Garden

June 2019 photos Part 1

July 6, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I have a lot of random photos this month! So many I’ll have to divide them into two posts, so watch for the next installment in a week.

One Sunday afternoon, around the beginning of the month, the mountains were covered in snow and so beautiful! All the children decided to go on a bike ride up the road and enjoy the beautiful winter sunshine. Esther took this picture.

Simon goes through a lot of mayonnaise. Every work morning, he fries two eggs for his breakfast, spreads mayo on two slices of bread and puts the eggs on top of that, then eats them with a large cup of creamy tea. Because he uses so much mayonnaise, he ends up making it for us quite often in the evening, to make sure he’ll have what he needs in the morning!When I took the children to Hokitika for the homeschooler’s art day, we had another gorgeous, sunny day. I asked Mr. Diligence, who was in the back seat of the car, to take some pictures for me. This is the bridge going out of our town; it’s scheduled to be replace within a year and a half.

Looking downstream from the bridge, down the Ahaura River. Its confluence with the Grey River is just downstream—the Grey is under the line of fog. See the snow on top of the Paparoa Mountains? The Tasman Sea is just the other side of those mountains.

Going on down the road towards Greymouth!

Another view of the Paparoas, across a dairy farm. The Grey, again, is under that line of fog.

This is the bridge my sons built me over a ditch in the paddock our house cow is currently living in. They built it strong enough that a couple of big boys standing on it can’t make it sag! I requested the chicken wire to be stapled on so I don’t slip on wet or frosty mornings—and I’ve been very glad for it! During the summer, I milked at about the place the fence turns, just above the end of the bridge, but the cow didn’t like crossing the ditch after the rains started, so I knew I would have to cross it myself. The new milking shed is just behind you, if you were standing where this picture is taken. By the way, I plan to get a photo of the cow in the shed sometime, but I’m milking before sunrise and after sunset right now, because our days are so short, so there isn’t enough light! It’s working well, though. She has learned to walk right in and put her head in the proper place, and the morning it was pouring, I was very thankful for the roof.

Midwinter harvest! I got the cabbage, leeks and carrots from the garden, and everything else came from the greenhouse. We are enjoying this feast.

One evening while we had family worship, Mr. Imagination was acting up, so I told him to do 5 push-ups. Mr. Intellectual and Simon couldn’t resist; they had to join in. Simon did 20, I believe, before he had to give up. Mr. Intellectual saw his brother grabbing the camera, and jumped up on his chair before the picture was taken.

My New Greenhouse!

June 8, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

My boys spoil me. They do so many things for me, and I just have to keep wondering how in the world I ended up with such wonderful sons! The most recent big project was building a greenhouse. When we lived in Cheviot, we were given the frames for two greenhouses, from two different people. We used one for a couple of seasons, and Simon assembled the other but it didn’t get covered with plastic before we moved and had to dismantle it again. They were two different shapes, but when the boys started working on erecting them here a month or two ago, they figured out how to put them together to make one long high tunnel, about 40 feet by 10 feet (13.5 m by 3.5 m)! The next hurdle was to cover them. After some searching, they found the old plastic from the hoophouse, and the new plastic we had bought for the other one. They were able to cobble them together and cover everything except the lowest part of one side; Gayle built a device for rolling up the lower couple of feet of plastic on the other side, for ventilation during the summer. We bought sheets of clear plastic to finish the part we didn’t have plastic for, and they built frames for them, and hinged the frames so they can be opened in the summer, as well. Now, I’m enjoying having salads growing in there for at least part of the winter! Here are a couple of photos of the boys working on tacking down the plastic.

This was a peek inside, during construction.

….and a view from the same place, this week!

This is a close-up of the bed right inside the door. I found a new-to-me variety of radishes called German Giant. They were advertised as getting large without getting pithy, and not going to seed so quickly. So far, they’re living up to their promise—I’ll sure be interested to see how they work in the summer! We’re really enjoying having radishes on our salads.

We transplanted the lettuces on the left into the ground here right after the framework was erected, and have been eating salads from that bed for a month now. I set out the lettuces, bok choy, and other things on the right a couple of weeks ago, and we’ll start eating them soon.And, here’s a fun picture! I found this leaf one day when I was washing lettuce. It was two leaves grown together! It’s hard to tell, but the midribs were stuck to each other. I had never seen one like this before.

