Featherweight

I couldn't pass her up.

Actually, I almost did pass her up.

But Hubby said to get it.
My Grandma gave me one soon after Hubby and I were married. A few years later (and needing something that would sew heavier fabric) someone talked me out of it for $50 and I've always regretted it.
Blondie and I were wandering through Sandy Antique Mall looking for a dresser or chest of drawers for Prion's room and I saw this beauty sitting in the cabinet.

She's so pretty and in such good shape! There were only a few spots of wear on the flip down arm. The decals are all in perfect shape.

And she came with a carry case in great shape, too. The case doesn't even smell!

Look at all the feet that were in the attachments box! Even a few original needles.

Her only scar is a chip from the bottom of the socket.

She's visiting A1 Sewing right now. They were able to save my serger and make it sew like it was brand new, so they're giving my new girl a Platinum Service to make sure she is running smoothly and will give me years of good sewing.

The owner saw her and said, "Oh, we love Featherweights!"

So do I.

The woman 'checking her in' looked up the serial number and said she was built sometime between 1950 and 1951. Fantastic shape for a 60+ year old machine.

I can hardly wait 2 weeks to give her a spin on my next quilt block.

And I'll be thinking of my Grandma and smiling the whole time I'm sewing.

Another Corned Beef Experiment

Sheepy had some extra beef that she was willing to share. Meatloaf (Sheepy's bull) got a lot too playful with the cows. So he turned into.... something to eat. If you can't keep your horns where they belong, you're gonna end up with lead poisoning.

I recently bought a book (what else is new!)

A Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing & Smoking Meat, Fish & Game by Wilbur F. Eastman Jr.

In our defense of buying books, we've always taught our kids that reading is like magic! If you can read, you can learn almost anything you want to learn. After being married for 30+ years we have books and bookshelves in every room in the house except some of the bathrooms.

This book looked like a great reference book so I decided to add it to our collection.

It happened to have a recipe for Corned Beef. (It really has 2 recipes, this one cures in the fridge). This recipe was much easier than the one that Sheepy sent me. (Here's my first and second posts about my first corned beef).

This recipe used salt, brown sugar, bay leaves, pepper corns, allspice, and cloves. Much easier than the last recipe!

All ready to put in the fridge. I hope "Meatloaf" tastes good!

It's been such a long month so far that I wrote "Ready 10 April". It should read "Ready 10 May"!

"Meatloaf" will sit in the brine for two weeks, instead of a week like the first corned beef. I have to shake it around and flip the meat every day or two to make sure that all the meat gets covered with brine.

Thanks for sharing, Sheepy! I'll let you know how it tastes.

Salad Garden Part 2

I got the salad garden almost done yesterday. I want to plant some lettuce in the front, so it isn't completely done. But the bed is done, the kale, broccoli, and spinach are all planted. The experiment is officially underway! (The first post for this project is found here.)

Here are the final photos.

Bed all done, wood chips in place.

Here's the corner that has newspaper under it, and a piece of paneling at the bottom of the fence, below the dirt, to keep the dirt from leaking out the fence.

Kale on the far left, broccoli on the right, and you can't quite see the spinach because it's little. It lines the front of the bed.

Here's the spinach!

Since the wood chips were all in place before I planted (that's what the video said to do), I had to move the chips out of the way when I planted. As I dug the hole, I kinda made a mess with the dirt.

I ended up adding another wheel barrow full of wood chips to cover up the places where the dirt was visible after I planted.

I actually think the bed looks kinda nice, nicer than anything else we've ever done in this spot.

This guy thought it looked kinda nice, too. I sent him to visit the chickens, they thought he looked kinda nice.... for a snack.

The first lady bug of the season! Sweet!

I watered all the plants very well yesterday and today. I'll water them every day this week. After that  I'll only water them if they wilt.

Planting some lettuce is still on the list. My plan is to plant it between the spinach plants.

It will be an interesting experiment. I'd love fresh broccoli, kale, spinach, and lettuce all summer long.

And if this works well, this will be an easy bed to cover in the fall to extend the growing season.

Happy Birthday, Hubby!

He's away on business, but his wonderful partner took this photo of him eating cake. His birthday is really today, but they had birthday cake last night, because today is going to be busy.

We don't get many photos of Hubby, but he has a hard time refusing his partner. He's a good and generous soul. Actually, both of them are, which is probably why they like working with each other.

There are so many wonderful people in the world! They are just so busy working and doing good stuff, that most of what we hear about is the not so nice people.

I hope you've got wonderful, generous, kind, gracious, good people in your life. I really do.

Salad Garden Part 1

The Back to Eden Gardening video looked so interesting! I really wanted to give it a try, at least in a small way.

We have a spot by the gazebo that used to be a flower bed, but I couldn't grow much there because the sprinklers didn't hit it, and I'm not much for wasting culinary water on plants. That spot also gets strong sun part of the day, but it's in shade both morning and late afternoon.

Mix that thought with the thought that our kale did very well all summer, even in 100˚ F weather, because Hubby loved the wild sunflowers that grew in the veggie garden and shaded the kale.

Here's the spot. I dug out what was left of the wood raised bed.

The grassy spot on the left wasn't part of the original flower bed, so I hacked off the grass (it was soooo tall). This area doesn't get hit by the sprinklers either, so it had crab grass and never looked very good.

I laid wet newspapers over the area that was grass. I've done this in other areas before and it works great as a weed barrier as long as the grass is clipped short under the paper, the newspaper is at least 4 layers thick, the paper is wet (to keep it from blowing away) and the newspaper is overlapping by at least 3".

