The Broccoli Experiment

        Our family loves broccoli we eat it several times a week. We decided to plant this favorite veggie even though I had heard it was hard to grow. This is the first year we have ever planted broccoli. I really didn't know how it was going to do. We planted them in April thinking that we still had enough cool weather ahead of us, boy were we mistaken. Our spring is usually very cold and rainy, but this spring it reach 80 degrees and up for many days. We had the driest spring we have ever seen. This was really bad for our broccoli. Just as they really started to grow that heat wave hit and half of our broccoli bolted.We were so frustrated. A very interesting thing happened though, the broccoli that was planted at the end of the potato rows weren't even affected by the heat. In fact they hadn't grown very much at all. We wondered at this, could it be because the broccoli was surrounded by straw. My dear husband was worried that he made a mistake by planting them there. I told him lets just wait and see what happens. The row that wasn't planted in the straw continued to have trouble. By the time it was ready to eat about 3/4 of the row bolted. The heads were very small and sparse. We weren't very happy with them. The broccoli that was planted in the straw still didn't have a head on them. There was no sign of a broccoli head starting, no side shoots, nothing. This really seemed strange, then again we are new to growing broccoli. Meanwhile we pulled up most of the bolted broccoli, but left a couple to continue flowering in hopes to get seeds. A week passed and finally we saw the beginnings of a head on all the broccoli that was planted in the straw. Slowly but surely the heads developed, it took awhile. When we decided to harvest them they were huge compared to the other broccoli we harvested. The heads on them were about 6-7 inches across and there side shoots were bigger than the heads of our other broccoli. They were beautiful.
          Now that we have harvested most of our broccoli it's time to plant the second season of our broccoli. We have sown the seeds directly in the garden. Once they have grown large enough we are going to surround them in straw and see if this helps them stay cool through our short summer. We are hoping that by the end of the summer we will have some nice sized broccoli to harvest. We will be documenting how our broccoli does in these conditions and post our findings.

http://groworganic.com/images/sized/organic-gardening/images/submit-photo/broccoli-450x338.jpg

 

 

This is close to what our broccoli in the straw looked like. We were so excited to eat it we forgot to take a picture of them. I will remember to take some pictures of our next batch.

 

Barefoot Gardening

            One beautiful Saturday morning I work up at around 7:00 AM to the smell of fresh coffee and a missing husband. This is a little early for me on a Saturday, but I could here my chickens clucking beneath my bedroom window and knew I needed to go feed them. I sat up in bed and discovered our dog Izzy was all sprawled out across my feet. I gave her a good rub and moved her, so I could get up. She just looked at me like "what are you doing, it's to early". My dogs are so lazy. I pulled myself out of bed and went in search of my husband. I wandered into the kitchen thinking a cup of coffee would help wake me up, when I spotted my husband. He was out in the garden enjoying the sun. I made a detour and headed out to say good morning. There he was in the garden barefoot. I garden barefoot, but I never thought I would ever see my dear husband barefoot in the garden. I teased him a bit about it and he laughed. He said it makes him feel more natural, closer to the earth.  Barefoot gardening, what a wonderful way to spend a nice sunny day in the garden. I am sure many people do it, but to my husband we are the first to ever do it.

How the Garden Grows

 

Its truly amazing to me how fast a garden grows. This morning I woke up and thought I'm going to take some pictures of the garden. I got my camera and went out to the garden. Just as I went to take a picture my camera beeped and told me the memory card was full. So of course I started to delete pictures that weren't worth keeping. I love to take pictures and I take so many. Most of the time I don't even remember taking some of them. So as I was flipping through them, I came across pictures I had completely forgot I took. They were taken back in April when we first started to plant our garden. I loved that I had taken these and now I can compare how much everything has grown. Check it out, the first two pictures were taken in April and the last four were taken today (June 2013).

 

 

 

April 2013 

 

 

 

                                            There's DH watering

 

                                          These are todays (June 2013)

                  one of these days I'm going to paint that chicken coop.


