Sleep

[Photo by Herbert Matter. Available to purchase at Condé Nast.]

I haven't been sleeping well lately. But when I look at this picture it makes me want to crawl back into bed.

–c.

Workshop Stuff

I forgot to mention in my last post that a few good friends of ours chipped in and for our wedding got us a substantial gift card so that we could buy the table saw. Andrew's been wanting one forever.

Also, last year one of our local hardware stores closed down and had a huge sale. Andrew found this.



–c.

Barn Workshop

I was thinking that this post would be an update, but I was looking back at the archives and realized that I have never posted about our workshop in the barn. The farmhouse that we live in, like most farmhouses, has a barn. Andrew remembers when he was young and horses were in the field and in the barn. They were taken care of by a woman named Marge. The horses and Marge are gone and the barn is pretty much empty except for some hay the Towne's use for the alpacas and a ton of wood scraps.

When we first moved in almost all the stalls still had old hay in them from when the horses were around. We had to wear masks while cleaning it out because it was an allergy nightmare.

Basically, this is what it looked like before and while we were cleaning it out:



And this is what it looks like now:








Thanks to my brother TJ for all his help getting the barn into shape. In the past year the workshop has produced a dining room table, a bed frame/desk, a toy chest, a stool, a compost bin, a trellis, a kid's desk, Hungarian shelves, and a storage box for pool supplies (I'm sure I'm forgetting somethings)!

–c.

Swiss Chard

Yesterday, the Swiss Chard seeds were sowed in the garden! Potatoes have been in the ground for a couple weeks now and they are sprouting up so fast. I'll post pictures soon. We planted waaaay too many potatoes. Serious. We are going to have 300lbs of potatoes by fall.

–c.

yhs: Fruits & Vegetables - Plot Preparation Part 2

We had to wait until the ground was sufficiently thawed and dried out a bit before we could plow. There is an old time farmer named Mr. Chandler down the road from us who was kind enough to lend us his plow. Last year, Andrew and Andrew's dad and brother helped Mr. Chandler and his son put their barn door back up that had come off it's track. Andrew said it felt really nice, like he imagined it was in the old days, neighbors weren't strangers and everyone helped one another out. Afterwards, Mr. Chandler's daughter-in-law baked us pies as a thank you!

Andrew's dad drove the plow because he is familiar with them. It's crazy how powerful machinery is! The type of plowing we did is called moldboard plowing which is a pretty intense way to turn up the soil and clear the land. Usually for gardens as small as ours this is a one-time, never-need-to-do-again plowing process. It's hard on the land and over time, if it is done repeatedly, can actually ruin the soil. Next year we will just till and we should be fine.

The plow took about 10-15 minutes to clear a 30' X 40' space! That was the easy part. We then had to rototill the whole plot (it would have been ideal to disc the field at this point, but we didn't have one of those). Oh, and the raking...ugh...talk about back breaking work.


The weeding for the first year is going to be absolutely horrific, but we just need to stay on it!


Next step: fencing.

–c.

10 to Change

Last week I wrote about the new blog that I have been contributing to, wiseUP and the "10 to Change" challenge. Today, my post is up about my "10 to Change" idea. Here is the link to the entire blog where you can read other people's "10 to Change" ideas as well as other inspirational posts. And here is a link directly to my post.

Enjoy!
–c.

In My Head

I know that people get a song stuck in their head all the time, but have you ever gotten a name stuck in your head? I've had the name "Jim Zarroli" (NPR reporter) repeating in my head over and over! And Andrew currently has "P.J. Carlesimo" (NBA basketball coach and broadcaster) on repeat. It's just one of those things.

yhs: Fruits & Vegetables - Plot Preparation Part 1

So far, the most labor intensive process of the garden has been preparing the garden plot. Between mowing, plowing, tilling, raking and weeding, the majority of our time and energy thus far has been spent getting the ground ready for planting.

We're fortunate to have a big fenced in pasture right next to our house that has been nothing but grass since the dinosaurs, as Andrew likes to say. Originally it was a field for horses, but there hasn't been any there for nearly 20 years. It gets full sun all day (except for one area that gets shade towards the end of the day from a huge tree in our backyard) and seems the perfect spot for the garden.

We started the plot by measuring out the plot then mowing it.



Here is the plot after mowing, next step: plowing.

–c.

Wetting Our Plants

I'm not exactly sure where I found this. Funny, nonetheless.

[If this is your photo, let us know!]

