The Greenhouse and a LOT more.

It is, basically, finished. We are going to add the parts that will make the sides able to roll up in hot weather. But I can start putting the plants into the system now. The water is correctly balanced thanks to our fishy friends and the temperature of the water and the air is just right.

Here are some photos of the last stages of construction:

Getting the roof installed was the hardest part because it started to become a very windy day. Since the weather was getting worse, we decided to leave the middle section tacked down with the plan to come back after the rain and secure it permanently. 

We had a lot of high winds and tons of rain that pulled the temporary stays away from the structure and left the middle section flapping in the wind. We were resigned to loosing it. The next morning I got a call from my Mom telling me about tornado warnings in the area. (We don't have local, cable or satalite TV, so it's easy to miss warnings in the middle of the night.) It was a nerve-racking morning but eventually the threat passed and the skies cleared up in the afternoon. Aaron went out and finished the job- securing the middle section permanently. 

So now all that is left to do is put the seedlings in the system and create the roll-up system for the sides. Hurrah!

And speaking of the seedlings....

Sugar Snap Peas GONE WILD

Lettuces and Broccoli

The week I came home from Florida I was floored by how much the seedlings were growing- especially the sugar snap peas. They were a tangled mess, as you can see in that first photo. So I knew I had to do something quick to keep them from getting so tangled that I wouldn't be able to separate them. 

Here's what I did:

My work station 

What a root system!

Happy in the window

Happy on the (not working) gas heater stove.

Happy on the table by the window.

What I did was separate all the seedlings and give them sticks to support them. When Aaron and I first planted these seeds, we did what we had been doing with all the others- putting two in the same plot so if one failed, it wouldn't be a wasted space. Well, NONE of the sugar snap peas failed. Every single one of them popped up and started growing big and fast. So lesson learned. Next time, they will get started with a stick to guide them and they will each get their own plot. Even if one doesn't take, the time it took for me to separate them all and re-plant them was wasteful. It took me pretty much all day. I had to be extra gentle and move slowly since they are so delicate. 

I've been doing a lot of other gardening around the farm and loving it. My great-grandmother Julia was a very successful gardener and turned her passion into a business selling flowers and arrangements. She even had her own storefront! I am not going to be following in her footsteps in that way, but my love of flowers and gardening is just beginning and I like to think it comes from her. 

A variety of flowers and plants from the Lowe's garden department. 

Into the ground! 

These flowers actually got quite beat up in the recent bad weather. They don't look nearly as cheery as they do in this photo. My Mom assures me that they will bounce back and be fine. 

My mini rose bush from Johnson's Nursery. The best place for plants in the area. 

Planting in in the plot in front of my porch. English daisies, money plants, zinnias, cosmos and two peonies. 

I created a chicken wire cover for this area to keep out cats, dogs and chickens. I'll remove it when the baby seedlings are big and strong and can withstand being trod on occasionally.

The last thing to report is a funny story about Atticus and Wanda. So, to give you a general idea of their friendship... it's only Atticus who thinks they are friends. Wanda is scared of Atticus because he enjoys chasing her. He'll chase any of the chickens that get out of the coop and the guineas too. He doesn't want to hurt them, he's just having fun. Chickens do not share this idea of fun. Once I rescued Wanda from Atticus- he was looming over her and she was hunkered down and not moving. (I was momentarily scared that he had killed her) I shooed him away and picked her up and discovered that she was covered in his slobber. I think he had pinned her down and just started licking her. She was not happy and had much to say about it. This happened about a month ago.

Atticus is getting better and better about not chasing Wanda, but sometimes he just can't help himself. And Wanda is getting better and better at not running away, but sometimes she just can't help herself either. 

Anyway, the other day Aaron and I were in the side yard on the phone doing FaceTime with our parents. Wiley, Atticus and Wanda were nearby and just wandering around. All of a sudden Atticus rushes at Wanda and instead of running away, she pops an egg out right there in the yard. After a bit of confusion, she quietly tottered off. 

We were stunned. We weren't sure that what we just saw actually happened, but it did. I saw it with my own eyes and wouldn't have believed it if I didn't. Atticus actually scared an egg right out of Wanda. 

