What's New

 I have hit a snag in my gardening. I wanted to plant all the seeds I had to use them up so what I did is I soaked them all in baby-food jars I had saved. The thing is I had no room in the house for 30+ jars. I had to sit them outside. I also could not cover them with the accompanying lids as it would deny the seeds the necessary air they needed (lesson learned, next time I will use cheese cloth as a cover). Leaving them uncovered drew flies. I had asked my boyfriend for help to the point that he took all the seeds and dumped them in the ground. Well needles to say that method did not work very well as at this point we only have three surviving types of plants; banana peppers, cucumbers and eggplants.
 I would post pictures but both my cameras went kaput. So while I wait for produce and the money to buy more seeds I am going to be looking into the types of farm animals and their  benefits along with other farming skills and plant recognition.
 We have been having alot of rain lately so our vines have covered the yard again. I will be unraveling them and using them in basket weaving. I also have a load of yarn I will be cleaning and using along with making candles. Well that is all for now ciao and happy reading.

Do For Yourself

Are there any metal workers out there? I challenge you to use this video to make a spray bottle nozzle that is pure metal with a glass tube. I am working on something myself but as I do not have the necessary skills it may look pretty rough.
 I believe that we can live off scavenging materials and recreating new stuff from old. Want to know what I know, watch some youtube videos on blacksmithing or sheep shearing. How about how a spinning wheel is made? I want to spin my own yarn. Carrots Love Tomato's is a great place to start for companion planting your food. This is how serious I am about doing it myself. If we all did for ourselves we would not need to be so dependent on this corporately owned government.
 Don't forget the name contest I mentioned in my previous blog. My apologies for the shortness of this post as the one I am currently working on will be up in a day or two. I have to add a few pictures and a teething child and no camera have kept me from finishing it. I am sure there is something I am forgetting but that will save for later, til then ciao and happy reading.

What A Week

This may be my only chance to post today so I am taking advantage of nap-time and wishing my keyboard were quieter. This has been one fragrant week. I have enjoyed being outdoors. I took some pictures of my progress from yesterday and had to take a few snapshots of some of the cool looking plants I have in my yard as well.
 As those of you who have been reading my blog from the start you will notice a difference in the way I have my setup. When I first started I had areas surrounded by plastic. That was mainly to keep the coons out of the food I was growing. They seemed to love the corn but since I have no corn to grow this year among other reasons I no longer have the plastic up. I would love to do away with plastic period as it is not organic.

 I cleaned off the deck and moved my bins onto it. I was tired of moving the compost bins (trash cans) around the yard just to get sun and to cut the grass. Which by the way this area was mowed yesterday.

 This is where I originally had all three sitting. Now for some other pictures although I will try not to bore you with too many but notice the difference.

 

 

 Now for some of the cool plants while I still have a little time left before monkeybear wakes. I so far only have potatoes (FINALLY) and strawberries which are producing for the second time.

 I have to thank my boyfriend for covering them otherwise they might not be growing. He cleaned the right side of the walkway outside the back door so I could pit some plants in there as a type of border in rearranging the plants in my yard. Putting the shade loving plants in the shade and sun loving plants in the sun where they belong.

 I have been told this is a Hibiscus. Is it really because I think this is an ugly plant but will keep them around just because they have flowers.

 I have been told this is Wild Ginger but unless I looked it up wrong it does not look like the Wild Ginger plant images Google has.

 I really have no Idea what these are but they love the sun and grow some interesting flowers. The seed pods if that is what they are, are just as interesting.

 I have more pictures but I am thinking my time is seriously waning so unless I want to save this for another day I need to end here. 

One last thing, I was talking to a friend last night about my long term plans on this project and gave her a bit of a head-start. I am having a contest for the best name of a homestead farm/pioneer skill school. The individual who comes up with the best name (voted on by the readers) Will get a free weeks stay once the permanent property for this has been decided. If you do not want to donate via the we pay system I will go with the most popular crowd funding system. For now, ciao and happy reading.

Finally As Promised...

 I went for a nice long walk yesterday (it was a beautifully fragrant day) and forgot to get batteries for my spare camera but I still have temporary use of my camera phone so as I promised back at the beginning of the month...
 Of the five plants I started on the 18 of last month in a small baby jar filled 1/4 of the way with water I only managed to get a handful of tomatoes (I haven't counted so I do not know exactly how many sprouted) and one carrot.

 The Marigolds, Lavender, and Sunflowers did not take.

 

And The peppers I started about a week ago (I need to put dates on these).

 

One last picture of my small indoor grow area.

 

I am rather excited to see what I get out of all of this. I cannot rush the seed growth but will keep tabs on it and what grows best with what and other how to tips as they come to me. By the way those are maple twigs in a glass cup. I had an intruder in my yard who broke a branch from one of my trees giving me more wood to cut then I currently have for. 

 I am formulating a twig birdhouse project with the branches and twigs I clean. If anyone is interested I will post that as well. For now ciao and happy reading.

 

Be Positive...

