beautiful day after the rain...

friends - it rained all night. it was beautiful and i love hearing the rain bouncing off of the plastic-roofed porch. but my man had to be up early today as he was going into LobstersRUs for a full day of work. i made sure last night that his lunch was made, and his clothes were ready...and then i slept fitfully as i always do when i know he has to go in to work. you must understand that i brought him here to retire him and the fact that he now has a part-time job is wonderful...but i worry.so i was up 45 mins before he had set the alarm to be sure that he was up on time. it rained all night and this is what it looked like at 5:45 am....soooo beautiful.



for his morning breakfast i fed him some scrambled eggs with his homemade hot sauce, some coffee and water. when he isn't going to work and we wake up whenever we wake up - we eat decadent things like poached eggs, a lobster tail and claw and some grapes - bahahahahha!

we planted 200 potatoes in our 40 tires - it's something both of us never get tired of talking about. i'm sorry if it's boring for you all.

but every year we have tons of seed potatoes left over. below is easily another 200 seed potatoes.

we discuss urban guerrilla gardening often except that we live in the middle of nowhere. but we do have a ton of islands in our river, and being that we have our quiet canoe, and jambaloney is a true courier des bois - we have access to many places to guerrilla garden even if we live in the middle of nowhere. a post about that coming soon.

comfrey salve. the salve to make itching bug bites go away.

it's homemade and made with beeswax and coconut oil. which we have many years worth of both in our preps.

comfrey slips. to send to our friend W. though he be many thousands of miles away, his friendship has meant the world to us. he has taught us so much because his knowledge is limitless.

fresh trouts off the grill. nothing else needs to be said.

and it is now 8:45. my manz be at workz. i watered the greenhouse and opened the windows.

the rain has watered all of the beds and i am feeling tired from a fitful sleep. i always have a fitful sleep when i know that he has to be up for work. the day is going to be gorgeous and long...as i await my sweet man to return - with fresh lobster and crab. yes, i know that we live a very difficult life - bahahahah! but just know in your hearts that we are grateful and happy for every single day - and we never pass up the opportunity to express our gratitude. i need to go out and look at my beautiful strawberries and make sure that my lettuces were properly watered. then wash 10 million cat plates. and pet fat, healthy cats in between all of that. cats who have been fed about 2,000 times since we woke up. oh...and we are getting a puppy in about 8 weeks. they were just born. we asked for the runt.

life is amazingly wonderful. i miss my man. i can't wait till he gets home. i am so proud of the work he is doing. uh-oh - a cat just woke up and is screaming for food. jeesh eh?

(EDITED TO ADD: i can't stress how much of a courier des bois he is! he really is!)

mid-june garden update

this post is mostly for my garden records, but i do so enjoy tours of other blogger's gardens so i hope that you will enjoy this tour (pay no mind to the weeds - jam has just started weeding today but we will get it all weeded in the next few days!)!

a big, beautiful hugelkulture bed filled with strawberry plants - some of which already have blossoms - woohoo!

garlic bed number one:

one of the many salad bars:

the pea bed weeded and comfrey leaves laid down - comfrey and seaweed are both excellent mulches and add a variety of extra nutrients to the soil.

we put seaweed in all of the beds/pots/tires every fall and spring. seaweed will be going down on all of the beds this week.

our 12 biggest tomatoes have been put out in their tires:

a crazy thing happened this year - we have volunteer tomatoes everywhere!!! i planted 46 and 46 came up but in all of the pots in the greenhouse - volunteer tomatoes have appeared. we have an additional 20+ tomatoes. i like having those kinds of problems!

this is the radish, daikon radish and swiss chard bed, weeded and comfrey leaves spread on:

garlic bed number 2 (it is full of garlic but some of it is from last year):

these are 2 melon/squash/pumpkin beds. i start one or 2 of each and then when i plant them out i plant seeds directly in the beds. the cans are to protect the older plants from slugs.

here is the brassica bed - again, i start some brassicas indoors and then when i plant them out i continue the rows with seeds. that way we don't have a glut of stuff all coming in at once.

this is for our good buddy PP who looooooves tires! look at all of those potatoe plants - woohoo! please ignore the weeds. potatoes are pretty forgiving when it comes to weeds but we'll get to these tires eventually!

