And…another beautiful, awesome, sweet, lovely day on the homestead full of incredible and ordinary things that remind me of just how blessed I am.

It happened! Bluegreen eggs are in the house! Frida and Rosie, the matriarchs of our fanciful flock of 17 and steady brown-eggers themselves (pictured above), are not sure what to think quite yet. But WE are excited. For anyone who wonders if FRESH homegrown, free-range organic eggs taste different, I can attest — it is night and day different. The 5$ organic eggs at the store don’t even come close to these. I’m talking solid, rich tumeric-colored yolks inside thick shells that are naturally salty. As Tulsi summed it up after eating an entire egg by herself (a giant feat for her!), “Egg Power!” Thanks, Ladies!

A whole lotta heart and sweat went into starting our garden. We dug and hauled about 75 wheel barrels full of the construction dirt and barely made a dent in the mound. I was SO determined to do it by hand, but luckily Patrick had more sense and hired a man and his bobcat to clear the sage and a few trees, and create a burm (and windblock) along the south and west side of the future garden. Over a few years, we have added several enormous truckloads of manur+sandy soil and double-dug it into all our raised beds which are on drip (fed as much as possible by collected rain water). It started at roughly 3600 sq ft to grow into, and in such a short time we have, and even expanded with our greenhouse-dome. I have been going non-stop this summer, and especially lately, trying to preserve as much food as I can, and this morning was one of those “awe” moments for sure. Giving a lot of thanks and appreciating what we’ve created. Patrick, Tulsi, Oso and I make the bestest team ever.

One thing happens every garden season: some things work, and other things don’t, and we always learn a LOT. And at the beginning of every growing season, I announce that I’m going to keep a journal of everything — what we plant and harvest and preserve, what we sell, where we failed and what we were most excited about. But I never do. SO…this post is for me to remember next year, and for anyone who has any interest… :) And I would LOVE to hear what you are growing and preserving!

Without further ado, THE 2010 Garden Masala FARM REPORT:

I need to remember that the summer of 2010 was sorta crazy in the sense that we did more than what seems humanly possible for 2 people with a 16 month old. And although we always felt behind, and were hard on ourselves for having a sloppy summer greenhouse-turn-temporary-chicken-house or for abandoning our potato bags (an experiment this year to save space and time and therefore had a puny harvest (yet delicious)), I think it’s important to acknowledge how we had the biggest vegetable and flower garden yet. We started everything from seed in the greenhouse which was extremely exciting. And we took a huge step closer to our goal of feeding our family year round. That’s just awesome…

Here’s what we grew/did new this year:

NuMex Bolo Onions. Our stellar crop of the year! (and the first time we’ve EVER succeeded at growing onions.) They are HUGE and sweet! The most exciting part is that we started them from teeny seeds last February in our dome! We grew around 120 of them, and next year, I want to plant more! The trick, we learned, is to find an onion already proven to grow well in our climate/altitude, and this is the one. I’m curing them for the winter, which is new to me. I’m trying the braiding and hanging method, in a shaded, airy place, but I may move them into our new mudroom since it’s going to freeze soon.

Tomatoes. in our dome and hoop houses that we built with pvc and plastic. We grew several heirloom determinate varieties that fruit all at once at the end of the season (great for canning). At 8000ft, our summer nights are still quite cold (45-55 F) (which make tomato growing a bit slow), so as of right now, we have several hundred green tomatoes…we’ll soon see if this experiment works or not. I learned that tomatoes do MUCH better if you ‘feed’ them. And space them adequately. I also learned about pruning tomatoes and that I am HIGHLY allergic, breaking out in a prickly red rash every time I come in contact with their leaves. Next year I want to plant fewer tomatoes and indeterminate varieties in our dome. Juicy, fat red tomatoes in May is my goal! I also discovered the FAT, and crazy fast tomato horn worm who can devour an entire tomato plant’s leaves in 30 minutes…and how it turns into our garden’s beloved hummingbird moth.

Peppers. we grew in a hoop house with sweet bell and a medium pepper, and green chillies and jalapenos. Bumper crop. Not sure what to do with it all. Ideas? Maybe roast and puree for green chilli sauce in the winter.

A perennial herb garden. Been drying and freezing basil, sage, oregano, rosemary, thyme, parsley, and cilantro. I canned this concentrated soup stock, and it’s great! I know we’ll be using it a lot in the winter months.

Wild pesto with sorrel, arugula, and lamb’s quarters. SO yum. I’ve always made it with basil, but the wild ones are really great, too. So yummy on pizzas and pasta but also a spoonful in soups.

I started my first fermenting endeavor! (Veggie Kimchi) My first batch is only 3 days old. It’s carrots, beets and ginger. Going to do a big batch soon with my friend who is teaching me.

