The Potting "Shed"

When Mother Nature hands you this...

in LATE Februrary, all you can do, besides swear at the ditch rat for getting it all wrong, is hope and plan for Spring.  Spring that you know will come, you just don't know when.

It's rather difficult to do when your garden, which you should be filling with grand heaps of compost is under this...

Yes, that's the path that Doc has been keeping open for us with the snowblower between the coop, barn, and workshop.  The garden is under all of that, and it's not a fluffy drift.  Most of it you can walk on top of, until you can't.  Which is why we've had to make a cut in it.  Walking on top of it hauling 8 gallons of water is fine, until you hit a soft pocket and the drift eats you for breakfast. 

We are still in the deep freeze, which we shouldn't be, but the temps should start warming up into the 30s.  That's still 20 degrees colder than we should be, but I'll take it.

It does hinder the garden work that should be going on this time of year.  But to keep on the gardening track I came up with a project.  Inspired by a post on the Old World Garden blog where she builds racks for seed starting.  She also sells the plans for them for those less hands on.

So where could I create this safe space for my seeds?  Previously I was sprouting seeds in the kitchen.  But the light source from the windows was too high and caused the plants to get leggy before their time.  I have plenty of room in the unfinished warm area of the basement, but really didn't relish having moisture laden seed racks down there in a part of the house that has no moisture issues. 

So where......

AH HA!

In front of Doc's car space in the garage is this odd little nook.  It forms the ceiling of the staircase below and I suppose was meant to be an awesome area for little used storage.  Although without shelving, it became a seasonal dumping ground that never got cleaned or emptied.  With the 18 inch step up, it also wasn't very convenient.  (Had I built the house, I would have enclosed it and put a door on that back wall and made it a walk in pantry for the kitchen.)

I was then able to get great measurements and take care of the hardest part, the planning and the list making to pull it all together. 

I already had a potting table that I was using for cooking in the outdoor brick oven, so I made sure it made it in the room. I figured out the best placement for shelves and made my list of supplies needed.  Then I was off and running.

Behr Tidal Blue in SemiGloss

I removed all the goodies in there and set them aside to find new homes for it all later.  I swept it clean and removed most of the cobwebs, and slapped on a coat of fresh paint. Of course, doing this made the rest of the garage look terrible. (project for another time)

Then came a scrap piece of vinyl flooring in a nice slate stone print.  It was that or looking like a wood plank floor.  Since it's a potting room, and one of my favorite movies is Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, it had to be the slate.

I put back the trim after installing the floor and set to work building the shelves from 2x4s.

Several trips up and down the 18 inch step later, I decided I needed to build a step.  I used a pair of cinder blocks with a piece of plywood attached with construction adhesive and topped with another scrap of vinyl.  That made the work easier.

Plywood was secured to the frame tops and then covered in more scrap vinyl and rubber matting. 

I capped the end of the shelving unit with an opaque roofing panel to block the winds and cool drafts when Doc open his door, and also a curtain across the front on a rod for the same purpose.

The lights are full spectrum LED lights on a timer.  They are adjustable in height from the seedlings.  I also had room for a Blue/Red LED grow light on the potting table.  This one is for lettuce, the lights are color adjustable for seedlings, and the plant stages.

I am hoping to not only get seedlings started for the garden, but also perennial and self seeding annual seedlings for the pollinator beds.  I invested in a potting cube maker and am looking forward to seeing how they compare and stand up to use as compared to using commercial soil and plastic starter cells.

I also walked into a clearance sale at the local big box store.  They were discontinuing colors from last year's pots, so I took full advantage of that.  The long trays are extremely heavy duty plastic liners for window boxes.  I guess they no longer sell the boxes that they go into, or people just didn't want to spend 9$ on a tray.  But I'll spend less than 2$ for a home for rows of cherry seeds.

The large planters will start asparagus, and the squares are saddle belly planters for over bricks or railing.  Those I will fill with lettuce for the deck and maybe flowers for market.


Hopefully, in another week or so, we'll get everything going.

Mittens, Mittens, Who's Got The Mittens?

Otherwise known as "The Winter That Refuses To Die."

It's the third of March, and we are still deep in winter.  We shouldn't be. We SHOULD be in the forties, with pop up days in the 50s and 60s.  Of late our highs have been in the teens, with wind chills in the negative teens and 20s.

