Seems like we’ve been living in our wellies this week as we spent most of our time planting in the garden.  This week we’ve started:

Peas, round two, this time in the front yard – Little Marvel, Tall Telephone, and Oregon Sugar Pod II.

Potatoes, in three beds in the backyard, near the larger coldframe – German Butterball, All Blue, and a rare heirloom, Red Thumb, an oblong potato with thin red skin and rosey pink flesh.

Leafy and misc. Veggies – Fordhook , Magenta Lights, and Bright Lights Swiss Chard; Russian Red, Dwarf White, and Nero Tuscana Kale, chives, an heirloom lettuce blend, mustard greens, and a brave early attempt at carrots.

Sprinkled around the edges of the beds we seeded calendula and mixed-color California poppies.  At the ends of the pea rows, we put in Wedding Blush tall sweet peas.

(Hyacinth picture by Firecracker)

When I got too tired to do any more yardwork, and the kids were tired of scooter and bike riding around the driveway, we sat on the front steps (smelling the fragrant hyacinths that have just begun to open), and potted up some seeds:

Tomato and tomatillo – third round of tomato planting, so all of these are repeats – Green Zebra, red and yellow Brandywine, Persimmon,  Black Krim, Yellow Pear, Sweet  Million, Tigerella, Cherokee Purple, Crnkovic  Yugoslav (from Seed Savers), Marvel Striped tomatoes, and Purple de Milpa tomatillos.

Other veggies – we started Musselborough Leeks and a second round of globe artichokes (Tum Tum the Destroyer did in my first pot of 7).

What veggies are you starting in your garden?  What are you most looking forward to starting?

Monday is baking day.

We’re enjoying the Monday tradition of baking homemade bread.  Our favorite “fancy” recipe is Challah - the dough is so kid-friendly, the results wow everybody, and nothing goes better with homemade jam.

It looks like the sun is starting to come out, so I think we’ll go plant some potatoes (along with the usual Yukon Gold and generic redskinned, we’re trying three heirlooms this year - German Butterball, All Blue, and a lovely pink-fleshed Red Thumb).

After some busy gardening, I think we’ll deserve some challah and strawberry-banana jam for afternoon snack. 

We scrapped all other plans for today,

and simply played in in the dirt.

As Firecracker said, “There’s nothin’ more natural than gettin’ dirty.”

Somehow, in the midst of playing “dirt fairies”, “cruel dirt queen who makes her workers dig all day”, “climb dirt mountain”, “search for worms and buried treasure”, and “fill and empty buckets of dirt over and over”, we managed to spread just shy of two yards more compost over the front beds, finally completing them.

Tomorrow – chard, beets, kale, mustard greens and potatoes are sown out front.  The coming weeks – finish backyard beds, plant more veggies, mulch paths, plant a few fruit trees, and finish chicken coop/run.

Our front yard before this weekend’s garden work day:

And this afternoon:

Many thanks to all of the volunteers who helped on Saturday!!  We are excited to see the garden grow and develop in the coming months!

You know what they say – “Good things comes in small packages.”  I think tomato seeds are just about the best small package around -they contain the promise of wonderful meals to come.

I know our garden is going to be growing food for more than our nuclear family, and therefore we’ll be starting more tomato plants than the average garden.  However, we want to grow a wide variety, and I could never use up all of the seeds from the dozen or so types of tomatoes we’ll be growing if I purchased a separate packet of each type.  Thank goodness for mix packs that contain 3 or 4 varieties to a pack – each dyed a different color, so you can still tell what seed will produce what tomato.

My favorite salad tomatoes – Black Krim and Green Zebra…I can’t wait for August!

What are you favorite tomato varieties?

(One of the two tubs with tomato and tomatillo pots – each with 4-6 seeds.  I can’t help but peek at them over and over, hoping to see someone germinating.  Patience, patience!)

Little Hen and I made this recipe for spiced pulled-pork (from Sunset Magazine) for dinner two nights ago.  I have yet to find a Sunset recipe that is a dud – there are always keepers in ever issue -but this one was a cut above.  Oh my goodness, the allspice and thyme combined with the apple-cider vinegar, and tender (yet economical) slow-cooked pork – it was beyond delicious!!

