Every time a recipe calls for an obscure herb, I try to remember where I planted it. Today it was nigella seeds and I'm thinking I saw them by the tomatoes...🤔 The look of shock on the fam's faces whenever I say it's growing outside brings me joy. Lol.
"In June, yearlings start moving out. Bears that were born last spring and denned up with mom this past winter are now 18-month old yearlings. If all goes well, they’ll be the size of a medium-sized dog by the end of June, although their fur coats can make them look larger. Yearling females are often allowed to move in next door to their mom. Yearling males are strongly encouraged to move out and go find a new territory of their own, so most young bears wandering far from home are males.
No matter how big and furry they look, yearling bears are all trying to figure out how to live without their mom’s help. They are often lonely and lack the fully developed survival skills of an adult bear. They are also hungry and inquisitive and will instinctively check out anything that seems as if it might be a source of food.
Like human teenagers, they are at a very impressionable stage of life. If they quickly discover that human places should be avoided, they will learn to support themselves as wild bears. If they find the backyard pickings are easy, they start down a road that is often a dead end. No matter how cute they look and how hungry they are, the best thing you can do to help yearlings grow up wild is to make sure there’s nothing around your home to attract them. "
There are many more insects, birds and especially swallowtail butterflies this year. I'm not sure if it's a good sign or not. I am always suspicious of these things, thinking maybe the heat is pushing species farther north. The end of May and so far in June, it feels like late July with the heat. Anyway, I am enjoying these beautiful creatures that flutter in my yard by the dozens.
June 1st garden update. Every seed I planted seems to have germinated except for a few blue lake pole bean seeds that were a few years old. Got some new seed and replanted. Now that the heat is due to set in hard this week, we should see some serious growth. SIL even dug in a ground bed where there was nothing but rocks and invasives.
I learned how to can cannellini beans in the pressure cooker last year. Bean patties are so good and so easy. I put a quart of beans into a bowl, add an egg, some flour (I dunno like 1/2 or 2/3 cup), seasonings like salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic granules- add other stuff you like, maybe hot pepper- then mix well. You can do it in a food processor if you want, double the recipe or as I did tonight- use gluten free flour and then fry in a mixture of oil and butter. Cast iron makes the colour nice and golden brown without burning. They take quite a while to cook through, so I put a lid on after they are browned. Serve with salad out of the greenhouse, veggies, rice whatever. Low effort dinner with shelf stable ingredients.
Don’t let anyone ever tell you that chickens aren’t tiny dinosaurs.
Found this lady insisting on sitting on some eggs today so I replaced the measly 2 she was sitting on with 9 fresh eggs I was saving to incubate. It’s her first attempt at motherhood so hopefully in ~21 days she’ll have some cute little chicks following her around.
Spent the day doing garden bed prep and now I’m pooped.
I’m widening both the garden beds and furrows because I found them to be a bit too narrow last year. Reshaping the beds is a pain in the ass and a lot of work but hopefully this is the last time I need to do this and then next year I can just mulch and broadfork them so the bed prep will be much less of a pain in the ass going forward.
We had a #homesteading mindset from 1977, when we married, but not until 2009, when shonin retired, was it possible for us to expand the #gardens and #orchard to cover even half of our acre. These four images are from 2008, and represent some of our best effort from when we were still both working full time (in libraries). It was a much easier climate to #microfarm in, for sure.
Because I was still on the mailing list for some reason, let me remind you to NOT BUY from #BakerCreekSeeds because of their blatant support of right wing ideologies and white supremacy.
My life partner and I live on a 13 hectare #SmallFarm in rural #Merida#Venezuela. We raise dairy cows, heritage breed creole pigs, chickens, geese, fish, and #freerange children.
Tutorials/designs courtesy of Open Source Ecology
https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Hydroponics...