#northern minnesota

More scenes from the Big Garden.

I planted a new strawberry last summer, I’m very particular about which and where I plant so I can tell them apart and figure out the best varieties for our conditions after some unproductuve duds. When I found these edible ornamentals with COLOUR FLOWERS I snatched them up, both for the novelty and easy identification! They’re a light and dark pink, specific to each mother plant. One tag said “Toscana”, which there is plenty of info online about but the other was something like “Havana” or “Hovana” but I can’t any information on it. Or even any other shades/names for pink strawberies besides Toscana, so make of that what you will. They are doing great as a garden perennial and also look fantastic cascading out of a hanging basket, which is how I origionally bought them.

I’m also very excited to see my buckweat flowering, although of the three pounds of seeds I planted it was considerably sparse. Rodents have been digging up my seeds just as fast as I plant them, sometimes eliminating entire crops before they can sprout, and it’s become an epidemic in our garden… I’m hoping to fill in gaps around the garden and between beds with Buckwheat to use as bee forage. A local homesteader recommended it for it’s fast growth and ease of uprooting when rotating crops. It also produces a dark molasses-like honey if a lot is available.

July 17, 2017

Summer garden getting into full swing!

Here’s some hardy roses, greens clipped for lunch, our hugelkultur mounds with perennial berries and herbs, a ground cover of radishes and rye that I pull up and use as green manure (it’s been coming back for a few years, anywhere I drop the seeds), squash vines (on a hugel mound) with a cattle panel set up for a trellis, and tractor tire raised bed full of tomatoes.

Finally, what I’m hoping will be a snake habitat to control pests. It’s set into a hugel mound that the rodents made nests and tunnels in, there’s a water dish nearby and the bricks and rocks catch the sun and warm up. I’ll let the grass around it grow long to create cover. Strawberries grow on top.

July 16/17, 2017

The end of the Driveway garden! Since we got the Big Garden going we don’t need it like we did and can spend our days working in the backyard with the animal and woods around us rather than listening to traffic. The backyard is also fenced better and a nicer place for the Kiddo to play while I work.

After tearing up the old fence and moving all the rocks we’d placed at the base, Lieblings used a box blade behind the tractor to smooth it out. Now we have a lot more space for parking and whatnot. The box blade is a pretty handy implement for leveling the ground, we also used it to correct the bad ruts (some were a foot deep) that form in the spring melt.

July 7, 2017

July 10, 2017

Rural life…

Found this tick burrowed in Judas Jr.’s hair. I’ve been checking him daily and pulled about 30 over the course of the summer, but this is the first bloated one to slip past. As much as I love wild lawns, it’s beneficial to keep a play space mowed for kids to deter these jerks and prevent Lyme Disease in the case of deer ticks which are smaller. You can see a big chunk of skin in it’s mouth, which is preferable to leaving behind a buried fang. Gross. The Kiddo was understandably horrified.

These are actually the first ticks I’ve personally seen on our propoerty. I don’t know if weather played part or what but we’ve been lucky to have a very non-ticky experience here since we moved in in 2009. The chickens and other birds we’ve raised have undoubtedly helped clean them up too.

July 8, 2017

I love this guy and just want to see him happy. Maybe I was just being nostalgic but I felt a pang when he sold his big KLR. It was after a brush with the pavement that resulted in a head injury and a near miss before that thanks to some idiot… Oh, and a bump with a deer, but he didn’t even go down for that. So I understand his desire to step back and having a family depend on you is a factor to consider.

He really needed a bike though, I think life without one was taking a toll on mental health and we all need a way to decompress. It’s slightly cramped but should work until the day when we can dish out for a Vstrom.

It had a big ugly fairing that came off and will get dirtbike-style handlebars. It’s also small enough I can sit flat footed on it, at least in my thick-soled Docs. So if he ever gets the Ideal Bike someday, I’ll get a street bike. Not that I don’t love my TW200 dual-sport, but it doesn’t go fast enough for the highway. =P

July 7, 2017

I have been staring at the Small Puff and wondering, well, why isn’t she a puff???

There were very fluffy pups in her litter of purebred Great Pyrenees that were indeed little round puffs of fluff and I dug up the puppy pictures of Puff Senior to verify that I remebered right.

I am very curious now why she isn’t fluffy. I did feel certain we left with the runt of the litter, the last puppy available after a mere 48 hours since they were listed on Craigslist (livestock guardian dogs from *working* lines seem to go fast) but I wanted another LGD and knew she was the right pup. She’s very healthy, sweet, and mercifully not the constant barker that our older LGD is. I don’t know if we stumbled on a genetic oddity but if a “smooth Pyrenees” is linked to the polite-barker gene, I’ll take it. She was definitely from the same litter and her parents and siblings looked like full pyrenees so I don’t know if this is a mutation of a pure breed or something buried so far down the line that it wasn’t obvious until it popped up.

July 5, 2017

I feel like I’m moving through a dream and not entirely present but then I am. I am. I hate that churning clouds of heavy thoughts can distract you from what’s in front of you, blinding your eyes from behind. I love that children, animals, and plants force you into routines and out of your head. Before I had the former I always surrounded myself with the latter.