Climbling cucumbers in the dome. Delicious, but they’d do much better if they had a proper jungle gym. Made pickles for the first time today!

Melon in the greenhouse. We only got one, and she was a BEAUTY! The funny thing is that it fell off the vine when I touched it and smelled amazingly ripe but was flavorless. Go figure. Gotta find us a yummy variety!

Fennel. We are growing tons for seed since we use it a lot in cooking, teas, and masala chai.

We planted our winter and summer squash in amended holes on our big burm. It worked GREAT! They could go wild and didn’t take up any valuable garden space. We tried a new winter squash variety with a shorter season — the buttercup — not a huge harvest, but they look beautiful. They are curing right now. Hoping they are super flavorful. I’m going to buy some other hard squashes from a local farmer to keep for the winter and try out other short-season varieties that do well here.

Parsnips. YUM. The candy of veggies. They have a long growing season so we may let them winter over…My intention was to plant a patch now to grow while the garden hybernated, and harvest them in the early spring, but my cuppeth runneth overeth.

Asparagus!! This was our first harvest season, and oh boy! They were prolific and perfect. Asparagus pizza and quiche and in stir fry! And simply raw in the garden is my favorite.

Raspberries! Our teeny transplants from a couple years ago have become a forest and quite abundant. I made raspberry muffins and waffles and froze some for the winter. Same with our strawberries. Looks like next Spring will demand another strawberry patch be started!!

We started an echinacea patch with great success! I’m most excited to tincture it since we consume a lot in this house.

Sugar Snap Peas. Happy to say we had 100% success rate with planting all saved seeds from last year’s plants!

In addition to these new things, we also grew tons of different lettuces, potatoes (although we neglected those and they had a teeny yield), spinach, kale, chard, carrots, beets, basil, and LOADS of flowers.

Foods I preserved: Dehydrated: tomatoes, watermelon, apples. In the freezer: pesto, soups galore, zucchini, spanakopita, berries, peaches, sugar snap peas, grated beets, zucchini bread, coconut-cilantro chutney. Canned: salsa, pickled beets, regular beets, fall soup. Stored: onions, winter squash, potatoes. And more coming! I’m learning proper curing techniques this year to avoid previous winter harvests going soft and mushy. We’ll see what happens, but another motivation for preserving as much food as I can is that we have two major creative projects that are going to fill our winter. (YAY!! Can’t wait to share more about these later…) So we want to focus our energy creating art and less on cooking and running to town for groceries. I tried new things this year (and more quantities) so we can really see what we eat and how long it lasts us. I imagine it just takes a few years to ‘get it down just right’.

And flowers! I forgot. Most abundant ever. So fun to have a flower stand at the market and sell to local restaurants, and of course to light up our house and friends’ houses.

On my list to try next year :

Garlic! We planted for the first time this morning! yay! Hard beans to keep for the winter. Garbonzo or chick peas, for hummus. LOTS more potatoes. Quinoa…gonna give it a try, who knows, it would be so fun to grow our own grains. And BEES!! A few friends told me recently that our bees would be in heaven with all our flowers, and well, we consume a lot of honey. :) Plus, we have several friends to learn from.

Whew! It’s addicting, this garden thing, and endless, too. Another thing I’m really excited about is crop-swapping. We just can’t grow everything, and we traded with friends and local farmers for corn, potatoes, tomatoes, turnips, cabbage, peaches, jams, honey, and more.

How did your garden grow? What varieties of veggies do you like best? What did you preserve? Please share!! I want to learn more…

It’s been the running joke in our house that we are “almost” homesteaders. And that we will be officially someday, when we get chickens. I have been asking Patrick for chickens for 3 years now but none have come.

And this summer has been fuller than any to date. Two new add-ons : a bedroom and a mudroom/entry way, our biggest garden ever, a spot at the farmers’ market (that we have attended irregularly, yet fashionably), and my greatest (and most successful) attempt thus far at storing nuts for the winter (–my mom just visited for 5 days for a canning+freezing extravaganza! 18 pints of beets, 10 qts of veggie stew, 12 qts of salsa, 20 batches of basil and wild pestos, frozen broccoli soup, chutneys, berries, peaches, and more. And that was just in 5 days! A lot more before, and hopefully still…) SO, long story short. If you build it, they will come.

Or, if they come, you will build it.

Well, at least that was my reasoning. Patrick of course didn’t laugh as much when I brought home the 2-day old chickies, but when he saw Tulsi doing her lil’ chickie dance and saying “Baby!” over and over, he turned to a puddle of goo and agreed to help me build a coop. Because our “simple” life has been so busy lately (and admittedly, a wee stressful on occasion), I am especially excited about this joint project. I’m happy that it isn’t “a chore” for Patrick or we aren’t buying one from someone. We’re building it together, and we’ll end up loving it that much more — no matter how many mistakes we make or what it looks like.

