serious sunstroke number 1 of 2016!!!!

it was very cloudy yesterday afternoon - check out these clouds:

cloudy....but beautiful:

very cloudy!

 the sunset was amazing:

today jambaloney went to work on-site for half of the day....that is if you consider showing up for work at 6 and working until after noon just half of a day....i waited for him to get home because it looked like this:

i opened up the greenhouse and gave the cats their nip. the temp was around 60C (15F). it was gorgeous!

did odd jobs around the house and then he got home and we got to work! after we put sunscreen on his face. i put on my baby oil mixed with coffee grinds. i like getting brown by the sun! i mulched the garlic beds:

lots of garlic:

truckdura down at the beginning of the road to the river:

jambaloney was weeding the strawberry hugelkulture and gathering dead raspberry and blackberry bushes to make fine mulch so that we can aerate our pea bed, carrot bed and radish and beet bed - woohoo! lots of planting tomorrow.

the crazy little daffodils that were supposed to be tulips are all blooming...and pretty:

our regular daffodils keep spreading every year:

our grape vine is finally showing some tiny nubs (for my friend W, who told jambaloney how to trim them):

another beautiful pic of the backyard with truckdura, the greenhouse, the sky and our loungers:

we have blue russian comfrey growing everywhere on our land....including in our compost pile:

i got a big bucket and stuffed it full of brand new baby comfrey leaves and water. i will let this cook up in the greenhouse for a few days and then water all of my plants with it. comfrey tea is wonderful for any kind of plant!

indications that indeed the faeries have been around!

they regularly clean their homes of faery moss that they use in their homes in a variety of ways.

truckdura filled with dead blackberry and raspberry bushes. yummmmm....awesome to make fine mulch with mulchdura!

tomorrow my first job is to mulch the strawberry hugelkulture....i started weeding it and jambaloney finished it.

and one last pic before we came in the house, drank a gallon of berkey-filtered rainwater each and then crashed.

both of us were sunstroked - not badly - just enough to make us want to lay down and sleep. tomorrow is a full day and it supposed to be gorgeous out! i will slather my man in sunscreen several times a day, i will cover myself in baby oil and coffee grinds, we will get out and plant, plant, plant....and if everything goes as planned - the mermaid tail will make it to the river - woohoo!

spring is really here! xoxoxo to all of you!

mid-may update!

it's been a couple of nice days.

today is a little grey so we are doing mostly inside jobs. jambaloney was at work on-site yesterday and is back again tomorrow, but thursday, friday and saturday  are supposed to be gorgeous days - woohoo! might even be able to take my mermaid tail down to the river! did i already say woohoo? well woohoo again!

do any of you grow chickpeas? we love chickpeas and they are something i have never tried to grow.

i love making various chickpea salads - this one is chickpeas, red pepper, avocado, EVOO, lemon, garlic and some baby frisee. yummeh!

yesterday i planted some fun things in the greenhouse - i planted myrrh, stevia and anise. i had anise growing in the front yard last year but it doesn't look like it's coming back. anise has a wonderful licorice flavour, makes a beautiful tea using the leaves and fresh flowers, and can also be dried for use during the winter. myrrh has many medicinal uses that you can read about here. stevia can be used as a natural replacement for sugar...so if i can get it and the sugarbeets growing - we'll always have a source of sugar.

here's some sugary/whiskey chicken that i made the other night - it was sooooome good!

and because my friend W is always asking for pictures of the cats - here's Mobie-Moe sleeping on a chair that he's about to fall off of!

Frankie Blue Eyes in his basket on the dishwasher.

the only smart one is noodie-noo all sprawled out in a chair.

i grow a ton of catnip and give them some fresh every day - one leaf each. then when it starts getting cold, i start drying the fresh nip for them to have over the winter. these cats are spoiled!

i'll be reading my new books tomorrow while jam is at work - i can't wait! and then we'll be out planting for real for the following 3 days - soooo much fun and rewarding when everything is in the ground!

The Official Framboise Manor Potatoe Planting Day of 2016!

what a beautiful day for the Official Framboise Manor Potatoe Planting Day of 2016!

AAAAAAND - it's friday the 13th and a full moon. if you hear howling tonight - that's not a wolf, fox or coyote - that's me screaming from the hottub - thanking the Lord, the sun and the moon for a perfect potatoe planting day!

here's 40 tires, double stacked but only filled to one and a half. 200 potatoes were planted in these tires....200 potatoe seedlings whose genetics go back 6 yrs. we have saved and used our OWN potatoe seeds all these years. what a feeling!

my friend PP loves our tires. and he loves the great use we get out of them year after year.

yesterday late afternoon - the sky was brilliant!

here's dawn this morning - it promised a perfect day!

for breakfast we had our protein shakes, played cards, hottub dipped, did some of our stretches and then planted all of our potatoes - woohoo! breakfast was a vietnamese/kymberified soup - using home-canned broth, pineapple juice, a ton of lemon juice, a ton of garlic, a ton of ginger, cut up tomatoes, fresh mint, ground cumin and ground coriander. with our own chives and our own hot pepper for garnish.