I love this farm. The weirdness never ends!

I'll leave you with a few random photos I have taken recently from around the farm. 

A wet day. Atticus wears his rain jacket  while he waits for Wiley to come off my porch and play.

This dog knows how to relax on a rainy afternoon.

Oh the mud! I had to carry him into the bathroom and wash him. A basic toweling off was not going to work.

Gardening is hard when you have a gigantic puppy napping in your flower bed. (Good thing I hadn't planted anything there yet)

Trying on Dad's hat.

So exhausted, he can't even take his head out of a shoe.

I was planting some baby trees from the arbor society (I'd take photos but they're just sticks right now) and when I got up I found these two camped out right behind me.

 My dear, sweet, Wanda napping in the tall grass.

An Epic Battle

Last night Wiley and I had an epic battle with an unwelcome guest in the cat's barn. The story begins thusly:

It was a dark and stormy night, the wind was up and the rain was coming down in sheets. Very dramatic! After an evening playing Dominion with my brother, (Thanks to my cousins Jenny and Alex for the gift!) I started walking up the hill to my studio. Wiley, of course, was with me initally but he took off to do his night patrol of the property. He does this every night.

Anyway, there I was walking alone up the hill. As I passed the door to the cat's section of the barn, I heard Hilda making a low howl and growling. When I opened the door to see what's going on, I see she's on the floor of the barn looking up to the counter where I feed the cats. On this counter, casually helping itself to some free cat food, was a huge opossum. It paused when I walked in and didn't react until I said, "What do you think YOU'RE doing?!"

The beast ran toward the back door and took a route behind some stacks of wood planks and a collection of old doors. I didn't see it run out the crack in the door that the cats (and this thing too, I suppose) use to get in and out of the barn. So I went to investigate and found it huddled behind the stack of doors that were leaning up against the wall of the barn.

Photo evidence:

I armed myself with a long stick and started screaming at the top of my lungs for Wiley. While I did, I stared banging around where the monster opossum was hiding, with the intent to scare it out of the barn. What I didn't count on was how determined and committed this creature was to staying in the barn and not going out in the storm. When Wiley showed up in high alert mode, he wasn't sure what we were doing but he was ready to battle! I pointed out the beast's location to him and Wiley took up where I left off. While he was growling and barking at the thing, I yelled at it to "Get out of here! You don't belong here! You are not a cat! You are a wild thing! Go away! Shoo!"

 I also used my stick to poke it and try to shove it toward the back door. It didn't react the way I was hoping. In fact, it barely reacted at all. I bopped it on the snout thinking that sharks can often be deterred with a bop to the nose, so maybe it would work with giant opossums too. Sadly, it did not. The creature looked annoyed and if it could talk I am sure it would have said, "Don't DO that!" I used the stick to poke it IN THE MOUTH. Again, it gave me an annoyed look and a half-hearted hiss. Finally, I used the stick to bonk it on the noggin which actually got a reaction- it snarled and blinked a few times.

At this point we were at a stalemate. So I decided to move the doors it was hiding behind and let Wiley really get at it. It was a last resort. Even though Wiley had gotten his updated rabies vaccine that morning, I was worried about him getting an injury in the middle of the night. Anyway, I started moving the doors and I could see the beast start to panic. Once I made enough room for Wiley to get in there, he bravely went forth and began to give that opossum "the business".

Unfortunately, I didn't think the plan through very well and all this did was force the creature to run away from the back door and further into the barn. Sneaky little thing ran behind and under the wood planks and into the darkness. Wiley tried to follow it and track it, but there were too many obstacles.

We never saw it again.

The lesson in all this is if I feed the cats in the evening, I cannot leave the food out for them to graze at their leisure.

The Mysterious Beast of Three Oaks Farm

We had a visitor to the farm yesterday…

I was up by my studio gardening late in the afternoon when Aaron came running up the hill yelling about something. Of course, since he's working with power tools I had a moment of breath holding and expectations of blood. But he was pointing down the hill to the pole and saying, "I'm pretty sure you can see it from here." I looked into his binocular thing that he uses for judging distances that isn't actually binoculars and this is what I saw when he told me where to look:

We were both freaking out! What is that thing!?