So here is some of the gang…they are growing by the minute (in size and personality) and loving their temporary spot in the greenhouse. No names yet except for Roo-Roo the Rooster. Yes, I decided to get a rooster for my flock, to protect the flock from larger winged sky predators, and well, I’ll admit, I have always loved drawing roosters. The chicks are so fun, and they love Miss T. Oso still licks his chomps, but he loves eggs, so I told him to be patient and he’ll be happy. We are vegetarians, but we eat and bake with eggs. And now that Tulsi is nibbling on ‘real’ food more an more, I want to have our own chicken’s eggs to offer her.

So, here we go. I’m learning a lot, fast. Like, how it’s actually hard to find bugs when you are looking for them and that worms are ok to divide to share among the chicks but caterpillars aren’t. I’ll post some pictures of the coop when we get there! Until then, here is an old ink drawing I made of a rooster in Thailand.

I have really been shy and have had mixed feelings about blogging, too, since I rarely have new art to share. (That was the reason I started blogging). I even stopped looking at a lot of blogs, because I have a lot less time, but also because it’s kinda discouraging.

I feel like my art has been on hold with the exception of short spurts here or there. The how-and-when really stump me. Every week is different, too. Sometimes I think I’ve found something that works, and then next week, it doesn’t. And sometimes I feel a little lost or like I’m falling behind.

I really can see the bigger picture though and know that time flies faster than my struggles. AND, I wouldn’t trade my time with Tulsi for anything! This is just my present moment, and I’m noticing that. I know some friends have this “perfect” picture of me, imagining me easily keeping up with everything and doing my art. Um, no. Not quite. But I certainly try. One thing that does make me feel more positive is seeing friends like Amy (with a grown-up kid) who is doing her art full-on and very successful. And so I know I won’t stop being an artist, even if I’ve slowed some for now.

It’s nice that I don’t spend too much time thinking about all this during the days. I’m too busy playing with my girl! Today was one of those ‘most’ perfectly perfect days in every way. We spent almost all day outside and in the greenhouse… I just love that Tulsi loves playing in dirt (which was her 2nd word in between turtle and tree). She was so content while I transplanted broccoli, cauliflower, zinnias, marigolds, and lettuces… It is going to be fun when she can start helping more, too. Here’s a dreamy glimpse of just a fraction of our greenhouse! It is nutzoid.

We had our first farmer’s market meeting last week! The thought of having a stand at the market all season is SO exciting. It’s such a fun way to be a part of our community and to inspire people with flowers and organic food. I think Tulsi will love it, too. The first market day is May 15th, and we are planning to sell veggie and herb starts, annual and perrenial flower starts, and bulk basil, mixed salad greens, kale, chard, spinach, arugula, and more. I gotta start thinking of signage and ways to make our stand super sweet and fun!

The other REALLY exciting news here on the homestead relates back to my struggle with art and time… I know this may not be the end-all answer, BUT, it may very well be a HUGE help. In this picture (my view from the greenhouse), Patrick is busy digging the foundation trench for our bedroom!! Yep, that’s right. Our wee, one-room house is about to grow…meaning, I can actually work at night when Tulsi is sleeping…I’ll be able to turn my studio lights ON and even make a little noise, and, as long as I have the energy, I can see to paint! Yay!!!  (I have a feeling that the energy will come with the freedom/space to create!)

If all goes well, it will be finished the end of May. We are doing strawbale construction, a natural form of building that is super insulated and perfect for here. It will have mud walls and a mud floor. I keep telling Tulsi, “We’re making you a dirt room!” Another great part of it is that Patrick is building it with our builder-friend, who promises to demystify building. Every guy’s dream, right? I’m already making a list of future building projects for Patrick to tackle…a mudroom, chicken coop, meditation/yoga hut, a studio…

I know I’m a little all over the place in this post, but it helps me to see once again how energy follows thought. And with persistence, patience, heart and sweat, soon something will change.

One moment Tulsi and I were staring out the window at grayness, the next we were harvesting arugula for lunch. It happened! Our dome came to life!  Despite subzero nights, seeds we planted 5 weeks ago somehow grew. A miracle at 8000ft! Since we returned from the ocean, we’ve been eating arugula, kale, and spinach daily. It’s incredibly yummy and so full of PRANA! Trays of wheatgrass are almost ready to juice, AND chard, carrots, beets, and more greens are already showing their first leaves.

Patrick has been working so hard to get our dome growing, and now it’s happening. Yay! Growing our own food –especially in the middle of winter– is one of the most exciting things in life! We are creating our homestead little by little. C’mon by for lunch…