Bees are enjoying the onions that have been allowed to go to flower:

I wonder what the honey will taste like?

It’s a great year for some things, like our tart state plant, the Oregon Grape:

It’s not actually in the grape family, but it makes a really delicious dry fruit wine.

Some year soon, we’re going to have to do a huge field of black oil sunflowers, which are a staple item for our goats and chickens. This is a volunteer, and a spectacular example; I lost count at 27 flowers on this one 6′ tall plant:

Most of the remaining garlic and onions were pulled this morning and now hang from the rafters in the living room:

I am not recommending this as an air freshener. Especially on a hot day when the windows are closed to hold in the cool nighttime air.

Tomato plants are finally setting fruit, and are overflowing the former garlic and onion beds:

We planted about 7 different varieties of tomato this year, purchased as small starts from Boondockers Farm, a great place for heirloom seeds and starts near Eugene.

Boondockers have been working with several obscure (to me, at least) tomatoes, fusing their goals of preserving heirloom DNA and finding varieties that thrive in our particular climate.

Evan, who owns the farm with his partner Rachel, was kind enough to spend an inordinate amount of time educating someone (me) who was only buying one tray of discounted starts. Several of the ones I chose from their almost overwhelming selection are of Eastern European origin, with names like De Barrao Black Ukrainian, Kosovo, and Malakhitovaya Shkatulka. The ones with less exotic names sound no less enticing – Chocolate Cherry, Black Zebra, Chocolate Stripes.

I carefully placed little tags next to each start so I could assess the varieties for future planting, but now there are a few mystery plants…the sometimes frustratingly persistent ink of a Sharpie marker has no UV resistance whatsoever =\

I also don’t know what variety of tomato these are; they popped up voluntarily in a compost bin:

The first round of potatoes is in, and the yield is not overwhelming but better than my previous efforts.

I did not know this before, but “potatoes,” like most of our roots and tubers, are things we plant and care for in order to keep the tunneling moles well nourished. Kidding, but not entirely; I’ll explain in the next post.

We got snow!

The critters all had their own ways of dealing with it:

Some found spots of sunshine…

Some hid in the trees…

Some went exploring…

…and some wondered what the heck this cold white stuff was!

Can you find the goat in this one?

Here she is:

These are not goats:

Lulu and Zoe:

Nikabrik:

Sherazi tobacco curing in 2007

In 2007, I impulse-bought a packet of Sherazi tobacco seeds, and this hardy Turkish variety survived my bumbling first year of outdoor gardening, growing to five feet tall. Inexpert curing left this already very strong variety almost unbearably harsh, and the part that turned out best was only smokeable mixed in with some American Spirit. Most of it ended up getting mold on it as I shuffled it in and out of the house in the late fall, when the outside humidity is about a zillion percent and the inside humidity, thanks to the wood stove, is pretty much a negative number.

In 2008, I tried a variety called TN86, which is a more mild one similar to what is used in American cigarettes. The seedlings all died in the inadequately sealed greenhouse. Twice.

March 2009, with the greenhouse a bit tighter, I started a bunch of TN86 using commercial seed-starting mixture in 4″ pots, and some Sherazi from seed produced by my first crop. Germination was terrible with the 2-year-old Sherazi seed, but there are five of those now in the garden, along with about 25 of the TN86. They seem to be doing well.

I got my TN86 seeds from Victory Seeds, an Oregon company that specializes in preserving open-pollinated heirloom seed varieties. They have a basic tobacco growing guide here, and there’s plenty of information available online, so I’ll just relate my own observations that may be of help to someone trying to grow it in our damp, mild region.

• it has to be started early; March seems to work for me, but you MUST start it indoors or in a greenhouse this early; it will not tolerate freezes at either end of its cycle.
• sterile seed starting mix must be used – the seedlings are tiny and can take up to 3 weeks to come up. If there are any weed seeds in your mix, they will completely overcome any wispy little tobacco seedlings.
• Thinning – ok, this goes for all plants, but it is vital; you don’t get 2 half-size plants if you crowd them, you get two stunted and asymmetrical ones
• full sun – even in the greenhouse early on, the ones that were partially shaded showed it.
• be ready for silly questions; many people in our area have licenses to grow marijuana, but are surprised to hear that growing tobacco is legal.
• Tobacco REALLY likes loose, fertile soil. I know, what plant doesn’t? But see the photos below…

Tobacco planted in soil worked for the first time this year, with minimal compost worked in:

Tobacco planted in soil that’s been worked for two years, with a moderate amount of compost mixed in:

Tobacco planted in soil that’s been worked for three years, with a moderate amount of compost mixed in every spring:

And finally, monster tobacco growing in a foot-deep layer of composted goat bedding in a hay-bale raised bed (circled because it’s being crowded by zuccnini plants):

Feed your tobacco well!

Apparently our girl was experiencing false labor for the past approximately 36 hours. She was still having mild contractions when we checked on her during the night, but by this morning they were no more.

And even more surprising – her ligaments are back. Those ligaments near her tail end are the biggest predictors of impending kidding – they go soft to let her bones separate enough for birth. Yesterday we couldn’t feel them – except for a couple of times when I almost thought I could, but then they would disappear again – today they are soft, but they are clearly there.

She is up and alert and enjoying the mid-70s and sunshine on pasture with the other goats. Her actual “due date” is this Friday, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on her over the next few days, waiting for the real thing.

It might sound silly to someone who always got eggs from a supermarket, or who always had chickens, but today we ate “homegrown” (home laid?) eggs for the first time, and it was a thrill. It’s amazing that these pigeon-sized bantam hens lay such big eggs.

The shells were very firm and thick, so they cracked neatly with no shrapnel. Yolks were the deep orange, high-domed ones we’ve gotten used to from real free-range eggs, and unsurprisingly the omelet was delicious.

This is going to be a raised bed with straw-bale borders. The inside is filled with old goat bedding and other compostables. Soon I’ll remove the tarp, letting water in to start the composting process. The plan is to put a layer of soil and finished compost on the top and plant into that, hoping that the warmth of the compost action beneath it will help get early plantings off to a good start.

Yesterday, our neighbor and I planted a hundred baby fir trees along the property’s roadsides, to eventually decrease traffic noise and provide privacy. They come in a bag about three feet long:

I expected the trees in there to be tiny, but they were mostly about two feet long, and very healthy looking.

This kale is actually the remains of last year’s that got harvested, then eaten down to stubs by goats, then transplanted into the cold frame, where it’s thriving.

Turnips are starting to sprout in the cold frame as well. It’s not the ‘right’ time of year to plant them, but with the mild climate here it seems worth trying.

This garlic we planted a few months ago is looking well:

…as is this garlic, which we planted about a year ago. It died down pretty young and I never dug it up, but it’s returned as a volunteer. (since everything is so green out here, I removed color from everything but the garlic plant to make it visible)

Pregnant goats!

Here’s a 55-gallon steel drum (used once, to transport maple syrup) set into the ground to serve as a root cellar. We haven’t experimented with putting food in it yet, but the thermometer I have in there seems to stay in the 40s no matter what’s going on outside.

Well, we weren’t expecting this so soon, but our dear little Molly left us a gift this morning!

Here it is next to a “regular” egg, so you can see the size difference – the bantam egg is the smaller one on the left.