New favorite Blog

I have a new Blog that I read almost daily. I started following the blog and I have been reading it when it comes in my email. They have been interesting, well researched, put together and thought provoking. posttomorrow.wordpress.com I hope he keeps up the great writing.

Garden update and Hoop House Pictures

Here are some pictures of my hoop house. The plants are growing like weeds. The peas are over 4 foot tall and flowering.

peas, lettuce and carrots

I am thinning the carrots and they are looking like tiny carrots too cool. We are eating the lettuce. I have two types: leaf and romaine.
The cabbages and onions are growing quickly also.

Cabbage and onions

The first picture up is when my girlfreind and I put the plastic on it. It was too short for the sides. The mistake I made was I bought 10 foot long pvc. and put them together. In hindsight I should have cut a foot off of each pole. It would have been shorter but then the plastic on the sides would have been right.

Plastic is ready

I had to add 1 x 10′s covered in plastic on the bottom of the sides. That gave me a place to anchor the plastic to. I did that with 1 x 4′s with Truck Cap stripping. I screwed them to the 1 x 10′s. It was a pain on the wall side. The solution was to cut a couple of boards and using them to hold up the 1 x 4 to the right height on the 1 x 10.

1 x 10 side border

On the inside I attached a few of the pvc to the 1 x 10 with pvc straps. I’ll have to take a picture of them. Probably should do them all.

plastic all the way except the door

I saw a movie this weekend called “Our Idiot Brother” the idiot brother lived on an organic farm and went back there after a stint in jail. The green house had solid sides built from house siding. When I tear the plastic off for the summer my plan it to rebuild it with house siding sides. It will be very cool.
Eventually I put plastic on the door. I ran a heavy duty extension cord out there and added a heater and keep the Christmas lights from last year.

Door with plastic

I added a fence pole and wired a hose holder onto it. Now I don’t step on it when I go into the house.

Hose holder

One day in Arkansas I hope to build a permanent green house attached to the house. One day …

Thanksgiving

I know I am a week late but here is a turkey day post. I cooked a turkey overnight so it would be ready for lunch the next day. I Looked online and printed and copied 3 recipes. The one we used was closest to what my girlfriend had cooked before. The recipe I found was called “Easy Overnight Turkey.” We modified the ingredients but stayed true to the temperatures and times. Here is the recipe with our modifications:
1 (20 lb) Turkey (Ours was 17 lbs)
1/2 stick butter (We softened it in the microwave)
1 lg clove garlic (We used 3 small cloves)
1 lg peeled onion (we halved and quartered it)
1 lg. peeled quartered apple

We added the following items:
2 bay leaves
3 stalks celery
1 peeled and quartered red pear
Sage
Rosemary
a cup of water (really did not need it)

Rub turkey inside and out with half the butter (at this point we also seasoned with sage and rosemary. I lifted the breast skin and rubbed butter and sage under the skin also); place remaining butter, garlic, onion and apple in cavity (we added the bay leaves, celery, pear also and it was over flowing). Place turkey, breast side down in rack in roaster. Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees. Turn turkey over (I forgot to do this); reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees. Bake uncovered (We had the roaster lid on ours the whole time) without opening oven door for 10-12 hours. Should serve 12 people.
If you could just smell it the next morning when we went in the kitchen. It was a bit of heaven. We started at 9:30 pm with the hour at 350 and took it out at 9:30 am. We let it set on the oven for 30 minutes after we took it out. Here is a picture:

Turkey in the old roaster

The meat fell off the bones. I pulled the bones, cartilage, fat and skin out. We put the meat in a tray with some of the juice and put it back in the oven on warm so it was ready for lunch. The roaster we cooked it in was my girlfriend’s grandmothers that was handed down to her. What a great piece of kitchenware to still be in use.
The next day with the left over turkey and corn, and a can of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup with herbs and a little water my girlfriend made a turkey pot pie. She used a Pillsbury frozen pie crust she thawed and rolled into the pie pan. She mixed and added the ingredients and then put another pie crust on top.

