Spring Planting Update

I thought I should give an update on my spring plantings.
My spinach has taken off and is ready to be harvested, so we will be enjoying spinach salads for awhile

My seedlings have a mixed story to tell.  The newspaper pots worked great and all my seeds took off and were growing gangbusters.  The beans and pumpkins had gotten so tall they were starting to fall over so I figured I had to move them outside. We haven't had any nights below freezing for almost the whole month of April, and so I thought it would be safe to move them into the beautiful raised planter bed my husband made for me.
I was wrong.
It appears that young and fragile seedlings don't like temperatures even in the low 40s.  My tomato seedlings and bush bean seedlings died within days.

The zucchinis, cucumbers, and pumpkins are doing okay, sort of.  They had grown too tall for their own good in the warmth of my living room and half of them have just fallen over and are laying prostrate on the ground, groaning in agony at the torture I put them through by going outside.  But at least one of each is holding on to life.

The jalapeno and bell pepper seedlings are hanging on okay, as well as the zinnia seedlings, but they are still tiny. How can they possibly grow to a mature fruit bearing plant by August?  I guess I will see, but in the mean time another year that I will have to go to garden store to get vegetable plants for the garden.
What's their secret??
I was given a little bit of solace when I was at Target today and the cashier said she also has a really hard time with tomato seedlings, and she has an enclosed porch.  So my conclusion for Denver home gardening from seeds in the spring is spinach, broccoli (because the earwigs stay away from them) and rhubarb (our rhubarb plant comes back happier and happier every year). If you don't hate earwigs like I do and want to try out lettuce, I've had great luck with it, but really I just can not handle picking earwigs out of my lettuce.

I will keep you posted on the progress of the survivors.

Farm Life - a Tribute to Cosmo

I am first to admit I was not raised a farm girl. I grew up in suburbia, and still live in suburbia.  I love animals and creatures of all shapes and sizes and am not squeamish about dirt or hard work but I do not have the tough heart that it sometimes takes in farm life.

My sister has a small farm, with maybe 15 nigerian dwarf goats, dogs and cats, and chickens to come soon.  I was visiting her to meet all the baby goats that have been born so far this spring.  Mostly nigerian dwarfs are sold to be pets or small sized dairy goats and have a really sweet disposition if they are properly socialized. We sit with them in the morning while they eat some grain to help socialize them and get used to people. They are the sweetest funniest goof balls, and love to bounce and jump on everything around them including you.  They love to chew on your hair, your shirt, your fingers.  They snuggle up in your lap and will climb on top of each other to get the best position.  In short, you can't help but fall in love with them.

The goats at feeding time

In the evening we took three of the does to be disbudded. This is a common procedure for baby goats to remove the horn buds before they can grow into horns.  It isn't a pleasant thing to watch, but all the kids seem to recover very quickly from it and it is a low risk procedure when done by an experienced person.  All seemed to go well and the girls were up and running and playful in the morning.  Sadly, tragedy struck later the next day.  While we were gone for a few hours, one of the girls, Cosmo, somehow knocked the area open, possibly on a major blood vessel, and died very quickly from blood loss.  It was horrible and tragic, and from what the vet said, a complete freak accident since everything had been looking so good earlier.  I was heart broken as she had been holding her just that morning. I think people that breed animals understand that some babies just don't make it and that you have to calculate that as part of the losses of the farm, but it was hard to accept that when it happened so suddenly to such a happy and healthy little thing. When you see a runt of a litter or a tiny baby that develops an illness, you fight for their survival but can somehow accept if they don't make it.  But when something that is strong dies suddenly, it feels that life is robbed from them. My sister and I cried and questioned if we could have somehow found her in time or if we could have known something had been wrong, but at the end of the day, all we could do was to say goodbye to Cosmo.

Cosmo on her last morning

I can't end the story like this because that would just be too sad, and because as we all know whenever a life is lost another is born.  And thankfully later that day a new life came to the farm.  My sister's vet friend had gone to a farm where a sheep was dying from a brain infection.  She was pregnant, and so two babies were taken from her as she died.  One of them survived and the vet was able to keep it and nurse it as a bottle baby.  He was premature and tiny but he lived.  Since she doesn't have a farm she gave it to my sister to raise.  

Little Huey arrived a few hours after our loss of Cosmo, and he was such an adorable and vulnerable little lamb, we were so happy we could help take care of him.

Huey

We put two sweaters on him and worked to teach him to nurse on the bottles and put him in the warm barn at night under a heat lamp.  Every day he has grown stronger and stronger.  

We would walk around the yard with little lamb Huey bumbling around after us and he was completely adorable.  He is growing to be friends with Bubba, a baby buck my sister got who is also a bottle baby. It is strange to think that he may grow to be up to 300 lbs some day.

So for this suburban girl who is not hardened to the ways of farm life, it was a very emotional day. 

Full of heartbreak and tears and joy and laughter.  

Life is an intense thing; whether it is the life of an animal or a human, it is full to the brim with...well... life; 

and it will always be hard to say good bye.

Bubba 

War on Women

I read a quote today that the Democrats are asserting that the Republicans have waged a War on Women.

Given that it is an election season I am not surprised to see quotes like this, as they are trying to blame each other for everything wrong in this world, but this time there really is something going on and I need to speak up about it.  It isn't just a battle between political parties; the battle is for all of the women's rights that people like my mother worked so hard to achieve in the '70s and '80s.  It is a social and economical battle; it is a battle for the mothers and the single women, for stay at home moms and working mom, and it is a battle we can't afford to lose.
Here are the major battle lines I think have been drawn.

