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By Annette, on April 1st, 2012% So I let the daily blogging thing go by the wayside. Winters – or, more accurately, waiting for spring to really get rolling – are a bit boring on the ranch. I probably should have been painting more, or working more on the neverending to-do list, but the fatigue factor really got to me. Now that I’m on some supplements to get my B levels back up, I feel a whole lot better, and more like my old self. Still not taking iron supps, though, and I’m definitely not eating any liver, so that’s still a work in progress.
But progress there is: all of the first round of flats, except two, have been transplanted: tomatoes and peppers, mostly. The other two flats have onions (plus one lonely little datil pepper that isn’t going to make it, like the other dozen that never bothered to germinate) and herbs (plus artichokes to replace the ones zapped by the severe freeze we had). I’ve also sown shelling peas, snap (green) beans, peanuts, three kinds of cucumbers, okra, carrots, spinach, and sweet potatoes, along with various herbs and flowers for the bees. Out back in the chicken yard, where we had composted some things over the past year and where the chickens had scratched around, I put in lima beans (ugh), sunflowers, and corn. Yes, corn. It is my personal windmill here on the ranch, and I have another variety I’d like to put in somewhere, too.
Yesterday we got over an inch and a half of rain, as measured by our very own weather station. Before the rains started, I had transplanted out a flat, and gave it up when the big thunder started rolling across the sky. It was only around 10 AM that it started storming, but it lasted almost all day. Much needed rain, although we’re still very short of normal.
Today, more sweet potatoes put in, the other flats put out, as much newspaper and hay put down as my back could stand, and two more flats started and put under the lights in the barn: paisano tomatoes for sauce, sweet basil, purple basil, and two types of tobacco for mom. Got another canvas started, added to one of the earlier ones that is now dry, dealt with an asshole who thinks we should have known to remove his account when he never bothered to let us know, bitching about the invoice the system generated – hey, my superpower of ESP still has not kicked in from the radiation, and no others have appeared either. That’s a bummer.
Several trees my mom swore were dead were just a little dead, and are now upgraded to alive, leafing and budding out. The peas, cukes, and okra have all started to poke their heads up. The snap beans are probably a week or so away from beginning to flower. We’ve had asparagus spears popping up for the past couple of weeks. It’s time to start prepping the spots the beehives will be in: two in the rear, one up front.
Tonight: seafood feast by request, as my sister is visiting from Illinois. Another attempt to view Jupiter and its moons before it slips away beyond our viewing period as the days get longer. Starting another canvas while the others dry a bit. Starting the reworking of our tutorials for our users, since our control panel has changed since the first round. Doing end of quarter stuff for the business. Relaxing. Maybe.
By Annette, on March 18th, 2012% Lately I’ve been feeling pretty tired, all the time. With some B12 supplementing and some working outside in the sun once more, I’m now feeling a lot more like myself. Today I replaced three (of four) boards on various frames that needed to be repaired, fertilized some frames and worked that in to prep them for planting, replaced all my watering timers as the current set froze over the winter and then cracked (didn’t toss them, though – they still work, they just leak like hell which will be fine in areas like the orchard), planted the first round of sweet potatoes, reran some irrigation lines, and cooked some steaks, sauteed squash, and baked some potatoes for our dinner. I even managed to get some steak down, a major accomplishment.
Oh, and I got the first sunburn of the season. Luckily with my heritage, by tomorrow it will be faded and I’ll be back to getting my farmer’s tan on.
Tomorrow: beginning the tomato transplants, as they’re ready to come out of the flats, sunflower sowing, thinning some onion and leeks that were started in the front garden late last year for replanting to give them all some more room, and washing/sanitizing wine bottles and the fill bucket so I can bottle the rissling for storage, then beginning the honey weizen. Always something to be done at the ranch.
By Annette, on March 6th, 2012% One week into clarifying, and we’re making progress.
The clearing continues from the top down. Another week or so, and we should be ready for bottling and aging. Since we’re into spring here in Florida, we’ll be picking up some strawberries (local!) and getting started on some strawberry wine by request.
By Annette, on March 2nd, 2012% Finally, getting together with my doctor’s office for the results on the blood work I had done. I swear, it’s impossible to reach them, or they don’t call back. Much as I love my doctor, I think I’ll be finding another one just to avoid having to deal with his staff.
In any case, all the good stuff is low, and the bad stuff is high. Low B12, low iron, high total cholesterol, high bad cholesterol, high liver enzymes, etc. Apparently the B12 is so low they want me to come in for an injection for the next two weeks, and then take a supplement. That low level, and the iron low level would certainly explain the constant fatigue, though, so it’s a good thing we did the testing. They want me to take drugs for the cholesterol (nope) and no more tylenol or anything with acetaminophen due to the liver issue. The worst of it all is the lecturing from my mother and the planning by her and my sister without me about what to do about me. It’s a conspiracy!
