Happy Friday!

This has been a rather long week for me as I’ve been trying to finally get a cold out of my system — and get Mackenzie over the same cold which was really not a fun one (sore throat, runny nose, congestion, hacking cough). But the weekend is quickly approaching which is always a good thing around here!

After I was going around and seeking out plans for garden inspiration last week, I came across a pretty cool gardening software called GrowVeg that I just might have to become addicted to. In the past, I have usually sketched out our garden and made my planting schedules that way — or made none at all and just sorta hoped for the best (the latter being the most frequent route for me). But since we are considering doing Square Foot Gardening in at least a few of our beds (if not all) it would be really practical to start keeping track of the plantings and also be able to give some consideration to crop rotation. I mean I know we’re supposed to be doing it — but I honestly don’t remember what goes after what and which plants belong to what families — so we just end up doing whatever in the long run.

What’s Cool About the GrowVeg Garden Planning Software

For starters, I’ve never seen a garden planning software that is quite this advanced but still totally easy to understand and use. Sometimes when you find one of these, it’s a pain to set everything up, input the plants and so on. But they’ve done a really nice job with this software to make it quick and easy to get going.

The software adapts to your location, no matter where you are in the world. When I set up my profile, it asked about the frost dates and suggested ones for a city not to far from here, with a last frost of April 28th and a first frost of October 28th. That is seriously one of the first times that’s I’ve seen a gardening application that has information about frost dates in Germany. Most of the time I’ve had to guesstimate and come up with my own ideas of when those dates might be.

You can create multiple plans if you have more than one garden (like we do) and there is a wide variety of plants in the system to choose from. Small fruit plants, vegetables and even fruit trees are in there — and you can rather easily add your own if you like or just use the generic “herbs,” “fruit tree” and other multi-purpose plants if you don’t want to get too involved.

Something else that I find to be super practical about the software is that it includes a planting and harvest guide. So once you’ve got your garden all set up and ready to go, you can switch to the planting view, and it will give you a calendar which shows you how many plants you have in the ground, when you need to sow seeds indoors and outdoors, and when you will be able to harvest. This is part of garden planning that I never put a lot of thought into because the last thing I want to do is constantly be sitting down to map out the harvests…and I generally just plant stuff whenever I remember. But because the system will even send you email reminders after two weeks, you can remain on top of the gardening experience without it getting out of control.

You can even use the software for Square Foot Gardening and it’s totally simple! Here’s a little video showing off the garden planner and how it integrates with SFG.

There is a free 30-day trial available for the GrowVeg garden planning software with full functionality or you can just play around with a free online version to test it out — but the latter won’t let you save or print your plans. The software is $25 per year or $40 for two years (which is a bit greedy) — and you can even buy gift certificates for a gardening friend. I know I sure would be stoked if someone gave that to me as a gift.

There is also a mobile version for iPad (and eventually iPhone) which was recently launched and it’s currently only $9.99 (one-time fee, not yearly)– but will go up to $19.99 in a few weeks. The mobile and desktop versions can be synced together and it looks super awesome. Plus I would find it amazingly practical to keep track of things with your iPad as you peruse your garden! They are apparently working out some bugs still because it’s brand new, but I’m thinking about just getting this version in preparation of the iPad I’m looking forward to getting later this year because the price is way more reasonable.

By the way, if you’ve seen Mother Earth News’ recent promotions about their garden software and the cool new iPad and iPhone apps, this is the same software — they’re just selling this GrowVeg software as affiliates. The links in this post for the desktop software are affiliate links and I will earn a small commission off of any sales made through those links. I appreciate your support of NOH when you make a purchase. 

Want to join in the garden fun and link to your own blog or images online? You can share about anything related to gardening, old or new posts, from recipes to harvesting to grow reports to DIY projects or inspiration.

Here’s how this works:

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDELINES, especially if you have never linked up before!

That’s it! Share your garden with us by linking up below!

There have been some really useful things coming across my screen lately when it comes to planning your garden for spring — which I know will be just around the corner despite this wildly cold spell we are having here in Germany right now. Thinking of spring and seeing the tulips I planted indoors coming up while it’s about 0°F outside is really keeping me going…not to mention all the wonderful sunshine we’ve had with this cold.

