Blog award?

A few days ago, debbie over at the Happy Days blog gave me a beautiful blogger award and asked me to respond by putting up a list of 10 things about me that you may not know. I'll do this one myself WITHOUT Lisa's help...as in the response she put in for me 2 posts ago. She does think she's funny.

1-I DISPISE sports. I've never watched a game of anything in my life
2-I can quote Texas Chainsaw 2, Student Bodies, and Blazing Saddles pretty much from beginning to end.
3-I'm a professional steering wheel guitar player while driving
4-I'm an admitted and untreated peanut butter & jelly addict
5-I (we) haven't had any kind of cable/satellite/antenna t.v. since last January
6-I'm a HUGE list maker but tend to lose the notebooks that contain the lists
7-I am the last of my family name
8-I can't sleep if my feet are covered at all
9-I'll eat deviled eggs till they come out of my ears but can't stand the smell of egg salad..go figure
10-Anytime I am in a bigger city where there is concrete and tall buildings everywhere, I almost feel like I can't breathe. Cities make me feel like I am choking. Even little-bitty downtown Akron nearby. I can't stand being there.

Rainy Day pictures

Of course after just two days of warmth and sunshine, the Ohio weather gods decided to make it turn cool and rain again. I think they're in cahoots with the orange barrel gods Ohio has too...gonna have to do something about that. So, I sat around with a pot of 2 of coffee, read some herb books, and snapped some pictures of how things are going outside so far.


These are the greens beds. Everything is up and/or gone and resewn already. The spinach that was in the bottom left spot was nearly gone and what was left had bolted. It's been resewn as well as the lettuce in the one to it's left.

This is one view of the front yard. I wanted something a little better, but I was hiding from the rain under a pine tree. That trellis/obilesque has a cherry tomato plant under it, and there are 2 more stakes of them straight up. I just have to make more...many more. In between those are small beds for Lisa's gourds and pumkins that I dug and tilled yesterday. In the center is the 30ft round herb bed. It's nearly finished. It just needs a few more herbs and some kind of border or edging. Right now it contains-lemon balm,spearmit,yarrow,chocolate mint,oregeno, basil,chives,rosemary,catnip,sage,lavender,parsley,dill,thyme,peppermint, mugwart and wormwood. In front of the round bed are two other beds planted full of cucumbers, and behind those you can see the grapevines.

This is just another view of the bed for the gourds and cucumbers, and the raspberries growing along the fence behind them. I can't wait for that whole area to fill up with berry plants.

Just a little better shot of the herb bed and the two for cucumbers. I'll be making something fairly tall for the cukes to grow up.

Just a picture of one of the cucumber beds and the grapes. It's hard to believe those grapes were just five little plants two years ago. I have to make something taller for them to vine on when I can.



Partial view of the main vegetable garden. The corn, onions, green beans, squash, and zuchinni all planted from seed just a week and a half ago are already 3-4 inches above ground. Now if we can just get more than 2 days of sun and heat, things will really take off.

Little different view of what is above ground already. That one lone onion made it through the winter.

Happy chickens with 4 wheelbarrow loads of grass clippings.

Speaking of chickens....in the past 3 weeks we have lost two, one being the cute little banty that was everyone's favorite. We decided that since we have more people asking to buy eggs, that we needed to bring the flock back up a little bit. I talked to my neighbor today, and after he got home from work, we went to his friends house where I got five young layers for $20. That brings us back up to fourteen layers now. I'm going to be looking around for some cheap or free fence and posts so I can expand their yard and rework the old round-top end.

When we picked up the hens, the guy laughed and said "for buying five you get a bonus". I laughed and before I saw what he was doing, he tossed this rooster in the cage I had brought to transfer the hens. He's a beautiful bird, a blue cochin, but I have no use for a young rooster. Anyone wanna give him a home before he ends up in the freezer? LOL

Tomorrow it's supposed to get warm and sunny again..at least for two more days until the rain and storms come back for the weekend. I have one more project in the front yard to do and thats making a bed for sugar snap peas. I'm going to put it in front of the herb bed and between the two crabapples that we got for free. After that, it's just adding edging/borders and cleaning up before I move to the backyard and concentrate on the big stuff.

I have to still move off the 24x3 foot pile of sod pulled from the potato beds, weed the edges of the garden, dig the last 5 foot extension, dig/widen around the blackberries, then possibly move the clotheslines so we can expand the junebearing strawberries in the spring. I may just let that one go till fall.

For now, I'm gonna post this, swallow some coffee, read a few of my regular forums, and call it a day....I'm going to need the rest.

Garden growth & business ventures

Again, we finally got a break in the weather, so things are finally starting to catch up outside. The main garden is done, other than broccoli,(which we can't seem to find anywhere), and the last 5 foot extenstion which will be 2-3 more rows of sweet corn. We did have a good laugh at a mistake though. In the haste of getting things in, and lack of normal planting with a list and garden drawing like we do every year, we managed to forget cucumbers. How the hell did we miss cucumbers? Of course the garden is full now, so I had to dig 2 new beds in the front yard for the forgotton cukes. I put in two beds for them, each 4x8 feet. Of course Lisa also reminded me that she wanted to plant gourds and pumpkins, soooo.....there are 2 MORE beds marked out front with stakes and string that I'll be digging, tilling, and planting today. I also need to dig and till the section I have marked for widening the blackberry bed. It's just getting too big and is a pain to mow around. The herb bed is nearly done too. I got it dug and tilled on Friday, then planted on Sunday when we had the first break in the rain. I'll have to make a list of all the herbs we have planted out there. There are far too many for me to remember.

Everything we had planted last week is doing well. The corn is already standing around 3 inches tall, as well as the onions and green beans. We didn't lose a single plant yet either, so we have high hopes for the whole thing so far. We've been picking a lot of strawberries already too. We picked some on Saturday, then yesterday I picked 5 pounds of junebearing and 3 pounds of everbearing. I still have half of the everbearing bed to pick today, so I'll probably end up with at least another 3 pounds. The total picked so far is at 11 1/4 pounds, our best first picking to date.

The mini-CSA is doing well too. Right now we have stopped at 5 customers. They aren't getting anything but greens, eggs, and strawberries; but everyone is happy so far. Lisa also has a few steady egg customers beyond the CSA people, so we're going to end up getting a few more hens to keep up with the demand. It looks like the next major project is going to be extending and rebuilding the chickens yard to allow for more....yay for another project!!

I heard back from one of the stores last night where I have the staffs and wands on consignment. Apparantly they are both getting great customer reviews, and the owner said that she would take anything that I would make. The other store had a few requests for items that I am trying to work on in my spare time in the evenings, so I'm woodburning designs in boxes for tarot cards, gemstones, and runes, cutting and designing wooden runes, and giving a try at making carved wooden knives. Mike got orders from the same place to make a larger version of this awesome teepee style incense burner that he designed and made to try at the market.

All four of us, (me, Lisa, Mike, and his wife Chrissy) have started a website for our crafts. It is nowhere near completed, but it's starting to take shape. I came up with our company name and Mike has been working on getting the website up and running. http://www.alchemyamongus.iwarp.com
Lisa has been making her jewelry and has a store set up on Etsy as well. http://www.etsy.com/shop/AlchemyAmongUs?ga_search_query=fishing+jewelry&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_page=7&includes[]=tags&includes[]=title When Mike and I get more things made that don't go directly to the stores, we'll be adding them to sell there too. Making them in....yanno....all that spare time I have.