Home Sweet Casa

Our search is over as we have found our new homestead! Very exciting times for us right now, and to add we will be moving in within the next week or so. Our home sits on almost 2 acres, has an old one stall horse barn, a creek, several fruit trees (apple, pear, peach, apricot, quince and cherry), woods to walk in, large open space for gardening and not to mention a hillside of overgrown blackberry bushes (fun times await hacking those down).


Here's a few sneak peek photos....

Overgrown brush & blackberries

Can't wait for our journey to begin.....

Catch-up Montage

It's nearly Halloween, 6 months since my last post here and a great deal has happen during that interval.  To keep it short I wanted to do a sort of montage type recap.
So here it is....
                                                                                                                                 

Packin' away

Not long after my last post, Rick and I were notified by our landlord that we had to move out of our homestead due to their son wanting to live there.
We spent the remainder of April and most of May packing up all our belonging (some plants too) and hauling it all away into storage and my parents house.

My Parents

Since we didn't want to sign into a year lease with another rental we decided to take over the whole upstairs at my parents house and save up money for a home of our own to purchase after our wedding.

Yummy bi-color Pineapple Tomato

I was able to get my gardening fix by growing an assortment of heirloom tomatoes in my parent's garden and building them a herb garden.

<3 Love <3

August came fast and before we knew it Rick and I said our "I Do's" and kissed under the blue moon sky.
Happiest day of my life <3



So here we are...Oct 20th...newlyweds, knee deep in the (new to us) home buying world which is exciting and at times unnerving! We are in hopes to find our new casa soon as the holiday season is right around the corner and we will... I know we will... I have a good feeling.  :)

New Family Members

We are pleased to announce that we have adopted two new members to Friel Casa. Chickens!!!

Meet Penny Lane (Buff Orpington)

Meet Rita (Barred Rock)

While Rick was playing shows in Costa Rica I decided this would be the ultimate welcome home surprise (unfortunately it was near 2am when he arrived home this morning, so the chooks were sleeping). Nonetheless, he couldn't wait to see them first thing today.

Penny Lane checkin' out the digs of the run.

Rita checkin' out Penny Lane who is checkin' out the digs of the run

We are both tickled pink in welcoming these two lovely girls to our homestead.

Fungi

A lone peziza violacea thriving in the growing conditions of our fire pit.

Weathering Wood

 My newly built yardstick gate is looking fabulous and all but it sticks out like a sore thumb against my aged arbor. Questioning if a store-bought stain will give the look it truly needs, I decided instead to weather it.
Looking to see what I had around the house, I found some old rusted metal, white distilled vinegar, and day old coffee still left in the pot. I combined all three and let my concoction set for a day or so before applying the murky brew to my gate.                                                                                                                                     

I missed a few spots on the first coat

Two coats and 15 minutes is what it took for my gate to age... saved me the 2+ years of wait for this to happen naturally.

Before

After

Seed List 2012

2012 Seed List

• Bean (bush) -Roma II
• Bean (pole) -Cherokee Trail Of Tears
• Bean Fava -Windsor
• Bean Lima -Henderson's Bush
• Beet -Chioggia
• Cardoon -Gobba Di Nizzia
• Cucumber -Carosello Scopatizzo Barese
• Greens -Seven Top Turnip (my absolute favorite)
• Kale -Lacinato
• Kale -White Russian
• Okra -Hill Country Heirloom Red
• Parsnip -Half Long Guernsey
• Pattypan Squash -White Bush Scallop
• Pepper -Black Hungarian
• Pepper -Criolla De Cocina
• Pepper -Friariello Di Napoli
• Pepper -Pasilla Bajio
• Rutabaga -Laurentian
• Swiss Chard -Rainbow Blend
• Tomato -Black Krim
• Tomato -Pineapple
• Tomato -Riesentraube
• Tomato -Thessaloniki
• Tomato -Violet Jasper
• Watermelon -Moon and Stars
• Watermelon -Stone Mountain
• Zucchini -Cocozella Di Napoli

Things that I'm still in need of:

• Pumpkins

Yardstick Garden Gate

Now that Rick and I are planning on getting chickens here in the next couple months, I need to start proofing the yard. My easy fix of a garden gate that worked well for our dog Suki just isn't going to cut it with chooks.

The previous Suki proof bamboo stick garden barrier

I needed an actual gate. Not wanting to spend a lot or take that much time with building one, I decided that a yardstick would actually be a perfect height for a picket gate (and they are pre-cut :).

      

We set off to Home Depot in search of yardsticks and gate hardware and forked out about $15. Using some left over wood we had and a little over an hour of construction, we now have ourselves a new chicken and Suki proof gate. 

It literally rules (pun intended)!

Apple Tree Branches

I have to admit I can't stand pruning my apple tree every year. Trying to get in between the branches with my ladder, my hair always getting stuck on the limbs, and not to mention the chance of being smacked by the falling 4 ft long branch as I prune (maybe having my compost near the tree wasn't a good idea considering the lengths of these limbs).

One thing I did differently this year was I didn't throw the branches in our yard waste. I wanted to make use and do something with them this time around. What to do is the next question. My original thought was to make bean trellises for the garden, but they just weren't tall enough considering last year our bean vines got up to 10 ft. So I went with option #2  -hide the chicken wire fencing on the front side of our garden. I stuck the cut side of the limbs in the ground to create a branch like border that would hide the chicken wire. 

I love it...I just wish I had several more limbs to make this divider even thicker.

My summer vision is seeing a thick bunch of Grandpa Ott's Morning Glories growing up and throughout my new apple tree branch fencing.

Seed Hunting

Maybe it's my family's DNA or quite possibly it's the DNA from over 10,000 years ago when humans first discovered how to cultivate crops... whatever the reason I hunt seeds. I hunt when I'm on vacation, road trips, walking Suki, at family/friend's houses, parking lots, etc.  

During our walk with Suki today we saw a huge vine that had pods dangling from it. It appeared to be Wisteria but I was unaware this plant even grew pods. I looked online and sure enough they do! Along with the Wisteria seeds I found Chinese Lantern, Annual Honesty, native Snowberry, and some dark purple berries I pulled from an evergreen bush. 

An hour dog walk gave us 5 new plant species for our garden... and for free!

The long lost seeds

My Pop told me stories of an incredible cucumber his Mom would grow when he was a child called "Scopatizzo". His Uncle Vito brought the seeds over from Bari, Italy and had given some to my Grandma. The cucumbers grew a peach like fuzz that easily rubbed off while the taste was almost melon like. These heirloom seeds have been lost from my family now for years as somewhere along the lines the seed saving ceased. I have always wanted to grow these interesting melon like cucumbers and sadden that our family's seeds have vanished...

This year I was determined to find them and FINALLY (yay!!) I found them from a seed company in Bari and ordered 4 packs of 100 seeds. They just arrived in the mail today and I immediately called my Pop to tell him the good news. We talked awhile about the good ol' days and his fond memories about this amazing cucumber.