Oh My Garden!

Life is good. The garden is growing and flowers are in bloom. Bees are busy buzzing around, pollinating our squash blossoms and pollinating themselves. It's so funny to watch those big butted bumble bees fly out of a blossom totally covered in pollen. On their face, their feet, their butts. Silly bees! I have a frog that lives right outside my bedroom window and it just sits there all day and all night. It's a little one, maybe a few inches long. Sort of a pastel green color. There are beans growing up our window wall outside and the frog loves it there. So do the grasshoppers... they love eating the bean leaves.

Bountiful Mexican Beans cover our window and it's a jungle!

Those are squash in the front there. One of our 4 zucchini plants! There's a sidewalk at the front of the bed, so we are training the zucchini to crawl over to the side. It's amazing how quickly a plant takes the hint. It was going straight for the sidewalk and after three days of shoving the vines the other way, it caught on. We also have some delectable white patty pan squash plants. Buttery and delicious... Okay more pictures!

Reisentraube Tomatoes - they're extremely bountiful heirloom grape tomatoes

Tomatoes. Zucchini. Patty Pan. Morning Glory. Marigold. Pumpkin. Carrots. Basil. Okra. Eggplant.

Those tiny sprouts are tomatillos that Carlos just planted. Need to thin them soon.

Gourd growing up the wall. Morning glories up the patio. Pepper in front.

And a fun one from the beginnings of our gardening adventures...

Whoa. Big difference!

Most of our plants were started from seeds, many of them our own saved seeds. It's amazing to look at it and think it once fit in the palm of my hand!

raw milk is so delicious

Today I'm going to share my experience with raw milk! :)

Growing up, I didn't care much for milk from the store. Store bought milk contains blood, pus, and fecal matter from cows which are kept in extreme confinement. They are overloaded with hormones and antibiotics. Milk is a massive industry controlled by a few large dairies so it's hard for them to pay much attention to hygiene and the well being of their animals. And all they care about is money.

A couple years ago I tried some raw milk, unpasteurized and unhomogenized and since then I have been a milk addict and drink 3 or 4 glasses of it every day! My milk comes from a local dairy where the cows eat green grass, relax in the shade of the trees, and they aren't given any hormones or antibiotics because they don't need them. From the milk we make butter, ice cream, cheese, and wonderful smoothies.Thank you Jersey cows!!!

Caretakers Update

We were supposed to go to the 16 acre farm where we were offered the caretaker positions, to take a look at the place and do some weeding this morning. We got up and ate breakfast at 8 and around 8:15 we got a call from Catherine. What I gathered from the short conversation with her is that she used to have a caretaker who no longer wanted to do it so she asked us, but then the guy changed his mind and wants to continue being the caretaker. So Carlos is back on the hunt for land. 

My parents are looking to buy a house somewhere near Branson, because my dad works in town. Their ideal is that they find a piece of land (5+ acres) so Carlos and I can grow veggies, raise chicken for eggs and meat, and raise some dairy goats. It's mine and Carlos' dream to have land so we can live a self sufficient life and share it with others. My family has been interested in the idea for about a year, but we still haven't found anything. Actually we have found a few places, but none have worked out so far. My parents lease is up this month so we have to find something real soon so Carlos has been a busy bee, looking all the time. He found a real nice one today, but I don't want to say too much about it. :)

 I was feeling real down this morning. A caretaker position would have been so wonderful and I was looking very forward to it. It made me wonder what I should do and it made me feel like I'm waiting for something to happen instead of making it happen. I feel better now. My parents are starting to support Carlos in his search more and become more active themselves. AND I got a lot of work done this morning. I finished some new dish cloths and face scrubbers. Crocheting is such a mellow out activity. It calmed my mind to sit on the patio bench and zone out. Wish us luck with the land endeavor! :)

 Thanks for stopping by.
 Lots of love, Desiree

A Farm and A Concert

Wonderful things in my future.
Wonderful feelings in the present.
Wonderful tunes in my ears.

A Farm...
It started with a Craigslist ad that I posted for Carlos a few months ago offering music lessons for anyone interested. A lady named Catherine called to schedule violin lessons for her little niece, an adorable shy little girl who picks up dead moths and thinks turtle shells are cool. She started coming once a week and like most kids she picked it up pretty quickly. Personally, the violin is not for me. The crazy posture involved in holding a curvy, fancy block of wood and plastic between my chin and collar bone or shoulder....not for me. Anyway, the two of them hadn't been around in a couple of weeks and we didn't know what happened. Then, out of the beautiful blue, Catherine called Carlos to share a proposition with him. Turns out she has this farm on 16 acres of land with a geodesic dome house sitting on it in Omaha, AR which is right across the border of Missouri maybe 20 miles away from here. She's also got this place in Springfield, MO and she travels between the two which is a trek and she is getting tired of it...

