D is for Dreams

And I'm dreaming of dirt, as in garden dirt. High on my list of priorities this year is improving my soil, in large part so it holds moisture better. My raised beds look pretty good:

It's not black Minnesota soil, but it's a lot better than the anemic prairie dust in other places around the property. It's also free of pesticides and herbicides. All that improvement came from clean top soil, compost, and poop from local cows and chickens.

I worry about what I'll be able to grow around here as the weather heats up. We're still in a major drought area and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. Water is plentiful and cheap in my town, a situation that says more about bad leadership than reality. Conservation will have to start soon or we'll simply run out of water like the next town over. My planning includes all kinds of sustainable gardening methods from all over the world, like my own keyhole gardens - I'll talk about those in subsequent posts. But this map hints at what is in store for a large section of the U.S. this year.

Dreams - I hope there will be more to my gardening efforts than that. I'd like to be able to grow and put up most of my vegetables for the next year. I've never succeeded in that, but I think it's a worthy goal. Have you ever tried it?

Speaking of dreams, here's a terrific book by a city gal who met her true love and took a completely different career and life path into The Dirty Life.

Kristen Kimball now works a draft-horse powered farm with her husband. I loved this book, and her blog is a fair treat too. Be sure to bookmark it and visit often. Look at the dirt in her seed flats!

C is for Challenge

For the A-Z Blogging Challenge as well as for so many others - I can turn this letter into a World Crisis!

I'd be a lot more challenged if I hadn't gone through the alphabet last month and brainstormed themes for each letter. I have my handy list to refer to and here's what I can choose from today:

• compost
• clocks
• convenience
• chickens
• cold frames
• chocolate
• cats
• cows
• corn
• cedars
• clary sage
• coolness
• children's books

I'll talk about my dreams of becoming the Compost Queen later. Also my neighbors chickens when we get to E for eggs. I don't need the temptation of chocolate since I just gave up sugar... again. I could write about my neighbors cows, but I'd rather tell you about their luscious milk when we get to M. Because having raw, local milk is a very cool thing indeed!

So meet a few of my cats:

This is Sassafrass

Pippin on the Roof

Chai being Bored 

Duchess on Call

On a grander scale, I'm feeling dreadfully challenged by all the environmental issues we face, whether from oil spills, GM contamination, declining bee populations; it seems like our battles are endless, and I often feel we're losing the game, don't you? I suppose we can only take one step at a time and do what we can. Part of my contribution to environmental betterment is through promoting a little publisher named Little Pickle Press. They publish children's books in an environmentally sustainable way. Here's one of my favorite titles by Rana DiOrio.

You can buy the hardcover book here.  It's also available through iTunes and Kindle for you gadgets. Because teaching children how important the environment is, well, it's as important as teaching adults to take care of the only planet we have.

What about you? What's challenging you today? Please leave me a comment.

March Weather Wrap-up

It was a curious month of weather, with more extremes than usual. Gratefully we got a bit of snow. The widest temperature spread a week apart was 70 degrees, from -7 one night to 63 degrees one day a week later.

Here's Moby Drift which is still about half the size, but is rapidly melting away. This is from last weekend.

Wishing everyone a happy Easter and Passover! Stop by often as I'll be posting daily as part of the A-Z Blogging Challenge.

The Lows and Highs of Weather

This is January 2013 and look at those "snaps" every few days. This is what global warming experts talked about thirty years ago. We go from -15 on Sunday to a high of 51 on Wednesday - a 65-degree swing. I wonder how this will affect the trees?

On our agenda this week is more work on cold frames and adding real windows to the glass house that will enclose the goat shed. We scored a houseful of old wood-framed windows which will replace the plastic sheathing that didn't last the summer! Live and learn. Here's the framework. I told hubbs I want white trim with cuteness and a British look. We have a way to go, huh? :D

Even though it's cold, my thoughts turn to making compost. Here's a terrific post from Jaden at Steamy Kitchen about making compost in three days.  I haven't mastered making compost in three months! You?

Chickens and Chocolate Eggs

Dear Juwainyuh,

What a lovely letter you write, and thank you for sharing all your wonderful ideas about gardening and houses! I have to tell you a story about chickens and brown eggs.

I actually get brown eggs from my neighbor a half mile away, who also has Brown Swiss cows. I feel very lucky because, hard as it is to believe, getting local eggs is not easy out in the country. Most local farmers who raise chickens sell the eggs in the city, where they can earn more money for them.

But the brown eggs I get from my neighbor are nothing like the eggs from French Maran chickens. Have you heard of this breed? We first learned of them when we visited Minnesota in October. We stayed at the lovely Deutsche Strasse B & B and one of the other guests was participating in a chicken show at the local fairgrounds. Their French Marans won best of show. And here is a picture of the eggs they lay. Now those are brown eggs! They look like chocolate! You can find more information about this breed here and here, if you are interested.

