A Bridal Garden Party to remember

Our beautiful garden was complemented by all the beautiful, caring and fun people that joined us this past weekend.  We are very lucky to have found this place. I am very fortunate despite the circumstances of moving to this country when I was 15, and all the hardwork that  Lindo and I had to do to get to where we are now.  And it is all worh it.

                                    

I want to thank everyone that came to the party. I am sorry I missed some of the people that I wanted to be there the most, like my mom and my sister. I guess that is the price you pay when you live away from "family" home. 

                                     

I had so much fun and I just have a big smile every time someone asks me about the party.  It was everything I imagined it to be and more. Thanks to Lindo for putting up with my mysterious planning and setting up the place for the guests.

Since I am teacher, I like to be organized so I set up a map of the garden and a to do list by the temporary tent I borrowed from school. Everyone was helping so cheerfully and I am glad that all my friends got to meet each other and meet my mother in law, Sherrie and father in law Michael. 

Weeding was the first project and the one project everyone was willing to do.  Some of my friends were scared of weeding beds because they didn't want to rip off the veggies, instead they helped me weed the paths and at the same time I showed them what some of the weeds looked like. Also, we planted chard that I had sprouted indoors weeks ago. 

Other projects included planting the veggies and herbs that I got from Jinny Cleland's farm - Four Springs Farm. I worked for her this year for a couple of days and she paid me with plants for the garden. 

I got all kinds of peppers including Hungarian waxpepper, cherrybomb and others. I also got tomatoes for making sauce, for slicing, cherries and novelty ones. Finally, I got eggplants including my favorite Japanese eggplant.

For the first time I got Okra. Also a huge bush cucumber, and herbs like Borage, Thai basil, thyme, water cress and ginger mint. The water cress was planted by a spring near the house and the mint near a bank where it can take over without getting in the way of the garden plants.

The party was also filled with joy and laughter. Our friend Michelle brought her 6 month old baby girl, Brynn to the party.  She was great! I must say she was the number one attraction and who could deny that?

We also planted 3 varieties of potatoes, Red Norland, Russets and Blue potatoes. We turned a bed in the middle of the garden for one variety and for the other two varieties we put them in a new bed that I made of decomposed wood, raspberry canes, mulch, compost and top soil.  We will see how they do. I added phosphate as well before planting the potatoes.

Our friend Jo planting and watering the Forsythia.  These beautiful bushes have the first yellow flowers besides daffodils and dandelions that we can see in New England. Can't wait to see it as a 6 ft + bush

We also worked on planting a new flower garden by the front yard next to where we park the cars. We planted goatsbeard, dahlias among many others.

Jinny Cleland holding the bush cucumber! She knew exactly where to place it in the garden, as well as, where to put the herbs depending on the watering that each herb needs and spacing. I have known Jinny since the fall of 2008 when I met her at the coop and asked her if I could work at her farm.  Since that year, I have helped her either planting pansies and other plants in the greenhouse, spreading compost in the field, wedding carrots and picking up produce for her CSA members. She has been a great source of gardening information and we share a vision for the development of a farm school at her farm.

Asparagus and chocolate thumbprint cookies

There is nothing more relaxing (maybe I'm exagerating) than coming home from work and be in the garden until dark and cook dinner.  Completing both activities everyday are part of my peace therapy, away from things that make me feel rushed, hustled and worried. I have been talking in my sleep and turning on the light to say random stuff in Spanish.  Sometimes I remember what I have said and sometimes I don't.  I definitely want to be out of school.

Anyway, this week I made pizza with local ingredients including local wheat flour.  I made the dough (just all purpose flour) on Monday and by the time I came to prepare the dough for pizza on Thursday, it had turn into a sourdough. So, I did not pacnic because I know that if you add yeast, water, flour and salt, then you can have the dough be less of a sourdough.  That is exactly what I did, added 1 Tbsp of yeast, 1/2 Tbsp of salt, a cup of warm water and maybe 1 cup and a half of whole wheat flour. The dough was still wet, so I added barley flour just to play with the flavors, I might have added 1/2 cup. Then, I let it sit for maybe 1 hour while I prepared the ingredients.

I decided to roll the pizza on to the parchment paper sprinkled with local coarse corn meal. Then, this is where I start to get creative with the toppings.

I prepared the following :

Fiddleheads sauteed on the stove top with local sunflower oil, then added tahini, nutritional yeast, rice vinegar, mixed salt, lemon juice, nutmeg and braggs aminos sauce.

Our own grown Asparagus cut in slices with mandolin. Local cheese, local spinach , olives, our own garlic, scallions and yellow onions.

Needless to say, the pizza was delicious as so were the other two vegan ones that I made with : local tofu sauteed with tumeric, basil, oregano, caraway seeds, mirin and salt, plus the other ingredients above and tomato sauce.

