Is it spring yet?

Is it spring yet? Is it spring yet? Right now I am feeling like a five year old waiting for Christmas morning. It has been a long cold winter and I am excitedly and impatiently waiting for spring. Daffodils blooms are still a long month and a half away, which right now feels like an eternity. But there is hope...in spite of the frigid 20 degrees we had today their little green spikes are showing in the garden.

Daffodils getting ready for Spring.

Winter Sowing--Round One

I discovered winter sowing four years ago. Basically winter sowing is planting seeds in clear covered plastic containers, then sticking them outside to freeze and eventually germinate and grow. The clear plastic containers act as mini green houses to retain heat and moisture and speed germination and growth while protecting against severe freeze. The seeds germinate when they are ready and because they are outdoors in natural light and varied temperatures, they are stocky and healthy. You can read all about it here. It has become an important part of my winter and early spring routine and insures that I have hundreds of very cheap, and very healthy plants. I don't know how I gardened without it in the past.

I winter sow in three rounds. The first round is the hardy perennials and annuals that need cold stratification (need to be frozen) in order to germinate. These can be done anytime from December through March. I wintered sowed 24 milk jugs of seeds today. These were mostly those hardy perennial and bi-annual flowers such as poppies, shasta daisies, sweet william, verbascum, black eyed susans, etc.

Start with milk jugs...cut off the tops (set them aside--you will need them later)...poke holes in the bottoms for drainage.

Fill with moist, high quality potting soil....plant seeds...lable with a waterproof marker or pencil. 

Pop the tops back on the jugs....and put them outside in the snow....sit back and wait for your plants to grow!

The second round comes around March 15th. This will be hardy greens and hardy annuals. Winter sowing lettuce, spinach, kale, and collards gives me a big jump on on fresh green salads early in the spring. They germinate during any warm day in late March, then get transplanted into the garden as soon as the ground can be ground can be worked in April. I'm picking baby greens in the begining of May. Hardy annuals such as poppies get planted in mid-March as well. (I grow lots and lots of poppies!)

The third round comes in early April though the first week of May. This is tomatoes, vegetables such as broccoli and brussel sprouts, and herbs like basil and summer savory, and thyme. And lots and lots of zinnias and marigolds.

If you want a support group while your are taking your first baby steps in winter sowing, check out this great forum.
And if you need free seeds to get you started in your winter sowing endeavers, check out this forum...

Almond coconut granola

I am not a cold cereal fan.

A lot of cereals are too sweet and get mushy as soon as you pour milk on it. The ones that aren't too sweet and mushy tend to taste like sawdust or are just so coarse you spend all morning chewing. There is only one boxed cereal that I like--Honey Bunches of Oats with almonds. It has be the Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds. I've tried the other flavors of Honey Bunches of Oats, and they just don't cut it. It is the almonds that make the cereal. Every so often I buy a different kind of cereal to see if there is something else that is edible. I usually end up eating half a bowl then making my husband eat the rest of the box (thank goodness he seems to think all cereals are created equal!).

And honestly, I really don't like granola either. Every home made granola I've ever had is way too coarse. I've never even been tempted to try making it myself. So I surprised myself when I thought, "That sounds really good..." when I read this recipe for homemade granola. (To give credit where credit is due, the recipe was linked in a post in one of my favorite blogs, All That is Good--thanks, Trina!) The best part was, I had every ingredient already in the house, and was on the lookout for recipes to use up the five pounds of almonds that I had bought on sale last month. Plus, I really needed to use up all that extra coconut I had left over from Christmas baking. I made a small batch just to try it out to see if we would like it. Terry and I ate the first batch in one sitting.

Terry's comment was, "You should sell this, this is way better than anything you can buy in the store." I had to agree (maybe not about the selling it part, but it did taste way better than anything I've ever bought in the store or any home made granola I have tried, for that matter). I made another batch using up all the quick oats we had in the house.

I am posting the original recipe, but knowing me I did not follow it exactly.