From a distance you could barely see this creature without the binocular  thing. It's perched on top of a power line pole that's approximately 24 feet tall. We were completely confounded and were coming up with crazy ideas of what it was and how it got up there. Some of our ideas were that it was a groundhog that got picked up by a hawk and dropped on the top of the pole (mine), or it was a lost guinea pig, or it was a rabid wombat, or it was a marmoset, or we thought it could even be a genetically mutated chipmunk. 

Whatever it was, it was creepy. If you stood close to the pole and looked up, the white patch on it's face made it look like one of the woodland spirits from that movie Princess Mononoke. Also, we were not 100% sure it was alive. Or even mostly alive. Not once when I repeatedly kicked the pole, did it move.

It was only until I walked around to the other side of the pole and looked up, did I see it for what it was.

Just a squirrel.

A squirrel with an odd white face, but a squirrel nonetheless. From the angle we initially saw it at, it looked gigantic. From the side, when you could see the body and tail… it's just a normal sized squirrel. 

I'd be lying if I said we weren't disappointed. 

The Skunking of Wiley

Well, it was bound to happen. Wiley found a skunk and chased it till it spayed him full in the face. The smell is intense and headache-inducing. We are lucky that the skunk didn't bite him or that he bit the skunk because since it happened during the day, it is very likely that the skunk was rabid.

I have tried everything to get the smell of skunk off him and all I can do is lessen it. Nothing works. I have gotten a ton of great advice from a lot of reliable sources, but the truth seems to be that the smell will wear off over quite a few weeks.

I feel badly for Wiley but I hope he has learned a lesson.


EDIT: This post should have been published two weeks ago but I guess those headaches really got to me and I clicked the wrong button along the way and didn't actually publish it. So the event of Wiley getting skunkified happened a week before I went to Florida.

…. he still smells faintly of skunk.

Spring Peeks

This past week I was visiting my Grandmother in Florida. I got to see a huge contingency of my family and a few friends too! It was a great trip and not long enough, but I agree with the old adage that you should always leave on a high note. Here just a few photos I took while I was there:

My baby cousin Lily in her carseat. She's a good baby and very smart- along with being insanely adorable. We were on our way to lunch and then the beach.

At lunch someone ordered a glass of wine and it ended up at our table. I thought it was funny that it looked like Lily was reaching for the wine. (We removed it right after this shot. I think she would have knocked it over if we hadn't)

The beautiful beach!

A sunset from my Grandma Faye's house. My camera doesn't do it justice.

My Grandma Faye and me at Rocco's Tacos in Florida.

Grandma Faye, me and Uncle Steve. Mehri took this photo but I can't seem to find the one we took with her in it.

Self portrait on Grandma Faye's front balcony. I look pretty happy and relaxed I think!

I was sad to leave Florida so soon after arriving, but I was very happy to get back to the farm and get my hands in the dirt. Wiley and Atticus were very excited to see me and that's always heartening. It was a great reunion with the dogs. There was a lot of jumping, panting, wiggling and twirling… and that was just me!

I realized, while I was away, that I hadn't updated the blog in some time and that you all are a bit in the dark as far as how the seeds are developing. So here is a series of photos that shows how they have grown:

Here we are on March 3rd, the day of the planting. I was sick, so Aaron helped me.

March 10th: Coastal Star Green Romaine Lettuce. Though at this stage all the seedlings look almost identical.

Most of the seeds sprouted by March 10th except for the two cherry tomato seed groups.

March 15th: Coastal Star Green Romaine Lettuce in the front and Nancy Green Butterhead Lettuce in the back. You can see the Sugar Snap Peas in the back on the right in this photo. Those were just racing ahead of all the others!

March 16th: Sugar Snap Peas in the back and Spaghetti Squash in the foreground.

March 21st: The day I got back from Florida I found that the Sugar Snap Peas are about to start needing a trellis and the tomatoes (in the foreground here) have decided to pop up finally.

March 21st: Close up shot of the Sugar Snap Peas.

