The Sun
Mr Chiots always jokes that I’m like to sun and it’s probably not for the reason you’d expect. You see, here at Chiot’s Run, everything revolves around me. Why? Because I fill the food bowls.
When I’m in the house, I have 2 cats and a dog that are always close by waiting for a hand out. When I’m outside, there are cats, dogs, ducks and chickens that follow me around. It’s especially evident when it’s nice outside and everyone is out and about.
Whenever I head outside, animals come out of the woodwork hoping for a snack of some kind. It’s rather amusing actually, though it can be annoying at times. When I head up to the coop to check for eggs, I really don’t need all 13 chickens to follow me up there. When I want to move from the kitchen to the office, I don’t need to be tripping over cats and dogs.
It’s funny how that is, the person providing the food somehow becomes the center of those around them. Others rely on us for nourishment. That’s not a bad place to be, except sometimes I feel like they’re sneaking up on me plotting their attack. Mr Chiots and I joke that someday, when I forget to feed the animals, he’ll find me all tied up like Gulliver!
Are you the primary food provider in your household? Do you find animals/people following you around?
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Hello Spring?
This is what my garden looks like this morning (only with 6 more inches of snow). Very fitting since it’s the first day of spring.
The weather is a strange thing, this time of year you just never know what you’re going to get. I have photos of snow in my gardens in Ohio in April, but then one year my mom and I planted our potatoes and peas on St. Patrick’s Day. You definitely take notice the weather as a gardener. Some years are hot, some are cold, there are wet springs and dry springs. That’s why you always plant a wide variety of plants.
It’s a good thing I went out on Monday and added some greenhouse plastic to the hoops in the potager. I did it to start warming the soil in order to plant spinach and transplant leeks. I also wanted to protect the soil from this snowstorm.
Now the ground underneath will remain dry so I can plant in it earlier. This summer, I have plans to add a large walk-in hoop house to the garden for winter gardening. I can hardly wait!
What does the first day of spring look like in your garden?
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Our First Holz Hausen
A long time ago I pinned this article from Mother Earth News for Mr Chiots. I thought this European method of stacking firewood might be something he was interested in. As we were splitting and stacking wood last weekend, we decided our next stack of wood was going to be made using this method.
It’s a round stack with all the good pieces stacked around the exterior and all the gnarled pieces loaded in the middle. It’s really quite simple to construct. First, you build a circle on the ground out of pieces of firewood in the diameter you want your stack. Then you start stacking wood in the circle around it. This first ring of pieces of wood will start you pile off with the pieces of wood slanting inward, this give the pile stability.
Every so often, if your pieces of firewood start to slope outward instead of inward, you add a horizontal piece across the stack, you can add one in just that area or all the way around. You can see a few of these in the photo below if you look. All the gnarly hard to stack pieces get thrown into the middle vertically.
Sunday, we spent the afternoon splitting wood and we worked on our very first one. It wasn’t difficult at all and it went up fairly quickly. After a couple hours of work it was about 5 feet high (ours is about 6 feet wide).
I rather like stacking wood this way, it is like putting together a puzzle. The interest it adds is also worth the effort of doing so. All-in-all, I think it’s actually quicker and easier than traditional stacking methods. We’ll see how the wood seasons in this pile. No doubt we’ll be building more of these, it’s always nice when you can find a more beautiful way to deal with something like firewood.
Have you ever seen one of these or another artistic way of stacking firewood?
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Cultivate Simple 22: Beyond Organic
Today we’re talking about going beyond organic. Thinking about how the things we do in the garden have consequences beyond what we can see and often beyond what we’re thinking. We’re talking about pest control and how that affects the rest of your garden.
Links
Who’s Eating the Codling Moth
Killing of Robins from spraying
Patured vs Free Range eggs – video
Books of the Week
A Great Video to Watch about Silent Spring
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:40:39 — 69.8MB)
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Quote of the Day: Maria Augusta Trapp
One of the greatest things in human life is the ability to make plans. Even if they never come true-the joy of anticipation is irrevocably ours. That way one can live many more thank just one life.
Maria Augusta Trapp in The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
Mr Chiots and I always find ourselves with long lists of things we plan on doing, especially when it comes to travel. We will someday drive to the west coast and Alaska, someday we’ll find ourselves on that long flight to Hawaii. We have plans to visit all the National Parks. None of these will happen this year, we’re simply too busy to take that much time off. We decided that our tiny trailer had to make a voyage this summer, even if it’s only somewhere close by.
Where will we go? We’re thinking Prince Edward Island. It’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. We haven’t nailed down a time to go, probably later in the summer when we’ve got everything to a state where we can be away for a few days. It’s been such a long and crazy year, I can’t wait to go camp somewhere and have some time to relax!
Do you have any great trips near or far planned for this summer?