Here is Sunset’s original recipe (I’ll post my slight alterations at the end) :

Sunset Magazine’s Spiced Pulled-Pork

We made a quadruple recipe (since I happened to have a 5-ish lb. pork shoulder in the fridge).  This way, I could serve pulled-pork with spinach rice and a side of roasted sweet potatoes (in cumin, paprika, coriander, garlic, and a titch of cayenne) the first night, and pulled-pork sandwiches (on homemade buns) with a side salad and some homemade pear sauce later in the week.  There were also two dinner-sized bags to pop into the freezer.

If you’re going to make a quadruple batch, and also planning on feeding this dish to children (who, by the way, love shredding the pork, it’s great, messy fun!), here are some changes I recommend:

1)Quadruple everything in the recipe, except the hot chilis – keep this the same, so it’s not too spicy for little ones (our pork had a teensy kick to it, but even Tum Tum ate three helpings with no complaints.) and also do not quadruple the water – instead use 2 1/2 – 3 cups.

2)Definitely let the larger cut of meat sit in the rub overnight or even 2 days in the fridge.

3)Increase cooking time to about 4 hours, using a meat thermometer to check that the middle of the roast has reached a safe temperature – that’s 160F.

If you’re looking for a hearty, easy, delicious late-winter meal, I highly recommend this recipe.

Up next for comfort food (if I can get my hands one some local lamb that doesn’t bust the budget) (thanks for tipping me off to this yummy looking recipe, Chris!) – Honey-Rosemary Lamb Sandwich.

PS- Have you seen Sunset’s blog, One Block Diet?  I have been reading it lately, and getting some inspiration for our own garden project.

The girls are listening to Daddy read The Mousehunter at bedtime, but our daytime book selection reflects the unusually sunny, warm weather that has us all thinking of anything except the tail-end of winter.

We just finished listening to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Which is why we’re starting an asparagus bed -  Little Hen was fascinated by the chapter on asparagus – as read by Barbara Kingsolver’s daughter), interspersed with a complementary collection of Appalachian music.  Indulging a totally separate branch of the girls’ current interests, we had worked our way through a stack of books on Norse mythology and ancient Egypt.  So, it was time to order some new items.  In the afternoons, when we’ve needed a break from gardening, we’ve been scrolling through the library’s website, ordering books, books on CD, and music CDs that appeal to us.

When we went to pick up the books, it was clear that a definite theme must have been running through our collective subconscious while we were ordering:

SPRING!!

This afternoon, while the rain comes down outside, we’ll be reading the chapters on winter and spring from Our Farm, a book about 5 siblings’ experience of a year on their family’s farm.

What books are seeing you through the end of winter, as we edge toward spring?

We’re working on a converting our front lawn into veggie beds, and the unseasonably warm and dry weather has helped us get a jump start on sheet mulching.  Goodbye lawn, hello permaculture landscape!  While Tum Tum and I spread cardboard, straw, manure and compost, Little Hen and her Daddy were busy building cold frames out of scrap wood and old windows from the ReStore. (Firecracker was either resting inside, or resting curled up in a nest of blankets on the driveway, since she not only had strep throat, but then a head-to-toe reaction to the amoxicillin meant to cure the strep.  Poor kid. )

(Collage posters Little Hen made calling for Garden Volunteers – I wrote the words, but she went to town with the scissors, a stack of old issues of Mother Earth News and a glue stick.)

Last year we worked at Penelope’s Garden, but this year, we’ll be hosting a community-building garden of our own.   It will be years before our seedling fruit trees and berry bushes obscure many sunny patches of our yard, so we thought we’d make good use of it all and put in veggie beds to grow fresh, organic produce for families of limited means.  This weekend, a team of volunteers will help us finish installing the front yard beds and create many more in the backyard, so that the organic veggies grown here and cared for by volunteers can be delivered to the families at Birch Community Services, a local non-profit serving needy families in Portland.

We saved a little time for planting poppies and sweet pea seeds, rhubarb and asparagus crowns.  We also started tomato, artichoke, and cardoon seeds in pots in the basement.   The dry evenings allowed me to plant blueberry bushes, dozens and dozens of strawberry plants, and a red currant after dinners last week.

As Little Hen’s sign (which she hung on the front door) says -”Gardening – You want to sign up?”  If you’re interested in volunteering to grow food for needy families in the Portland area, and teaching those families to grow their own nutritious, organic produce, please e-mail me at

angela(dot)baker(dot)knits(at)gmail(dot)com

I’m working on setting up a little blog dedicated to the garden this year.  More on that soon.   If you have any ideas on a name  for the Birch Community Services’  educational and food producing organic garden hosted at the Baker’s house, I’d LOVE to hear them (short, sweet and whimsical is best).

