salad of the season

In season and ready to be picked and enjoyed are:  asparagus, lettuce, spinach and green onions.

These fresh spring greens made a wonderful salad today.

Roasted Asparagus Salad

Asparagus
Penne pasta
green onions diced
vinaigrette (olive oil, vinegar, soy sauce, mustard)
Salt & pepper
spinach and/or lettuce
cashews
Parmesan cheese grated 1/3 cup

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash and lay asparagus in oven pan and cover with a bit of olive oil
and salt and pepper and the diced green onions to Roast for 15-20 minutes until tender.
Cook the penne pasta. Add 1/2 cup of olive oil vinaigrette to the pasta. Cut the roasted asparagus
into smaller pieces.  Layer the greens, pasta, asparagus, Parmesan cheese and cashews.





A tasty nutritious main course salad

In May's Lick, Kentucky, a gentleman planted 3 1/2 acres of asparagus many years ago.
Today his great-grand kids sell asparagus from their Asparagus Shed on the farm from April to May.
The rest is donated to the annual Asparagus Festival May 19th.
Besides eating lots of asparagus, there is also an art show, live music and a parade.
Also, they have a fund raiser for a Women's Crises Center, which includes a stiletto obstacle course
(yes, stilettos).
http://www.burrwalsbest.com/

hen coop

What is That?!

We found this at the local goat auction. We traded for it from an ol' man.
It was his design. The Hen stays in and the little chicks can go exploring
and when the hen clucks the chicks all run back to her.
Amazing and simple.
The hen will raise the chicks for about a month - 6 weeks.
Then she'll run 'em off and lay more eggs.
By then the chicks are able to fly up to a roosting pole or limb to rest or escape.

I'll give the hen a little chicken scratch grain and water everyday and they all can eat clover
and fertilize the lawn.

Maybe will make more of these hen coops from the leftover cedar from the strawberry bed.

Cole Crops

First crops into the ground in spring are from the mustard Brassica family, also called
cruciferous vegetables or cole crops. I remember the word cruciferous by the 4 leaves of these plants resembling a cross from which the word comes from in Latin.

This family includes foods from the roots to seeds and oils.

Roots: turnips and rutabaga
Stems: kohlrabi
Leaves: cabbage and kale
Flowers: cauliflower, broccoli and brussel sprouts
Seeds: mustard seed
Oil: canola or rapeseed



4 leaves like a cross

These plants like lime (calcium), bone meal (phosphorus) and borax (boron) added to the soil.

planted 100 little broccoli and cabbage plants
what we don't eat or give away
the whitetails will love to nibble on

I'm thinking, feeding these cole crops, which contain lots of minerals, to the buck deer
may help their antlers grow larger.

Strawberry Bed

How I got a strawberry bed.

1. Find a big red cedar tree
2. Cut down the tree
3. Load the cedar logs onto a trailer and take to saw mill to be sawed into boards
4. Make the bed from the cedar lumber
5. Go to the river bottoms and get a load of river dirt
6. Go get a load of sand
7. Mix dirt and sand in the newly built bed.
8. Plant strawberry plants
9. Cut off blooms and runners and wait 1 year
10. Next year, hopefully we'll get buckets full of sweet strawberry's.

Cutting the red cedar tree into a 14 foot log



Loaded log ready for the trip to the saw mill



The strawberry bed half full of dirt
14x4

The cedar tree log got us three 2x6 14 foot long
and six 1x6 14 foot long
and six 1x6 8 foot long


I used cedar because of its natural resistance to rotting. (no need to buy and use the toxic treated lumber) Eastern red cedar is also aromatic and will help to deter insects.
Hopefully next year we'll have sweet strawberry's.  I planted 50 honeoye plants.
Honeoye are reliable and bear in June.

Easter Eggs

Happy Easter to Everyone from Green River Deer Farm.



Easter Eggs are a symbol of the Resurrection or of new life.


Here is a photo, of natural colored eggs, from different breeds of chickens.
                   (no need to color eggs here)

(L-R)  Araucana lay blue and green eggs
Leghorns lay white eggs
Welsummer lay dark brown eggs
Dominques lay tinted eggs
Buff Orpingtons lay light brown eggs
and the last two are from a candy machine

I sure had fun taking this photo, keeping the cats and dogs away and hoping
the baby chick didn't run and hide and then I got to eat the dark brown ones.


Enjoy :)

Beauty in KY

The Wildcats from Lexington are going to the basketball championship game.
They beat the Louisville Cardinals.
All is crazy for this team here.

Also the roses are already blooming here.
The first was Home Run, a red blooming rose.

And the best is:  the Queen of all Flowers, the Tree Peony is going to bloom any day.

Beauty surrounds us.



Go Wild Cats




A flower made for

Gods and Lords



First Rose Bloom of the Year
Home Run