talk about blow your head off, clear your sinuses and give you tons of energy to go have a great day!

jambaloney gathered some old weathered sticks from just around our yard.

then he ran them through mulchdura (named so because we have a 1980's chevy vandura, we call our truck truckdura, we call our sucky little boat boatdura - but we still call our canoe bob's special because it is a bob's special and canoedura just didn't seem to work!). anyway here is mulchdura:

he's pretty gorgeous no?

here's the mulch he makes from dead trees and brush around your yard/land.

look at this beautiful mulch!!!

kids - you know how hindsight is 20/20....and when you start off on an adventure and you plan and feel confident that you have thought everything through? well, when we landed here in 2010, after years of planning, we knew we needed a truck, we knew we needed to have several backups for our water, we knew it wasn't going to be easy but we thought we had planned for and had thought of everything that we would need pronto.

and now it's 6 years later and we finally have mulchdura - something we should have invested in when we first got here! our land is full of dead, fallen trees, brush, old blackberry bushes, old raspberry bushes, old and dead weeds....all of which can be run through mulchdura and not only can we now mulch all of our beds to keep moisture in and weeds out....mulchdura also has a fine setting so that we can aerate our soil! oh hindsight!

another pic of 40 tires planted with 200 potatoes for my friend PP. he likes it when i mention him in posts and he loooooooves tires!

in other daily news at the Manor....the tulips are all coming up!

i have no idea what kind of tulip this is - but it is bright yellow on the outside and a deep orange on the inside.

back to mulchdura - jambaloney filled a tractor tire with mulch lickety-split.....this mulch has a special purpose....

tomorrow we will weed and mulch our strawberry hugelkulture.

mulch not only keeps weeds down and holds moisture....it degrades every year and adds nutrients to your soil. we'll be making mulch for all of our beds...and the mulch is extra special because it comes from our land!!!

a funny Framboise Manor story for you - because we live in the middle of nowhere, when we order anything from the internet, we get phone calls from the local deliverers asking us where we are, how to get here....and once they get here they seem a little freaked as pirate jambaloney heads down the driveway in his bandana, dirty work clothes, knee-high rubber boots and always gives a tip. it's the tip that freaks them out the most! anyway, we were expecting a delivery since last week - UPS kept changing the date of delivery and we just rolled with it....we're starting to expect it now. but today a delivery man showed up and pirate jambaloney went down to get it. it was delivery for me and they are stunning!

you are thinking diamond earings right? a tennis bracelet? an Hermes handbag perhaps? laboutin shoes? well you are getting close.....

no, i received these 2 incredible beauties in delivery today:



TWO Umberto Eco books!!! be still by racing heart! i told you how much i loved anything Eco in this Leibster Award Post here. i looooooooooooove Umberto Eco!!!!

so kids it looks like there will be much of this in the next few days, weather permitting. sitting in the hottub reading my new books!

jambaloney is working on his contract and we will be having a late dinner  - spaghetti of lobster. i hate doing anything to lobster other than just eat it right out of the shell - but jambaloney wants it and what jambaloney wants - he gets!

then a late supper of chicken drum sticks that have been marinating all day in soya, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar more ginger and garlic than should be legally allowed - and get ready for it - cape breton's version of single malt scotch whiskey? i know...crazy eh? i'll let you know how it turned out in tomorrow's post.

for now, i have to be quiet because the man is coding and when he is coding - he goes in the zone and needs to focus. not a hard thing to do when the windows are open, all of the different birds are chirping, and the only vehicle we have heard in the last week is the delivery guy today.

we know that we live in paradise, and that good food and small little pleasures can keep us entertained for life. we have nothing but good wishes for all of you, too.

and Ed - stop calling it lunch! sending love to you all!

tomatoes have been transplanted, potatoes are suntanning, many herbs have been planted and a few busy days!

busy few days...but at least all of that fog and mist moved out. i love fog - i think it is a magical time and faeries come out to play because they know that we will have a very hard time seeing them. but having some blue and some sun.....that's my fave.

these 13 pepper plants might look a little scraggly and sad but we overwintered them in the house - and somehow they survived! they even produced 5 peppers over the winter! now that they are in the hot greenhouse they will bush out and start producing peppers much earlier than i ones i planted from seed last week!

probably a good enough time to throw in some dinner (please don't ever call it lunch to my face - it's DINNER!). i normally make a beautiful from-scratch salsa but - being without teeth - i need to gum everything. so i had to blitzkreig the salsa and guacamole. i have no problem chewing through the chicken and the refried beans. but i have to eat my wrap with a knife and fork.



check out these 200 potatoe seeds that we saved from our own plants last year! we have 60 irish cobblers, 60 yukon gold, 40 russets and 40 red chieftains. we have found through trial and error that those numbers can keep us in potatoes until around mid-march. all while providing us with seed potatoes for the following year.

that's 7 years and counting of never buying potatoe seed and knowing that our potatoes have never been exposed to pesticides or any other kind of "icides". we grow our potatoes in tire towers....it makes my buddy Pioneer Preppy stark raving mad!!!!

