Britesea - Living the good life in rural Oregon

Light drizzle here right now -- goats ran to shed so they didn't MELT!!! It is "chilly" with the dampness but, to clear and then possible more rain late. I am leaving for work soon, work tomorrow and HOPE, hope, hope, I can light till an area to plant on Sunday. At least a place to start some seed for transplant.

Need to change attachments on tractor so I can light disk a field for some seed to go out -- ASAP. The strange weather we've all been having is not good for gardens.

Kudos on finding the window parts!! I hate when I "put things in a safe place", only to find them after buying more.

@milkmansdaughter that's great that your son cares about others like that. I know most people have historically helped others during a disaster- our instructor calls them "SUV's" (Spontaneous Untrained Volunteers) but it's so much more valuable if you actually have some training.

Oh yeah, @Mini Horses - Murphy loves us, doesn't he? We got ready to install the window and couldn't find the screws... wasted time searching for them and finally found where they had fallen out of DH's pocket onto the floor in the bathroom. By that time, of course it was raining.

I did get to spend some time in the greenhouse transplanting things from their peat pots into 4" pots. Now that the weather is warming up a bit everything is perking up nicely.
I also found a "volunteer" valerian in one of my raised beds. I had bought a small potted seedling last summer at the Farmer's Market and when I brought it home I put it out in the garden where it would get water and sunshine until I could get to it. Well, you know what happened-- I forgot about it. Over time, the roots forced their way through the bottom of the pot and into the soil beneath, and now I have this sturdy little plant with a cute little plastic collar around it, lol. I hope I can dig it up and transplant it successfully...

Looks like we are getting out of the danger zone for snap freezes now, although there is still a risk every month of the year up here.
I planted my cabbages, and lost every single one of them to ground squirrels, dang it! It's too late to restart now, so I'll have to wait and try for a fall crop.
Put out my swiss chard and got smart- I mixed up some hot pepper spray and doused them thoroughly. That always seems to chase them off after one bite. The valerian plant looks like it will survive the transplanting process, although it wilted heavily at first; guess I didn't trim enough.
I need to finish sifting some compost and filling up the beds that settled over the winter before I can put in my summer garden.

I managed to severely bruise my wrist, banging out a bucket against the wood pile- I didn't aim right, and the wrist came down solidly onto the edge of a piece of wood. I have a 1/2" round hematoma in less than a minute. So I went inside and slathered it with arnica, and then sat with the hand elevated with an icepack for the the next half hour. I put more arnica on it before I went to bed. That was 3 days ago, and you almost can't see any bruising, but it still hurts under pressure.
THEN, I was helping hubby do some repairs on the roof of the small chicken coop and managed to slice the knuckle on my pinky. I put peroxide on it, then my homemade antibiotic salve. It's still kind of red and puffy, but I think it will be fine.

Last Thursday, I went to the VA to get some gel shots in both knees. These aren't like cortisone shots- they don't do anything to reduce the inflammation, they mainly cushion things and help with pain control. My left knee doesn't feel much pain now, but the right knee is still iffy; especially if I walk on uneven ground (which describes pretty much our whole property, lol)

I've been getting a bit lax about my diet, and have regained about 8 pounds over the last few months. Today, I started keeping a food journal again; it seems like the accountability of actually having to write it all down helps me stick to it.

My goodness! So sorry about your boo-boo's! Hope they heal quickly and you get relief. I hear ya on the diet thing....I'm up about 5 lbs in the last few months.

We all gain in winter, right? It's the less physical and more sit & nibble problems. Hey, spring generally helps reverse it. If a journal helps, DO IT!

Hope your gardens do well for you this year. Been some funky weather in a whole lot of areas!

Goodness! Things have been busy! This is going to be a long post, since it covers more than a month...

My weight kept bouncing around, so Tuesday last I tried a 5 day Egg Fast (nothing but eggs, fat and dairy for the duration)- taking plenty of vitamins, extra potassium and magnesium to make up for the lack, although I doubt I will do major damage with a short term fast like this. As of this morning, I had lost all the weight I had gained, and I'm tired of eggs, lol. 2 more days of transition (2 meals with eggs, 1 regular meal at night- tonight is buffalo wings). What the egg fast is supposed to do is this: Eggs have both choline and methionine, cheese is rich in casein; these three items help the liver to metabolize fats (in fact, a lack of these in your diet can lead to fatty liver disease), but if you eat too much carbs it tends to neutralize their effect. So hopefully, I've got my liver charged up and raring to go now.