–c.

yhs: Fruits & Vegetables - Compost

From the start, there was no question that we were going to have an organic garden. And one of the most crucial elements of an organic garden is organic compost. My parents have composted kitchen scraps as long as I can remember so the notion of saving kitchen scraps was nothing new to me. But once we started reading up on the correct way to make compost, that's when our heads started to spin.

Basically, there are a million ways it can be done. On one hand you have people who are super meticulous about the ratios of "greens" to "browns" and how often to turn it, and swear that you have to do this and have to do that. And on the other hand you have people like my parents who throw things in a pile at the edge of the woods and it seems to turn out fine regardless of the limited time they spend caring for it.


I think we are on the right track. Andrew built this amazing and beautiful composting bin out of old willow trunks. It seems strange that something so nice looking will be filled with decomposing stuff. I don't think we will able to use any of the compost this season though. We got such a late start and like most good things it takes time to build up. Next growing season we will be ready!


–c.

Rain Rain

I'm looking forward to more sunny days and less rainy ones. And a lot more days like this one at Medina Lake last summer.


Our niece, Abigail at Medina Lake.

–c.

yhs: Fruits & Vegetables Updates

We've come a long way since our last garden meeting! This is what's been happening.

After we had our soil tested, we made a list of all the veggies everyone wanted to try to grow and came up with a pretty ambitious list. Every person was then responsible for doing a little research on a few different plants. While everyone was reading up on their veggies we ordered the seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and anxiously awaited their arrival.

Fast forward a few weeks and here we are with starts growing in the basement under lights, a plowed and tilled garden plot with fencing, and a composting bin made from thin willow logs.

This is our first time gardening anything more than a few tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in pots on the window sill. Our plot is 30 ft. X 40 ft. with a separate plot for extra potatoes. We had anticipated that it would be a lot of work, but you never really know how much work until you are standing before a seemingly huge plot of upturned earth with a rake in your hand and the sun blazing down on your back. But it's been refreshing and rewarding to feel the work in my body. Something that I can't really say I experience sitting at the computer all day.

To quote what Andrew said in a previous post

"the day we're laying on our backs in our overalls eating fresh, warm strawberries straight off the vine in the summer sun will be the day I happily forget all the planning and laboring."

–c.

wiseUP

We're back from NYC! Thanks to our Brooklyn friends that came out to see us on our short visit, we had a wonderful time as usual.

Before we embarked on our 8+ hour drive from NE Ohio to Brooklyn, NY, Andrew printed out a list of every local NPR station from here to there ensuring our listening capabilities. We've done the drive so many times that we have to keep coming up with new ideas to keep us occupied. And this brings me to the main purpose of this post!

I'm sure many people are getting weary of listening or watching the news and being bombarded with dropping employment rates, rising UNemployment rates, stimulus packages, and swine flu. Talk about a real downer! Unfortunately, the bad economy has hit us close to home so I've been especially happy to announce that I am contributing to a new blog dedicated completely to thinking positive.

The company I work at, Wise Group, has launched a grass-roots campaign to "Unleash the Positive" to inspire people during these tough times. My first post on the wiseUP blog is up today, you can check it out here.

You can check out all the posts by going to www.wisegroup.com/blog where you can learn about our "10 to Change" challenge where we are encouraging people to try to make a difference in the world/community/city/town/themselves with only $10. My "10 to Change" idea will be posted next Wednesday (May 20th) so check back then to see what I came up with.

If you have any ideas for a "10 to Change" please feel free to email me or my editor Ann at Wise Group and we will post it on our site.

–c.

Technical Issues

I've been noticing that images that I've been posting recently will disappear. And to get them to show, I have to re-publish the post. I'm trying to figure out how to fix it and hopefully it won't be an issue for much longer.

–c.

This Morning

I apologize if you had problems viewing the site this morning! I forgot to change it back to "public" last night.

–c.

New Look

If you haven't noticed, our blog has a new look. Tonight I played around with different layouts and this is what I ended up with. I still haven't wrapped my head around how these layouts work so it was a bit frustrating at times. I'm going to play around with it a little more since I'm not 100% happy with it, but it's a start. We'll see where this goes.

This image is currently my desktop and it makes me really happy.

[Photo by John Rawlings. Available to purchase at Condé Nast]
– c.

Teatime

I could use one of these right now.

Taken on 12/17/08 in Brighton, England.
–c.

Outdoor Living

Yes, it's almost time!
– c.