Isn't this mug adorable?!  It reminds
me of those S'Mores Christmas
ornaments.  What looks like a
coaster isn't, it's part of the mug.  It IS
a "chocolate square and graham cracker".

And SNOW.  Oh mercy, SNOW!  We normally manage, on average, about 25 inches of snow over the winter.  We are creeping up on 55 inches.  When the snow comes, it's not messing around.  We've been gifted with howling winds, ice, and 8 to 10 inches of snow at a go.  The drifting has been ridiculous, and necessitates Doc taking the snowblower to the yard and cutting paths from the plowed driveway to the chicken house and the barn through 2 foot drifts, so that we can more easily haul water, and walk.

The alpacas and chicken are being real sporting about the matter.  The alpacas can't read, so they don't know what month it is.  They are a tad annoyed that I have closed the gate to the drift laden pasture.  It's not that they could get out of the pasture.  The problem was they were finding ways from the corral INTO the pasture and then couldn't remember where the pass was to get back INTO the corral.  This forced me into my ranch bunny suit, to chase down giant furry rabbits, while my own movements were limited to something that looked like Frankenstein's revenge.  So confinement to the barn and corral it is.  They stood and looked at for a time. I'm quite sure they were discussing, between each other, what on earth this new construct was.  Sterling, of course, had to spend some time licking it.

The chickens, while they cannot read, know it is supposed to be Spring.  They can tell by the ever increasing number of hours of daylight they are exposed to.  This increases their need to lay eggs.  So while the sun isn't warming us, or them, they are popping out eggs right on schedule.  Even Mirida is finally laying.  The cold is hard on all of them.  But with the walls keeping them from the wind and warm meals twice a day, they'll be fine.

Freya was all ready for her photo shoot, when Princess pulled a photo-bomb.
I love the annoyed look on Freya.

As for the ranch, projects are at a standstill due to the weather.  The bees are on order and will be in at the end of April.  The guest bathroom remodel in the house is finally finished, but the ceiling in the lower level still needs repaired.  Much beyond that even the seed starting is at a standstill.   Every nook and every cranny has been cleaned and sorted, organized and purged.  Spring weather needs to come soon as I (and all my friends) have run out of things to clean and sort.

So that leaves me with writing and knitting.

Not only are three books in various stages of production and disarray, but now there is a forth in the mix.

As for the knitting, it's been going gang busters.  All manner of shawls, hats, and scarves have been managed since Christmas. 
For Valentines Day I made Doc a Tardis decorative scarf.
Then I got it in my head to make a pair of mittens for myself.  Everything on the market has too long of a space for the fingers and are too wide.  OR they do fit, but are dainty useless decorative things.

I found an easy pattern on Ravelry.com, but even with sticking to the pattern and the gauge they were giant floppy things.  The basics of the pattern were sound, but the sizing was off.  As I knit Portuguese style, purling is ridiculously fast, so the pattern also had to be re-written for that account.

Then I change the thickness of the yarn and it needed re-written for that account.

I eventually got it to where I wanted it and went to work.  I recently found out that I can now use some of the new, modern super washed wool yarns.  Not all of them, so it's still trial and error, but it's a start.  The pair was still a little too large. This led me to decide to Thrum them with an alpaca and silk lining.  I used a rug hooking needle to insert the afterthought thrums in each mitten.  They are magnificently warm, but smell to high heaven of wet dog.  I'm not sure I'll be wearing them.

The second pair was a super bulky yarn, so again the pattern needed tweaked.  The yarn is soft and wonderful, but had some weak spots in it that needed trimmed out. There was very little twist in places, and was little more than weak top/roving.  That was annoying.  This pair came out exactly the right size.  The yarn, however, has a tendency to loose strands of hair like bits. I am hoping this will stop with multiple wearings as little white hairs float around the car, get stuck to your nose, and generally attach themselves to pretty much everything.

The latest blast from the polar region had me knitting a third pair.  These are a thinner yarn, and I certainly wouldn't wear them in the deep cold, but to take the edge off, they're perfect.  The size is perfect, and the pair only took about 5 hours.  I like the yarn, even if the colorway didn't match through the ball.  One is a deep dark blue, the other a dirty medium blue.

I honestly cannot look at more yarn or my needles any more.  They've been put away for now.  Come ON SPRING!

Next is a temperature scarf.  I have all the yarns set up and ready for a spate of boredom later!