Our watering system in the garden isn't working well, so plants are not getting all the water they need. I'm tired of trying to make these weeper hoses work; they tend to get clogged up really easily, and getting the pressure low enough that they don't blow out but still getting enough pressure to water everything just doesn't seem to be working. I didn't have any trouble using weeper hoses in my garden when we lived in California, but now it seems like they are only good for a year or so before they start springing leaks all over the place. I suspect they aren't being made as well as formerly. *grumble*
I've been thinking of trying out a variation on Mittleider's automatic watering system )) on at least 1 bed, just to see how it holds up. I was worried about how long the pvc pipe would last above ground, but apparently if I paint the exterior, it greatly inhibits the UV effects. Anyway, we pretty much have to chalk up the cucumbers as a dead loss due to lack of water.

Once again I have a plague of grasshoppers; they riddled my chard plants to the point where there wasn't enough leaves to harvest. I bought some Neem oil, but it's a slow fix and I'm still seeing hoppers, although not as many and the chard seems to be recovering.

We seem to have a shortage of pollinators in the garden as well-- no squash or eggplant babies. The tomatoes and peppers are doing fine though since they are primarily self-pollinating. I think I will buy some mason bees in the spring; we have mason bee houses, but I didn't notice a lot of filled tubes this last winter. We do seem to be having a LOT of yellow jackets in the area though, and I know they prey on bees. I think we used to have a nest of Bald-Faced Hornets in the area, which prey on the wasps and yellow jackets.. I wonder if someone got rid of them? I got rid of one yellow jacket nest we found, using a combination of Dr Bronner's Peppermint Castile Soap and a tea kettle full of boiling water. Seems to have done the trick, since I haven't seen anything coming out of there since. But the wasp traps we put up are still attracting wasps-- so much so that the first one needs to be emptied soon; the level of dead wasps is only an inch or so from the top of the entrance cone and I think more wasps are finding their way out again.

Since the garden is pretty much a loss this year, I decided to concentrate on building up the infrastructure this year, so that hopefully things will do better next year. We weed-wacked all the weeds that were coming up in the pathways and I sprayed everything down with vinegar to kill off the remaining top growth of weeds, then covered the paths with cardboard, and have been laying down a 4 inch layer of wood chips we got when the neighbors had a tree removed. Every week or so, I patrol the paths with my pump sprayer filled with a combination of vinegar and detergent and spray any weed that dares to pop its head up. I started with a mix that included epsom salts as well, but that's actually a fertilizer and it occurred to me I might be helping the roots of those weeds stay alive longer, so I stopped the salts. Table salt would work, but I don't want to risk it getting into the soil in the growing beds. I may run a line of weed killer plus table salt along the fence edges though... we'll see. I also rebuilt one of my compost bays- a 4 foot U shape of concrete blocks- and refilled it with the not-broken-down-yet stuff from the second bay, as well as cleaning out the chicken house and adding that. Hooked up a pallet in front to keep it from spilling out too much. I managed to drop a concrete block onto my right ring finger (yeah, the trigger finger) and bruised it pretty well. The arnica I put on kept the visible bruising down, but the finger still swelled up to almost twice normal for a few days. Now I need to redo the second bay, but I need to buy some more concrete blocks- we ran out about halfway through the second course.
I'm trying to figure out what more I can do out there besides the paths, the compost bins, and the watering system. I won't have enough compost to do much for the beds until spring. I think I will put a good layer of pine needles down on the beds, since we have several pine trees and pine straw is readily available to protect the soil over winter.

Finally, our Tai Chi teacher had been feeling poorly, and it turned out she needed gall bladder surgery. She had asked me to sub for her whenever she couldn't make it; it's been about 3 weeks now-- hopefully she will be returning the middle of next week. Leading the class has been good for me- it really "set" the forms in my mind, having to teach others. But I will be very glad to relinquish the classes to her when she returns!

Wow! You have been busy!

Britesea said:

y weight kept bouncing around, so Tuesday last I tried a 5 day Egg Fast (nothing but eggs, fat and dairy for the duration)- taking plenty of vitamins, extra potassium and magnesium to make up for the lack, although I doubt I will do major damage with a short term fast like this. As of this morning, I had lost all the weight I had gained, and I'm tired of eggs,

Click to expand...

Yikes! I don't think I could do it. I like eggs, but geeze I couldn't eat 'em for every meal, every day - even for just 5 days. Kudos to you for your "sticktoitiveness" and the weight loss!

Britesea said:

Goodness! Things have been busy! This is going to be a long post, since it covers more than a month...