The ram has knocked a wall down on his shelter. The kiddo and I, with a constanct procession of dogs and goats, play. We watch roses bloom in the garden around the cedar tree and build altars with the things they drop. We watch the garden grow, torn between wonder and dismay at it’s energy and the many small things that eat it. The puppy never holds still for photos and every one I take of her not sleeping is the blur of her constant vibration. She is so excited to be a Puppy and be Alive, a New Thing in the Universe. We vibrate along with her, bouncing around woods on the same frequency. The goats eat the weeds and we shovel their waste into piles to feed plants. The world is beautiful and always busy. So much can happen in a small space. Ten acreas of Happiness, even while uncertainty gnaws… The summer feels fast and will be over too soon. Absorb every moment of these days.

July 4, 2017

There is no joy like the joy of a child racing home with a bag of fireworks.

The transient folk who set up camp and sell them were a riot, we could’ve spent all day in the dusty tent on the side of a rural bar listening to the life stories of the father and son team.

I tried to get some “good” ones this year, that might actually fly into the air, but not too good because I’m terrified of forest fires and our homestead is pretty well nestled in the trees with a lot of kindling thanks to a destructive beetle.

July 3, 2017

Scenes on the farm: most of the goats, a buckeye chicken with an overgrown beak before I clipped it, and Papa’s hair getting long! c:

July 25, 2017

Family outting off the homestead! We road the alpine coaster at Spirit Mountain and it was super fun! It goes up to 26mph (you control the speed with hand breaks) and zips through the trees and overlooks Lake Superior. This is the ski hill that in recent years have expanded to summer activities with their “Adenture Park”, including adding really sweet downhill bike trails.

We had dinner at Clyde Iron Works. It was out first time there and REALLY good. A number of local places we once enjoyed have been overpriced letdowns in recent years, but we’ll defnitely go back there.

Finally a stop at Lester Park. We went to the old swimming hole I used to bike two miles to all summer as a kid. It’s been called “Keep Smiling” since before I was born and attempts to cover it’s namesake grafitti always prove futile. We’ve had a lot of rain this summer so the falls looked like they do during spring melt. Some summers this section slows to a trickle. The basin warms up and makes it nicer to swim in then Lake Superior (which stays cold all summer and is where it empties into) but the water flows through enough that it doesn’t get gross, either. Watch out for snapping turtles downstream.

July 23, 2017

I’ve been hunting for a railroad spike to give to Lieblings for our 13th wedding anniversary (which was last month) and tonight I finally found one! It had to be one I found myself in the wild and I was starting to think the slow tourist line wasn’t active enough to jiggle any loose, but there it was at dusk.

I’ve appointed it a lucky talisman, it means “wherever you’ve come from and wherever you go, I’ll be by your side”.

July 22, 2017

The barn, nice and clean stall side but not-quite-there-yet left… Eventually the other side will get stalls too, as well as along the back.

The herd eating, Cream’s face in the second one cracks me up. The hay is sunbleached and not very pretty, which only changes palatability and carotene content but they like it. Hopefully it wasn’t cut late? I’ve been dragging out the hay on a utility sled (for towing behind snowmobiles) and making them reach through the fence for it to prevent waste. Otherwise they like to throw it everywhere and walk/poop all over it.

July, 2017

Inside the goat pen and puppy shenanigans.

Luci stole a pair of Jr.’s underwear while he was swimming an brought them over to sheep try and engage them in a game of tug-of-war. They weren’t terribly interested. =P

Luci pals around with the lamb and they actually do play together. For whatever reason the goats ignore him so he latched onto the puppy. I’ve also seen the lamb chasing roosters around the yard and grabbing their tailfeathers in his mouth! It’s a real sight to gaze out the window while doing dishes and see him crest the septic mound pasture in hot pursuit.

July 21, 2017

Life on the farm. Happy kid, happy animals. Black currents and other things in the garden…

The first photo is the recreational area I put in the garden, behind the cedar with a sandbox in a tractor tire. It’s the burned sod I got for free and nursed back to health, contrast that with the next picture and you can see how sad our pasture is. It’s been over-grazed so the herd spends much of their time in the pen but we bring them out to play, walk in the woods and eat brush, etc. They are eating mostly hay this year, but I toss them garden weeds and leafy/piney branches when we cut wood.

In the garden shots are herbs in raised beds (tires) and I’m using baling twine from our big hay bales to train my climbing rose (‘Wiliam Baffin’, the hardiest climber I could find) to wrap around the cedar. The new pup is getting big and her and the older livestock dog spend all day together, playing and patroling.

July 20, 2017

Goats are weird.

And hard to photograph when they keep chasing you.

July 19, 2017

My Ditch Lilies are blooming!

Did you know the entire plant (young shoots, buds, flowers, and tubers) are edible? Just make sure you have a unspotted Day Lily (aka Ditch Lily) and not a poisonous Tiger Lily or hybrid. They are super hardy, low maintenece, spreading, easilly divided, and lovely, though they are considered invasive in some places.

July, 2017