I don't like the paper dripping wet, just wet enough to keep it from blowing away. I take a handful of paper and hold it under the water in a bucket, that's usually enough.

If the newspaper doesn't overlap weeds will grow through the cracks. I promise!

Hubby bought the landscaping bricks before he left on a business trip. Good thing he bought 1 extra because the length of the garden wasn't evenly divisible by the number of blocks, so I had to make the garden about 8" deeper.

The level of the garden is higher than the bottom of the fence. I used an old piece of paneling cut to fit between the ground and the fence. You can see the white-ish piece of wood in the background.

The back of the paneling matches the fencing color, you can hardly see it in this photo.

This is why I'm trying to get the salad garden done this week. This is the kale and broccoli I planted last fall. The kale is just about ready to bolt in the greenhouse. It didn't grow as well as I wanted over the winter, but it took off this spring!

I finished putting the dirt and the wood chips in the garden. But by the time I finished it was almost dark. Almost as in there were too many stars for me to count, but I could still see the ground so I wanted to finish.

Tomorrow I'll plant the kale and broccoli and maybe some lettuce seeds. I might try planing some peas in the back so they grow up the outside of the gazebo.

As with many of our projects, this is another experiment. I'm not sure it will work or not. I love the idea of having a salad garden close to where I can pick the produce. The thought of not having to water or weed much because of the wood chips is a big plus, too!

I've still got a few small piles of wood chips. I'm planning on putting them around the raspberries this year to keep the weeds down and the moisture in the soil.

And we're also planning on trying a few raised beds in the big garden. I want to see how well the Mini Farming concept works, too.

Not too bad for a days' work--especially for a 50 year old lady :)

Vinegar Weed Killer

I've had a few people tell me that using vinegar for a weed killer is a great option to Round-Up or other weed killers.

I searched around on the internet for some recipes and found this very helpful site. The Garden Counselor

I really appreciate the scientific approach used on the site (being that I'm married to a Ph. D. chemist and all.)

They used a few different recipes for killing weeds. I used the Full Strength Vinegar and Soap recipe. Really, it's 1 gallon of regular white vinegar (it's cheaper than cider vinegar) and 1 tablespoon of Dawn dishwashing liquid (because that's what I have on hand.) I put mine in a new garden sprayer.

Are you wondering what the soap adds? The scientist/hubby said that the soap is the 'spreader sticker' that makes the vinegar stick to the plant better.

I sprayed the weeds in the flower beds and around the new fruit trees a day after it rained.

There are some pros and cons to using vinegar. The pros include: I don't have to buy a Monsanto product, it is safer around pets and kids, it only kills the tops (not the roots) of the plants, our soil is alkaline here, so adding some acid to the soil is a good thing.

One con is: it only kills the roots of the plants.

While killing the roots and the plant completely is a great thing in some areas of the yard, I'd prefer to not kill roots in the flower beds and around the fruit trees. If I spray with vinegar and soap often enough, I'm fairly sure the roots will eventually die off. If they don't, at least I haven't killed off the flowers or the fruit trees along with the weeds.

Here are some before and 24 hour afer photos

Before spraying.

24 hours after spraying. I didn't get the camera in exactly the same spot, sorry about that! You can see the grass and the dandelion are brown, although the flowers on the dandelion are still yellow. 

Before spraying

24 hours after spraying, again, the flowers are still yellow, but the leaves of the plants are dying off.

24 hours after spraying (but no before picture). You can see the bind weed all shriveled. I'm pretty excited about this! I can spray really close to the other plants in the flower bed, while it might kill a few leaves of some of the flowers, it won't kill the roots. I never use Round-Up in my flower beds because I don't want to kill off any of the flowers, but I hate pulling bind weed all summer long, too. Using vinegar and soap (I'm hoping) will help me keep the bind weed down this year without hurting the rest of the flowers.

One more reason to use vinegar and soap: I'm not leaving harmful chemicals on the plants that the bees still enjoy! This is the first honeybee I've seen this year, what a beautiful sight. Since Dandelions are among the first flowers to blossom in the spring, they are pretty important to the these hard-working gals!

We'll probably still use a stronger weed killer on the access road to the barn and in spots on the driveway, especially to control the puncture weeds. However, I think we'll be using alot of vinegar in the flowerbeds and around fruit trees (and maybe even on the thistles in the pasture) and see how it works in other areas of the yard throughout the summer.

Back to Eden Gardening Method

My friend just told me about this method of gardening. It sounds really interesting!

Here's a quote from the site:

BACK TO EDEN shares the story of one man’s lifelong journey, walking with God and learning how to get back to the simple, productive methods of sustainable provision that were given to man in the garden of Eden. The organic growing system that has resulted from Paul Gautschi’s incredible experiences has garnered the interest of visitors from around the world. However, never until now have Paul’s methods been documented and shared like this!

As a part of our mission to freely give and freely receive, the makers of BACK TO EDEN have agreed to stream the full feature film online for free. For viewers who support this film and who want to help other people see it, please share backtoedenfilm.com, buy copies of the full feature film to give to others or host a screening in your community.

Part of my community is my friends from all over the US who visit Welcome Home Farm on the internet. So I'm sharing with you

If you are a Christian, you will love it even more! If you aren't, there is so much good information here that it is worth watching.

He's really not preachy, he just tells you how he figured out how to garden with little to no watering, weeding, and starting with terrible soil.

http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

We're going to try a raised bed or two this year as well as using wood chips (from trees we chipped last year) all around the raspberries.

Thanks for stopping by. If you watch the video, please let me know if you try gardening this way. If you use this method already, leave a comment about how you like it.

We're always learning something new on this little hobby farm, and that keeps life exciting!