Terrace farming

Yesterday I spent most of the day working on these terraces where I grow most of the vegetables. I finished weeding and mulching two of the terraces, weeded two others, and dug up a bunch of volunteer potatoes and transplanted them. There was room for one more row in the terrace where I planted the other potatoes, which was going to be for red potatoes; but I waited too long to buy them and everyone was out of the Red Pontiacs. The garden devas provided enough volunteers to fill the whole row.

Yesterday morning I attempted to remove some plumbing parts from the Olympic gas kiln but they wouldn't budge for me, even with the heaviest wrench. The water column gauge I got from Olympic doesn't seem to have any place to fit on either the new regulator or the solenoid valve, so I need to call them this morning and find out whether I need a different part or a new part to get all these things working together.

Today is a new moon, so according to planting by moon signs, I can plant some seeds of above ground veggies, which I'll do right after breakfast. Then I'll head back to the garden and weed another one of the already planted terrace beds, transplant a few more kale seedlings and mulch the bed.

Dinner is going to be easy - bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, so I'll try to squeeze in a bit of studio time.

Non studio productivity

No studio time till the middle of next week when company leaves; but the house is super clean, animals are fed and exercised, new lettuce, broccoli raab, another kale variety, and rose campion seeds are planted, a new rye sourdough is started and the last of the other sourdoughs is fed (I'm not giving up on that one until the new one arrives and gets started!). I even found time to order some new seeds and write out some new recipes to try. I'm currently intrigued with some Peruvian recipes and will try them as soon as I get some of the unique hot, aji peppers called for in some of these dishes.

I'm also making headway with paper work and catching up with backed up reading material while I anxiously await this evening's arrival of our daughter and son-in-law who are flying in from Munich, Germany. Two days ago I promised them mild, sunny weather, which is what weather.com forecast. Wonder what they're going to think when they see this new, light covering of snow!

Seed starting and gnocchi update, change in Gougere recipe

ATTENTION: I forgot to put the amt of water in the mushroom gougere recipe, so for those who said they want to try it, I added the water to the recipe in the original post. It's 3/4 of a cup of cold water.

As I mentioned the other day I was going to make my first batch of gnocchi. It was a lot of work and frankly, not worth the effort. I told Jim for all that trouble I could have made pierogi's which are a much better use of mashed potatoes and flour! I once had gnocchi in a restaurant and wasn't that fond of it, but since I've been on an Italian cooking kick, I thought I'd try home made, hoping they'd be better. The gorgonzola cream sauce was a winner and gave some punch to an another wise boring dish.

Yesterday was an indoor gardening day. I planted the large tray of seeds above - everything from tomatoes to bok choi, made a rough garden plan for this year and got a lot of older seeds wrapped in wet handtowel  paper and baggies to test their viability. Today I'll start some more veggies and put some of my older cabbage and broccoli seedlings outdoors to start hardening them off. The greenhouse window is a bit overcrowded and I need to make room for these latest seedling once they sprout. After it warms up a bit in the afternoon I need to prune my butterfly bush and maybe spent a few minutes on other garden cleanup.

If any of my local, gardening friends want to try some new seeds, I'd love to share. Seeds like lettuce and peppers don't last long and we can only eat so much! So give me a call, come over and sit and have a cup of tea and we can go through my huge seed stash.

This time of year I'm usually splitting my time between studio and getting ready for the spring planting season.  With Jim doing so much better, I think I'll finally be able to get in the studio by next week; and I'll only be about 100 feet away if he needs anything. I'm skipping the spring studio tour so I'll be able to work without the stress of getting a firing in before the beginning of June. There's still a lot more work to make to fill the kiln.

Baking day yesterday, seed planting today

Here are the 2 loaves of no knead bread I baked yesterday. It seems that most of my day was spent in the kitchen. I made a couple of pizzas for our Friday night, porch sitting with our friends Jim and Laura. It's the first Friday in about 6 weeks that we've been able to do it.

Jim fared well with the visit but this morning he's a bit achy from the fractured sacrum.

The robins have arrived, so spring is in the air even though the weather is still hanging on to winter. Even in this cold, some perennials and bulbs are starting to peek through.

I've been planting seeds this morning - Genovese basil, Italian parsley, 2 types of spinach,  artichokes (which have to be in the fridge for 2 weeks), and a bit more Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage. After lunch I'll plant another savoy cabbage variety "Chieftain". My kitchen greenhouse window is almost filled to the brim and same for the grow lights in the basement. I wish I had more south facing windows in the house. I may have to clear my studio desk and put seedling on it once I've used up all the house space.

Today or tomorrow I'll need to transplant some of my Broccoli Raab and cabbage seedlings. The first crop of mixed lettuce seedlings are doing well, so far, in the basement. One of my over wintering geraniums is actually flowering under the grow lights!

Kent McLaughlin Bowl

Here's another great pot from my collection. It's a huge, rope impressed,stoneware bowl by Kent McLaughlin. Kent is what I consider a "potters potter" always producing, beautiful, solid work that transcends gimmicks and the latest fads. He has a solid understanding of all parts of the process of making which is evident in all his work.