I loved seeing the plans of the raised bed garden . I have raised beds, too, and I can't imagine being able to grow anything in this hot, dry climate without them. It really makes a big difference in being able to grow food to eat. I had a very good salad garden right outside my back door all summer. Here's an example of how I mixed up the vegetables with the flowers which was very pretty and lush looking!

And here's another picture of a raised bed:

There are four L-shaped raised beds that border the "charmed circle" in the middle (which is just a napping place for the cats).

I'm interested in permaculture, too, and in the new year, I plan to create a sun trap in my middle garden as well as some keyhole beds. Have you heard of those? I have a tremendous amount of brush to process, and this seems like an excellent way to handle that. I just have to find something with which to build the support walls, which is an issue around here, since there isn't a lot of rock. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about:

As to the big binder you left behind in Yemen with all your research and plans... you can create another bigger and better one here, right? Think of the old binder as nothing more than practice for a better set of plans!

Thank you so much for your wonderful letter, little friend!

Love,

Dani

Sukhailah's Yummy Yemeni Dinner

Earlier this week, I received a care package in the mail from my long-time Story Circle Network pal who is also a cow-orker at Little Pickle Press. I'll tell more about all the treats later, but first I want to share the best part of the surprise - all the sweet handwritten letters... long letters... from the children. Sukhailah, the eldest daughter, sent me two of her chicken recipes, and I couldn't wait to try one out. So I started with Curried Yogurt Chicken. My comments in parentheses below.

Here's what the recipe says to do:

Take one chicken cut into pieces and set it in a very large bowl! Crush 3 cloves of garlic or put them through the garlic press. Rub them all over the chicken pieces. (This helps tenderize the chicken.) Sprinkle with:

3 Tbsp. curry powder (we blend our own)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger powder
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
Lots of salt and pepper
If you like spicy foods, add some cayenne to spice it up a bit.

Add two cups of plain yogurt and mix it up. Leave this mixture to marinate for at least a few hours.

When you are ready to cook the chicken, chop two onions (I used shallots from my garden), and heat up a little oil in a large pot with a cover.

Saute the onions, then carefully add the marinated chicken, add chicken or vegetable stock (or water) to cover, and place the lid on the pot. Simmer until the chicken is tender, checking often and adding more liquid if necessary. (It took about 1 1/2 hours for the chicken to be perfectly tender, and I did not need to add more broth.)

Serve with rice and/or flat bread, along with fried onions and salad. This is what we made with the chicken this week. We had it with a Yemeni condiment rather like salsa that we all love.

The luscious smelling spices as the chicken cooked, inspired the making of chapatis, an Indian flat bread that's super-easy to make. It's basically just 2 cups of flour, some salt, and 3/4 cup of water kneaded to a smooth dough. Then we smash the dough in a tortilla press using a bit more dough than a tortilla needs so the breads are fatter.

Then just fry on a cast iron skillet.

Here it is served over rice. We just had it with chai to drink, a spiced tea with milk. Next time, I'll probably add a salad with a simple lemon dressing. No room for dessert, but we did talk about poached pears with some almond-flavored cream. Definitely a meal fit for the holidays!

Thank you, Sukhailah! We absolutely loved this dish! A definite 5-!!!!! favorite! :)

A Bad Week for My Home

Hello January - My Weekly Schedule

It's Book-in-a-Week and this year, I plan to join monthly again. My goal for January is 30 pages. I'll be working on new chapters for the Blog Book Tours How-To and one of the children's stories which I'm crafting into a middle grade chapter book rather than present it as a picture book series.

Weather is bright and sunny today, but a bit on the chilly side. We are due for some more snow mid-week but I hope it's nothing much, as we're scheduled for two appointments in the city to talk stained glass with Mick's clients. We're in that hardworking (and tiresome to me) bidding process with a half dozen churches which means a lot of paperwork that is unbillable time. Here's a peek at the church blog.

Sweet potatoes are in the oven roasting. I'm reading An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler and am quite taken with her organic cooking style. Plan to make a hummus from these tatties, to smear on thick slices of home-baked bread. On Saturday, we tried her suggestion of cooking greens in hot olive oil with garlic, then serving on bread coated with cream or pot cheese. I added some tomato slices, pepper, and more olive oil for a cut-with-a-knife sandwich lunch. It was quite tasty. Hubbs wasn't so impressed with the egg experiment on Sunday though. Here's Tamar and How To Teach an Egg to Fly via video instructions. Cute ideas.

What else is new? Rough start to the new year with Mom in the hospital with a viral infection, and a funeral - a friend's husband. Plumbing problems, eye issues, toothaches... it hasn't been a pleasant start. How about you?

It's a New Year!

What better way to start than by commenting on the crazy weather?

Look at Thursday from one week to another - it's not exactly normal for my stretch of the middle. With seed catalogs in hand, I feel like working in the garden this week, but know it's probably not a good idea with impending cold next week. Cwazy! How's it out your way?

An Unusual Sight

My cedars/junipers are blooming this year - with these curious flowers.

This is the first time in six years I've seen this. What exactly is happening, does anyone know?