Todays pictures make the garden look like a over grown jungle. I am really happy it has grown so much. We have already harvested our Broccoli, lettuce, carrots, beets, and snow peas. Our strawberries are huge, our raspberries are abundant, and our blackcaps are going crazy. Now if I could just keep the birds from getting into them.

On the road to being dairy free

      We have very recently learned our daughter, Laikynn can't have any dairy. She has always had a sensitive stomach, but this was different. The older she got the more stomach aches she had. I think that she may have been just dealing with it and not telling me how bad it was.  Lately every time she would eat it would be, " mom my stomach is upset I think I'm going to throw up." She would go lay down and it would pass and she would feel fine. I knew it was food related, but didn't know what food was the cause. The culprit was finally found, (milk, every part of milk.) We are a family that uses a lot of dairy products, yogurt, sour cream, butter, cheese and the list goes on and on. Needless to say it has been very interesting and a huge learning experience trying to find substitutes for some of those products. Through some trial and error we found that soy works the best for her. We tried the almond milk and the coconut milk and the two combined, but those didn't work. I am happy to say she is feeling so much better it is amazing.
        It has been interesting finding foods that she likes and that doesn't have milk in them. Cooking has definitely changed in our home. We have always cooked healthy, but sometimes we would have a meal that had cheese in it. Breakfast has been the biggest trial. You have your traditional breakfast foods like; eggs and bacon, sausage and pancakes, the list goes on. We really don't eat that kind of breakfast, maybe the occasional eggs and turkey bacon. We are more yogurt and berries, cottage cheese and peaches, or smoothies. The kids sometimes eat cereal, but not very often. She has decided that she likes smoothies, soy yogurt, and turkey bacon for her breakfast choices. I bought her, her own personal blender that she can use just for her smoothies and the great thing is she able to make one for herself when ever she likes.

Here is her favorite smoothie: 1 cup mixed fresh berries
                                                 1/2 cup silken tofu or you can use soy yogurt
                                                 1/2 cup juice ( berry mixture)
                                                 1/2 - 1 Tablespoon honey or to taste
                                                 1 scoop unflavored soy protein powder

          Add everything together in blender and blend well. You can alter it to your own taste. Play with it, the possibilities are endless. This is a thick smoothie, so if you would like a thinner smoothie just add a 1/4 cup more juice.

          I love smoothies and I was amazed with the taste of this smoothie. It's like a berry explosion in your mouth.

Laikynns skirt

       I love to sew it is one of my many passions. Yesterday I started a skirt for my daughter, Laikynn. She is very hard to find clothing for, so I tend to make a lot of her dresses and skirts. We can always find shirts and pants, but the skirts and dresses are all made either to short or indecent. On top of that she is very petite and picky ( imagine that). Anyways this skirt was something that I have made before, it is a very simple skirt and needs no pattern. It took me just a couple of hours to make, that is including all the interruptions from my daughter and the dogs. I am very rarely able to just sit down and sew something from start to finish without any interruptions. So yesterday it took me a couple of hours, but it should only take about an hour or less to make. It's that simple. It is wonderful to have a skirt that is so easy to make and when it is done it looks like you spent a lot of money on it.
     

                           This is the skirt before making it shorter


         I got the skirt done, but Laikynn wanted it a little shorter. She says," long skirts look bad on me, please make it shorter." That is the great thing about making your own clothing you can adjust them to however you want. You are not limited to what is in style at the time and you can pretty much choose whatever color or patterns you want. So I'll be cutting it off today. When it is all done I'll post the pictures of it. I'll also put up a picture of the first skirt I made like this It turned out beautiful. My daughter didn't think she would like it and thought it would look to fancy, but she loved it.
      

                                   This is after cutting it off.


         The next project I hope to start soon is a skirt for me. I found some material at the fabric store the other day that I loved. The best thing was it was on clearance for 50% off. Yay!

 

This is the first skirt make. The picture doesn't show how pretty it is.