Children—March 2019

April 13, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I took quite a few pictures of the children in March! Here, we were doing a science experiment about camouflage. I bought some M&Ms, and they crumpled colored papers in three of the colors of the candies. Then, we put equal amounts of each of seven or eight colors of candy in the basket with the paper, and they were to see how many of each they could easily find in a minute. After counting and recording their results, of course, came the best part—eating them!

Mr. Imagination and Little Miss were playing with the marbles one day and made pictures with them. I let Mr. Imagination take photos of their cats. The first is his, the second is hers, and they made the third together.

The little boys asked for a box that came in the mail, one day, and they cut it up to make swords and shields. Little Miss wanted her own set, and struck this “fierce” pose when she wanted her picture taken.

Little Miss badly wants her hair to be braided now. She hardly has enough, but she loves the results when I take the time for it! (She just saw me writing this and said, “That was when I had long hair.” Now she wants me to braid her hair again!)

Mr. Imagination was picking up leaves to “start a campfire” one day, with Little Miss and Mr. Sweetie watching him.

Last year, Simon gave Little Miss some cosmos plants for her birthday. This year, Esther bought her some seeds, so I started several plants. I couldn’t believe how huge they grew! She has loved having her own flowers to pick, although she can’t reach very many.

While I was in the garden with the camera, I grabbed this picture of our marigolds. I haven’t grown many flowers in the past, but have decided it’s fun to have a few scattered among the vegetables.

Odds and Ends From February 2019

March 30, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

One evening, I took the camera down the hill to where I milk. We are deeply grateful to a local man for allowing us the use of this large paddock, and Poppy appreciates all the grass in it! Pansy has her own fenced-off corner to keep her from direct contact with her mother (for obvious reasons), but they can be fairly close. Notice the mountains across the river? I enjoy seeing them in all their different moods.

To get into the paddock, we cut across the fence near the top of the hill, using this stile that my boys built (on the suggestions of the property owner). Then, we scramble carefully down a very steep hill.

I wanted to make lasagna one day, so Mr. Imagination helped me make the noodles. Yum!

This was one of our first big pickings of tomatoes. Last week’s, about a month after this photo was taken, we got about twice as many as are in this picture! We’re very thankful for such a good harvest from our 104 plants. Today, I’m making the third enormous batch of salsa, since my big boys eat so much. We just happen to have very spicy peppers this year, which makes the flavor they enjoy, so the popular vote this week was to make salsa instead of bottling whole tomatoes and juice. We had about 110 pints from the first two batches; I think we’ll have 60-70 more after today. Hope that’s enough! Hard-working teenage boys eat a lot, and one of them was eating it by the cupful when I asked for taste-testers this morning. Notice the pink and black tomatoes? We had a bumper crop from our heirloom plants this year. We’re loving eating those super-tasty ones!

Little Miss is watching me write this. She wanted me to write down her story, too: The man was picking apples. Then he saw the big, bad wolf, and then he made a brick house quickly and then he went in it and the big, bad wolf said, “Let me come in, let me come in.” Then the guy said, “No,” and then the big, bad wolf said, “Well, then, I will huff and I will puff and I will blow your house in.” Then he huffed and he puffed and he couldn’t blow the man’s house in. He said, “There’s a farmer’s tree down the road. Will you get up at 6:00 in the morning and come with me to the farmer’s?” The end.

December 2018 Photos

January 12, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

As usual, there are a lot of photos that don’t fit in any other post.

Mr. Sweetie was enamoured with this cicada that he found. It’s only an inch long.

We planted sunflowers in a square for a playhouse for the two youngest. They figured out what is was pretty quickly, and Mr. Imagination built a table for it. He took these next three pictures.

I planted zucchinis close to the sunflower house.

Little Miss loves helping me in the kitchen. She was actually quite helpful when I made Tomato-Cheese Pinwheels recently.

The canoe continues to take shape. Mr. Intellectual adds a strip or two every day.

The kittens are growing! Here they are at a month old.

This is Mr. Sweetie’s lego airplane.

Here is another example of the interesting vehicles we see driving past. This is an old Land Rover.

One afternoon, Little Miss helped Esther and I to make tortillas. She loves helping in the kitchen!

Another day, I sorted through a box of clothes set aside for her to grow into. She was thrilled to find that she could now wear this pretty dress!

If you want a free Kindle book today, Chautona Havig’s A Bird Died is free for a few days. This is one I really enjoyed; read my review of it here.

Garlic

January 9, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Two friends have asked me in the last few weeks how I braid garlic and onions. I happened to have a pile of garlic that I decided to braid this morning, and after I got started thought it would be a good chance to show how I do it, for those who were curious.