kids - i keep talking about teeth and what i can eat/gum without having any teeth. if i am boring you to death, i am sorry. but i just know that i was talked into fillings, keeping teeth, getting crowns and bridges, then partials....all to no avail. i have ground my teeth since i was a baby and nothing made me stop grinding them - especially in bed all night long! when i think of the thousands of dollars that i spent trying to keep my teeth and constantly needing re-adjustments for this or that....i wish i had of had them removed 10 yrs ago. since having them removed - NOT a single headache or migraine. NOT ONE! here's hoping that the migraines and headaches were due to grinding. and if someone would have shared all of this info with me years ago - i never would have put myself through all the various manifestations of dentistry. so, if you are having constant problems with your teeth, i am giving you my advice from my experience - do with it what you will.

if any of you would like to talk about any of this, my email address is kymberzmail@gmail.com

here's a great sushi salad - all of which i can eat woohoo!

there's rice, dipping sauce, lobster, tuna, avocado, hot peppers (jambaloney was crying eating them - i won't touch the things - i have used them to make fire before. no - it's really true - they're deadly!) and some hearts of palm and pickled onions. deelish!

my tomatoe seedlings in the greenhouse in the house were all 5-8 inches long - they HAD to be transplanted! we buried them up to their little heads and put them in these 5 gallon pots. we'll bring them outside at the beginning of june and jambaloney will make a windbreak thing for them.

lots and lots of tomatoes plus a whole pile of other stuff - some overwintered, some started in little pots to be planted outside in the beds in a few weeks.

lots of herbs were planted! we are herb crazy - we eat the herbs raw in a variety of food and then dry some for the winter months.

more herbs and various pots of things.

here's 5 more trout jambaloney caught the other day.



the 2 biggest are for Pioneer Preppy and the 3 small ones are for Sweet Sandy. it's actually kind of amazing that both of us love any kind of fish or seafood (except for swordfish - i didn't care for that at all!)...but we have access to some of the freshest fish, seafood and shellfish - it's awesome!

which brings me to another plate of sushi - we can't get enough of it and eat it just about 3 times a week!

that's lobster, tuna and avocado sushi. the dipping sauce is the kicker - raw ginger, raw garlic, soya, sesame oil and rice wine vinegar. normally there would be chives and green onions but the chives are just coming up and i am not holding out hope on green onions this year. i think i am going to cheat and plant organic onions in order to get the green shoots.

so we have had a couple of busy days, jambaloney is working on his contract and then we are off to do this:

well not jambaloney. he would try to kill himself with a rubber mallet if i ever even suggested that he get a merman tail. he's actually as in love with our river and ocean as much as i am. it's just that he's a trout - not a merman!

hoping you all have had a fine couple of days. 

another foggy, misty day...but that's ok...Pioneer Preppy accepted my Leibster nomination - woohoo!

it's been foggy, misty, rainy and grey for over a week now. you can't see our mountain range or Strachan's Brook out front.

you also can't see the river out back.

it is a very surreal feeling when it's this misty/foggy. but beautiful raindrops on tulip leaves always make me think of diamonds.

as for the lotus experiment....scarify the seeds, kids. i started 2 lotus seeds last monday with no scarification and nothing has happened yet. i scarified 2 lotus seeds on wednesday and they are sending up their first shoots!

when jambaloney is next in town, he will get me a pretty punch-bowl-thingy to plant my lotuses in. then i will take them outside and put them on the table next to the hottub. it will be so pretty to look at.

we moved our well-established herbs out of the greenhouse to make room for the tomatoes to go in tomorrow.

my tomatoe seedlings are huge and we are planting them all in 5 gallon pots. they will live in the greenhouse for a while and then they will be moved outside.

we also moved our lettuce/beet trays outside. jambaloney threw a little table thing together in 5 minutes out of junk wood. he'll build us a proper salad tray in the next few days.

here are some comfrey roots that i am rooting for my new friend P and our most special friend W. i want them to establish strong roots before mailing them out to our friends.

this garlic bed is going gangbusters. we planted 100 of them in the fall and will harvest them in september. we planted another hundred in a different bed this spring and will let them go until we have to take them out of the ground...probably about novemberish.

we were up at the crack of dawn this morn, played our cards, did our walk around, hit the hottub, jambaloney worked on his contract for a few hours, we filled 30-some odd tomatoe pots to get ready for transplanting tomorrow....and the man has gone on his first "fishing in the canoe" trip now. normally he is out right when trout season starts (mid-april) - but he's been so busy with work at home, going in to work, doing homestead stuff - he hasn't been out in his canoe yet this year. he is going to have a wonderful time and i think i will send him back out this evening. he needs some relaxation - he's been working pretty much every day since january.

and - get ready for it kids - Pioneer Preppy accepted my Leibster nomination and answered my questions - woohoo! it shows just how much he really cares for me although he'd never admit it. you can read his answers to my questions here.

thanks PP - yer a swell pal!