Staying Busy

We had the house inspection on Friday, and while there were a couple of minor plumbing and electrical issues the main hiccup is the roof – some unfixed hail damage and improper flashing installation means we need a second opinion, and maybe a new roof. Seeing as we’re already at the top of our price point, if the seller (in this case, a bank) isn’t willing to work with us, we might have to back out of this property.

I find myself relieved to know the details of the house – to know what needs attention, how old the furnace is, all sorts of things that foreclosed houses can’t tell you. While some of the best deals can be foreclosures, they can also be scarily silent about what’s transpired under their roofs – if you haven’t lived there, you can’t disclose anything about the property, so they bank can’t share a thing about the state of the fuse box, what’s hiding behind the dry wall, or the quality of the garage.

But, of course, seeing as how it’s the weekend, we must simply twiddle our thumbs while we wait for news from a roofing specialist on Monday and then begin the terrifying process of negotiating with the bank. We can’t pack, we can’t plan, even dreaming can be dangerous if the house falls through – so what can we do? Garden and keep busy, apparently!

Early blueberries

The last couple of weeks have been so hectic and trying that our poor seedlings haven’t gotten much attention. They have really taken off and are tangling together under the delicate warmth of their plant light, so it was time to start transplanting to larger pots with more nutrients to offer. We picked up some compost from our city compost center and I spent some of Saturday afternoon in the sun, with the kitties, transplanting the scraggly seedlings into reused pots from last year. Evan planted double what we will end up needing, so I sorted out the weaker ones for compost and planted the stronger. I spent time transplanting our butternut squash, spaghetti squash (which got pretty shocked by the transplant – hopefully they bounce back!), our Roma and heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, cayennes, and jalapeños. Our bell peppers are still too young – we had a late start planting – to be ready to move just yet.

My potatoes are flourishing in their potato “cage”  – I hope that we can gently disturb this cage and move them successfully to the new place, because I would love to see how successful of a crop we have this year. Hopefully, the garlic will be somewhat close to ready when/if we move, as well, because WOW! My garlic is gorgeous! Thick, hefty stalks and green growth that stretches high to the sky. I’d hate to miss out on our first batch of one of my favorite culinary ingredients.

My mother-in-law is moving up here on Friday – wow, how the days fly! – so I’m feeling anxious to clean and purge. Even if we do not move in a couple of weeks, it’s always a good exercise to step back and ask yourself if you really need seventeen different purses and that garage sale book of which you only read half. There’s no point in packing items I’ll just get rid of at the next house, so I started a big pile for Goodwill out in the garage of clothes, shoes, purses, and random electronics we haven’t touched in ages. I also spent a good deal of time vacuuming and prepping the guest bedroom for her – I’m going to be really grateful for a companion during my evenings home alone since Evan works so many evenings! Not only will I have a friend to help decode those strange sounds out in the country, but Sharon is being unbelievably generous in how she is helping us with our downpayment. We would not be looking at the land or houses we have without her love and support!

As I’m purging, however, something I can’t be too quick to get rid of are bottles! My batches of cider are starting to come around – they’ve spent somewhere between 2-3 weeks fermenting, and are now bubbling happily away! My first batch was just bread yeast and apple juice – the latest batch substituted a cup of apple juice with a cup of rosehip syrup, which I think made things very tasty and upped the level of alcohol content, as the additional sugar gave the yeast more to eat off (there didn’t seem to be much alcohol at all in the first batch).

As you can tell, I was trying to keep busy with things around the house. I have a lot of worries and anxieties swirling around this potential new property, from the lack of closet space and small bedrooms (it was designed as a vacation home, therefore we have to get creative!) to flood insurance because of the river to just the sheer responsibility of owning such a large home, acreage, and the accompanying mortgage and fees. I’m in love with the place, but oh my, am I drowning in the potential adult responsibilities, plus my checkbook is steadily leaking cash throughout this process. All the calm thoughts you can send my way, the better!

I’m going to continue to keep myself busy – that’s not hard to do this time of year when you’re a teacher – and hopefully that will mean some additional blogging, as well. It’s surprisingly soothing, to take the time to document and share my journey – while it does take time, it certainly helps me understand, express, and explain our challenges and dreams. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, we’ll be one step closer to a bunch of our dreams, and I will be busy in a different sense – by beginning our work on our homestead.

