January, 2015

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A new project

Friday, January 23rd, 2015

I’m attempting to grow microgreens. (This idea came after a very lovely bed of lettuce outside got munched down. I’ve replanted, but can’t do without greens for 6 weeks. The weather here is well below freezing at night, and things outside grow slowly in the cold.) Microgreens are supposed to grow as fast as two weeks.) We visited a farm that grew large amounts of this, and I’ve had it in the back of my mind ever since.

We adapted an old piece of roofing to make a tray to grow these in. I’m starting with varieties that are supposed to be easy and fast-growing like arugula, cress, and broccoli. The seeds sprouted within two days.

Stay tuned for more on how this goes.

tray

Beans

Saturday, January 3rd, 2015

This week I finally finished shelling all the dry beans from the garden this year.

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The two bags on the right are white cannelini beans, my favorites. The others are Bisbee black cow peas. As you can see, a few beds of these seem to be going back to regular light brown cow peas. (All of these beans were seed saved and are on their 2nd or 3rd year.)

These are big gallon ziploc bags. I’m not sure we can eat this much beans in one year, but one of their attributes is that they last.

The sky is falling!

Friday, January 2nd, 2015

Two days ago a big storm system swept through the southwest. We were supposed to get a couple inches of snow. We got a little rain and barely a dusting of snow. Not very exciting.

Yesterday, there was no precipitation forecast. Then I woke up to this.

Currently, we have about 4 inches of snow. This is the most we’ve had in the 6 years we’ve lived here. And it’s still snowing! (The weather forecasters seem to have no clue. The forecast is getting updated every hour or so for the snow we’ve received so far. This doesn’t exactly seem like a “forecast.”)

One of the interesting things is all the wildlife I saw while I was walking around in the snow this morning. In particular, there were tons of rabbits. We often see a couple, but nothing like this. I’m not sure if they were drawn closer to shelter or if it was just easier to see them against the snow. All the tracks were pretty fascinating too.

It has been very cold this week so I don’t expect this to melt soon. It would be nice to see the sun again though.

More pictures here.