My version was this:

12 cups quick oats
1 and 1/2 lbs almonds (I only had whole almonds so I ran them through the food processor for a 30 seconds or so)
24 oz flaked coconut (That might sound like a lot of nuts and coconut, but it was those two things that made me notice the recipe, plus I had plenty of both on hand!)
1/2 cup honey and 1 cup raw brown sugar (using what I had on hand)
a couple of tablespoons oil ( I will leave this out all together next time--I'm not sure what the purpose is and the 2 cups called for in the original recipe just sounded kind of gross.)
Dash of salt
tablespoon of vanilla extract
 1/2 cup whole flax seeds
Enough water to make everything moist.

I put everything in a bowl, mixed it with my hands until everything was thoroughly combined, then spread it on cookie sheets and let it bake in a 200 degree oven until completely dried and golden brown. Almond coconut crunch straight out of the oven.

Now here is the original recipe...

16 cups quick oats
4 cups coconut
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup slivered almonds
2 cups oil
2 cups water
2 cups honey
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon almond extract

Instructions:

1. Mix oats, coconut, cornmeal, and almonds in large bowl.

2. In another bowl or blender, mix remaining ingredients.
3. Combine all and stir well. Spread onto two greased baking sheets or in a large baking dish.
4. Bake at 200 degrees for 4-6 hours (or overnight) or until granola is dried and lightly browned. Stir once during baking.

Ducks on the banks of the Huron

The wild mallards are happy that the weather is warming up and the river is thawing...

Possum in a tree

This cute little fellow seemed happy to pose for a photo when I ran into him in the woods today....

Last year I trapped a massive opossum in the have-a-heart trap I set for the squirrels that were demolishing my strawberries. I debated whether or not to just release it the back yard or take it a couple of miles away to woods. I posed the question on a gardening forum that I frequent...do opossums do enough harm in the garden to justify relocating them? I was astonished by the amount of hatred that my question generated. Nearly everyone expressed that the only good opossum is dead one, without giving any concrete reason why.

Opossums are about the most harmless creatures there are. The only real negative thing about them is that they will eat baby chicks (but then just about everything eats baby chicks). I did a bit of research on their diet and discovered that they eat just about everything...including rats and mice, road kill, snakes, ripe vegetables and fruit, insects, berries and bulbs. The opossum very well could have been attracted to the strawberries in my garden. They also are not territorial like many animals and apparently don't mind being relocated. I ended up relocating it to a woods full of ripe black raspberries so it could eat berries to its heart's content.

A lot of people think opossums look like overgrown rats, but I think they are pretty cute. Especially when they are still young...
Look at those whiskers!

Egg Factories

I am not in any way an animal rights activist. When there are babies who are being aborted by the hundreds everyday, children who are hungry and abused, people who are homeless and alone, and folks who cannot afford basic health care, I can't justify getting all upset about animals. None the less, my little flock of hens is making me think far more about the eggs, meat and dairy products I buy, than I ever have.

The way commercial egg factories treat their hens angers me. My California Whites are the prettiest, liveliest chickens I have known. From the time they were tiny babies they had to fly and roost. It is part of their nature to seek the highest spot possible. These birds are so not suited for being cooped in tiny places. They don't even like being cooped up in their hen house, even though they have ample room and lots of places to roost. When I let them out they act like they are in heaven flying from one end of the yard to the other, running around, digging and scratching. These hens are bred to be commercial egg layers. When you buy white eggs from the grocery store, chances are the hen that laid those eggs was either a California white, or her mother, a white leghorn.

These beautiful perky hens whose lightweight bodies are designed to fly and move about quickly, are they same hens that are stuffed so tightly in tiny wire cages that they don't even have room to turn around , let alone roost or fly. That is what just makes me so angry. Of all the chickens in the world, these are the ones who, because of their temperament, are least suited to this type of treatment. (Not that any chicken should be subjected to that kind of treatment.)

Looking at pictures of these hens in the factory setting breaks my heart and takes away my appetite. If the hen that laid the egg is sad, unhealthy and miserable, how can that egg be any good? How can any human be so cruel as to take one the most spritely, elegant breeds of chickens and watch it turn it into a featherless, sick, miserable creature? And then advertise the eggs as healthy and good for you? It is so not worth it, for any amount of money.

I for one, am not going to buy another factory egg. I can't be part of that system anymore. And I am looking forward to the day when there are hens in every backyard, making egg factories obsolete.