I thought I would share some useful pins from the last few weeks that will hopefully get you inspired and thinking about what your garden will be like very soon. You can check out more of my gardening pins on Pinterest along with my other interests.

This one I actually shared on FB as well, but it’s just so fabulous that I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it. I really great visual guide to companion planting, this is one of those charts you’ll want to reference often when planning your garden.

Thinking about putting together a compost bin but just aren’t sure how to get going? Here’s a tutorial for a great 3-bin compost system that will have you creating rich, perfect compost in no time. (We seriously need to see about doing this ourselves since our current system isn’t cutting it.)

Short on planting space or just have an old dresser you want to find a new purpose for…how about turning it into an herb or flower garden?

Or maybe you’d prefer to turn some old galloshes into planters? I think this idea is really fabulous and would look great near your entry to your home or garden.

These little garden markers caught our eye the other day and are too cute. They also wouldn’t be too complicated to make with a little bit of artistic ability.

What inspiration have you come across lately? Do you have your own collection of gardening ideas on Pinterest you’d be willing to share with us? Just scroll down to link up below. 

Want to join in the garden fun and link to your own blog or images online? You can share about anything related to gardening, old or new posts, from recipes to harvesting to grow reports to DIY projects or inspiration.

Here’s how this works:

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDELINES, especially if you have never linked up before!

That’s it! Share your garden with us by linking up below!

Have you ever awakened one morning to find your plants covered in strange little black bumps? Or sprayed the aphids from your plants for the 100th time but still don’t seem to ever successfully be rid of them? Would you like to know how to once and for all deal with insects and diseases of all shapes and sizes on your plants with natural and organic methods without searching online for hours? How about being able to check out detailed photos of what your plants might look like right now with solutions nearby of how to deal with the troubles?

Wow. That totally sounded like an infomercial. But that is exactly what I’ve found myself using this book for. The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control: A Complete Guide to Maintaining a Healthy Garden and Yard the Earth-Friendly Way is my go to book whenever something goes wrong with my plants. I not only used it to get rid of funky black scales on my houseplants, but also to save my rosemary bush that was becoming infested with furry mildew. If it’s not in there, I know I’m in trouble because we’re being attacked by aliens.

There are tons of websites out there with information about organic remedies for your garden, but in my experience, I’ve often run into a lot of conflicting advice as well as stuff that was just downright wrong. So it’s nice to have all the information I need in one 500+ page book that has (so far) never steered me wrong.

I actually have the 2006 version and I’m not really sure what the difference is between the two, aside from the fact that you can get the newer version new for a better price, the covers look different and they’ve made the tagline of the book more trendy. Don’t you just love the idiosyncrasies of books?

The Nitty Gritty

Basically, the book is broken down into four parts: Plants, Insects, Diseases and Organic Controls.

• In the plant-by-plant listing, you’ll be able to flip through alphabetically (by common name, not Latin) to get an overview of what issues you may be facing with your plants. Glean some tips on how to grow the plants, what conditions they like, how to get the best germination rates and then the meaty stuff about disease and pests.
• Then you can get a closer look at common insects that may be harming your plants — but will also find an overview about bugs that are fine or even good for your garden. This book is quite thorough, and explains things like the life cycle of pests plaguing you, what they look like exactly (including images), where they are generally found in the world (so you know if you really need to be worried about boxelder bugs or not), what sort of damage they do and how to control them. I’ve found this to be extremely helpful not only in getting rid of bugs I already have, but also in knowing what to watch out for and giving myself some room for prevention.
• The Diseases section nicely describes how diseases are spread, how to control them, and most important, how to prevent them from even taking hold. You’ll figure out how to quickly recognize common diseases, as well as be able to see a detailed list of diseases with images, symptoms, what types of plants it affects, and prevention and control guidance.
• Part 4 is all about Organic Controls, creating a plan for your garden to keep it healthy and how to go about implementing the plan. There are numerous tips in this section of actual remedies like how to get rid of slugs or make compost tea for getting rid of mildew. They also cover beneficial insects, common household items, companion planting, crop rotation and more.

A really nice feature of The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control are the What Goes Wrong and Why images throughout the book. The You can get a really nice visual representation of what is happening with your plants and what steps you need to do to save them. Naturally, these diagrams are just a jumping off point, because once you actually pinpoint what the problem is, you can flip to the following pages and read more about what exactly you can do to control the issue.