By Annette, on March 1st, 2012% Wine, that is. This evening is the final stage before bottling: stabilizing and clearing. Everything has been mixed in, the carboy is topped off, and the bung is back on with the airlock. Another 14 days or so, and hopefully the wine will have cleared appropriately and we’ll be able to bottle into 375mL bottles, cork them, and put them away for a bit.
The lager we did previously is aging nicely: we popped open a bottle to look it over, and it’s getting there. Mom drank her half, and the other half went into the shrimp we were boiling. The next batch of beer, to be started next week, will be a honey weizen. We’ll also be doing more wine, as my brother has requested a batch of strawberry wine. What better time for that than spring, when the berries are freshest?
By Annette, on February 16th, 2012% Coming soon to a wine bottle near you.
To be more precise, it will hit the bottling phase in about 10 days. From there, it will need to age a bit. This is a riesling type, as that’s what my mom and aunts like to drink. If I were still drinking wine, I’d be inclined to go for a pinot grigio, but I think the next experiment in wine making will be a fruit wine (blueberry!).
By Annette, on February 14th, 2012% Honey lime chicken, rice, black beans, onions, a touch of (very mild) hot sauce, wrapped in a tortilla, covered in a three cheese sauce, broiled for just a few minutes.
Delicious.
By Annette, on February 5th, 2012% The football season, that is! Tonight’s the last game until fall – boo. I’m sure we’ll find a way to keep ourselves occupied in the offseason, which is the real season on the ranch. Tonight we’ll have pizza, subbing for brisket, and guacamole, and chips, and other assorted crap that is suitable for noshing during a Super Bowl.
The flats started last month in the barn are all up. Tomorrow I’ll start the flats of tobacco (for mom) and keep working on the reconfiguration of the frames in the front garden. And f still refuses to rain, more dragging hoses to the trees to try to keep them going. The grapefruit and the orange out in the orchard are striking quite the pathetic poses, as are the lemons. Sad, but I figure they should be able to pull themselves out of it. After all, citrus farmers down here have had trees go through this kind of oddball weather and still produce a crop.
Today I began the first fermentation of the wine (riesling), in the bucket, airlock on, waiting for the yeast to get busy. In a week, time to shift it to the secondary fermenter, and maybe start another round of beer. If only I could drink any of it…
By Annette, on January 30th, 2012% Looking forward to the (short) series Doomsday Preppers coming up on National Geographic. They had a standalone episode last year, with one guy repeating the same long phrase about coronal ejections over and over – but he and his wife did build a tilapia tank out of their pool and used that waste to fertilize crops in a very nice setup. I’ve been reading the comments on some sites about the new series – in the clips for which I could swear I saw the Dervaes clan briefly, so that part will be muted out or forwarded on the DVR if that’s the case, since they annoy me – and I have to say that some of the fringe dwellers on those sites are absolutely batshit insane. Between the people with grandiose conspiracy theories about how the military is gearing up to take over at least one major city and the armchair commandos blathering about OPSEC, it can be amusing when it isn’t a bit scary. I watch this sort of show for the same reason I watch things like Hoarders: morbid fascination.
I’ve also been watching some bee-related documentaries and working up some reviews of those, including the single most annoying line out of all of them.
Mount Mulch is being taken down, slowly but surely. The back garden area has two walkway areas to mulch to be complete before I move along to the herb garden and berries up front. I figure Tuesday to finish the paths and begin on the other stuff. Wednesday is yet another trip to the dentist, so Thursday will be the day to pick things back up again. Instead of banging/jarring my head around working outside after the dentist, I’ll be starting the wine (riesling!) that we’re going to make here. Fun stuff.
By Annette, on January 27th, 2012% Sometimes I wonder about these things, especially when we get an egg that is huge compared to normal eggs. The five normal eggs weigh about 2 3/8 ounces each. The whopper weighs in at 3 5/8 ounces. We’ve gotten several double yolkers since we’ve had chickens, and this one will likely be another – or perhaps a triple. That would be something to see.
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2012 Harvest Totals Eggs: 703
Vegetables:
Cucumber: 6 3/4 oz
Bean, green snap: 20#
Peas (shelling): 1# 12 3/8 oz
Peppers (bell, all colors): 7# 1 7/8 oz
Herbs:
Dill: 8 oz
Marjoram: 5/8 oz
Oregano: 3/8 oz
Rosemary: 7 1/2 oz
Thyme: 6 oz
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