Some Days…
Some days….
you wake up with a headache and overcook the eggs
and the dog is sick from eating chicken food
it’s a rainy dreary day so you can’t get outside
then you remember there’s laundry on the line
Some days we simply focus on the wrong things.
Because on those same days…
you have a warm and toasty house
with warm wooly socks to wear and fluffy cats to pet
and a honey that brings you ginger tea
delicious locally made sausage and braised cabbage for dinner
along with a few new books on the coffee table to read after it gets dark
Some days it’s not about what happens, but about what you see.
What wonderfully simple things are overshadowing your hardships this week?
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It’s a Garlic Planting Party
Today I’m doing a giveaway for a Garlic Combo from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply. There are also 7 other blogs participating in this Garlic party and they’re all doing giveaways as well, it’s the same prize pack only each blog has a different variety of garlic. If you’d like to increase your odds of winning, you can head on over to these wonderful blogs to enter to win. While you’re there check out their blogs, they’re all great!
If you’d like more chances to win, there are 7 other blogs doing this same giveaway, with different varieties of garlic.
Peaceful Valley’s Organic Gardening Blog for ‘Bogatyr’
Gardenerd for ‘California Early White’
A Suburban Farmer for ‘Purple Gazer’
North Coast Gardening for some ‘Russian Red’
Western Gardeners for ‘Purple Italian’
Living Homegrown for ‘German Red’
Dirt Du Jour divas are giving away French red shallots
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Garlic Giveaway from Peaceful Valley
Last week I was thinking to myself that it was time to look through all my garlic and pull out the nicest bulbs for planting. Garlic is one of those crops that I’ve been growing since I first started gardening. It’s so easy to grow and brings such great reward.
Earlier this year, my interest was piqued when I read that softneck garlic stores longer/better than hardneck garlic. As much as I’ve read in my lifetime, I have never heard this tidbit of information before. Hardneck varieties of garlic are all that have been grown at Chiot’s Run, because it grows better in colder climates. Though, I have seen softneck garlic at the farmers market, so I know it can be grown successfully. Most of what I see is hardneck though.
Over the past few years, I’ve grown most of my own seed garlic as well. I do occasionally long to grow new varieties for flavor and to see if I can find ones that do particularly well in my climate/area. Your local farmers market can give you an idea of which varieties will do best, ask around, or just try a few that sound interesting.
With so many questions about planting garlic in the comments of this post, I wrote a Garlic Planting Guide over on the Your Day Blog.
When Peaceful Valley contacted me about doing a garlic giveaway I obliged, knowing one of you would love to win their garlic combo pack for your garden. I’ve talked about why I love Peaceful Valley before, so I’m happy to support a company I appreciate (they aren’t paying me to do this post, though I did get some softneck garlic to try).
What can you win?
A Garlic Combo Pack – Comprised of 1 head of Elephant (conventional), 3 heads of California Early White (organic softneck), 3 heads of Purple Italian (organic hardneck), 3 heads of Russian Red (organic hardneck), 3 sets of French Red Shallots (organic). Should yield approx. 50 plants, needs approx. 6-8 sq ft.
A Quart of Liquid Kelp – Cold-processed liquid kelp Enzymatically digested, concentrated liquid extract of California Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana), harvested from kelp beds in the Pacific Ocean off the Northern coast of CA. Freshly harvested kelp is rapidly processed at low temperatures, using naturally occurring enzymes isolated from the kelp, to digest and liquify the chopped kelp into a dark liquid extract.
a 10 gallon smart pot – which you can use to grow your garlic in if you don’t have enough space in your garden.
1 Garlic Twist (clever kitchen gadget that minces the cloves when you twist it; easy to use and clean)
and a print of your garlic variety.
So why kelp? Peaceful Vally has a great video that recommend soaking your garlic bulbs overnight in kelp before planting. I used kelp before, but I have soaked them in a baking soda and fish emulsion mix. You can bet I’ll be doing experiments by soaking a few and not soaking a few to see how they grow (similar to my remove or leave the scape experiment). If you’d like to read my post on planting garlic including a few of the varieties I grow, head on over to this post.
All you have to do to enter to win is to comment on this post. Contest will end at midnight PT on Wednesday, October 17. contest closed…check back for more great giveaways in the future.
Do you grow garlic in the garden? If so, what’s your favorite variety?
If you’d like more chances to win, there are 7 other blogs doing this same giveaway, with different varieties of garlic.
Peaceful Valley’s Organic Gardening Blog for ‘Bogatyr’
Gardenerd for ‘California Early White’
A Suburban Farmer for ‘Purple Gazer’
North Coast Gardening for some ‘Russian Red’
Western Gardeners for ‘Purple Italian’
Living Homegrown for ‘German Red’
Dirt Du Jour divas are giving away French red shallots
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On Air
Mr Chiots has been itching to start a Chiot’s Run podcast. It’s not really my cup of tea, but I figured I’d give it a go (remember Sunday’s post about fear).
The plan is to record a podcast every Sunday and publish it on Mondays (oops, today is Tuesday, but I already had my Monday post planned). This week the theme is “Why?”.
The podcast was posted as a separate post just before this one, you can listen there. We’re still working out the kinks, so let us know if you have any problems. If you have any questions you want answered on the podcast, ask away, here or on any post. It will be up on iTunes shortly, so you can subscribe there if you’d like.
Do you like to listen to podcasts or talk radio? Any questions you’d like answered in a podcast format?
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Cultivate Simple 1: Why?
In our first episode on the Cultivate Simple podcast we ask the question “Why?”. Why did Susy start the blog and why does it continue, why did we move to Maine, why do a podcast. We finish up with ‘Around the Run’, our homestead update.
To keep up with what’s going on at Chiot’s Run around the web you can find me on Twitter and on Facebook.
Update (10/10/12): We are now on iTunes. If you have any other services that you use and would like us to submit the podcast to, let us know in the comments.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:26 — 30.7MB)