a beautiful comfrey plant that i am letting go to seed:

we have volunteer comfrey plants all over our land. comfrey can be cut back 3 times a season here. we use it for mulch and compost.

here's our little apple tree that got decimated last year by aphids - he's coming back strong now, thank goodness:

and then there's these apple trees. ugh.

we love having a variety of birds in our yard all throughout the day but for some crazy reason, this year, the goldfinches and purple finches have started eating all the buds!!! we have no idea what to do.

here's the greenhouse - a mish mash of peppers, tomatoes, herbs and such:

more seeds being started:

a blurry pic of more peppers:

more tomatoes and peppers:

tomatoes, peppers, herbs and more salads:

herbs, peppers, tomatoes, salad:

volunteer chives that are all over the yard:

i don't bother planting chives anymore as the several bunches all around the yard provide us with all we need and they re-seed themselves every year:

our friend W is going to kill us when he sees our grapevine - we just haven't gotten to it yet! but we already have grape clusters forming - woohoo!

and some pretty apple blossoms:

i couldn't finish the post without a pic of today's catch of trout:

you are only allowed to catch 5 a day during trout season. these things are so good for you and salmonoids are loaded with omega 3-6-9.

these trout were caught for BullDog Man and Sweet Sandy. Pioneer Preppy gets the next batch.

kev dared us and we accepted!

our friend kev alviti from england just did a post about seeing a pic his friend Texan and that she didn't look at all like he had imagined from reading her blog. he also mentioned that he considered his readers to be friends....and we feel that all of our readers, followers, commenters and everyone in our blog list to be friends, as well.

he then dared us all to take a pic of ourselves and put it up on our respective blogs. we like kev and so we took the dare.

this pic is about a year old and it was only in trying to find a pic to take kev's dare that i realized that we really don't have a lot of pictures with both of us in them!!! need to fix that!

so will you take kev's dare? if so, leave a comment here with a link to your pic. let's all get to see what each other looks like. kinda' fun, no?

(EDITED TO ADD: we didn't take a selfie this morn because my hair is in an all over the place bun, we're burnt, tired and bitten to death by black flies. we look awful!)

a great new fermenting tool that we highly recommend to make the process of fermenting food a hassle-free breeze!

as you all know, we do not have advertisements on our blog (except for listing other great blogs in our blog list!). however, when we come across a product that we feel is fantastic and might interest some of our blog readers, we do a review. for this review, we have not received any compensation or product other than what we purchased. a very thoughtful free gift was included but with no obligation. i'll get to that in a minute.

first off - let's talk about fermenting. it's a topic that is getting a lot of interest and that is a very good thing. lots of people are thinking about, reading about and learning about the incredible health benefits of fermented food - and the benefits are nothing short of amazing! jambaloney and i have been making sauerkraut, sauerruben, carrot and daikon kimchi, regular spicy kimchi and a variety of other kimchis, and other veg for years now. we loooooove fermented food! but although a lot of people are interested in fermenting - lots of them are scared of trying it. well - have i got a tool for you that takes all of those fears away!

so on to this great new fermenting tool that we recently purchased, have used and are thrilled with! have a gander at this funny looking baby:

to me - it looks like a crazy science experiment! but that's because whenever i made fermented foods in the past, i simply used regular mason jars, stuffed them full of whatever, put lids on them, stored them under the bed where it is dark and cool to ferment them and then HAD TO UNSCREW THE LIDS 3-4 TIMES A DAY TO LET THE GASSES OUT!!! i always put the jars on a tray because sometimes they would fizzle, bubble and overflow. no big whoop but really kind of a pain in the "you know where"! this way of fermenting food has been done for thousands of years in crocks, mason jars, bottles - you name it. and it works! it's just a pain to be worried about unscrewing jars several times a day!!!

well those days of unscrewing lids are over - woohooo! i am not sure how i stumbled across fermentools.com but it was probably while searching for crocks, ferment recipes, etc.

this company has an unique product that makes fermenting foods a breeze! i am here to testify that their product works and provides delicious results!!!! here is the 6-pack kit that we ordered for $72.90 USD - it may seem like a lot but, we saved for it as we suspected it would pay for itself in only a short time.

