Elderberries

I was excited last spring when I found elderberries blooming on our new property.  Come harvest time those berries were tiny and sparse.  Not any berry one could make anything with.  Real elderberry bushes have been on my to do list for a while.  This past weekend at Rodale I bought the last two bushes they had for sale. (And hopefully they are going to take the last of the red raspberry bushes I have been trying to get rid of!)

Yummm, elderberry jam!

Rain Barrels!

I have wanted rain barrels for a while, and the new barn and its metal roof would be the perfect location. And the barn is uphill from the garden. I can easily gravity feed the garden with water from the rain barrels. The only thing really holding me back, besides the lack of a barn, was the cost of new rain barrels and/or the lack of time to make our own. Well, this past weekend at Rodale's cold crop sale we bought two brand new very nice and very inexpensive rain barrels. Now I only need a barn!

Magnolia's don't like freezing temps

Our magnolia tree is about to bloom. But its supposed to go down to 26 degrees tonight. This after many days of 60s and 70s.  Magnolia blossoms turn all brown and fall off when it gets too cold.  We'll see how it fairs.  I so love this magnolia tree.

Garden Work

This weekend has been glorious!  And we got so much accomplished outside with the beautiful weather.  Today could not have been a more beautiful early April day.
Yesterday Alan moved things in preparation for the new barn and I got the vegetable garden ready for tilling today.  I dug up about 60 raspberry bushes, still more to go.  Friends came over today and took 20 berry bushes, that still leaves plenty to go. But the end is in sight.
Today was a perfect day to till the garden.  At first the chickens were afraid of the tiller, then they realized what the tiller left behind.

Then they kept getting in the way!
I am still in love with my soil, and so are the chickens.

So much promise in a newly tilled garden.

But there's those pesky raspberry bushes again. Please someone take some, please!

Late March Gardening

Spring is nearly here.  Seedlings are starting to come up in the greenhouse.  Kale, pac choi, mustard and spinach have all begun germinating and are just starting to peak out of the soil.

The garlic is doing very well.

Inside, under the lights, the onion seedlings are tall enough to get their first hair cut yesterday.  Ground cherries, tomatillos, 4 o'clocks, and holly hocks seeds were planted yesterday.  Most of the bulbs outside have begun to grow.  The chives, comfrey and rhubarb have started to come up.  And today I planted two varieties of Sweet Peas. I love Sweet Peas but never seemed to get them in the ground early enough. They would begin blooming about the time it really started to get warm and the flowers would wilt in the heat. Hopefully this year I will get loads of blossoms before the real warm weather starts.
 
Other signs of spring are evident at our local Mennonite hardware store, Weavers.  This is the first year I have ever seen them selling chicks.  And they have quite a large selection of seed potatoes and onions.  I really can't wait to get digging in the soil again.

There is so much clean up outside yet to do.  The cinders from the road crews need to be raked back into the road.  Last year they came around and swept up the cinders on the road, but not the ones on the grass next to the road.  I wanted to have the cinders in the road when they came around, but I just missed them today. I guess I will just have to shovel them up myself.  There is major pruning needed on most of the arborvitae, especially along the stream.  And there is still clean up from Sandy. We have been working on clearing things away from the areas of the new barn and access road.

Thank goodness for pole saws!

House Work

Working on the house is a big puzzle.  So many behind the scenes jobs need to be completed before we can start the fun things, like a new kitchen.  So, before we could make any changes to the lay out upstairs, put in the second bathroom, a new master bedroom and so on; we had to do things like jack up the house to make things level and take out the springiness and big dips in the floors. But before we could jack up the house we needed to get rid of the hot water pipes for the oil heat.  Before we could get rid of the pipes we had to run out of oil.  And so on and so on. 

Well, Alan finally started lifting up the house.

I came home from work one night last week and he asked me if I noticed anything then proceeded to tell me he jacked the house up half an inch.  Gee, and I didn't even notice until he said something!
A lot of the doors are now not latching or have started rubbing, since they were put in when the house was sagging. But our bedroom floor is no longer springy.  Before, if I was in bed and Alan walked around the bedroom the bed would shake.

One of the old supports in the basement was on old porch column.  With the extra lighting downstairs we noticed some writing on the post.

It says "The Rahn Residence 7 Acres." Mr And Mrs Rahn moved the cabin to the current property and added the majority of the additions.  Not sure why they had their name and acreage written on this post. But its a nice note from the past.

For my other Hobby- My New Dress Dummy

I have wanted a dress dummy for years.  I used to have a duct tape dummy, but I was never happy with it.  I looked at the new dress forms available on line and at Joann's but was turned off by so many of the bad reviews.  I needed a sturdy dummy that could stand up to the heavy gowns of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Enter Dorie, my new dress form.

She must be at least 30 or 40 years old.  But she is very sturdy with a nice heavy metal base.  She also has metal adjustments inside that move with wing nuts, much sturdier than the plastic dials I saw on the new forms.  However; 17th and 18th century garments can not be made on her lovely hour glass shape.  So I got to work with some extra fabric, an old shift and an old set of stays.

She is now pretty much my size when I wear my stays.  This will make fitting garments so much easier.  Its a pain in the neck to change into a shift and stays when you are making period garments. Now Dorie will be my body double and I can stay comfortable.