Building and repairing garden fences

Now it is spring! Or it would be according to the calendar. Maybe the spring is in the air but the weather outside is telling something else. Today it was cold, windy and even a little ice storm. Not the  best weather to be outside and work in the garden or work with the horse to pull some firewood. Fortunately we have a lot to do inside also. A lot of vegetables we do for grow inside. For example paprika, I sowed them in February and now they needed a larger pot. That I did today in the kitchen. 43 paprika plants I have now….. I have also sowed celeriac, tomato, celery, artichokes and some weeds. I love to look to the seeds every day, to see if they already sprout. Sometimes it's after a view days, sometimes you think they are dead all untill the next morning a little green is showing. It’s a wonderful time.

Every hour it was nice weather the last view weeks, we where busy outside. To hack in the garden, pull firewood for next winter, saw and split the wood, and repairing the fences.

We build our garden fences out of branches. When we bought our home there was a lot of deferred maintenance. A lot of small trees and bushes where growing everywhere. We cut them all down and made a garden fence of it. These type of garden fencing is easy to build. That’s is just what you need when you have a lack of time. But its also a nice and comfort place for a lot of animals and insects. For toads and frogs who find a save and little soggy place underneath it, but also for wild bees who love the dead wood. 

The only disadvantage is that you need to fill it up at least every other year. The branches underneath rot and the wall is sinking down. Last year I had so much to do that I didn’t take the time to repair it and now it is really time! All the posts where rotten and now my husband made new posts out of hazel. I put them all in the ground and made a begin to fill it up in between.

We even had a lot of work with selling our berry bushes. We had over 50 and now after 3 years they where ready to sell. I placed a advertisement on Facebook and WOW what a reactions. In 3 weeks we where sold out! That is a nice income too! I love it. It’s a great fun to meet new people and they are all exited about the new plants they bought, most of it where young people. Just great! Let’s see what’s coming next!

Breaking in the young horse into the harness

Since I was very young I was in love with everything about horses and ponies, and still I love them very much. I was 4 years old when I first ride on a little Shetland pony, Ronny, was his name. He was owned of friends of my parents. When I grew up I cycled 6 days a week to care for him and ride on him. He was a really old fashioned Shetland pony. About a 1m tall, large head and strong legs. He was so sweet but also frolicsome, just like a shetty should be.

Ronny a year before he died

When we get married we get him of them, and we also take him (and the other horses) with us when we moved to Sweden. But in September 2014 my little friend died 35years old…

Our welsh pony became very lonely when he died, so after a while we decided to look for some new Shetland ponies, not only for I fell in love with that breed but also are they just exactly what we need on the homestead. They are strong enough to pull a little hay wagon or a little plough but they don’t eat so much and they are easy to handle.

So came these two little fellows to our homestead in 2015. Brommy, the youngest one was only 8 months old and Berry 1 ½  years old. Our welsh fell in love with Brommy on the first sight! So lovely!

Brommy and Berry, just arrived

The last years they have been on the meadow just to grow, but every day we get them in the stable on the evening and lead them out every morning. So we checked them every day and every day they learned a little better to being lead on the head collar. This year is Berry celebrate his 4^th birthday and Brommy his 3 ^th . Last year I learned Berry the commands I use. Like, walk on, stand, back etc. etc. and also lunging him a view times. But now he is old enough for the real job!

Yesterday it was nice weather and a perfect day to get started. The first thing I want to learn him is to wear the back band with the girth and the crupper beneath his tail. Just after a view times get it on and off he was really relax, so I fasten the girth and the crupper and we just go for a walk. He was so relax and he did it very fine, like he have done it for a live time! I’m so proud of him! Now we do this for a lot more days before we move on to the next step!

Maybe you have noticed on the pictures that I don’t use a bit. I have a some reasons for it, I find there mounth to little for fitting in such a large bit, they understand a bitless bridle much better and I don’t need it J

Planning the kitchen garden, part II

Last Friday I received my seeds! I love to get post and I love even more to get a large package! Even if I ordered it myself J.

Almost all the seeds I use come from the same shop. It is a post order shop, which sell a lot of organic seeds and have a good service and a quick deliverance. Most of the seeds they sell have they tried on there own garden first so you’ll know that the seeds can grow in Sweden.

Only a view seeds where not available there and them I ordered somewhere else.

This year I will change the plan in my garden. The last 4 years my garden has grown every year a bit.  I had the garden divided in 5 parts and every part had 4 seedbeds of 120cm wide. At one long side a had a small long bed 1x6m with strawberries.    

And so we have the second kitchen garden, that we made last year. It’s there I have my small poly tunnel also.

It worked fine with 5 beds but a lot of the area is used for paths between them. I also decided that I will use our work pony to hoe between the rows and that goes a lot better with seedbeds some are only 60-120cm wide and go over the hole length. So I will have a lot more area for my seeds and as an additional benefit al the beds will be in the north-south direction. All crops will get same quantity sunlight and hopefully grow even better.

For a couple day’s ago I measured both pieces of land and noted where the berry bushes and other fixed elements are. Yesterday I make a drawing of each piece of land and made plans where to grow which crop. Only a couple of square meters have not been planned yet, we’ll see what we can plant there, maybe some extra lettuce or maybe some herbs….

I will explain my drawing, I hope you can read the figures in the drawing.

