On new old hobbies...

I have been curious about tatting since the first time I saw one of those strange little shuttles at the craft store next to the embroidery floss. I have always kind of know I'd get around to trying it. I have a passion for historical crafts and lacy, dainty things. Hah.

So this past week I picked up a shuttle and some ecru colored thread and went about learning. I quickly found that while it's numbingly abusive to the finicky, detail-oriented part of my brain, the part of my brain that does math and manages my OCD was intensely satisfied. What could be better than counting and having to pick out little tiny knots every few minutes? Did I mention I love to untangle knots?

http://www.thisntat.com/lessons1.html

Above is the link to the tatting tutorial that I used to learn. I think I also pulled up a little video on youtube when I learned how to join picots, but I honestly can't find the link. Forgive the poor linkage, please. I'm posting from my phone and blogger still has a seriously inferior app for posting (I'm considering checking out Wordpress for this very reason).

Needless to say, I am hooked (heh) and I urge anyone who has a mind for patterns and hand-work, and who can understand tension, to give it a shot. I've been making bits of tatted lace to trim some of the projects I've been working on and it's so satisfying to complete!

This is a link to my next project. http://www.georgiaseitz.com/2002/bridal/docbridal.html

Have you ever tatted? Do you find yourself tatting in your sleep now, like I do? Haha!

Tanglewood 2012 lambs!

Well, I've been insanely busy lately but I figured I'd post quickly about the latest additions to our farm.

Last week Nance finally gave birth to a leggy single moorit ram. He's adorable and gawky and hilarious to watch walk.

I admit I was a little disappointed since I plan to send all rams off to freezer camp this fall and this meant I only had one more chance for a ewe lamb.

Well, Blair didn't disappoint! She gave birth to two adorable little lambs, a strong and spunky spotted ewe lamb with some serious chrome, and an adorably scrawny and wimpy little solid black ram. They're so cute together!

In between the lambing ewes, I had another surprise greet me in the barn. One of our chickens, who we have repeatedly had to kick off a nest, had apparently been sneaking back to it to incubate her eggs. I walked in the morning after Nance lanes to find six baby chicks! They're super cute, though we did (literally) lose one yesterday. It was there and then it wasn't! I guess that's how things go on a farm sometimes.

So. I'm posting from my phone which means this isn't going to be very nicely formatted, but here is your daily dose of cute!

Brighid's Little Boy

Now, I know the first few days of a lamb's life can be a roller coaster, but I never thought I'd see such an intense little newborn lamb!

Brighid, my one winter ewe (meaning she's only one year old herself), has given birth to a beautiful and incredibly strong little ram lamb! I'm actually sitting in the barn right now (hooray for wifi!); Nance and Blair are convinced my laptop is edible and Brighid and her little boy are tucked away in a lambing jug with molasses water and alfalfa hay.

I was just drifting off to sleep, with the window cracked ever so slightly, when I heard the quietest nudge of a baa come from Brighid out in the field. There is this seriously fantastic sound that mother sheep make to their babies: something between a baa and a grunt, but with all the softness and gentleness in the world. Brighid sounded exactly the way her mother sounded when she was born!

Of course I was filled with an icy adrenaline burst immediately. I grabbed my sweater and slipped on my sandals and dashed out the door with a headlamp. When the lamplight hit the barn entrance I saw four little sets of eyes reflecting back at me, where there are usually three!

Brighid had not only birthed the little guy all on her own, she had cleaned him off and had mastered the art of shoving him back to her udder where he appeared to be happily, and strongly suckling away, tail wagging the entire time while she cleaned his little bottom! Of course, it's possible he was just trying to suckle. I'll have to watch him over the next several hours to make sure he's looking perky. I can't believe how well formed Brighid's udders are for a one winter ewe!



I'm pretty sure I'm not making a ton of sense right now, but I'm also pretty sure you understand.

I hope everyone else has a nice sound night of sleep. I'm sure I won't, especially since this super-big-bright-full-moon ('tis a broad brecht moonlecht necht tenecht!) has the raccoons, coyotes and even the foxes crying tonight. Super creepy! I'm on high alert, as, I'm sure, is Brighid!