this kit contains an instruction/recipe manual, 6 stainless steel lids with holes in the centre, 6 glass weights (ingenious i say!), 6 3-piece fermentation locks, 6 plugs with holes for use during fermentation, and 6 plugs to use after fermentation (i just use our regular mason jar plastic lids when storing).

jambaloney and i love to buy canadian-made and us-made products and do so whenever we can. imagine my surprise to see that the fermentation locks are made in canada and that the boxes are made in the us!!!!





so once you put the little contraption together on top of say, your sauerkraut, what makes this contraption exceptionally easy to use is it takes out all of the guess work for you. the fermentation lock does all of the work releasing gases and the glass ring submerges your vegetables in the brine. no more wrapping cabbage leaves on top of the jar, or using clean rocks to keep your veggies submerged and no more worrying about mold forming on top - it's ingenious!



last but not least - NO MORE UNSCREWING LIDS SEVERAL TIMES A DAY - WOOHOO!

when i first contacted the company with questions about the product and questions about shipping, i received a very prompt response answering all of my questions. i love and appreciate good customer service and this company has that in spades!!!

Matt, the person who responded alerted me to the fact that the standard shipping rate to canada was quite expensive ($44) and made recommendations on which of their products we should buy in order to make the shipping rate worth it. we bit the bullet as the product was much less expensive than any crocks we have ever found and i have priced close to millions of crocks.

and this is where over-the-top fantastic customer service comes in to play. we received our product, beautifully-packaged and a personal hand-written note on the sales slip.

the note reads - "james and kymber - Thanks for your order. I hope you get a life time of use from this kit. I feel bad about the shipping cost, but there is nothing I can do...but add extra product. I hope you enjoy the salt."

and included in the package was a 1 lb pound bag of Ancient Himalayan Salt. now THAT is customer service!!!

i have always used sea salt in all of my ferments and was really glad to get a chance to try the Himalayan salt. the Himalayan Salt is high in trace minerals which is very good and produces a very good product but if you can't get access to Himalayan salt - sea salt and kosher salt work just as well in fermenting foods.

as with all fermented foods - you adjust for taste. some people like their fermented food at 3 days, 7 days, 280 days - it's all a matter of testing and tasting your fermented food until it tastes good to you!

here's our first bottle using our fantastic new product:

i tested it at 3 days (couldn't help myself - too excited!), at 5 days (still too excited!), at 7 days (getting close but not quite there), 9 days (ooooh almost!) and then at 12 days. we have decided that we like this the best.

i have been making fermented veg in mason jars for years without my nifty tools from fermentools.com and they have been jim-dandy and delicious! IS my sauerkraut made with the ferment tools better - YES! YES! AND YES! it is crispy, crunchy, tart, delicious and using these tools takes all of the guesswork out of fermentation! I LOVE THIS NEW PRODUCT!

i can now be fermenting 6 different things all at the same time or at different times and there is no need to worry about remembering to unscrew lids.

if you are interested in fermenting foods for yourself, but are hesitant to try and don't have a crock and don't want the burden of unscrewing lids - THIS IS THE TOOL FOR YOU!

if you follow the very easy instructions - you will be successfully fermenting your own veg for the rest of your life!

i can't recommend this product highly enough.

check them out at fermentools.com

Boo!

jambaloney here!


i know it has been a long time since i have posted - i really have been busy at lobsters rus - then home to work on whatever homesteading stuff we have going on... we are actually in really great shape considering the long winter and late spring ;-)))))


however one thing i have not done much of is fish - i only got out in the canoe for the first time monday - june 01, latest ever.... did i get some trout - oh yeah - have a look at the end result!!!

and this was the first...

and here is the daily limit for pioneer p and sandy to fight over - sorry for the delay guys but they are all yours!!!

here are wild strawberry blossoms on the way down to the river - they are delicious but as you all know tiny - no worries - k got us a bunch of plants that produce bigger berries that went in the huggie kulture!

actually a dreary rainy day - LOL!!

no matter - i missed this...

back to the stream..i keep forgetting how much the SAME it is year after year - very soothing... lots of green starting to show!!!

here is an inlet i don't frequent..

and here is a TINY wood frog where i hide the canoe key... that key is one inch long - go figure!!

now that things are stabilizing a bit - i will post more and visit your blogs - i hope you are all having a great spring!!!

cheers!