 1. The well                                                         2. red and blackberries

 3. strawberries                                                   4. cabbage

 5. carrot and union                                             6. beetroot and union

 7. beans and peas                                              8. lettuce

 9. herbs and flowers                                          10. plum tree

1. summer and winters quash                              2. pumpkins

3. corn and broad beans                                    4. pickle plants

5. potatoes                                                        6. poly tunnel

7. herbs and flowers                                          8. red and black berries

9. apple tree

Planning the kitchen garden 2017

Although it’s still winter I’m already planning for the new planting season. Every year I read as many kitchen garden books from the library I can. It’s so much fun to plan for the new year. I’m making a list for all vegetables I want to grow and a shorter list with flowers and herbs.

A lot of things are every year the same but I also try some new variety of vegetables to.

This year I will have purple carrots, and purple cabbage. I hear you think, purple carrots??!! Yes, exactly the first carrots ever grow were purple! But in 17^th century in the Netherlands they get there first orange carrot. And it became a great success! I will try the purple carrots and I hope we will enjoy it….

Because my husband and I eat both  vegetarian, we eat a lot of chickpeas. They come from a warm area and we can’t grow them here. But now I did find a old verity of peas called “gråärt” in Sweden it will have the same nutty flavour.

I did find some information about co-culture some will help against the cabbage butterfly. I read about to plant peppermint, celery and marigold between the cabbage plants. The have a smell witch makes that the butterfly not knows where the cabbage plants are, I hopes it will help and otherwise it will look nice also. 

happy new year

A new year is started and we’ve a lot of new ideas we want to do this year!

I have some new ideas for my vegetable garden, I want to grow a lot more for to sell. We will make a new fence we can put around the cabbage plants. Last year I did grow a lot of cabbage, but one night after a little bit of frost, everything was gone. That were the deer and elk some loved to eat cabbage to L. This year will that not happen again! So a fence it will be made!

Still we don’t need to buy potatoes and vegetables. But we need to build a place underground were we can store our potatoes and beetroots, now we store it in the barn but when it get to cold, we need to get everything inside. A ‘jordkällare’ is it called in Swedish. Sander made a start to dig it out last year but it is al lot of work, you find a lot of stones, small stones and BIG stones! Maybe he will finish it this year.

I started to make a ‘to-do-list’ for this year but it still grows longer and longer, small projects, bigger projects and huge projects J maybe I can better call it a 5 or 10 years ‘to-do-list’……..

After making new ideas and while talking about it, I got hungry and decide to bake a ‘raisin bread with almond’.

Recipe

You need for 1 large bread:

500gr flour                                                                  for the almond filling:

2 tsp salt                                                                     marzipan

35gr yeast                                                                   juice of a half lemon

4dl milk (37°C)

25gr butter

25gr brown sugar

1tsp cinnamon

250gr currants/raisin

½ lemon peel grated

1. Make a ordinary bread dough with the flour, yeast, salt, milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon and the grated lemon peel. Set aside to rise for at least an hour.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Do at the same time the currants and raisins in another bowl and add that much water to cover them all. Set aside to swell up.
3. mix the marzipan with the lemon.
4. after one hour, put the raisins/currants in a sieve and let the water leak out. After that mix the dough with the currants/raisins and make the dough a flat rectangle about 3 or 4 cm thick. Make a roll of the marzipan and put in the middle of the dough and roll it all up.
5. set aside to rise another hour.
6. Bake it in a moderately hot oven for 30 min after that sink the temperature till moderate and bake for another15 min. Let cool on a rack.

Homesteaders or farmers?

When I talk about our home, I call it a homestead but sometimes I call it a farm too.

But what is the right definition or maybe there isn’t a right definition?

Looking in the dictionary I found:

Farm

1. Land cultivated for agricultural production.  2. A.   Land used for breeding and raising of domestic animals.    B. an area of water used for breeding and raising of a particular type of aquatic animals.

Yes, we are farmers! We have land for agricultural production but….

Homestead

1. A family’s house, esp. a farmhouse, with adjacent buildings and land. (think on” the little house on the prairie” series)   2.  A tract of land granted, as under the homestead Act, to a settler who cleared, cultivated and lived on it.

We have also a family house with buildings for our livestock, we cultivate the land. I think the difference can be found elsewhere….

A farm,  generates money by raising and selling livestock and/or produce of the land. Like the definition it’s about production. A farmer has a different goal then the homesteader. A farmer will have a income of it’s land and make profit.

A homestead is a place were a person or a family cultivates the land and try  to become more self sufficient. On a homestead they try to live on the land by growing and raising their own food. Though they maybe will sell some products of their land, it’s not the most important goal they have.  They like to use what they can on their land to make it more sustainable.

We have our home not only for to generate income for we do have another income, but we try to live of the land, by growing our own food, and use what we have. Trying to save money, by doing things by ourselves without the need of buying. That is what we want, what we love to do.

So maybe we are homesteader or maybe you could call us something else, or maybe we are just some foolsJ

sewing room

A while ago I decide that I would have other curtains in my sewing room. The old ones didn’t really have the right colour and shape. I made them 5 years ago for the living room but after a year I get some really heavy velour curtains that I used instead. I thought a lot about it, and yesterday I get a idea! I could use the velour curtains in the sewing room and use the old living room curtains in the living room again.

In the evening I started to take away the old curtains and change them. I turned out so nice! I love it! But the room itself needed a little clean up to, after all sewing’s of the last weeks. That is what I did today. A lot of  patterns, bits of fabric, books etc. etc. I was a bit lazy so I put everything in my fabric box and have to assort them later. But the room itself was on the end of the day ready for some pictures!

On the second picture you can see a bit of a painting. I got it after my grandfather when he died. It was a wedding gift they get.