April Showers at Last!

It's finally raining on the 250+ strawberry plants my mom and I planted and transplanted earlier this week. It is exciting to see them blooming so profusely this year!

Two years ago I liberated a number of older strawberry plants by planting them out in the field along the raspberry beds. This year they have taken off and are actually choking out the perennial grasses in some spots! How exciting to grow such a deliciously functional groundcover!

Now if the 100+ transplants take off like that I am going to have an amazing strawberry patch out there.

I have "liberated" all of the modern varieties, leaving my raised strawberry beds specifically for rare and heirloom varieties. The single plant pictured below (with the HUGE blossom) is of a variety first documented in the 1700s! I can't wait to have all twelve of the front raised beds planted in rare varieties. Mwahaha...

Right. I have got to get back to this.

I've neglected you, poor blog! The spring has sprung and I have let you fall by the wayside.

The nice thing about a blog is that even if you lose readers from neglect, you can always pick the blog back up and dust it off.

This spring has been an intense one here at Tanglewood. I've put in so many berry bushes I can't even count them all and I've brought the berry patch up to a total of over 1/4 acre of blackberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries and even some less common rubus like wineberry, loganberry and tayberry.

I've also been hard at work prepping strawberry beds for the impending arrival of new bareroot stock this week. I've even been in contact with another strawberry enthusiast who has hooked me up with Madam Moutot and Scarlet cultivars, both of which are incredibly old and hard to acquire.

I've decided my focus for this year is to take the heirloom gardening a little further. I plan to use a number of Victorian (and Victorian inspired) methods to grow pre-1900 era plants. In fact I'm only growing two non-heirloom plants this year, but they're modern French imports: the Mara des Bois strawberry and the Petit Pois pea, both of which are supposed to be modern kickbacks to a time when the goal of growing food was taste (and novelty) and not marketability or quantity.

Yesterday my husband and I spent a bit of time in the morning's flurries (yes, flurries... Thanks, Michigan!) gathering pea sticks to support my shelling peas. I'll be posting photos (and info, in case you are unfamiliar with pea sticks) of them soon, I promise.

I also started plotting lines in the garden using my new string winder, based on Victorian designs.

Have you been up to anything unique in the garden?

Have you all abandoned me as I have abandoned you? Lol!

On Melon Houses and planting new fruit varieties

If you've read my blog much at all, I'm sure you've picked up on the fact that I have a huge sweet tooth. When you combine that with gardening you end up in all sorts of trouble.

I LOVE to grow fruit, and this year I have decided to pull out all of the stops. I'll be planting new varieties of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants and gooseberries - new to me, that is. Nearly every variety that I'm adding to my garden this year is from before the 1950's. The few exceptions include a modern white currant cultivar that I bought to compare to several antique cultivars that I've ordered, and of course Mara Des Bois strawberries, which I am in love with despite their modern origins. I'll post more on the berry additions later.

For now, take a look at what I've been designing and planning over the past few weeks!



It may not look like much, especially in my chicken scratchy handwriting and sketching, but this is hopefully going to be my adaptation of the British Victorian melon house. The whole thing will be covered with plastic, like a green house, but suspended midway (angled around approximately 2' above the soil) will be a cattle panel (heavy duty welded wire grid). The idea is that I will plant a row of melons at the back of the house (the small end). The vines will grow up the back of the house and onto the cattle panel where they will continue to sprawl outwards across the gaps in the panel. When they finally fruit, the fruit will hang down and I will tie it with simple cotton netting to hold it in place.

This set up will allow for air flow to help prevent mildew, cover to provide early heat for the plants and to prevent cucumber beetles from wreaking havoc on the poor flowers, and control of pollination. My plan is to hand pollinate all of the melons myself (Ooh, I'd love to use an authentic rabbit-tail pollinator! How cool!)

The other thing this set up will allow me to do is grow strawberries beneath the melons. June bearing strawberries tend to reach their peak in (duh) June, which is long before the melons would reach across to the front of the trellis. While the melons are making their first meager inches up to the trellis, the strawberries will be fruitful, planted in a row along the front of the bed. I'll also be hand pollinating these strawberries, which means I'll be able to play around with breeding a bit if I really get the drive. In between the strawberries and the melon plants will be some cutting greens, spinach and tom thumb buttercrunch lettuce.

