Worried about the garlic crop ...

planted 170 cloves of garlic this fall but in the no winter winter we are having they are struggling ... they are being heaved out of the ground regularly and keep starting to grow - then a fast freeze hits before I can tuck them all back to bed and they lie on frozen soil exposed

the most snow we've seen this winter - can you the lion in the grass?

what a shame we are trying deep mulching but I can't see having 170 survivors .. maybe half the crop will be ok now if winter sets in properly ever?

much more typical of this winter ...

nobody said farming was easy

no voice ... no problem ...

Planted another 80 cloves of garlic yesterday bringing this fall's total to 170 ...which I think should be a fine harvest for next year - I was able to only plant the biggest best heads this year so I'm excited for next year already! We have plenty of decent garlic left for winter too. Big T tilled the second bed for me which made planting a snap.

garlic bed one - the rail is down to mark the Korean and Schoolhouse garlic divide

All Schoolhouse garlic in the back bed this year

Dinner last night was delicious ... local chicken breasts baked and then finished with a little tomato sauce and Swiss cheese with our own squash and baked potatoes - YUM!

After I did the planting and before I started dinner I was bored but not breathing super well so I pulled up a YouTube video on casting on (a piece of knitting I couldn't recall ever doing). YouTube is awesome. I did a long tail cast on and started knitting and purling. Too much fun! Too smart given that I'd like to work on sustainable farming in the most humane, least animal destructive way ~which fibre does!  We'll see what the final product looks like, then I'll have to try more complex things - but a perfect winter thing to learn!

This is the site I used for the knitting help http://www.knittinghelp.com/. Very helpful!

and another season starts ...

you can hardly see the schoolhouse!

yup 60 onions in (240 to go)
two short rows of carrots and radishes ..
garlic all poked back to bed (some of it always comes to the surface through the freeze up and melting)

new bed (was a flower bed that got entirely overgrown) turned over ready for tilling to be the melon/cuke or zucchini bed

more wood split

a good day's work

and that doesn't include the long pleasure walk we took either!

melting snow ...



Dog reversal .. Kizmet wants in; Sally wants out!



and growing garden ... it's still not nice enough out for little old man Kizmet to want to be out though! We are off for a week and looking forward to it. Sally has already fallen through the pond once.

I was busy poking garlic back into the ground and watching carrots come to life .. We

collecting fermented apples on the ground and tossed them into the compost.

I'm hoping it's a drying week that stays above freezing so I can get the onions in ... (300 of them - spanish, yellow and red). Yum!

85 cloves of garlic

85 cloves of garlic actually take way less time to plant in a nice friable fluffy bed then you'd think!

I picked only the biggest best large cloves this year so am excited to see next year's results all ready - this is garlic that has been grown here since before 2006. The first year it was tiny - each year the bulbs have gotten successively bigger and healthier with bigger cloves too. Next year I'm trying my first brought in garlic - I'm planting a head of Korean garlic from a local organic gardener.

The asparagus is looking pretty amazing ... I'll try to grab a picture tomorrow if the sun comes out.
Bunny hutches are tucked up for winter.

On a sad note little darling Daisy died last week. She was the oldest of the does and had a happy year with us so I can't be too sad but I will miss her bossy funny ways.
My home computer is blown up which is a drag except it might force me to get a new one sooner rather than later!

Produce THAT

some of the onion braids drying the shed

Pulled garlic today - much earlier than usual for me but the test pull was beautiful so decided to go ahead .. glad I did. It's just lovely. And there is tons! That's a BIG picnic table it's laid out to dry on.

As usual I will put a few cloves from the biggest bulbs aside to plant in the late fall.

Didn't take pictures of the green beans or zucchinni today. They are growing well too!