Baby pictures

Houston, we have squashes!

Aren't they adorable?

Grow, grow into a delicious dinner baby squash!

Seriously, they are so precious I don't know how I am going to eat them. Oh wait, with butter. Mmm mm. Garden fresh goodness!

The morel of the story.

It is spring in southern Illinois, and that means mushroom hunting. In case you didn't know, finding fungus is a BIG past time in many rural areas. I know some people that spend hours and hours combing through the woods seeking out all sorts of edible wild mushrooms, but the crowning glory of wild edibles is the morel. They have a very unique flavor and texture, and are nearly impossible to grow on purpose. A pound of morels can sell for upwards of thirty dollars around here, but luckily for the average consumer adventurous enough to brave the ticks and snakes they can be found in almost every woods. But they are crafty little things.

It is the perfect excuse to enjoy the woods in spring!

Over the weekend mom and I engaged in this past time, and by engaged I mean she found mushrooms and I found just about everything else...

I found flowers.

And a turtle...



Some Jack in the Pulpit...

Some pretty mystery plant...

And about that time I had just about given up. Mom was walking around with a bag full of mushrooms, doing her "mushroom meditation." Which, though I want to mock, I can't give her trouble for because, you know, I found a turtle and she found a bag of morels. Go figure.

I found a wild Susan in her natural environment!

But the moral of the story with mushroom hunting, farming, and life in general is patience and perseverance! (Also enjoying the journey and not just the delicious and delectable destination!)

Happy hunting!

I think my plants are teenagers.

Don't they look like they should be getting out of the house to you too?

Let the hardening off stage begin!

So, I made a tiller.

And on Tuesday I looked down at my planned garden and said, “Damn. I don’t want to hoe that.” So, I made a tiller.

I said, I need something to break up the dirt, destroy all the weeds, push past the rocks and the buried walnut shells, take a beating and work it all again and again until the ground is perfect. So, I made a tiller.

I need a tool that will help me out as I try to garden. Reliable enough that I know it is going to work when I need it to, but low maintenance enough that I am not going to have to fiddle with it when I want to use it. Something strong enough to bust through roots and rocks and run for hours on end in crappy conditions until the job is through. So, I made a tiller.

I said, “I need a partner that can have my back and work the clay, loam, and sand with equal ferocity. That can push through compost and spread it through the soil for all those roots to find. To be there for me in evenings and on weekends after I finish my forty hour work week and actually start my work.” So, I made a tiller.

If you don’t get the reference, check out this commercial.

And yes, yesterday I did assemble my tiller. I am not remotely mechanically inclined so I am ridiculously proud of myself. I even assembled it all with the tools that live in the back of the four wheeler, because I’m awesome at farm stuff. Or it was just that easy to assemble. Whatever. It is held together with wing nuts, but I loaded it with gearbox lube all by myself and everything! I feel so bad ass!

Or, at least I felt bad ass until I noticed that the damn cord wrap was in the wrong spot.

So, I made a tiller!

DIY Newspaper Pots (otherwise known as Cat Bait)

Damn, I’m cheap, and I want to start some seedlings for my garden. What to do, what to do?

I should get one of those newspaper pot roller things. They’re great. I’m reusing old newspaper and I don’t have to transplant them. Plus all those damn plastic trays I bought last year didn’t hold up to the cat and dog laying on top of them, so I’m gonna have to do something for that anyway.

That thought process led me to getting an awesome little tool and losing about three hours of my life to making paper pots.

If you have read the rest of this blog you're going to know that I am not that big on measuring things, so it should come as no surprise when I tell you that I had no ruler and no idea of how long 3.5" actually was. So the first thing I did was cut my newspapers into fourths.

Okay, I lied. The first thing I did was wrestle the newspaper away from my cat and manage to miraculously not cut his feet off while I was trying to cut my newspaper. Such. A. Bad. Kitty. Seriously, if cats could take Adderall he would be on it.

Anyway, my lovely method of measuring yielded newspaper that was way too wide. Go figure. So rather than cutting it again I took the lazy way out and folded it. Wanna see how the cool little pot maker thing works? Yes? Awesome. Because I made you a montage. I hope you like it.

Quick! Go play Eye of the Tiger while you look at it!

Pretty sweet, yeah? I thought so too until I had to fill this. This being a big clear plastic tub that I had to buy and drill air holes in to protect all of my newly made pots, because someone, not going to mention any names *cough*MyGodDamnCats*cough, cough* decided to destroy all of them last time. Lets see them crush and shred them now! Yeah!

You might need to put it on loop for effect. That is three hours of Survivor right there.

SPRING!

Some people would say that this is oregano poking through straw. I prefer to call it SPRING! And it is about damned time!

Although, now instead of a to do list made up of cooking, eating, and catching up on my reading I have made a monster. My to do list looks like this:

Why am I excited it is spring again?

Oh yeah, BONFIRE!!!!!!

Farming Foible or Agrarian Adventure?

I am what you might call an accidental gardener. I was bred, born, and raised on a farm, but I have an intense aversion to getting dirty. Mess with cows and horses? Any day! But gardening was something that my grandparents did. Canning? Pah. Why, when I could go to the store and buy a .25 can of corn? Baking and cooking were things that I have always enjoyed, and I’m going to blame them for my recent garden obsession.

It started with a windowsill box of herbs for cooking. I was sick and tired of paying five dollars or more for a tiny bunch of basil. Watching the tiny green sprouts of basil and garlic chives changed something in me. The next year I had a full out herb garden. The year after? Well, let’s just say that I didn’t do my research and jumped into vegetable gardening with abandon. There may or may not have been an overabundance of zucchini at my house. (Who knew five plants would produce that much, other than every other gardener in the history of the world? In fact I may or may not have had zucchini in some way shape or form two meals a day for about three months.) Faced with the bumper crop of herbs, fruits, and vegetables I had to figure out what to do with it all. A few frantic phone calls to my grandpa later and I was officially canning jams and jellies, making flavored oil, and learning how to best freeze pesto and dry squash. Just like that I fell into it. And now I can’t imagine my life without digging around in my garden despite the mess. I have learned a few tricks along the way, and I’m sure there are going to be many more to learn as I go.

This year is going to be different. This year I have a plan. I know that dish soap under my nails will keep dirt from getting in them. I know that I am going to be inundated with squash and zucchini and delicious tomatoes. I have researched and plotted. I have studied companion planting books and seed catalogs. I have literally spaced out my garden on graph paper according to how it should grow best.

And I am positive that I will continue to muck it up, and I will be overwhelmed and it will be under watered, and that my garden will grow regardless. That’s one of the best things about gardening. It puts it all in perspective. It is humbling and empowering at the same time.

So I invite you to join me farmer, gardener, or none of the above as I set out to grow some produce, learn to use it, and hopefully grow and learn as a person in the process. I hope my tales are entertaining, enlightening, and well, enlivening.

But enough of the tree hugging, earth loving bit. Let’s go grow something! (Like seed catalog debt. Since, you know, it is February and I can’t plant anything inside because my cats keep eating all my seedlings.) Or take cow pictures! Because who doesn’t love cow pictures?

See, isn’t that precious?

Or we could bake something:

Because well, bread is AWESOME.

So many things to do, so many posts to write! Until next time!