March 10th: Mystery heirloom corn. I found a baggie of rainbow colored corn seeds in the freezer of the farmhouse when we first moved in. So when I was sowing the seeds for the aquaponics system, I thought, "Why not see what happens if I plant some of this corn?" So I did. And it grew!

March 16th: Happy corn just popping up! In the background of this shot you can see the Moneyplant seeds I sowed on March 10th coming up.

March 21st: I cam back to the corn getting really ready to be moved outdoors!

A second shot of the corn on March 21st.

An old pic from around the end of 2012 of the first batch of spaghetti squash.

Same plants on March 16th.  They are supposed to be droopy like that. They are a vine-like plant that likes to creep along the ground. Soon I'll have to transplant these outside.

So that is the update for the seeds! I'm very excited and I can't wait to put them in the system. Speaking of the aquaponic system, the test fish are in the tank and they are thriving nicely. Tomorrow we will get the rest of the fish. We are starting with goldfish and will move onto koi once we feel really confidant about keeping the fish alive and healthy. So far everything is progressing along nicely!

As far as the rest of the farm is going, we are doing our best to keep up with general chores as well as the aquaponics chores. My daily routine has expanded quite a bit now that the weather is consistently pretty warm. In case you are curious, my days are usually as follows:

Get up at 6:30 AM, let Wanda and Amelia out of their coop, give the cats a bit of kibble, (feeding barn cats doesn't stop them from killing pests- it just ensures they are getting a balanced and consistent diet), feeding Wanda and Amelia and refreshing everyone's water bowls, walking up the hill to feed the other chickens, checking for eggs, bringing any eggs back down the hill and cleaning them. THEN I feed Wiley, do my exercises, make my coffee and eggs, and read the news online. After that it's outdoor chores till lunch and more of the same after lunch. 

What I call outdoor chores are a whole range of things: working on cleaning out The Pit of Time, weeding, trimming trees and bushes, raking leaves that didn't get raked in the fall, cleaning up branches that have fallen during strong storms, watering my bulbs, mucking out the chicken coop… stuff like that. It's exhausting work to be sure and I have to watch myself so I don't re-injure my back, but I love it. 

Speaking of The Pit of Time, I was working on it this morning and found a creepy doll's head:

This is just a sample of how disgusting The Pit can be.

Close up of the doll head…. soooooo creepy!

The cats are all doing well, though since I've been back I haven't yet seen Chairman Meow. He can be elusive sometimes… much like his namesake. Carl is doing a lot better and looks super healthy! Atticus seems to be getting bigger and bigger by the day and has zero concept of how big or strong he is. Wanda and Amelia are doing really well and happily roam all over the property together. They love it when I garden and are excellent as assistant diggers and tillers. 

Here are a few recent photos from around the farm:

This morning's sunrise. My iPhone doesn't do it justice- it was so much prettier in person.

Aaron contemplating something.

Atticus and Hilda. She's so camouflaged that you really have to look very close to see her. She's right in the center of the photo.

Carl after his FIV diagnosis.

The ground cover we have all over the place have purple flowers and it's a beautiful carpet of purple and green.

Wiley on my wild stained glass style flower carpet. 

Morning cuddling with Wiley.

Atticus in the kitchen of the main house.

Atticus resting on my leg in the kitchen. I like to sit on the floor with him while Aaron cooks. 

Carl likes to sit on the porch table and peek at me through my kitchen window while I do the dishes. 

Wiley and Wanda eye each other on my front porch.

Carl and Lucy try to share a bed on the table on my front porch.

The hill outside my back porch. The structure on the left is the pool deck and the barn in the background is ours. 

Wiley and Atticus got into the back field this afternoon and Wiley was covered in burrs. Wiley had cornered Hilda and Atticus (as always) was just along for the fun of it. 

There is a trough for the goats and donkeys that used to live on the property that has rainwater in it. Atticus is now tall enough to easily drink out of it, as you can see. Wiley is not. 

I took him inside for some intense grooming and cool, clean water. He's now napping on the floor after his super big fun time adventure.

 Hilda is furious and I'm sure she's somewhere plotting her revenge...