Help and Thankyou!

It's a blank canvas with only a few strokes on it.  It's a start.  I'd rather see a whole lot of green where I see a whole lot of brown!  So to get on with it, one week ago I moved our pile of 'help' into the garden beds!  A great big thank you goes out to my llamas and goats for all the 'help'!

Speaking of help and thank you's, my six and a half year old son wants to be a farmer (he even wants suspenders to look the part)!  So he eagerly asked if he could help me.  That's him on the right hand side of the photo.  Amazingly he smoothed out the manure in the middle bed and inspired our oldest to help out.  I think he realized his little brother was making him look bad!  So he pitched in too!  And that wonderful little skidsteer is what I used to transport the pile and dump it into beds.  Imminently better than a shovel and wheelbarrow!  What would have taken days, only took about two hours to complete!  Ahhhh... lots of help!

A neighbor started four organic bell pepper seeds, and they ALL sprouted!  Since like me, she hates to thin and discard seedlings, she gave two to me!  Aren't they adorable!?  Thank you!

Fresh Spring-timey green.... sigh...

On a rare trip into town today, I picked up yet another version of help, Epsom Salts.  I'll use it for the Peppers and Tomatoes.  Next on the list is Fish Emulsion and Blood Meal.  I want lots of happy pepper plants this year!

I also picked up these two Anaheim Peppers.  Hopefully I'll accumulate a few more soon.  I hope to have enough peppers for things like homemade enchilada sauce and salsa verde.  Oh, I can taste it now!

I bought a grapevine!!!  Not much choice in variety, so it's just a Thompson Seedless.  We'll see how it goes, er, grows!

This of course is a good sign!

SPRING!!!

The garlic is doing nicely!  I am very hopeful that this will be a successful crop.  Garlic is known to be an antiseptic, antimicrobial, antifungal, antiviral, antiparasitic and even anti inflammatory!  Wow!  It's a miracle plant!  Lots of help from these unassuming, even stinky (to some, but I love their odor) plants!

The apricot has finished blossoming and leaves are emerging.

Now it's the peach's turn!

I sincerely hope this year will not get started as late as last year!  Last year I got so fed up with waiting on the weather to warm up enough that I just planted on faith in early June!  You'd think being in Arizona this wouldn't be a problem!  But when you live in higher elevations, the rules change a bit.  As it is, I'm already feeling impatient waiting for planting time!

Hope you're having better success in the exercise of patience!  Boy is it tough!

This post is linked to the Dandelion House Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop!  Take a look, meet other farmgirls at heart, and be inspired!

It's fun!

Summertime Dreams

We have so much to do.  But the weather isn't cooperating.  It's not easy to just sit back and accept a forced rest!  Especially on a Monday!

Early this morning.

It's Spring, dontcha know!  Which makes it so difficult to sit inside!  Things are getting ready to bloom!  Plants want to grow!

This spearmint begged me to take it home.  I didn't argue...

Now was as good a time as any to start collecting seeds! 

My onions, which have been living on the windowsill most of the winter, are getting ready to bloom!

I hope to collect the seeds!

I collected some garlic plants from the old garden, and a lettuce seed must have come with them.  Now I could have enough for a small salad!

Yep, Spring is here.

But you wouldn't know it by looking outside!

Here inside, the windowsill is producing a few Anaheim Peppers, and Bell Peppers!

The kids' science projects are sprouted and growing rapidly!

Our Home School Co-op in town is doing a project involving homemade instruments and the sounds energy can produce.  Plenty of noise, fun, and experimentation this morning!

Lot's of noise!!!

In the meantime, my MW is going crazy cooped-up indoors.  So much to do!  So on this rare occasion, he's enjoying his PJ's he got for Christmas!

It's perfect!  Remember the movie, "A Christmas Story"?  Well, MW shares a name with the main character, Ralph, or Ralphie!  It's a family favorite.

Until the weather clears, I'll have dreams of my gardens dancing in my head.

How many of you are going crazy like me?!  I know I'm not alone!