Start by fastening three heads together. I usually use string, but rubberbands were handier this morning, so that’s what I used this time.

Braid a few times, then start adding in another head with each braid.

Continue till it’s long enough, and then stop adding more. Braid a little farther without adding any, and then tie it off.

Here are my finished braids of this year’s skimpy crop (I think it was a combination of poor soil and not enough sunshine where we put it), and I’ll have the boys hang them in the food storage room later.

The softneck garlic I used to grow in Michigan was easier to braid, but I’ve learned that it’s possible with this hardneck garlic as well. When we want to use some, we’ll just cut or twist off a head.

December 2017 Pictures

January 23, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Simon helped me harvest the garlic on Christmas Day. We got 89 heads from an area about a meter square.

We’re having a problem with fleas on the kittens. I don’t want to spend $30 each to buy the pour-on stuff from the vet, because the mama cat would just lick it right off and I don’t think that would be good for her, so we’re dusting them with diatomaceous earth every 2-3 days. They hate it!

This cat has always loved to sit in boxes—but I think she found one almost too small for her, this time!

This hen hatched six babies right after Christmas. We were able to sell the mother and all the babies.

The positions we find the kittens in are sometimes pretty funny!

Spring!

September 17, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Spring is here! Some days sure don’t feel like it, but more days are warm than a month ago, and the grass is growing.

The first garden work was done in mid-August. Simon took the rotary hoe (rototiller) through part of the garden, after I showed him what needed done. It broke after he got some done, though, so he tore it apart and took one part to a local man to get a replacement shaft made. We picked up the finished piece the day I took Simon to Christchurch to get his Learner’s Licence; that night, Simon and Mr. Diligence stayed up till midnight putting the rotary hoe back together. He felt like he had to do it because he was leaving home a couple of days later and wouldn’t have another chance!

This is the lemon tree right outside my kitchen window. So beautiful!

Esther babysat the day I took Simon to Christchurch. She sent the boys outside for a break at one point during school. They started wrestling, and Little Miss was telling them to stop!

When it didn’t work to order them to stop, she tried to manually separate them!

Garden Stuff

March 12, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I sliced a bunch of zucchini for the freezer one day, and decided to try dehydrating some. I sprinkled them with salt, and they are quite good! I did learn that it’s best to oil the trays before putting the zucchini on, or they stick tight. A couple of the children had fun putting the slices of zucchini on the first time.

I had never seen a head of cabbage like this one! It had many small heads growing out around the stem, between the leaves.

One of the little boys was quite impressed with the bumblebees on the sunflowers.

One day’s harvest of cucumbers and squash.

Little Miss helped me fill jars of green beans one day. She did a good job of it.

We did an experiment this year with the tomatoes. After reading on the blog of one of Gayle’s cousins how she fertilized her tomatoes with sour milk and had very good results, I decided to try diluting the whey from cheesemaking and the buttermilk we couldn’t use up from making butter, and water the tomatoes with it. To make it a good experiment, we only did that with half the patch. The tomatoes on the right came from the milk-fed tomatoes, and the ones on the left came from the others. I would say the experiment was a success!

April Garden

May 21, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One morning in early April, it was already getting frosty when I went out to check on the garden at 12:30. No, I don’t normally go outside at that hour, but it was so cold that I was checking for frost to try to protect the tomatoes. I turned the pump on to try to keep the frost off them. When I went out at 6:30 to look, the entire garden was encased in ice! By 8:00, when I turned the water off as the sun came up, the ice was about 1/8 inch (2-3 mm) thick on all the tomato and pumpkin leaves! The little boys had fun going out and carefully taking the ice off a big leaf and bringing it in to show me. They put several of those crystal leaves in the freezer to show Daddy when he got home. I figured that was the end of the tomatoes, zucchini, and pumpkins.

That afternoon, I went out to the garden again. I was very surprised at what I saw! The next two pictures are the garden that I watered, which was encased in ice. The plants had not been hurt at all!

This picture shows the pumpkins in the next garden, across a narrow walkway. They were not protected with water, and were killed! I knew there was some sort of science behind that, so I looked it up. Apparently, as the water freezes into ice, it releases a tiny amount of heat, which keeps the plant above freezing temperature as long as the ice stays wet. If it gets dry, for example if a breeze springs up, the plant will be damaged badly. You have to keep the water running till the sun comes up, to prevent damage. It was very interesting to see this in action!

I harvested about half our pumpkins that afternoon. My three littlest had fun helping me haul them around and wash them. Then, they ran across them!