Also, a slight miscalculation lead me to build these houses 6" shorter than the length of the raised beds. I intend to plant snap peas in a single row along the north side of each bed in this space to help fix a bit of nitrogen and to add some diversity. If cucumber beetles become a real nuisance, I'll tear out the peas and put some rattail radishes in instead. 

No inch unplanted, that's my motto!

So in a fit of intense mania this morning, I began to build my melon houses. Heavy rains and storms were forecasted but I managed to get all three beds ready for the installation of the cattle panels. Once those are in place, I'll attach the final beams, some additional supports, and cover them in tensed 4mm plastic! I've never been a fan of using plastic in the garden, but glass is just not feasible at this point in my life :) I'm sure you understand...

So, this is what I've been madly researching, designing and executing lately. 

Are you planning anything exciting in your gardens this March?

In the kitchen: black currant and wild european blackberry sauce

(Sorry to double post this - it began as an accident but I figured I'd leave this up here in case you wanted to follow what I'm doing in my bakery kitchen this morning. Visit http://tanglewoodbakery.blogspot.com for more posts!)

Today I'm mixing up several cookie doughs and other sweets but what I am most excited about are the fillings for my tartlets.

This week's tartlets will be extra special as I'll be cooking down a rich and earthy fruit paste made from local black currants and locally foraged wild blackberries (European variety, naturalized).

I expect these to be super flavorful with hints of summer wines. I may yet put them over a chocolate or other base when they're in their final tartlet form. I'm hoping for now that they'll stand alone just fine, as I expect them to.

Alas

No sap flow today, but I've got half my spiles in and waiting!

I have been so berry busy..

I was going to apologize for the title of this post, but... nah.

Well folks, it's been a while, and as a consequence I realize I've lost some readers which is a huge bummer... but, but, but! I've been so busy! I go through phases of extreme mania this time of year any time we get a break in the weather, and Michigan seems to be offering break after break after break. It's hard to sit still long enough to write a blog post, unless part of that sitting still involves the comatose collapse after overworking myself in the garden or at the horse farm. We got a dusting of snow the other day; really it was four inches or so, but the next day it was nearly 40º outside so I call it a dusting since it only stuck around for a few hours...

Those few hours of snow were kind of a blessing though because they provided me with an excuse to crash between manic activities. The photo above is of the preparations for our 2012 berry garden. I forget if I've posted on this yet, but I'll be harvesting from seven rows of mature red raspberry bushes (30 ft rows), two rows of mature purple raspberry and two shorter (15 ft) rows of mature blackberry bushes this year. In addition to these beauties, I'll be planting at least 20 new blackberries, 24 gooseberries and 24 currants, in various varieties. This doesn't even begin to touch on the strawberries I have plans for!

While it was warm enough to melt the top few inches of snow this week I was able to get some belated weeding done. We have a serious problem with perennial turf grasses sneaking into raised beds. Ugh, what a drag. We are also plagued by catnip and creeping charlie, or ground ivy (which I find so satisfying to pull out by the arm load, so that's alright!) While weeding, I couldn't help but smile happily at the itty bitty wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) leaves I would find popping up here and there. They are incredibly hardy, but I still tucked them back into bed after I weeded, under some leaves and straw, just in case.

So if you haven't already picked on it, I feel I should point out that I've finally embraced my love for all things fruit and I've decided to replace many of the less desirable points of landscape around our place with fruiting plants. I will still vegetable garden, totally, but I will keep my veggies a little lower key this year, planting primarily things I can direct sow or let self seed. I want my veggies to be a little more... liberated. I'll be interplanting certain semi-shade-tolerant veggies with the berry patches and i'll still have a handful of raised beds designated for them, but I've given myself over to the siren that is fruit gardening, mostly perennial fruit. I've also made plans to convert my cutting green gardens to covered european melon beds, with strawberries interplanted beneath the slanted panels (they'll get crowded out of their sunlight, but not until after their June fruiting season when the melons really take off... at least that's my hope.)