What are you doing to keep busy?

Time to finish up home school, and get started on making calzones!  Yum!

Happy Spring!

Here's one very excellent way to chase away the Winter time blues.  Come over and take a look at all the great Barn Hop #5 participants at the Homestead Revival!

You won't regret it!

A Different Solar Life

We live very differently than most.  The nearest power lines are about ten miles away, as the crow flies!  Because of that, we live off grid.  Generating our own power teaches us not to take energy for granted.  Want to run the bread machine?  Well, it will help to know if the sun is shining first!

The same goes for laundry (drier machine is the sun, ie clothes line!), freezers, crock pot, coffee maker, hair dryer, microwave, television, and so on.  All the things one naturally takes for granted living with the power grid.  You think twice about leaving lights on in a room with no one in it when you generate and store your own power!

Another precious commodity we all naturally take for granted is water...

If you want water, you gotta drill for it.  It doesn't come when you turn on the water faucet unless you've drilled, set a water pump, set up storage, trenched and set water lines, and made all the necessary connections.  If you don't want your lines to freeze, you bury them at least a foot or more deep.  Then you wrap any exposed lines and inlets in the hopes that they still don't freeze!  Every year we have had to deal with frozen lines somewhere.  Nasty icy winds tend to find the least protected points.

Got a snack attack?  Want to zip down to the corner store and pick up a gallon of ice cream?  Hahahaha!  Not here!  You gotta plan for those attacks!  Or make your own sweet-tooth remedy...

 At least I have help in that department!

When you live 60 miles (on a good day) away from the nearest town, nothing is on a whim!  Weather changes the conditions of the 17 miles of dirt road we must travel before reaching the two lane highway, which in turn eventually connects to the interstate.  Rains can flood the Big Sandy making the main crossing uncrossable.

A second exit option lies on a route which adds another 20 minutes of dirt road down stream.  If that crossing is uncrossable too, then you go another 30 minutes to the third option.  If this third crossing is flooded as well, the last option takes you all the way down past the tiny community of Wikieup where there is a bridge built for the highway.  A normal trip to town is just over one hour.  But depending on the weather, rains, floods, washouts, muddy road conditions, it can be well over two hours away.

Need a restroom on the way to town?  Ok, all-naturale! 

Pick up a rotisserie chicken on your way home from work?  Nope.  Work is here on the ranch or just down the highway, no conveniences in between but home itself.  There are no water, electrical or sewer systems in place here.  We live in pristine rural mountain deserts!

 Our road snakes its way up through foot hills and mountain passes.

Homeschooling is the most obvious and logical choice for this rural family.  Since my first child I started thinking homeschooling may be a great idea, never knowing it would turn into a necessity! 

I'm always researching new ways to handle gardening techniques.  One of my nearest neighbors is a cattle rancher and his wife.  She keeps all kinds of great books on hand.  After I'm done borrowing a book, all I need to do is drop it off in a mailbox instead of always driving all the way to their house.

This mailbox is too far from any postal route to receive any mail, but it does serve as a handy rural drop-off point!

To cut down on the grocery bill, in any way is very helpful, and downright necessary lately.

Garden-wise, this is a  pile of 'help' that accumulated over the winter months, complements of our goats and llamas.  Just a couple of days ago we transported this pile, and the horse manure in the background that was already here, up the hill to dump into the garden beds.

 This is where all the help for our homesteading comes from.

Manure...

...eggs, meat...

...and milk.

And my Miracle Worker is the one who makes this all possible!

A little camera shy...

...but a first-rate equipment operator!

Without him, nothing would feel as worthwhile as it does now.  We are both living and building a dream that ultimately is all about the journey we are taking together.  Hopefully our children will be able to appreciate this special path in life!

Surrounded by my favorite people, the wilderness, and my gardens, what more could I possibly need?

We are truly blessed!

This post is linked to the Farmgirl Friday blog hop

Come take a look and enjoy visiting other Farm Girls at heart!