Painting the mud room

Painting the Mud Room

Sherwin-Williams has always understood me.  They know that if they send me a coupon for 40% discount, I will be in their store in nanoseconds.  They also know that, when we had the house built, I left two rooms unpainted (just basic ceiling white) because there had already been too many colors, texture, shape, size, pattern, etc., decisions to make and my decorator's brain was exhausted.  Those two rooms would have to be painted another time, by me.  

The coupon comes, Bruce goes out of town, and I get to work.  What a horror of a room to navigate in with ladders, paint buckets, and drippy brushes!  But I can do this!  YES!

The mud sink (aka Mutt Sink)

Wood you do the same as I wood?

Short Post.  Bought a Lumber Mill this past winter in order to make use of some of the many logs that we have at Bufflehead Pond Farm.  Most are trees that have fallen in a storm or were dead but standing so I cut them down.  After buying the used Mill, my neighbor and I bought about 20 large Washington Redwood trees that had been cut down to make way for a new fire station on Bainbridge Island. 

So I started with this:

And then we did this

And then we got this:

So I could make this

More projects coming

Survival of the Species

Puttering in the garden is the only activity that sets my brain free from the daily concerns of running a farm business, wondering what’s for dinner, will I have time to bathe my dirty dog tonight, what are those (bleeping) politicians going to screw up next, and so on.  It’s impossible to have stress in the garden, and that’s one of the reasons I spend so much time out there.  Time to recover from daily brain damage, time to listen to the birds, time to touch the dirt/compost/vermiculite/peat mixture that our veggies love to sink their feet into, to feel the cool greenness of our growing “children” who want nothing more than to end up on our dinner plates.

Shuckin' and Chivin'

My garden in autumn always looks like a hurricane went through it.  (My apologies and sympathies to so many out there who actually did go through some horrid storms this year!)  The tomatoes are at an end, still struggling to ripen before the rains descend, their leaves yellowed and tattered and pathetic.  Peas have come and gone a couple of times now and the stragglers hang on the fencing with their tongues hanging out, making seeds for next year.  Same with all the beans.  The cucumbers Bruce uses to make The Best Pickles In The Known Universe have succumbed to the cool and the chickens today are happily munching on all the immature ones left on the dead vines.

New chives under protection of fading cornstalks

Spud Berries and Other Distractions

Long ago and far away in a remote village in central France, a mere stone's throw from Chambord, we hopped into Dad's Van Ordinaire and headed to the local dump.  This place wasn't shown on any tourist map but it should have been well marked... even highlighted.  Aside from being the town's social gathering place on Saturday mornings, it was a literal treasure house of wonderful things, barely used, lovingly given up for adoption.  First come, first served.

A stainless steel goldmine!

Fin de Bagnols

Bagnols is a sweet little town in the heart of the Beaujolais grape growing and wine producting region of France, and I can't imagine a finer place to enjoy those delicious, sweet and tender green beans the French are famous for. But preferring to avoid airplanes, we now grow our own Fin de Bagnols from heirloom seed.

We don't know exactly why these beans were named Fin de Bagnols. It's a delicious little enigma since, in French, the word "fin" has about 50 different meanings.  It could mean "the end of the town of Bagnols," although the town still exists.  Or perhaps "at the edge of the town of Bagnols." Or "fin" could be taken to mean "thin, slender, or very fine."  Pas de quoi.  They're French beans and that's all we are ever likely to know.

Fin de Bagnols - delicious French beans

If in Doubt, Rout it Out!

No, this is not a picture of Bali, the most beautiful and serene spot on earth, where I'll be off to in a couple of weeks.  December isn't especially kind to Bufflehead Pond Farm and its denizens, and this denizen in particular is getting out of Dodge for a couple weeks.  But not until the rest of my garden is prepared for spring, with all the new raised beds built and filled with rich delicious compost and dirt for our new green babies...

The Big Chill