My weight kept bouncing around, so Tuesday last I tried a 5 day Egg Fast (nothing but eggs, fat and dairy for the duration)- taking plenty of vitamins, extra potassium and magnesium to make up for the lack, although I doubt I will do major damage with a short term fast like this. As of this morning, I had lost all the weight I had gained, and I'm tired of eggs, lol. 2 more days of transition (2 meals with eggs, 1 regular meal at night- tonight is buffalo wings). What the egg fast is supposed to do is this: Eggs have both choline and methionine, cheese is rich in casein; these three items help the liver to metabolize fats (in fact, a lack of these in your diet can lead to fatty liver disease), but if you eat too much carbs it tends to neutralize their effect. So hopefully, I've got my liver charged up and raring to go now.

Our watering system in the garden isn't working well, so plants are not getting all the water they need. I'm tired of trying to make these weeper hoses work; they tend to get clogged up really easily, and getting the pressure low enough that they don't blow out but still getting enough pressure to water everything just doesn't seem to be working. I didn't have any trouble using weeper hoses in my garden when we lived in California, but now it seems like they are only good for a year or so before they start springing leaks all over the place. I suspect they aren't being made as well as formerly. *grumble*
I've been thinking of trying out a variation on Mittleider's automatic watering system )

) on at least 1 bed, just to see how it holds up. I was worried about how long the pvc pipe would last above ground, but apparently if I paint the exterior, it greatly inhibits the UV effects. Anyway, we pretty much have to chalk up the cucumbers as a dead loss due to lack of water.

Once again I have a plague of grasshoppers; they riddled my chard plants to the point where there wasn't enough leaves to harvest. I bought some Neem oil, but it's a slow fix and I'm still seeing hoppers, although not as many and the chard seems to be recovering.

We seem to have a shortage of pollinators in the garden as well-- no squash or eggplant babies. The tomatoes and peppers are doing fine though since they are primarily self-pollinating. I think I will buy some mason bees in the spring; we have mason bee houses, but I didn't notice a lot of filled tubes this last winter. We do seem to be having a LOT of yellow jackets in the area though, and I know they prey on bees. I think we used to have a nest of Bald-Faced Hornets in the area, which prey on the wasps and yellow jackets.. I wonder if someone got rid of them? I got rid of one yellow jacket nest we found, using a combination of Dr Bronner's Peppermint Castile Soap and a tea kettle full of boiling water. Seems to have done the trick, since I haven't seen anything coming out of there since. But the wasp traps we put up are still attracting wasps-- so much so that the first one needs to be emptied soon; the level of dead wasps is only an inch or so from the top of the entrance cone and I think more wasps are finding their way out again.

Since the garden is pretty much a loss this year, I decided to concentrate on building up the infrastructure this year, so that hopefully things will do better next year. We weed-wacked all the weeds that were coming up in the pathways and I sprayed everything down with vinegar to kill off the remaining top growth of weeds, then covered the paths with cardboard, and have been laying down a 4 inch layer of wood chips we got when the neighbors had a tree removed. Every week or so, I patrol the paths with my pump sprayer filled with a combination of vinegar and detergent and spray any weed that dares to pop its head up. I started with a mix that included epsom salts as well, but that's actually a fertilizer and it occurred to me I might be helping the roots of those weeds stay alive longer, so I stopped the salts. Table salt would work, but I don't want to risk it getting into the soil in the growing beds. I may run a line of weed killer plus table salt along the fence edges though... we'll see. I also rebuilt one of my compost bays- a 4 foot U shape of concrete blocks- and refilled it with the not-broken-down-yet stuff from the second bay, as well as cleaning out the chicken house and adding that. Hooked up a pallet in front to keep it from spilling out too much. I managed to drop a concrete block onto my right ring finger (yeah, the trigger finger) and bruised it pretty well. The arnica I put on kept the visible bruising down, but the finger still swelled up to almost twice normal for a few days. Now I need to redo the second bay, but I need to buy some more concrete blocks- we ran out about halfway through the second course.
I'm trying to figure out what more I can do out there besides the paths, the compost bins, and the watering system. I won't have enough compost to do much for the beds until spring. I think I will put a good layer of pine needles down on the beds, since we have several pine trees and pine straw is readily available to protect the soil over winter.

Finally, our Tai Chi teacher had been feeling poorly, and it turned out she needed gall bladder surgery. She had asked me to sub for her whenever she couldn't make it; it's been about 3 weeks now-- hopefully she will be returning the middle of next week. Leading the class has been good for me- it really "set" the forms in my mind, having to teach others. But I will be very glad to relinquish the classes to her when she returns!

Click to expand...

Britesea Do you have any of mason bee tubes filled ? If you do you may want to try to harvest the cocoons. Ive attached a video of how to harvest and clean them
. We have found that the mason bees prefer natural reeds over the paper tubes that are show in the video. Good luck they are lots of fun

That's cool!