This week's been a constant reminder of that lovely saying "Man plan, God laughs"!
Life has impacted all my plans to get in the studio. Yesterday the plan was to get some seed starting in the morning, make a blueberry pie and get to the studio. Instead, the painter arrived; but sat around with me keeping her company for an hour and a half while she waited for the rest of the crew to show up with the paint she needed to get started. That ate up the pie making time! Fortunately she's a very intersting gal with amazing life experiences, so I didn't really mind the delay to my own plans. Then the crew needed input on where to place the pedestal sink, what more needed painting, approval of the new plumbing, and on and on it went. I was only happy I wasn't in the studio and had to keep coming back to the house to deal with all these questions and decisions.

So I decided to get on with my indoor seeding planting which took just about the rest of the day other than meal prep in between. So far I've planted onion, leeks, scallion, kale, spinach, artichokes, lettuce and a bunch of perennials. I've found places for all of them either in the greenhouse window in the kitchen or under the grow lux lights in the basement. Don't know where I'll put the seedlings once they need transplanting but I'll deal with that when the time comes. I may just have to buy more light fixtures and grow lux lights in another month!

Today was a nesting day which I decided to devote to cleaning up my huge paper pile in the living room, unpacking some of my jewelry making supplies in the basement, and making a nice, early, vegetarian dinner - tossed salad with garlic vinagrette and mushrooms stroganoff. Jim loved it so much he had seconds, so that is definitely a keeper recipe. He's open to vegetarian recipes as long as the man part of the recipe is not tofu! Although, I must say, that I've found if I deep fry cubes of tofu, and use them instead of chicken, for instance, in Indian or Chinese recipes, he will eat it. I think the problem for non vegetarians is getting weaned off the texture of meat as well as the taste; but I'm cooking 1/2 vegetarian and half non currently hoping to get the balance to about 80-90% vegetarian down the line.

None of the workers showed this morning even though, to Jim and I who grew up in the the Northeast (New York and Pennsylvania), the roads weren't that bad. There was only about 1 1/2" of snow; but the road was slippery. My 75 year old husband drove into town to pick up the mail and get me some sour cream for my mushrooms stroganoff. He just drove slowly and had no problem. The weather here years ago was much worse - 3' snow falls were common ten years ago; but these days 2" of snow keeps people home and schools closed. Go figure!

We were grateful to have a quiet day with no workers in the house, so I'm not complaining! It's been something of a cozy, vacation day with no studio time other than going in there after dinner to water plants, cooking and paper organizing and computer work (I turned the computer on this morning only to be faced with the blue screen of death, which took an hour or more to fix), and watching the snow fall.

I'll get in the studio tomorrow and get some work done and get away from the noise and mess of construction. That is, if the crew shows up. In any case, I'm still planning on studio time since I'm feeling guilty about staying away so long and there are pots than need slipping and decorating and more pots to make. But I have enjoyed these days off to catch up on things in the house that needed tending to.

Well, that's it for this cold (was 5F this morning)snowy, day.

Till later,
June

Gay Smith jar

Here's another sweet little soda fired jar by Gay Smith.

Yesterday was cooking, doctors appointment, seed starting and dealing with sub-contractors - needless to say - another "no studio" day. Today I should be able to get a half a day in the studio this afternoon. We're expecting the snow to start around noon, so Jim is going out right after breakfast to do some shopping and other chores and I'll hold the fort with the carpenters, painter and electrician. I was up at 5:00am, got the dogs out for their morning walk, had tea and tackled email. Afterward I mixed up more seed starting soil and prepped a few planters and after breakfast I'll plant some kale, shallots and lettuce.

I started my indoor seed planting yesterday -got onion, parsley, artichoke, leek,scallions, basil and celery planted. Other than what I'll plant today, that will be it till next month when I start some of the other warmer loving veggies like tomatoes, peppers,etc. I find that basil does well as an indoor plant in a sunny window. Luckily I have a greenhouse window in the kitchen with herbs like oregano, thyme, parsley and basil. In fact, I need to pinch and re-pot those few basil plants and get them into a bigger pot. Before I had the greenhouse window I could grow a lot of basil in a single, 5 gallon bucket in front of a sunny window and that supplied us with fresh basil through the winter.

I'm contemplating making a blueberry pie while I'm housebound this morning, if my frozen berries from July are still good.

If I have time after dinner, I'll go through my stash of flower seeds and see if there are any perennial seeds that I can start now. I harvested some day lily seeds last fall, so I might just start them. The problem is figuring out where I'll put all these seedlings once they sprout and are big ready to graduate to bigger pots. I only have 4 sets of grow lights in the basement which are currently being used for outdoor plants I'm over wintering .In the next month or so I may have to move some of those to the studio and squeeze them around the citrus and other tropical trees and shrubs that were too big to move into the basement for the winter. Otherwise I'll have to buy another fixture and more grow lights.

Time to get started on that "to do" list of the day.

Till later,
June