed we have planted cover crops: comfrey, borage, yarrow, bee's friend, fenugreek and sea kale.  Now is the time to start thinking about a second harvest so I think some more greens are going to go in as well as some carrots and maybe a few other things!

Garden etc.

The largest raised bed is flourishing. The cosmos, amaranth, night scented stock, chamomile and poppies are all blooming.

Catching up on some favorites from the past few months.

 Carousel at St. Joe Michigan

 Domaine Berrien Cellars

 Headless Hebe's pitcher

Beach at the Outer Banks

 I'm thinking of a new project to get myself a little more focused. I'm going to try and take at least one photo a day and post it here.  I'm trying to do better at editing my work and hopefully this will help!  I'm trying to find new subject matter too and by taking the camera everywhere with me, I may find myself inspired in random moments.

Happy Summer!

The garden is well on it's way this first day of summer.  We have all but one raised bed filled with plants! We've already harvested the Royalty Purple Pod and Empress green beans, and lots of herbs (made the first pesto of the season tonight!).  The tomatoes are green, I cannot wait for them to ripen.  The cone flower, cosmos, prairie coreopsis, rubeckia, monarda, vitex and one sunflower are blooming.

Much more has been uploaded to our Flickr page.

Garden Update-way past due!

April went by way to quickly, and we are trying to keep up with the garden.  That is my excuse for not keeping current here! We are making progress but due to some family priorities and some long days at work, we don't have everything in the ground that needs to be there. It is raining today, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to catch up.

Large Raised bed about a month ago...

...and now!

It doesn't look like tooo much progress however, there are many flower seedlings about 2" tall sprouting in the middle areas. We moved some Peonies into the back right corner and lemongrass in the front right.

We have already harvested about a dozen "Cincinnati Market" Radishes. I made them into a yummy salad. On the far right are more radishes waiting for harvest, beets in the middle. In the second batch kale and mustard greens are bursting and waiting for picking. Various flowers coming up in small troughs in front.

Brussel Sprouts on the left, beets in the middle, and where the radishes were harvested, new seeds were planted and they are now sprouting.

Our first harvest of the season. Last year it was lettuce, but it isn't quite ready yet this year.

We also welcomed new family members. About two pounds of earthworms. They will live in the basement where we will feed them kitchen scraps (no dairy or meat!) on a weekly basis. In about 3 to 4 months, we will have worm castings for fertilizer in the garden. We went to a vermicomposting class at Glenwood Gardens and came home with worms in two tubs filled with leaves, newspaper and a cultivator. I will make sure to keep that process up to date.

The broccoli is getting bigger in the garden.  The melons, beans and sunflowers have sprouted. Tomatoes and peppers are in the garden, raised beds and containers.  We are moving along nicely but much more to do.
Current blooms:

Bachelor Buttons

Valerian

Sweet Rocket

And kitties! Scarlett went out on a leash. I think she liked it. We live near a busy street and lots of dogs. I wanted to see if the kitties could enjoy the outdoors with us so we are trying the harness and leash. We'll see what happens.

xo,

Seedling Updates and more

I wanted to update sooner but time has slipped away from me yet again.  Much has happened over the last 2.5 weeks. The seeds we sowed inside have sprouted and look quite nice so far. The weather has improved greatly so we have been able to put the seedling trays outside to harden off (in other words, getting the little guys used to the great outdoors). We have also been moving out the less hardy plants we overwintered inside.  Only during the sunny warm parts of the day though, we have to ease them back into direct sunlight lest they get scorched.  The same goes for the seedlings, we place the seed trays in a somewhat sheltered area outside where they get a little bit of direct sun but not too much. We will do this over the next couple of weeks and put some of the plants outside permanently after that.  I plan on having the broccoli in the ground by the last week of March.

Here are some photos of our "babies"!

Left photo is all the vegetables: tomatoes, eggplants, broccoli etc. Right photo lots of herbs including thyme...

I also started a few little containers of lettuce, radishes, beets and spinach.

We bought a wine box from Jungle Jim's for about $5.00-in it are the beet, spinach and radish seeds.  The trough container has two varieties of lettuce: Rouge d'Hiver, Forellenschuss.  I think we are going to get a few more wine boxes for either vegetables or flowers. I put chicken wire over the containers to keep out the digging critters.
Both containers have potting soil, compost and a little bit of organic fertilizer. (I'm using the term organic loosely here)
I want to touch a little on fertilizer as there are many commercial varieties on the market. We don't use much or very many types-we are trying to use compost, cover crops and crop rotation to nourish the soil but some benefit can come from using a fertilizer.
Here is some advice from Start with the Soil by Grace Gershuny. These are only general examples and there may be some exceptions. We are not experts so I urge everyone to do a little reading on their own to get more information.

• Look at the guaranteed analysis (NPK analysis) Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium. It will tell you the percentage of soluble elements available in the fertilizer
• Choose an NPK rating no higher than 10 for any element. 
• Anything higher than 10 are probably standard chemical fertilizers that use: urea, monoammonium phosphate, muriate of potash
• Some bags of fertilizer will not have ingredients so understanding the NPK analysis is helpful

In addition to getting the vegetables ready, we've had some blooming flowers emerge!

Purple Crocus and Yellow Daffodils are some classics. Here the crocus are nestled next to our lemon thyme.

 Blooming Witch Hazel

We bought a blooming hellebore plant last week. We need to get it in another container but I wanted to get some photos before it stopped blooming. So pretty!

We are going to start constructing some raised beds very soon, so I will be updating that as we progress. I'm so glad spring it here!