Happy gardening!  The rains and cold weather are on the way, so I’m sure I’ll be posting more from indoors later this week!

This photo pretty well sums up our morning literary activities of late.

First thing this morning, we had to get a bit pot of chili blanco going on the stove, and batch of brownies in the oven, since it’s our turn to bring dinner to our homegroup.   While Firecracker helped measure out the spices and crush the garlic, Little Hen was in the living room, practicing some yoga with her Yoga Pretzels cards (she says “Warrior 1″ is her favorite pose).  She does 3 or 4 cards each morning, when she remembers.

After the brownies came out, we sat down for a little reading.  We are trying to read two stories a day, and the children all really enjoy and look forward to our snuggle time on the sofa while we read and discuss the stories from Scripture.

For Christmas, my mother surprised us with a copy of my favorite book of children’s poems – Tirra Lirra: Rhymes Old and New, published in 1932 and now out of print (I have scoured used bookshops for it for years, but she was able to quickly find a copy used on Amazon.com for next nothing.)  It is a wonderful, whimsical book fo children’s poems, and the girls got a big kick out of reading some of the poems today.

The poems in this book are full of delightful imagery, tell rich stories, and crack us all up.   I think we’ll keep reading a few every day for now – they enjoyed them so much.

I’ll leave you with the poem from this book that was my favorite as a child – Eletelephony :

Once there was an elephant,

Who tried to use the telephant -

No!  no!  I mean an elephone

Who tried to use the telephone -

(Dear me! I am not certain quite

That even now I’ve got it right.)

Howe’er it was, he got his trunk

Entangled in the telephunk :

The more he tried to get it free

The louder buzzed the telephee -

(I fear I’d better drop this song

Of elephop and telephong!)

– Laura E. Richards.

The intense sunshine this afternoon has all of us anxious for spring, but this morning’s hard frost was a good reminder that winter hasn’t left us yet.  It’s clear we’re moving toward spring, though – we opened the kitchen window to get a better listen to the a few birds singing this morning.

Our nature table had been empty since returning home from Florida, so after lunch, the girls spent a while reworking the shelf with me.  I realize we have so few “late winter” items, but we had fun going through our box of objects and choosing things to put out – things that reflect the lingering winter and anticipate spring.

I am looking forward to adding more and more items that direct us toward the coming spring as the weeks pass – we brainstormed a list of things we might like to put out – seed packets when they come from Baker Creek (until they are planted), a dish of moss taken from the back stoop.  There are  needle-felted eggs and butterflies we’d like to make, books on the spring equinox to pick up from the library.  And then, if we’re brave enough, asking lovely neighbor for a small branch from her cherry tree that we could force into bloom.  And eventually, our Easter goodies.

Hope you were able to enjoy a piece of sunshine today, and get a glimpse of the light at the end of winter’s tunnel.  Spring will inevitably be on her way soon.  What does your family use in your nature table to signify winter giving way to spring?

The past month has been an opportunity to re-evaluate what we value as a family – to really examine what we strive to be and to accomplish.  Although unintentional, the blogging break these past several weeks has been very therapeutic for our whole family.  (Actually, it was a break from all computer-related activities).

I realized how much time was being spent every week blogging, and reading other beautiful, but consuming, blogs.  I realized how much more time I spent reading, knitting, sewing, being still and quiet when I tuned out technology.  My stress level went down, and we were all less rushed and more at peace.  Most importantly, I spent so much more time  communicating and interacting with my children in a positive way.

I am going to continue blogging, still for the reason I began – to be an encouragement, and reminder of the value of being a mother, and a keeper of the home and a member of the greater community.  There is priceless value in the small, everyday moments of raising a family.   But, for the next few months, at least, I’ll be scaling back the frequency of  posting and dramatically pruning back the amount of time spent on the computer.

So, that’s it for this week.  I’m not going to spend the next hour reading other mama’s blogs (as inspirational as they are) while the baby naps – getting neurotic and feeling completely inferior about this humble little blog and our domestic activities compared to what I see elsewhere.

Instead,  I am going to put on some mint tea, and sit down with my girls and enjoy our tea with oranges, Nutella on graham crackers, lively conversation.

Blessings on you as you connect with your loved ones today.

I’ll be back next week.