My final thoughts

This is one of those books that you reference over and over again but would not really read cover to cover. There are a lot of good things to learn in the introduction to plants, and of course in the Controls chapters as well, but I don’t know that anyone would want (or need) to go through and read about every bug or disease that could at some point assault your garden. Who needs to live in constant fear?

I highly recommend The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control for both newbie and seasoned gardeners. It’s a really well thought out book with everything you need to know about keeping your garden in great health, without dousing it in chemicals!

Just made your seed wish list? Starting seeds for winter hearty veggies already? Got a great recipe to share for garden goodness? I’d love to have you link up below! You can share about anything related to gardening, old or new posts, from recipes to harvesting to grow reports to DIY projects or inspiration.

Here’s how this works:

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDELINES, especially if you have never linked up before!

That’s it! Share your garden with us by linking up below!

Over the last 6 or 7 years, we have collected quite a collection of houseplants. Some of them have fared really well, and others I killed pretty quickly (like every beautiful orchid ever brought into our home).It’s not that I intended for the plants to die; I just wasn’t very good at paying attention to them, giving them water regularly or diagnosing any problems they might develop. Thankfully, I’ve gotten a lot better about all those things!

When we moved into our last rental house in 2004, our friends who were moving back to the states had quite a few houseplants. And needless to say, they couldn’t take them with them. So we inherited a ficus tree (which sadly died a few years later) and an anthurium.

In case you’re not sure what an anthurium is (also sometimes called a Flamingo Flower or Boy Flower because of the way their wax-like flowers look). Here’s one of mine:

Now as luck would have it, we got a second one of these a couple of years ago as a gift. I think they’re pretty cool and was thrilled that we were getting a new one because our old one was looking pretty sickly. You see, our olive tree (which I usually keep indoors and don’t even get me started on how much that thing annoys me) developed scales several years ago. I asked a friend of ours who went to floral school what these wretched little brown bumps on my plants were and how to get rid of them. So she explained the story of “scales” to me.

You see, scales literally suck the life out of your plants. These brown bumps are actually insects which attach themselves to your plants and are completely immobile. More often then not, there will be sticky residue on the leaves around these critters. In the case of our olive oil tree which was rather badly affected, the residue was on the nearby window and all over the floor too. You’ll also notice that your plant just doesn’t seem to be making any progress. It probably won’t die, but it just doesn’t get any bigger, a lot of the leaves will be pale or discolored and a lot of the blossoms will also die off quickly. So what you’re left with is a plant that looks like the one below (which is my older plant — at least 7 years old) instead of the one above.

As you might notice, one leaf on the (mostly) healthy plant is the size of the whole sick plant. And the old one used to be much larger…but when the stems look like this, it really doesn’t stand much chance. These lighter scales are the newer bugs that are just latching on.

At any rate, the important question now is, “How the heck do you get rid of these little suckers?” The following directions will work on just about any sort of houseplant.

One of the smartest things to do is to isolate the sick plant from the rest of your plants. Otherwise it will spread to everything else. Believe me, I know.

Then what you need to do is scrape those little scales off the plant. They are oddly moist which is a bit unpleasant when you do this. But have a paper towel handy and just try not to be too squeamish about it. You can also use the paper towel to scrape them, but you may miss a few.  Try to get all of the scales off that you can find. Be sure to check the underside of the leaves and new growth as well to make sure they aren’t staking their claim early. If leaves are dead, go ahead and remove them.

Now what you want to do is keep the scales from coming back. One suggestion I’ve seen (and tried with awesome results) is applying a bit of rubbing alcohol to a cotton pad and rubbing it all over the stems and on the underside of the leaves. You’ve got to be a bit careful about doing this and probably want to try out a stem or leaf first before you do the whole plant because it could hurt/kill the plant.

You can also spray your plants with insecticidal soap (but never use that on ferns) — something I’ve never bought in my life otherwise I may have tried this first. After a week, rinse it off. The easiest way to do that is in the bathtub, which will also help clean your leaves.

If you’ve still got a scale problem after that, wipe the leaf undersides with a solution of 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in 3/4 cup warm water.