I usually have enough time to make dessert after dinner some times, but not lately.  So, the night after making the delicious pizza, I decided to make cookies.  I could not find a chocolate chip cookie recipe, instead I found a chocolate thumbprint vegan recipe that was amazing.  Here is the recipe:

Chocolate thumbprint cookies Ladeau style 

adapted from Vegan With A Vengeance

1 cup all-purpose flour 

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt 

1/4 teaspoon baking soda 

1/3 cup of sunflower oil 

1/3 cup of soy milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

2/3 cup sugar 

chocolate chips 

sheredded coconut

almond butter and peanut butter

1) Preheat oven to 350 F, line cookie sheets or pizza stone with parchment paper

2) Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda.

3) In bowl mix oil, milk, extract and sugar

4) Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and incorporate well

5) With damp hands, roll one tablespoon of dough into ball and press between your plams into a disk, then place on parchment paper

6) Bake for 5 minutes, the remove from oven, press your thumb into each cookie carefully not to burn yourself

7) Add chocolate chips and shredded coconut in each indentation and bake for another 6 minutes

8) Remove from the oven and place in a cooling rack 

9) Once cooled, add a teaspoon of almond butter or peanut butter and ENJOY !

These cookies came out amazing and even tasted better the next day ! You have to give them a try !!!

Bees at Ladeau Road

The package has arrived. The queen, the workers and the drones are here. They came from Georgia and we think they are italians.

They came in a package with sugar water and with a queen trapped in a little box with candy at one end and a cork/string at the other end.  The cork by the candy, was removed before setting the queen inside the hive and fter setting all the bees inside the hive..

The queen box is placed on one of the bars of the hive and the rest of the bars are placed to close the hive.  The bees have access to the sugar water thru a separator that has a hole to another compartment inside the hive.

The holes for the entrance and exit of the bees are located in the bar hive so that they are facing south.

Now, we just have to wait and have our bees get settled in their new home

What plant goes with what?

Since there is little space in one's garden, one must think of the possibility of increasing the amount of veggies grown by having a mixture of plants sharing the same bed. That is exactly how you can start planning for your garden space if you haven't done so by now. Also, keep in mind that the amendments for the soil depend on the plant you are growing. For example, carrots do not like high levels of nitrogen as other plants do like broccoli and cabbage. 

Here is a list of the veggies that can go together:

Asparagus with tomatoes, parsley and basil 

Beans with potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, cauliflower, cabbage, summer savory

         not with onions, garlic and gladioulus

Bush beans with strawberries, cucumbers, corn, celery and summer savory 

         not with onions

Beets with onions and kohlrabi and not with pole beans 

Cabbage family with aromatic plants, potatoes, celery, dill, chamomille, sage, peppermint, rosemary, beets and onions 

          not with strawberries, tomatoes or pole beans 

Carrots with peas, leaf lettuce, chives, onions, leeks, rosemary, sage, tomatoes

          not with dill 

Celery with leeks, tomatoes, bush beans, cauliflower and cabbage

Cucumbers with beans, corn, peas, radishes, sunflowers

                not with potatoes or aromatic herbs

Eggplant with beans

Leeks with onions, celery and carrots

Lettuce with carrots, radishes, strawberries, cucumbers

Onions with beets, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, summer savory, chamomille  

           not with peas and beans 

Parsley with tomotoes and asparagus 

Peas with carrots, turnips, radishes, cucumbers, corn, beans, most veggies and herbs  not with onions, garlic, potatoes 

Potatoes with beans, corn, cabbage, marigolds, eggplant

          not with pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, sunflowers, tomatoes and     

          raspberries

Radishes with peas, nasturniums, lettuce and cucumbers

Soybeans go with everything

Spinach with strawberries

Strawberries with bush beans, spinach,borage, lettuce as border

                  not with cabbage

Tomatoes with carrots, chives, onions, parsley, asparagus, marigolds, nasturniums  not with kohlrabi, potatoes, fennel and cabbage 

Turnips with peas

Mother's day projects and bee hive

 These are the last few days before The Shires Marathon in Bennington, VT.  I feel ready and I am excited that I finally trained for it. I hope to finish it between 4 and 5 hours. In the past weeks, I have seen a bat during one of my runs and a broad-wing hawk carrying some prey (I think it was a frog) in the wetland near the road we live on the other day. 

This past weekend was really exciting, since Saturday was Green Up Day and Sunday was Mother's Day. Also, Saturday was the first outdoor farmers market of the season and we missed it because I decided to volunteer us for Green Up in Springfield. A small student group showed up to clean around the school.  We picked bicycle tires, diapers, bottles, cigarette butts, candy and food wrappers and even shows and clothes.  Later in the morning, we had a picnic.  I brought almond butter and apple cider jelly for sandwiches.  Some kids tried it and liked the combination. A student brought a huge fruit salad! Overall, it was nice to share time with the students outside of the classroom setting.

