Waiting For Spring & Prepping For Our No Spend Challenge

We're just in a holding pattern here. I'm going to be starting tomato, eggplant and pepper seeds in a few days. I still have not gotten my list finalized as to what I'm going to grow out. We need to get over to either Tractor Supply or to Wilco and get some more T-posts so we can get our other chain length fence panels up and secured for trellising the tomatoes. We need to get a load of compost hauled up here. We need to get some of the recycled cannabis soil hauled up here and put on the beds. There's so much work to do. Bob still needs to get the second greenhouse framed out, as well. He opted to move a few raised beds and we're going to have them in line with each other, so I'll have 40 feet of greenhouses all in a row.

I did take some pictures of my seeds. I know I have a ridiculous amount of seeds, but I also live on 50 acres, so if I want to plant everything, I have the room to do so. I don't plan on doing that, however. I do want to scatter out some of my wildflower seeds. There's only a few varieties of flowers that I don't want to grow wild and those are my calendula, nasturtium, bachelor buttons, chamomile and spilanthes (toothache ache plant).

I can't say that I will grow out every variety of squash that I have, but I will plant out several of them. I want to put them onto one of  my fence panel trellises. I think I now have zucchini seeds in every color that there is plus round ones.

I want to triple the amount of peas that I grow. I bought several varieties of bush peas so that I don't have to trellis them.

I'm a greens fanatic. I love greens. Swiss chard, spinach, orach, arugula, cress, sorrel, doesn't matter. I love them all!

Here's one of those cool bean varieties that I'm super excited to grow out this year. I'll be planting these out and growing them in one of the greenhouses. I need to get some poles to make a tipi for them. These are called Ping Tung and I bought these seeds from Russ Crow.

I'm most proud, I think, of my collection of heirloom beans. Beans and peas are my favorite things to grow in the garden, particularly bush bean varieties.

Even all those drawers cannot hold my collection of seeds. I'd need to have about 9 more drawers for everything.

I'm trying to figure out a decent system so I know where things are. So far, this is the best I can come up with and it's not a very good, clear or concise system.

I have lots of flowers to get out there into the soil.

My tomato drawer. I have close to 500 heirloom/OP tomato varieties.

I think I'll work on getting my list narrowed down today. I'll probably turn to my tomato group for help on this matter.

We've had clear and quite cold temperatures around here lately. We got a bare dusting of snow here when the country went through that cold snap. We got down there, in temp, at night, but we didn't get the snow. It's so weird how western Washington weather works. We are at 260 feet in elevation, south of Kelso. Just 5 miles down the road, in Kalama, they got 8 inches of snow. In Camas, they got like 14 inches of snow. We got just enough to turn things white. That's it.

I'm not complaining, either.

Some of our friends showed up. << this one is a young buck with his >> young doe.

It was super cold out, I was shivering, so I apologize for the blur.

The lady in the house tosses apples out there for them. We give them carrots. They know that they are safe up here.

 Here's the doe eating an apple.

So, to be quite honest, there are days that I don't even get dressed and we have to fight the dogs for a heater vent up here.

Starting on March 1st, we will start our No Spend project. I have no set timeline for it. We are going to do this for as long as we can stand it. The only things we will allow ourselves to buy in the grocery store are produce, milk products (limited to only milk, 1/2 & 1/2 or heavy cream, nothing else because we can make it) and eggs because until our chickens get going, we'll need to buy eggs. As the garden comes on, I'm hoping we can drop buying most of the produce and limit ourselves to fresh fruit. I do have fruit bushes and we do have blackberries, but we will need to vitamins that come from citrus fruit and I cannot grow bananas here. Also, my grape vines are nowhere close to being able to produce for us.

So, that is my update as to what has been going on here lately. As soon as I finalize my tomato, pepper and eggplant grow lists, I'll write a blog post about those.

Until then, stay warm!

Our "Livestock"

 I was washing some dishes this morning. I want to get a jump start on our Easter dinner menu. Anyhow, I had just filled the sink with dishes that needed to be rinsed when I heard Bob exclaim, "Look at all those elk!"
I thought he saw the bull that was hanging around when we first moved in. I looked out the window and was pleasantly surprised! Bob counted 15, but they were on the move, so there very well could have been more.

I know that bull had been in our yard a few months ago because I found evidence of him all over. 

I love having the elk around. I just don't want them in my garden. We'll have to take the good with the bad. The previous resident had a couple of dogs that had all but run the elk and deer off, or so we've been told. Our dogs don't do that because we supervise ours when they are outside. If they are outside, we're outside.
Here's our Grr-ells. We have Rose on the left and Sasha on the right. Hopefully, with their scent all over the yard, the elk won't find my garden so enchanting and won't mistake it for an all-you-can-eat salad bar.

I don't think our Grr-ells would hurt the elk. They would probably try to herd them. They are Australian kelpies. That's what kelpies do.

This is what we woke up to on Monday (just 5 short days ago). It all melted off rather quickly, but we were in about 8 inches of snow here. You can see that hill that the elk were on in the background. When this melts off, we get quite the pond down below. 

So the elk come down to drink. They like to browse on vegetation, too. They can nibble over there all they want. I'm happy to coexist with them as long as they stay out of my garden.

They were there for quite a while.

We've had deer right up here in the yard. This was a week ago.

There was 3 of them. They were not even scared. This was right before the snow came. 

 

 The livestock grazed for around 20 minutes until they sauntered off into the treeline. 

These are neighbors that I shall enjoy immensely...as long as they stay out of my garden.