Hopefully after that, the scales will go plague someone else — or just die! But honestly, they will hang around forever if you don’t do something about them, continuing to come back time and time again. And your plants will just get more and more sad looking in the process.

Have you ever had scales on your plants? Or is there another pest which plagues your plants instead? 

Want to join in the garden fun and link to your own blog or images online? You can share about anything related to gardening, old or new posts, from recipes to harvesting to grow reports to DIY projects or inspiration.

Here’s how this works:

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDELINES, especially if you have never linked up before!

That’s it! Share your garden with us by linking up below!

I have a confession. I’m a bit of a book junkie. I love all sorts of books that help me learn how to do things, inspire me, entertain me and teach me more about myself. One of my go-to books during the canning season is my Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. It’s got over 400 recipes to help you use up all sorts of goodies from your garden and orchard.

Whether you’re just a beginner or have been canning for years, there is plenty to be learned from this book. Not only have they provided all the basic information about canning processes and how to make sure you don’t poison or kill yourself , but there are tons of tips and tricks to be learned along the way as well.

Some of the super helpful resources in the appendix include:

• The problem solver list to help you figure out where things went wrong in your canning process.
• A produce purchase guide so you know how much something weighs as well as its volume. So if you need 4 cups of jalepanos, you know that’s also 1 pound or 20 medium peppers.
• An altitude chart with information about altitudes all over the US and even a few places in Canada.

I’ve learned how to can peaches, potatoes, makes all sorts of sauces, relishes and jellies, meats and much more. All of the recipes are broken down into steps and they give ingredient measurements in both imperial and metric systems.

While I’ve come nowhere near trying all the recipes in  Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, the ones I have tried have been really good and quite easy. And I haven’t managed to make us sick even once. I highly recommend just about any book from Ball, since they are really a major authority on all things related to canning.

Pick up a copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.de.

What is your favorite canning book? Do you grow enough fruits and veggies to put some up? Or do you just try to consume everything you grow as quickly as possible?

Want to join in the garden fun and link to your own blog or images online? You can share about anything related to gardening, old or new posts, from recipes to harvesting to grow reports to DIY projects or inspiration.

Here’s how this works:

PLEASE READ THESE GUIDELINES, especially if you have never linked up before!

That’s it! Share your garden with us by linking up below!

So you’ve probably noticed the massive shortage of gardening posts these days when we should be ankle deep in produce. Our aquaponics system is doing ok but our tomatoes still have a ways to go before they turn red. I really hope they start turning soon because the weather is starting to turn cool here already. And I fear that we’re not going to get anywhere with the tilapia in this weather…just way too cold.

We did harvest a lot of lettuce out of the little beds in our courtyard as well as our salad table (and I’m going to try to plant some more seeds in there this weekend), and we also harvested 3 very hot chilies from our pepper plant in the aquaponics system.

But other than that, we’ve barely even been in our garden behind the barn this year. And we haven’t yet gotten our new beds in the courtyard filled either. I’m really still not able to lift things too much heavier than Mackenzie. And considering our accident in June, it’s a really good thing we had such a late start on our garden.

We will be harvesting our apples this weekend in our little orchard. It seems that we’re going to need to do a whole lot of trimming to our trees…and probably take several of them out. From the 19 cherry, apple and mirabella-like plum trees we have, we’ve currently only got one well-producing apple tree. So we hope doing some massive trimming will bring the others around. I fear there may have been a lot of standing water down there this year…and it apparently wasn’t very good for any of the trees. Our neighbors lost a really lovely corkscrew tree that I would have loved to get a cutting from.

Anyway, now I’m just wondering what (if anything) we should plant for the fall and winter…especially since Nico was here recently and has pulled most of the weeds in the backyard. At the most, we’ll only plant two of our raised beds. We’re past the point of growing way more stuff than we have the capacity to maintain. The other beds we’re either going to cover with thick black pond foil…or perhaps a nice thick layer of newspaper, old sheets and then something to weigh them down. I hope that will then be enough to kill off most of the weeds growing in the beds…and will leave us with a really nice starting place for next year. I think I need to consult a few more of my books and google that idea a bit though. We should have some composted material and a bunch of straw also…so perhaps we can even get some sort of real mulching process going.