(On a side note, I've recently applied to a government germplasm bank to receive tissue samples of some incredibly old Frageria x ananassa cultivars to use in some kinda geeky research that I'd like to do involving historical vs modern gardening techniques and the antique strawberry - one of these varieties is even documented as being bred at the turn of the 18th century! I will keep you posted on this - even if I don't receive the tissue samples, I have found a few resources for 19th century varieties that I can use.)

Another aspect of my yard that I've decided to dominate with fruit-bearing plants is the West-facing wall that runs behind the long garage. We don't actually have use of the garage; it's used to store golf course maintenance equipment, but I contacted our land lady (who has GOT to be the best land lady ever... and I don't even think she reads this blog so I'm not sucking up here) and she gave me permission to plant espaliered fruits along that wall! I've always wanted to train fruits to a wall, and this wall almost creates a Victorian courtyard feel to our yard, which I really enjoy and want to embrace. 

Yesterday I spent hours clearing the wall. It was plagued by some of the largest multiflora rosa bushes I have ever seen (with canes literally three inches thick!) and the image above seriously shows about half of the length of the wall I cleared. The bushes were huge! You can kind of make out the break in the grass (by the loppers) that shows how far they extended into the yard. I also cleared out years of junk that had been tossed behind those bushes, before our time. There were pallets, logs, old industrial wire, plastic... all SORTS of stuff! I threw away the garbage and dragged the rest of it to the windbreak of pines we have at the West side of the yard where I used it to close a few holes in the existing brush where the ducks like to scramble through to the other side of the old fencing. 

This is a photo that shows the finished wall. I left an adolescent crabapple tree down at the far end because it provides some awesome crabapples that I like to use for canning and we have a pair of orioles that occasionally nest in it in spring. Apart from that, with a bit more work on the existing stumps, this wall will be the new home to three fan-trained blackberry bushes (maybe five if I can clear out behind my raised beds), two fanned cherries, two espaliered pears and two fanned apricots. (I know apricots are impossible to grow, but I'm hoping that by keeping them against the west wall they will flower later and thus be sheltered from late frosts... hoping). I want to avoid growing many pears and apples because the several antique cousins looming over the property harbor a lot of disease that would make it inevitable that they would struggle. I may give in, though, especially if I find them cheap! I've got all sorts of walls I can train plants to on my house, too! LOL.

So yes, I haven't been blogging, but I've been doing so much more! Learning about espalier and prepping for spring has been keeping me very busy. What have you been up to, readers? Anything to prep for the impending spring?

Spring shouldn't be Springing...

We've been enjoying the strangest weather here at Tanglewood. This week has offered two days hovering in the mid-to-high 50's, and the rest of the week has been and will be in the 40's. My usual February activities are almost exclusively house-bound, apart from the occasional slogging of hot water to the barn if the hydrant has frozen again. 

Last year on this very date we were recovering from a snow storm that dumped feet of snow on us; I had to climb fences to get to my horses, as the gates wouldn't open in the deep snow. This year is in stark contrast, as yesterday I spent almost my entire day in a sweatshirt and muck boots, dividing berry bushes and digging holes for the 87 berry plants I've just ordered (Yikes. That number looks bigger when I type it here...) 


Today I intend to spend my time doing the same, taking a break in the mid-day to grab lunch with my brother and then slogging out to tap some Box Elder trees in the hopes that this year produces at least a little sap run despite the bizarre weather.

The crazy thing is, things are actually starting to break hibernation in this heat wave! The peach tree buds have the tiniest bit of swell to them that, if I hadn't inspected them closely last week, I would never have noticed. I have to wonder how this is going to affect our fruit production state-wide, this year. I can't imagine it's going to be good.

Crazier still, when I went outside yesterday morning and checked the pussy willows, they were tightly closed, the buds showing only minimal swelling. By noon, however, six of them had begun to swell so much that they were bursting open! This weather is strange, indeed.

Are you experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures where you live? How are the plants and animals taking it?

(Also, has anybody ever tapped Box Elder trees? I just learned that they produce a delicious sap for syrup and our place is literally plagued by them!)