Here is the kicker -
She wants us to be caretakers on her farm!!! WHOA I know. She has food growing there so I'm sure the beds are all prepped for lots more goodies to be planted aaand she has chickens. Chickens. I think about them during the day and I dream about them at night, chickens. We are going over there to look at the place on Tuesday so I'll try to remember and take a few pictures of the place. I'm very interested to see what this geodesic dome looks like. She said it has 1 bedroom plus 2 lofts and it's 1200 sq. feet I think... that's a big dome. It's a dream come true and I love it here.

A Concert...
Tomorrow Liberty and Justice will be playing their biggest show yet! That's my band with my boyfriend Carlos, for those of you who aren't too familiar with my life. We decided to call ourselves Liberty and Justice because our songs are about freedom, community, nature, and self empowerment... and we also mock the government a little bit, here and there. So it's a literal take on the ever popular slogan "liberty and justice for all". We take it pretty seriously and try to bring honesty into a very jaded world. We started our little duo on the road during our hitch hiking adventures last May. Me on harmonica and Carlos on banjo and we played all over the country to unsuspecting pedestrians. I now play the ukulele and Carlos also jams out on the guitar and mandolin every now and again. Since moving to Missouri we have played a show at the Farmers Market of the Ozarks and got paid with delicious local food and we also had a gig at the Springfield ArtsFest with a total of maybe 8 folks in our audience. One lovely lady gave us a $20 tip at that one! Tomorrow is day one of the Summer Concert Series that the mayor of Forsyth, Missouri is putting on as a fundraiser to feed hungry kids. Liberty and Justice will be kicking off the series at 5PM tomorrow evening and we are playing for a full TWO HOURS. Whoa. A two hour set. We've been practicing a dang awful lot the past couple of days.

There's a kicker to this story too -
A boy named Adam broke Carlos' banjo about a week and a half ago, so Carlos had to buy another banjo on ebay and it hasn't gotten here yet. The banjo and my voice are the centerpiece in our 2-piece band. Luckily we have a friend named Jim who plays the upright bass and practices with us sometimes, who just bought himself a banjo a little while ago. He said he'd meet us at the show so Carlos could borrow it. Either way, the show is going to rule!

Check out some of our music on our totally hip facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Liberty-and-Justice/206637086113219

Have a wonderful night everyone. 'Tis almost a full moon again. :)

Patio Container Garden

As some of you know, I'm currently living in an apartment. At one time, my family was given the okay to plant whatever we want in the garden bed next to our apartment as long as we maintain so last year we grew lots of cucumbers, some tomatoes that didn't do well because of the hot, dry weather.. lettuce, mint, wheat, and flowers. This year we wanted to plant more stuff so we made the bed bigger and started lots of seeds really early. Things were looking good until the management hired an outside landscaper who had no idea what anything was so he hoed up many of our plants. Goodbye lettuce and elderberry bush! A few lovely plants made it through the ransacking, but this made me think twice about planting veggies in the bed. I have resorted to primarily using containers on the patio...

And it's a struggle.

Please excuse my nighttime iPhone photography (no flash). These tomato plants are doing GREAT. On the right we have Chocolate Cherry and the left is a Goliath.

Besides the tomatoes though, most things are having a hard time. I'm very new to container gardening and I definitely did not use the right mix of soil. To start, I used straight COW MANURE and nothing else... it seems I was a little off my rocker that day. Since then I have amended many things with sand so they are 50/50 sand/cow manure. Yet most plants still look a little down. The only fertilizers I like to use are those that come from real sources like bone meal, kelp, etc. I haven't invested in any yet, but I have inquired at my local feed store. Should check back in with them. I have made one revelation and it is seaweed :

Above you will see my jar of seaweed! At night I put a handful of seaweed in the jar, let it steep like a tea overnight and in the morning I have nutrient dense seaweed water to feed my plants with! I feel like this is definitely helping, but I still need to amend the soil a bit.

Anyone have experience with container gardening and want to share some tips??

Love - Desiree