We’re actually giving some consideration to doing something totally different in the garden since we really want to grow our daily vegetables (tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, bell peppers) and a bunch of herbs in the courtyard. That would just leave us with our peach and apricot trees, whatever we put in the greenhouse, and probably a few bigger things like zucchini, strawberries, carrots, squash, pumpkins and so on.

But I’ve also read a lot about permaculture lately and I have to wonder if we shouldn’t just take out the beds and put in something that will be easier to maintain…like keyhole gardens of various herbs with the veggies mixed in. I’m not even sure where to start…but I do like some of these gardening ideas and have considered mixing up several of those elements like a small water garden and a bit of a cutting garden here and there too. Actually, what I’d really love to have is a tropical garden –but the weather in Germany is just never going to support that! Especially if our winter trend of -18°C for a week or two at a time continues!

What would you put in your garden if you could do anything in the world with it (and have help, too)?

The weather here is still yo-yoing between winter and spring…but I have little doubt that we will turn around twice and spring will be passing us by, with summer setting in strongly. Which makes me turn to thoughts about our garden, our hopes of growing all our own produce one day and all the work that still needs to be done back there and around the house in general. And let’s not forget the INSANE number of newspaper pots I will still need to fold in order to start seeds for the crazy number of veggies and herbs I now have.

So then reality sits in and I realize that we still have WAY too much work to do in the garden and around the rest of the farm to really put our full focus on growing stuff in the garden. That doesn’t mean we won’t be growing anything at all, because we will be setting up a significant container garden in our courtyard and have some things in our greenhouse still…but I think we’re going to keep most of our beds empty this year.

We still have insane problems with weeds, slugs and snails…and have a long way to go before we can handle those issues. And we also haven’t been able to lay any of the paths in our garden which is a task we really want to do this year when the weather isn’t quite so chilly, rainy or insanely hot…but also don’t want to worry about trampling plants as we’re trying to get around everything. We have hardly any idea what and where the flower bulbs are in our garden…nor can we say with certainly where the chives are either. All these things were planted by the previous owner and they still thrive every year, but we don’t know where they are until they start coming out of the ground. That makes it really hard for us to plan where we’ll put new bushes and trees. And we want to take out a bunch of roses bushes that are mostly dead as well as some trees that have popped up randomly around the yard in the last could years. Oh, and did I mention that the ivy on the barn is not yet dead so it’ll be needing a few treatments of vinegar and salt.

Then we move up to the courtyard where we need to get a grip on our grapevines before they just grow all over the place…and maybe this year we can prevent them from all being lost to fungus. Otherwise the vine just has to go. Keeping the courtyard tidy is another task that we struggle with and we really want to make it a whole lot nicer, greener and happier during the summer instead of rather sterile and sometimes cluttered with junk as it is now. We’ve got a few water traps like the former compost hole and the tiny duck pond to contend with. The last thing we need is Mack falling into either of these…and you don’t want the dog in there either because wow do they smell bad!

And let us not forget our window boxes on the front of the house and the planters out by the street which need some sort of flowers in them constantly (and lots of water) or they just look depressing. I’m hoping to use up some of the flower seeds I’ve purchased over the years in there since nothing survives the winter out there.

Oh, did I forget the orchard too? Lots of trimming to be done, dead wood to remove and shaping to be done…much of which can’t be done until summer or the coming fall (thank God ’cause the last thing we need is more stuff on our to do list!) Mowing the thing is a nearly impossible task and we can’t even get to the river during the summer because everything becomes totally overgrown. Chaos. Total chaos.

At this stage, it’s basically just a question of our resources. We have bitten off a bit more than we can actually chew and filled our plates to overflowing. So our goal this year is to really streamline everything, get our garden looking pretty for next year (including putting up the plexiglass on the greenhouse, laying the paths, building supports for the raspberries and planning areas for future fruit trees and bushes) and really just focus on finishing up some things around the farm.

We are only two people and we really only have weekends to work on anything. So that leaves us with very little time to do most projects. I do as much as I can around the house during the day, but with a toddler in tow, you can only get so much accomplished. She’s still mostly crawling and I’m not crazy about her crawling on the ground now while it’s still so cold. And unfortunately she’s not really prepared to hold the ladder against the wall while I spackle cracks in the mudroom or trim the grape vines. That’s aside from the fact that I’m blogging and working on a few other projects at the same time so something is always left unfinished.