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Part 2: Feeling Irish with Potatoes

Yep, you read that right. Today is the first day of spring, and it’s 81 degrees out. We’ve had an abnormally-toasty weekend, and the plants are loving it! The average temperatures in March are usually in the 50s and we tend to experience our last frost date in mid-April, but we might be lucky this year. We had a couple of bad cold snaps last week, but we’ve been unseasonably warm for a couple of weeks now, so we decided to jump in and plant our potatoes and onions this weekend. We’ve typically gone by the idea that we should start onions and potatoes as soon as the ground is warm enough to work, but I also love the fun saying that you should plant potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day.

 

 

Last week, I wrote about how we were gearing up for growing and waiting out those last few cold nights to venture out and plant potatoes for St. Patrick’s Day – and the warmth this weekend meant it was finally time!

We like to start with seed potatoes, and I like to let mine sit for a while to really encourage the eye growth and start the development process. When they look sprouted and begin to get a little shriveled and I go ahead and cut mine, usually in half, but enough so that each piece has its own growth.

 

In the past, I’ve had good luck with a modified-raised bed for potatoes where they can grow up rather than out, so we headed out to our city’s compost pile to collect supplies. We’re really lucky that our city not only collects compost but also provides the finished compost back to city residents at no cost – there’s a small fee if you want it by the truckload, but otherwise everyone is welcome to come load up pots and containers.

The finished compost is beautiful – warm, rich, light in your hands, and deeply nutritious. We filled 6-8 pots, which was more than enough for my potato pile.

Back at home, I took a small roll of 12″ tall chicken wire and used it to create a ring that would be the home for my potatoes for the next six months or so. To keep all the dirt from spilling out of the chicken wire, I lined it with some old newspaper from the garage.

In addition to the compost, I used some old peat moss that we needed to get rid of, and I think it’ll help to have a little extra water retention in a raised and isolated “container.”

I put down a layer of 2-3 inches of dirt and then laid down my first layer of tubers, keeping 4-5 inches in between them for room to grow. I added another dirt layer of 4 inches or so and put down another layer of potato cuttings, trying to offset them as best as I could remember so they wouldn’t run into each other as they grow up through the soil. All in all, my 8 potatoes (16 cuttings) ended up in three growing layers.

Up next, the onions! When we weren’t grilling and hanging out on our patio with Evan’s best friend, Cole, we were sowing rows of onions in the garden. We are planning on trying to grow the onions intermixed with tomatoes and peppers rather than give them their own dedicated patch – they can make great companion plants for peppers and tomatoes and help them fight off disease and pests. I am a little nervous about the tomatoes blocking their sunlight, but I’m excited to find a new way to use as much space of our tiny patch as we can. Intensive gardening methods can help you get so much more yield out of your square foot than traditional gardening methods (think rows and lots of empty soil between plants), and so far we’ve enjoyed reaping the benefits.

I picked up a big bag of baby onion bulbs a couple of weeks ago, though I’m kicking myself because I forgot to count how many we planted! I’m guessing that we put close to a hundred in the ground… (Thanks, Cole!)

This beautiful weather and the lack of freezing – or even frost – forecasted in the next week meant it was time for some of my indoor plants to soak up some sunshine. They rejoined the patio after a cold winter indoors and basked happily with us in the warm rays – a pixie grape vine we rescued from a garden center clearance sale (no longer the sad stick – now blossoming and growing strong!), cilantro seedlings, some rose of sharon seedlings I propagated last fall, St. John’s Wort, and a new growth of lilies of the valley (the bed & breakfast at which we were married let us take a few as a wedding keepsake).

 

Spring has sprung, and it is a beautiful time of year to spend outside.

 

Feeling Irish with Potatoes

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I’ve heard an old wives’ tale that says you should plant potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day to harvest by July 4th. Last year, we planted our potatoes on St. Patty’s Day in a raised bed of sorts and I think we might do the same this year to combat the tough clay soil. Here’s a peek at last year’s beautiful potato plants – Evan always says that if we were to pick only one plant to sow that he would pick potatoes because of their beautiful and soft leaves!