Watching Our Garden Grow

Day 120Things are winding down in the garden. All the onions and potatoes are in our pantry/cellar. The green beans, carrots, and broccoli are in the freezer. Bob has been canning his tomatoes. There is cauliflower still to pick and a few errant cabbage, but that's about it. Bob's already put up 20 or more quarts of sauerkraut. We'll try and muster up the time and energy to deal with the rest. The acorn squash and pumpkins are still on the vine and that's a good place for them until first frost. This was our second garden and we were satisfied with the amount of food we were able to grow, eat and preserve. We are already making notes on what we want to plant next year and are planning on doing more seedsaving.

Day 90 Day 60

Day 30

Our Vegetable Garden Day 90

Here is our garden 90 days into it. Those are 10-foot high sunflower plants in the background. They have bloomed since The Skirt took this photo on August 13th. (I'll post a picture later this week.) We are harvesting Walla Walla onions, potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, beets, carrots, greens, Acorn squash, peppers, a few tomatoes and buckets and buckets of cucumbers. Bob has put up almost 50 quarts of pickles! I know what everyone is getting for Christmas.

PS Chickens will walk on razor blades for cucumbers. You have to cut them open for them.

PSS Garden on day 60

We've Got Eggs!

Our eight, six-month old Black Star hens are laying eggs. They started around August 3rd and average about 4 - 5 eggs a day. We also have 10 Buff Orphington hens old enough to be laying. Our birds have run of the barnyard. Hope the Buffs are not laying in the shrubs somewhere.

Our Vegetable Garden Day 60

Ok, The Skirt knows this is a blog about vehicle design and fabrication, but I love showing the process of things. Here's how our garden looked on July 9th, day 60. We are eating loads of lettuce, spinach, kale, bok choy, mustard, pumpkin leaves, beet tops and beets, onions, shallots, radish, carrots and Joseph's Coat. Mrs. Bui told us about Joseph's Coat a.k.a. Chinese spinach. Very tender and tasty. It thrives in this over 100-year old cattle pasture.The garden on day 30.

The garden on day 1.

The Vegetable Garden Day 30

Hey car fans, the skirt has many interests one is growing our own food. Here's our garden 30 days after planting the seeds. Those are shallots in the left foreground and watermelon, pumpkin, squash and cucumbers on the right. North of those are potatoes, cabbage, and other cruciferous vegetables, Walla Walla onions, tomatoes, peppers and all the salad fixings - lettuce, spinach, radish, carrots and such. They are all progressing on schedule and we've been eating the mature greens. Also growing well are those weeds alongside the shallots. Our friend Mrs. Bui attends to that section. She told us not to get worked up about it as she plans on eating them.

Garden Day 1

Waiting For An Egg

We added chickens to our little farm this year. Here's one of our 52-day old Buff Orpingtons. Still have three and half months before we see an egg.

Watch Our Garden Grow

We planted 90% of our garden on Sunday. Held off on the tomatoes and peppers because they were forecasting a freeze watch for last night. Now we begin defense mode.

This video shows Bob using the Golden Jubilee fence post driver.

Plowing the Field With a Golden Jubilee

We love vintage tractors as much as vintage cars. Last September we acquired a Golden Jubilee. The Ford had been resting comfortably inside a Montana barn rarely used for the past ten years or more. We planned to put her to work tilling our garden and grooming our gravel drive. This winter we bought an old Maletti tiller off Craigslist. And after a few repairs and modifications tractor and tiller were ready to go. The tiller needs paint which we're gonna do soon now that the soil is tilled.

John Deere Model "H" with Buggy Top

Eight summers ago we sold our house in the big city of Tacoma, WA and looking to get back to our rural roots bought six acres in Spokane Valley. Before we even finished unpacking we saw an ad in the NickleNic for a 1946 John Deere Model "H". We weren't looking to buy a vintage tractor, but our interest was peaked. We decided to drive north to Elk, WA just to have a look and a scenic drive. The tractor came with several attachments and a seldom used buggy top. The tractor is one of our favorite possessions. Bob uses the "H" a couple times a month to maintain our gravel driveway.

These days the attachments are used primarily by our cattle as scratching posts.
The farmer we bought it from preserved all the manuals.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Wood Storage - Preparing For Winter

We'll be splitting and stacking fire wood this weekend. We know blog readers from far Eastern locales find this rustic, but it's a pretty common practice around the Inland Northwest. It does help to have neighbors who also heat with wood. A pellet stove in our basement keeps the chill out of the air and in the evening we light a fire in the wood stove. In the spring we cut down the dangerous and wind damaged Ponderosa Pine also known as Bull Pine on our property. By late summer it's dry enough for splitting and by winter it has just the right amount of moisture for a good fire. Bull Pine is probably not the best wood fuel, and you can see from the photo it has a thick, messy bark you have to get rid of, but we are surrounded by it, and it would just rot if we didn't burn it. All that aside we enjoy the ritual of storing up for winter.
P.S. This is a scan of a sketch done by family friend and Montana artist, Ace Powell.

The Fruits and Veggies Of Our Labor

One of the things we do when we are not working in the hot rod shop is tend to our fruit trees and vegetable garden. The raspberries are ready, so each night we pick and freeze the fruit in preparation for making jam. We are also harvesting lettuce, kale, spinach, yellow squash and nasturtiums. Nasturtium leaves and flowers have a pleasant peppery flavor and are great in salads. At the request of The Skirt Bob threw some into his cream cheese dip. With all the other ingredients it was hard to detect the subtle flavor of nasturtium, but it sure was pretty. Nasturtiums are related to watercress and mustard and are super easy to grow. Honey bees love them too!