Some of the things we want to accomplish now in 2010 include:

• Get rid of some of the excess stuff we have around here. Anyone need an antique Singer sewing machine?
• Make better use of the stuff we already have (including refinishing items in the barn to make them usable in the house and eventually building some furniture to help us store what we have)
• Make things prettier and easier to maintain. I hope to achieve some time cutting tasks down at the orchard with the use of a few permaculture techniques.
• Get projects like our mudroom and the closet in our guest house finished up, as well as start organizing in our barn so we can actually find our stuff again. We’ve moved everything so many times from place to place that stuff is just all over the barn now.

We can’t be happy in a house where we can’t find anything, always have unfinished rooms and projects looming over our heads, and generally just feel overwhelmed. 2010 has started off well for most of our business ventures…so now it’s time to let it work some magic around our home.

Have you revised any of your plans for 2010 already? I mean we’re barely even 3 months in but sometimes you just hit a wall and realize you were kinda crazy before.

We went down to the orchard today and harvested about 22 pounds (10 kilos) of mirabelle plums from our trees. We really should have harvested them a week or so earlier, but we simply haven’t had the time. Thank God we found Nico, our new farm hand, when we did or a lot of other things around here would be looking as bad as our orchard. But he’s going to be here tomorrow and will hopefully be cutting the insanely high grass at the orchard finally so at least walking through there won’t be a huge chore anymore.

Naturally we had our two helpers with us. Mack did some stretching and foot chewing to warm up for all the harvesting.

Ayla wore herself out chasing mirabelles. I don’t think she found most of the ones we threw for her, but she had fun running after them over and over again. Unfortunately she couldn’t get down to the water because the path is completely overgrown. Maybe Nico will have time to clear that  area too tomorrow.

In case you are not familiar with mirabelles, they are very small yellow plums, similar in taste to an apricot but generally not as sweet. Many people make them into jam or just can the whole fruits in jars, but we decided to make wine from ours instead.

It’s not a difficult process but you do have to remove the pits from them before you start the fermentation process. They are very high in tannins and I read they could even give an almond flavor when you preserve the fruits in a jar…but that’s not what we’re looking for in our wine.

These 10 kilos of fruit will probably make about 10 liters of wine. Unfortunately it needs to sit for about 2 years before you can drink it. So we’ll be waiting a while to know if this was all worth it. It seems that most of the mirabelle plum trees in our area only produce fruit every 2 years, though, so we may be able to give the wine a try before we harvest fruit again from our trees. There are actually quite a few trees on public orchards in our area as well, so if it does turn out to be tasty, our friends and family should be looking forward to getting a bit of it when it’s ready.

Mirabelle Plum Wine

Total waiting time: 2 years, 3 months

Ingredients

• 22 pounds of mirabelle plums
• 1 gallon water
• 5.5 pounds sugar
• 2 camden tablets, crushed  or 2 grams meta bisulfate
• 1 liquid ounce anti-gel agent
• 4 grams yeast nutrient (auf Deutsch “hefenaersalz“)
• 1 bottle of Ruedesheimer yeast

Directions

1. Pit mirabelles and lightly crush. Wear gloves to avoid staining your hands. Put pitted fruit in fermentation barrel or demi john.
2. Boil water in a pot. Once it is boiling, pour it into barrel or demi john.
3. Add sugar, 1 camden tablet or 1 gram meta bisulfate, anti-gel and yeast nutrient. Shake or stir mixture and allow to cool to room temperature.
4. Add yeast and shake or stir mixture again. Close barrel and top with fermentation bell to allow air to escape.
5. Store at room temperature for 7-14 days, until the bell goes silent. The room should not above 75 degrees F. Check your specific yeast for further information about preferred fermentation temperatures.
6. Dump contents of fermentation barrel in fruit press and express juice into a clean fermentation barrel or demi john. Add 1 camden tablet or 1 gram meta bisulfate.
7. Close barrel and top with fermentation bell. Let sit at room temperature for about 30 days, shaking once a day. When you see no more bubbles rising to the top after shaking, the wine is ready to rest for another 7-14 days.
8. Rack wine into a clean fermintation barrel or demi john. Use a siphon to pull the clear liquid from the top of the barrel, with as little disturbance as possible to the dead yeast cells and fruit particles in the bottom of the barrel. Let rest for another 30 days.
9. Bottle wine and let sit in a cool room for 2 years.

