Dropstone Farms » calendar

Happy Solstice!

Lauren — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:36:41 +0000

I couldn’t wait for the last holiday, but this one snuck up on me and I didn’t even prepare a holiday meal. All the same, we ate well, with ribeye steaks (we are using up the last of our cow from last year, in preparation for the new cow in a couple of weeks), and garlic scapes and spring onions, both from farmers at Pike Place Market, on the grill, as well as our current standard of plenty of salad with sliced radishes and fresh shelling peas.

I feel some stress about the fact that the year has peaked today; the garden is way behind and we are still not sure if we will do meat birds for sale and we have lots of lettuce but the tomatoes are still in pots in the greenhouse and and and … But we are doing OK. We are raising turkeys and a flock of 25 chickens for ourselves and our neighbors to eat, so we will be supplied with chicken for the winter. In spring I made a little spreadsheet to do the planting math for me, and it tells me that I still have 60-90 days of good growing season. So here’s hoping that the downhill side of summer is good and we have squash after all.

Record-keeping

Lauren — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 06:29:50 +0000

I’m not really one for resolutions, but I did get a nice Moleskine calendar notebook with room to write some basic notes on each day. I’m hoping to take notes each day about what went on — what was planted, what was harvested, how many eggs, etc. I forgot to do it the past couple of days but today I noted down 2 duck eggs and one chicken egg when Garth went out in the morning, and two more when I put them to bed when we got home from Seattle. Also, Stripes and one of the reds have bald butts for some reason; their butt fuzz has apparently fallen out. But today I noticed that Stripes’ butt fuzz feathers are coming back, so I wrote that down too. (Red was facing the wrong direction on the perch and I didn’t want to crawl around in the dark and freak the ducks out. I’ll check her butt tomorrow.)

Anyway, I don’t figure I’ll transfer the daily notes here, but on the other hand it may provide a handy outline for quick weekly updates, or ideas for bigger posts, etc.

Happy solstice!

Lauren — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:23:34 +0000

So let the sun rise, bring hope where it once was forgotten

Just before noon, the snow started again, and I lit several candles on the hearth and Garth put another log on the fire. We made some bloody marys with homegrown and -canned dilly beans (just you wait, we’ll learn to make vodka someday!) and settled down to open our solstice stockings, which I sewed on Friday. Mine contained a super fancy mechanical pencil, and a delicious-looking German marzipan cake, some CUTE pink moleskine notebooks!!, and a beautiful bottle of Basil Hayden bourbon. Garth’s had a little gym-style whistle for calling the dogs in from the woods, and a small length of dinosaur-fossil-patterned fabric he was coveting at the fabric store but which sold out before we got there, a chunk of British goat cheddar, a cute bamboo rice paddle, a sink drain screen that we hope doesn’t suck, and the Seed Savers catalog that came in the mail this week. Garth’s big present was the welding class that he took in November, and I have some long johns on the way.

This afternoon we will walk the dogs in the snow, visit the chickens, and leaf through the first seed catalog of the year, dreaming about what will be in the next year, and reflecting on what was. And also we will drink some fancy bourbon. Happy new year!

Only two more weeks until days start getting longer again

Lauren — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:28:09 +0000

… I can’t wait.

Anyone have any good solstice plans?