Home made Turkey Pot Pie

Tell me if that does not look delicious. It was. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Garden Update

Everything is growing except some onion seeds I bought last year. The peas and beans are really going to town. After having two frosts in a row I decided to get busy on the hoop house over the garden so I could get in there and mess with the veggies. Last years frost protection was so small it was difficult to get into, not that I couldn’t, but it was a pain. So I can walk into the hoop house.
What I did was: I hammered 2 foot pieces of 3/8 inch rebar into the ground until about 8 to 10 inches were left showing. I measured each rebar so that they were 3 feet apart. Then I pushed 2 sections of 10 foot long, 1 inch gray electrical pvc together. I put one end in one rebar and then bent it until I could slide the other end over the other rebar. After I got them all in with a little help from my oldest son I ran a piece of pvc down the middle of the top of the hoops. I had to constantly get off the ladder and stand back and make sure everything looked even. I had to unscrew the middle piece a few times to make the hoops look straight instead of angled.
The frame in the back was a pain. I pinned the piece of horizontal wood to the wall with the hoop to pencil the angle of the hoop onto the wood. The angled pieces coming down were also free handed and I got the angles wrong. I don’t think I have ever cut a straight piece of wood.
These are pictures from the first day.

Hoop House Day 1

Here is some pictures of the detail work.

Hoop House back wall framing

I got pretty good at cutting angled notches in the wood.

Hoop House cross pole detail

The second day I put a screen door on the front. I will take a picture of that later. Also after duck taping the rough spots I will put the plastic over it. I will also give an accounting of cost. It is about $250 right now.

Buy guns, store food, grow food all winter in your hoop house

Garden update: How to save your garden from a frost

We had our first frost here last night. I covered the plants with shade cloth. It kept the dew off the plants. I think because the cloth is black the dew was still wet and not frozen.
All of the seeds I planted have sprouted. Onions, cabbage, carrots, Lettuce, Romaine Lettuce, green beans, peas, winter squash.
In one of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books I read they had a late spring frost. Pa Ingalls had the family out pouring water on their sprouted corn. The plants they poured water before the sun hit them survived. The ones that still had frost and the sun hit them were burned and died.
Even though I had them mostly covered I went ahead and sprayed my plants with water.

Book Review

I just finished The Sword of the Lady by S. M. Stirling. Very good book. Got a little weird at the end with the visions the people were having, but I like Sci Fi/ Fantasy. It’s a book of the Change. When the change happened all combustion stopped. No engines, electricity or gunpowder worked any more. They have to fight with swords, bows and arrows, and catapults. So basically a SHTF world. The old religions of wiccans and Norse gods have returned. There are some of the current religions left.

Garden Update

The cabbage and lettuce are sprouting. yaaaay me. There is a cold snap coming I need to build my hoop house. I helped my friend Steve L. plant his garden this weekend. He had the pvc pipe I want for the hoop house and we designed a small one for his potato section.

Gasrden update

The Cucumbers died if I did not tell you. I travel and the person I depended on to take car of them watered them but in this summers brutal heat they needed it twice a day. I am going to have to get a watering system.
So I have just this evening plated my winter garden. Yaaaaay me. I planted onions, cabbage, carrots, green beans, peas, Romaine lettuce, regular lettuce (If there is such a thing) and winter squash. All of this was from seeds. No prestarted cheating though I am tempted if the onions come to the local nurseries.
Before the cold sets in I plan on building a hoop house over the whole garden. Plans are in my head. Pictures will follow.

Buy guns and grow your own garden

Breakfast

Eggs in a basket. I saw this breakfast made years ago on the movie Moonstruck. My girlfriend made it without the red peppers they had in the movie. I don’t know why I recently thought of it and wanted it. It was so beautiful I took a picture of it. Yum.

Eggs in a Basket

She flipped it after this picture.

Yummy, runny

I am fixin’ to eat this. It was delicious.

Something I have never done

I did something I have never done before that I can remember. I left food on my plate at a restaurant. I have always cleaned my plate and feel guilty not cleaning it. I am going to try to get over that guilty feeling and keep doing this. I have been eating too much. I have decided to try to do this more often to curb the calories. It’s not like I am counting calories. Just trying to maintain or drop a couple of pounds of weight.
It felt really weird not cleaning my plate, but I did it anyway.