A few weeks ago, we bought 3 huge IBC tanks to hold rain water for the farm. One of those containers was destined for our orchard and I guess my dad got tired of seeing it sitting in the courtyard because he offered to help Stefan move it down there. We just bought a little wagon that was on sale at Hagebau and it proved to be the perfect assistant for this move.

The guys loaded the container up on the wagon (the tanks are not too heavy when they’re empty, just a bit cumbersome) and we also took a sprayer full of neem oil insecticide with us to spray the fruit trees. We’d noticed quite a few huge aphids crawling around and some ants also seeking them out so we needed to take action.

The journey to the orchard with the tank was a short one, but did involve some street navigation. Thankfully there wasn’t much traffic since the guys had to guide it down the street for part of the trip. A few cars parked on the sidewalk made any other route impossible.

From there, it was all field traveling which was probably the hardest since it was very bumpy and one is never quite sure which part of the path is going to work. But let me state for the record that although it looks like Stefan was doing all the pushing, my dad was actually the one pulling and Stefan was merely making sure the container stayed on the wagon with all the bumps.

The guys moved it all the way to the back of the property where we’ve got it sitting now. We’ve yet to fill it up yet but are thinking about a rain catching device we could build that would funnel some rain water into it. Otherwise we’ll need to get a pump to grab some water from the river. But before we start filling it, we need to figure out a way to darken the container to keep algae from building up. We learned that the hard way with the other two tanks…which is a story for another post – coming soon to a screen near you.

Don’t let my lack of posting let you think we haven’t been busy or that I don’t have TONS of things to blog about. I’ve just been in a bit of a blogging funk I guess and also have been having a hard time finding time to sit down and git ‘r done. But I’m trying to get back on track and finish a few of the dozen or so drafts I’ve started…

We went down to the orchard a couple weeks ago to try to get a handle on the grass and weed situation. Things were starting to get out of control. I can’t promise that things are looking any better now after another few weeks have passed with no work, but that’s another story all together. Some might say we shouldn’t have taken on the orchard at this point since we can barely handle everything we have going now. But eh, you only live once!

Before we headed out, Stefan did me a huge favor and trimmed my hedge sheers. Is that even the right name for them? At any rate, this old sharpening wheel was here at the farm when we moved in. We figure it weighed too much for them to want to bother with it. We’re going to have to rebuild the frame at some point, but it still works quite well.

We loaded up the wagon with everything we’d need for a few hours work out there. Lots of liquids, sandwiches, chips, cookies and fruit were piled into the cooler with a few cool packs to keep everything chilled. We also had a big water tank with us so we could spray all the trees with neem oil. Turned out that 5 liters in our sprayer would have been plenty…but at least now we know. We also took the rake and scythe on the wagon, strapped down with bungee cords. It worked pretty well until we got closer to the orchard where the ground gets a bit rougher – but we’ll get more used to the terrain out there as time passes.

Yikes! Will you look at that place. Pretty sad right? At least we have a stinging nettles force field to keep people out. That stuff is the worst. A far cry better than poison ivy, I’ll definitely agree, but still not fun at all. We’ve got it everywhere so it should be a lovely battle.

This next picture is after about 2 1/2 hours work. Can you see the difference? Scroll up and down a few times if you need to. Maybe I should have put the wagon in there before as well but trust me, the grass was well over the handle. We got about one-third of the area cut.

I saw “we” but I really mean Stefan. Mackenzie was sleeping a little bit during out time out there, but we had quite a bit of fussing going on too so I was mostly helping her and not him. Although not having to listen to her yell was helpful to his sanity…

It was quite hot out there and there’s not much shade where he needed to cut. Thank goodness we had all our provisions there and a shady corner where we could rest. We’re most likely going to get a gas powered scythe to speed up the process down there. While it may be a great workout to do it the old fashioned way, it’s painfully slow and we have far too many other things to take care of.  Plus if we can find a gas scythe with a weed trimmer attachment, it will come in very handy in the garden behind the barn too.