On Sunday, Lindo's parents came up to visit and help us around our house. The various projects included gardening and woodshed work. The boys took care of the woodshed by cleaning all the old bark and mulch that was and has been at the bottom of the wood pile for years.  They also organized and split more wood for kindling and stacked wood and logs from the yard.  It was a huge project and now the space looks neat and free of wood.

The girls set out to work on transplanting pansies from various locations around the garden to a permanent bed by the front of the house.  They are blooming and some even started out from seed, which is really exciting because I hope to always have pansies in spring.  Also, the strawberry bed by the rock wall got was weeded! The plants are growing very nicely and hope to see flowers on them soon.  The wild strawberry crop promises to be huge this year.  The plants are growing everywhere and when they are done producing I will just tilled them over in the beds and grow other crops there.

While in the yard, I noticed that phoebes are nesting underneath the alcove in our cabin. We hope this time they don't have any trouble raising their young.  Last year they attempted to nest 3 times in different places around our cabin with no luck. 

Lindo has started to build a Top Bar Hive design used in Kenya. The design is simple and the bees do all the work. 

Mother's day projects and bee hive

These are the last few days before The Shires Marathon in Bennington, VT.  I feel ready and I am excited that I finally trained for it. I hope to finish it between 4 and 5 hours. In the past weeks, I have seen a bat during one of my runs and a broad-wing hawk carrying some prey (I think it was a frog) in the wetland near the road we live on the other day. 

This past weekend was really exciting, since Saturday was Green Up Day and Sunday was Mother's Day. Also, Saturday was the first outdoor farmers market of the season and we missed it because I decided to volunteer us for Green Up in Springfield. A small student group showed up to clean around the school.  We picked bicycle tires, diapers, bottles, cigarette butts, candy and food wrappers and even shows and clothes.  Later in the morning, we had a picnic.  I brought almond butter and apple cider jelly for sandwiches.  Some kids tried it and liked the combination. A student brought a huge fruit salad! Overall, it was nice to share time with the students outside of the classroom setting.

On Sunday, Lindo's parents came up to visit and help us around our house. The various projects included gardening and woodshed work. The boys took care of the woodshed by cleaning all the old bark and mulch that was and has been at the bottom of the wood pile for years.  They also organized and split more wood for kindling and stacked wood and logs from the yard.  It was a huge project and now the space looks neat and free of wood.

The girls set out to work on transplanting pansies from various locations around the garden to a permanent bed by the front of the house.  They are blooming and some even started out from seed, which is really exciting because I hope to always have pansies in spring.  Also, the strawberry bed by the rock wall got was weeded! The plants are growing very nicely and hope to see flowers on them soon.  The wild strawberry crop promises to be huge this year.  The plants are growing everywhere and when they are done producing I will just tilled them over in the beds and grow other crops there.

While in the yard, I noticed that phoebes are nesting underneath the alcove in our cabin. We hope this time they don't have any trouble raising their young.  Last year they attempted to nest 3 times in different places around our cabin with no luck. 

Lindo has started to build a Top Bar Hive design used in Kenya. The design is simple and the bees do all the work. 

Adios snow and welcome dirty fingernails

Picture this... The weather is nice and it is the day when you finally see the last piece of snow/ice melting away. You are walking down the driveway to see a newt make his way across to where ever newts go. The goats are laying down chewing their cud by a grassy area among leaves, raspberries canes, and under the shade of huge hemlocks. Fugee is tied to a tree (otherwise she would take off) laying flat and chewing on the different things that she might find around her. It is time to open windows and let the cool air in the house. You are barefoot and the warmth of the soil in the beds makes you want to transplant this, fertilize this and weed this...you realize...IT IS FINALLY SPRING at Ladeau Road! 

Everyone wants to be active and that means lots of projects to accomplish during the weekend and even after work. Some projects include: 

• Changing the pump from the  water well since it stopped working, we believe that it could have been lightning and an exposed wire. 
• Cutting the huge patch of berries to let more sunlight in the garden and grow flowers in their place. 
• Fixing that old wheelbarrow that held old bee boxes all winter and was useless last season. It just needed a new set of legs!
• Planting shallots and onion sets, peas and radishes. Weeding, moving flowers, planting flowers and fixing old and new rock walls.
• Taking Fugee to the dog park after being closed for late winter/early spring.
• Second or third attempt to grow grass in the front side of the house. Spreading seeds in the patchy areas. 
• Started swiss chard, flowers (morning glory, as a climbing vine), and plum seeds.
• Trying to grow ginger, tumeric and Galangal a gingery root from Costa Rica 

The list goes on and on.  Instead here are some pictures! and more coming soon ! 

Parsnips that were sowed last fall started to sprout

Fugee gets her second run at the dog park after being closed for some time

Asa and Che Che being content and curious about everything we do

Rhubarb coming out and from what I read they are better for you than cranberries

Wild onions or ramps growing by an apple tree, we used the first of these in a salad

Trays that lived inside during early spring can come out and enjoy some sun 

Broccoli, cabbage, carrots, beets, greens and onions

Garlic coming out