Garlic scapes, and chicken intrusions.

I'm sorry for not having a post up yesterday, with trying to get everything done, I've been running out of time and brain power. This is especially true as we've started packing up the Critter's things and he's getting upset and concerned about why his things are going away. That's led to evenings being a lot more challenging for us, and less sleep. Either way, while we have gotten rid of a lot of the homesteading things with the rabbits and being down to two chickens, there are still things left to do.

First of all, as you can see the garlic is doing very well. I went through and cut all of the scapes, and have put them in a vase. From the experience of a few seed savers this should give them enough energy to get through flowering. Over the next couple weeks I'm going to be keeping a close eye on them so I can pull the bulbules out and try to give the flowers room so we can save actual seed from them. It's one of those things that I really don't want to let go of  since it's been a goal for some time now.
Another thing that's going on is that the chickens are still very much around, and our red girl has survived and is thriving despite the attack from what I assume was a hawk. Unfortunately her desire to stay close to the house lately has led to some interesting behaviors. Including staring in the dining room window during dinner. The other thing that happens with this has become particularly relevant to my sleep. She's been perching there during the night, and as dawn approaches she starts shifting, and the bush taps the window. That wakes the dog up, who given the events of a couple weeks ago, thinks that the bear is back and wakes up barking. The barking wakes me up, and because you can't assume a false alarm I bounce up, run down stairs, and check for intruders. This of course cuts my sleep short when he does this 3 or 4 times from 4 - 6:30 AM.

Something we haven't discussed a lot in our homesteading talking is dogs and dog training. Dogs are an integral part of homesteading in my mind, and good training is an important part of that. We aren't expert dog trainers is why I haven't talked a lot about training. I would say though if you intend to do homesteading in the future, bone up on your dog training, and get good at it so you aren't looking for the best way to train this kind of false alarm behavior out, without eliminating the alerting behavior we do want!

Finally, we really appreciate all of the help we got on the GoFundMe, The push with the doubling met the goal, and it has helped a good bit. We're still struggling but it has made a huge difference for us, and thank you to everyone who has helped.

Seedlings, and seasonal confusion.

Despite the very strange weather that continues to be very unpredictable, and perhaps because of it, seedlings are our focus right now. This weekend was the seedling swap, so you may notice that a lot of our seedlings are gone because we gave them away at the seedling swap this weekend. I'm always happy to be able to share the wealth with seedlings, especially given that it isn't like we came home empty handed. You can see some of the more sensitive seedlings still inside in this photo, but we also came home with a basically full herb garden.

Growing and recovering.

One of the particularly unfair parts of parenting is something called sleep regression. It's when your kid (who never really slept well) stops wanting to sleep at all. The result of this is that I've been living in a fog for a few days. That has impeded us doing much of anything because between trying to get the kid to sleep, and day to day work nothing is getting done. That said! There are things happening. For one, the asparagus is doing very well. Most of the asparagus has come up and is doing well. To fill out the asparagus patch we've been advised to take the red berries they will sprout later and plant them to thicken the bed, which I look forward to doing. There is a lot that's going on though, especially with the weather as warm as it is, though we're still getting frosts at night not infrequently.

So many seedlings!

Our seedlings have come up! It's a really joyful thing to watch the first seedlings come up inside, and see them doing well. Right now most of what has been started inside is tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant. We started a good variety of various seeds this year and I'm looking forward to seeing how they come out, and being able to share a lot of seedlings. One of the main differences in our seedling starting right now is that we have the seedlings up on the baby clothing rack that used to be our seedling station. It works though!

Foggy days between freezes.

Another misty rainy day after a day of hard freeze, and before the expected light snow on Sunday. It'll be interesting to see if this is the kind of winter that just doesn't let up once it starts. That's what I'm starting to expect after the weather we've been having up to this point. I won't lie, I wouldn't mind a milder winter this year, but I don't expect one. This weekend the Lady of the House is going to be out and busy with selling at a convention, and I'm going to be home. I hope to spend part of the weekend relaxing, but at least some of it is going to working on the kitchen where I'm going to be building the counter top. I hope to be able to show that off within the month.

One surviving tomato, and poultry thoughts.

I think we've found some tomato seeds to save. This plant is incredibly stubborn and very hearty. It isn't doing very well at this point, but really I didn't expect it to be alive at all at this point given the number of frosts it's taken. Anyhow, there's a few last tomatoes holding on despite the cold weather and frosts, and it's kinda fun to come out and see. That bright red tomato under the right side of the plant, that one is probably going to be what I pick for seed saving. 

An oops, and starting to look ahead to what we should seed start.

As usual, it is expected to be snowing today. At least today it's expected to be a light snow with only a couple inches. While that is certainly it's own variety of frustrating due to the difficulty of clearing it when I can clear it at all, this time I am glad for a break from the heavy snow that we've been seeing lately. While this isn't an excessive amount of snow for a winter, getting it all at once isn't my favorite method. It's going to be very cold again for the next couple weeks which is to be expected for this time of year.

Owl visitor, hot water, and slight setbacks

As we continue to be busy we've been trying to get some relaxing time in with each other, and honestly haven't been able to do a lot other than exist. This weekend we got lucky, and I happened to sleep in until almost 9 AM, and got up, and looked out the window, and saw an owl visitor being driven off well post dawn when I usually let the chickens out. The picture above is from last year, but I think it may have been the same owl. Either way, we, and at least one of the chickens got lucky  this weekend due to me having a nice lazy morning. There have been a few other things going on as well, mostly with Gabriel, but also I have managed to, with help, get some things done around the garden as we look to see snow tonight.

Baby photos from Sunshine, finally!

Finally beginning the post with real baby pictures again!  I'm finally comfortable taking Sunshine's babies out to look at them despite the weather because they have fur. Still not taking them out for long because it is very cold, but at least we can share them now. All 5 that were alive the first day are still alive it looks like. At this point I'm just plunging my hands into the nest after warming them up as much as I can and trying to count by feel. Sadly it looks like Dawn wasn't pregnant it seems, so just the one last litter which should put us enough to eat for the winter.

Hilltown Seed Saving Network seedling swap from Saturday

The seed swap on Saturday was an amazing event, and unfortunately we didn't get the photos of it we should have. We also made the mistake of not getting photos of all of the plants we brought home with us before we set to planting them. Above is just what we have left after a couple rounds of planting. But I figured I'd just give a whole garden update.

The first planting begins

Yep, already. The very first bit of planting has started in the form of planting a bunch of Amaranth seeds to germinate before we put them in the ground in somewhere around two months after our last frost date which should be around May 15th. 

Shameless baby photos, and seed saving

 
 Yep, I'm taking advantage of the fact that we have cute babies right now to distract from the lack of serious content right now. I'll talk more about that below the cut.