Battle Line #1 :  Contraception
Now I had been living under a misguided perception that all insurance companies covered birth control. It is such a common thing.  99% of all American women have used contraception in their life and it is a generally accepted fact that the pill is much more effective than other contraception methods, so for most monogomous couples who don't want to have children it is really the best method.  And let's not forget all of the other benefits that the pill provides, helping with severe cramps, acne problems, menopause, the list goes on.
And then I hear in this great debate we had a few months back  that in fact many religiously affiliated institutions will NOT cover birth control pills and that there's a huge outcry from conservatives who think that contraception is an evil thing and should never be covered. Seriously??  How can something that provides so many medical benefits for women not be covered, putting aside the primary role of preventing pregnancy?  If there is a religious person who doesn't believe in contraception than they shouldn't use it obviously, but how is it their right to deny the use of it to someone else.  Maybe we can repackage birth control and call it 'hormone therapy' since there's no problem having health insurance companies cover all the mood altering pills we take to make us happy.  I don't know about you but not having debilitating cramps makes me pretty darn happy.

Battle Line #2 : Rights to our Body
So if we can't get access to contraception, then millions of woman will end up with an unwanted pregnancy.  I personally have never been in this situation, but of the friends I have known through the years no matter what their beliefs on abortion or adoption it is a very hard, painful thing to go through. It is emotionally scarring and a deep and personal struggle.  For those who have an abortion, they often go through years of guilt and regret. For those who give the child up for adoption they too often have incredible guilt. And for those that keep the child even when they are teens or single there are incredible sacrifices that are made for themselves and their child. Now many women and families overcome these hardships and struggles and make wonderful mothers, but nowhere in this deep personal struggle do a see that the government should have a role.  Nowhere do I see that they should have mandated vaginal ultrasounds before you can have an abortion. Nowhere do I see where they can dictate what you do or do not do with your body and your choices of how to create a family.  When my husband and I make big life choices, nowhere in the conversation do we ask 'now what would the president have me do'.  And it should stay that way.

Battle Line #3 : Families and Economics
Women have been struggling for years to get the same pay and respect in the work place.  It is nothing new and I must admit that of this current 'war on women' there's not too much that is changing in this continued discrimination.  But what has changed is that times are hard and there just aren't enough jobs out there for everyone.  Many families have only one person working full time; this could be for any number of reasons, by choice, by necessity of the job market, or because day care for their small children outweighs the income they would have received at a job.  This is hard enough for a married family, but for single parents things are even harder. They struggle to juggle work and family life.
But there's another darker side to this struggle that I have seen growing since the economic downturn in 2008.  There are fewer jobs, and so those who have jobs are being asked to be slaves to that job.  Work / Family balance? Companies just don't care.  There has been a shift in the last few years that views employees as widgets not people.  The people lucky enough to have a job are supposed to work 12 hour days and be happy about it. They are not supposed to take off work because their kid  is sick, or because they want to do something crazy like go on a vacation; if they do then they are looked down on, and led to feel that they might be picked in the next round of layoffs.  I have seen first hand women who ask to work revised schedules to accommodate their young children's schedules who are immediately put on the 'expendable' list.    This blatant discrimination is hidden because of the poor economy. Employers don't have to justify their decisions, and so they use perception over performance. There is a very old school philosophy that people who want a work/life balance are not committed to their company.  It isn't true. People that can take the time to keep their home life in order are usually much more able to be more productive at work.  If genuinely hard workers are shunned and ostracized because they want to attend their son's basketball game or don't want to take work calls on a Sunday morning, then we will end up with an empty nation of automatons.  We need to be respected as human beings, and when we are, all of us will bring more to the table.

So let us fight this battle.  I feel we didn't ask for it, but to ignore it would be devastating to our future.

Scrap Yarn Blanket - Knitting Project

My uncle was kind enough to give me lots of yarn recently when cleaning out his house. I love getting yarn, but the pile in the corner of the bed room is threatening to take over so I figured I needed to come up with a knitting project to use up LOTS of yarn.

I piled up all my yarn and sorted it into fiber type and weight.  I ended up with the biggest pile of worsted weight acrylic, so I thought a nice big blanket would be a good project.  I wanted a project that I could change colors easily whenever I ran out of scrap yarn and one that could grow to the size of the amount of yarn I had. I also didn't want something to complicated as this was something mostly to keep me occupied while watching TV in the evening.

My good friend recommended a pattern on Ravelry called the Ten Stitch Blanket by Frankie Brown
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ten-stitch-blanket
Here's a picture of her completed design

This pattern was perfect for my scrap yarn because it grows from the inside out, I can switch colors wherever I want, and it has nice visual interest without being overly complicated.
The only tricky parts are turning the corners.

So I picked out a big ball of ivory, bright blue, and smaller balls of navy blue, olive and brown.
Here's my project in progress.

I don't know if copyright laws would allow me to repost Frankie's pattern, so if you want to give it a try for your next scrap yarn knitting project, just follow the link above and the pattern download is right up there in the corner on the Ravelry site. It's a free pattern but it is copyrighted by Frankie Brown and is intended for private use. If you like to knit or crochet, definitely think about joining Ravelry. It's free and a fun way to share projects and find neat patterns.  If you do, come find me. I'm crazyhat.

Until then, happy knitting.