 Well I guess this is what I get for bragging. For the last year and a half I have been telling my family that I could live without technology and it seems that belief has been put to the test now more then over the last year. I have been using my phone to get online and do research when my little one prevented me from sitting at my computer. This past week my boyfriend broke his phone so he took mine. Now whenever he is home it is in his hands whether he is using it or not. I have been able to adapt so far. As far as living without technology. I still believe I could do without and be fine but then I would need to have a mailing list of people who were interested in knowing what I am doing to send my newsletter to.
 You may ask how can one live without electricity to heat/cool inside which is answered easily by solar/wind power. The house could also be built with materials in a way that could use the weather to benefit heating and cooling to the point where no heating/cooling unit is needed. Make sure to have a basement that can be sectioned off where part of it can be used as a root cellar/refrigerator so you cut down even more on the use of power hungry electric items. These are the things and more I would love to teach people through this blog.
 But enough of my ramblings for now. I have some gardening projects to tend to that I will hopefully be posting soon. For now, ciao  and happy reading.

Lost Track Of Time And Then Some

I in no way intend to abandoned my dream of growing my own food and did not mean to go so long with out an update but my son started walking which made it kind of hard to keep on top of things and then my lawn mower broke down.
The good news is I got a fairly new mower about two months ago and things seem to be falling in to place. Hopefully things go smoother and I can make time and stay on top of all the work I have planned.
I have seedlings which I will post pictures of as soon as I am able to and I will be posting some other information and updating other things as time allows. Well for now happy reading and ciao.

Day X 3.2

 I tried to do this post two days ago from my phone as my pc went down due to viruses and it didn't work. If it wasn't for bad luck I would have no luck at all. :) I finally got it up and running again. I am still working on Day X and will be posting more pictures tomorrow. But for now a quick update as to what I have been doing while my pc was down.
 I had cut down a blade of bamboo because it grew to long and broke. I took some small pieces from it and decided to see if I could not grow more. I left some sitting in plain old water and I dipped some in root starter and stuck it in the dirt.  While I waited to see what happened I decided to watch some videos from my phone on bamboo propagation. Turns out that bamboo takes a year to get roots unless you take roots from bamboo already growing to grow more. I would like to know what it is that is growing on my cuttings if it is not roots.
I have started shaving another vine covered tree and have plenty of vines to play with making into baskets. I am also working on building a loose compost pile since one of my neighbors called the fire department on me. I have cleaned up a great majority of visible garbage and move all the cinder blocks and bricks to the southeast part of the property. Well till later happy reading and ciao.

I Did Something...

I did something last night I swore I would never do. I am so serious about Day X and everything it stands for I have been looking into ways in which to get the word out, I went and joined Twitter. It is way different then any social network I am using but I have been reading books (one of my favorite past times) about working from home and marketing.  The ones I have read so far say Social Media Marketing is the way to go these days. In the interest to all that is natural I will be using SMM more often. I just wanted to take the time I have while the supervisor naps to keep my readers up to date.

 As far as last nights bonn fire, alot of yard waste was burned and the pit level has risen but there is still a long way to go before the pit is filled and everything is burned. I will be burning more tonight, then if all goes well we will be hacking and slashing and mowing our way to a more useful plot of land . As far as my plans with the pit, I am going to completely fill it in and let plant life take over so that there is a root system in place to keep the walls from collapsing again. This may need to be done on a regular basis but how often is yet to be seen. I will figure that out as it comes. Till later happy reading and ciao.

Day X 3.1

I know it has been a few days since my last post and I wont make excuses. I am taking this time I have to update what has been going on. We have a good portion of the yard cut down but it still needs trimming as the machete work looks kinda like a butcher job.

Yes, this is the pit area. There is so much plant life it is hard to make sense of it all the way it was so overgrown. Right now we are just cleaning up the clean up we have done so far. The downed branches and dead vines needed a few days to dry a bit and tonight we will burn the stuff we have cut to fit the pit so we can reshape the pit. It is to wide for our grill...

...so we had to jury rig it in order to use it. I will be taking more pictures and will continue to look for a decent video editing program that will give me file options so I can post it all here. I doe have a couple of videos I did two years ago I will attempt to toss in here as well. Till later, as the supervisor calls, happy reading and ciao.

What's Going On...?

Sometimes things get just a little too busy around here and things are left undone. Sometimes we feel overworked and just need to step back and re-evaluate how things are going or how something should be done differently then what we first decided. Well it has been one of those moments these past few days. 

We have manual powered tools and were looking for some electric tools to get things done a little faster. Only thing we came across on Sunday was a dealer with sewing items. I am going back this weekend to see if I cannot find a foot to fit my sewing machine so that I can finally use it. I did buy a couple project patterns to work on after dark when all daylight hours work is done. 

Monday and Tuesday I was feeling under the weather and enjoying the downtime to pre-occupy my cranky teether. Now it is time to get some more work done. What is coming now, before we can cut back anymore vegetation is the garbage pickup of the bottles, cans, bricks, rocks, toys and whatever else was left from previous tenants.

I will be posting more pictures as they come. I am also looking for a better video editor, one that will give me more options and capabilities then Windows movie Maker. Till later happy reading and ciao.