Category Archives: Ginny Projects

Let the Sunshine In

Ginny Projects

Once our 600 new logs were inoculated and stacked, it was time to begin the rest of our 2021 list of things to do. Ron had been adding to that for at least 6 months. I really do think it is time to cut him off from YouTube. He gets too many ideas from those videos. He watches it all. Narrowboat living, flower and veggie growing, homesteading, sailboat living and whatever else catches his attention. Interestingly the pandemic and its effects on the world were clearly visible on all these shows. People dealt with being unable to travel, lack of supplies, lost customers, lost jobs and so many of them; did what people have always done. Figured out a work around. They made do until they could actually do again. Ron is determined to do what is necessary for Tiny House Farm to be at least a moderate success and he is will to have us try just anything to get there.

This year we are growing some specialty produce. Tomatoes and one squash variety to start with. And flowers of all things. I have three rows of my calendula of course, but we are trying some other, more showy flowers. Sunflowers, which I have always loved, to start with. We took the advice of a few other flower growers (from YouTube of course) and ordered our seeds from GeoSeeds. They have a wide selection of seeds, but a bare bones catalog and no website. Which made placing my order a bit tricky. They only have a scientific name listing so you need to know what you are looking for. And then you need to fill out their order form. My handwriting sucks to be honest so I always try to type when I can. This form was not one of those fillable ones. So I had to download a trial PDF program. And blasted thing was not that easy to use at all. Took me 2 hours to get it all done and emailed it to GeoSeeds. Seven different varieties of sunflowers and assorted other cut flower selections. I am looking forward to this project. I really do like flowers. Have never tried growing them though.

Following all the given advice I started my first batch of the sunflowers inside. Apparently if you plant the seeds straight into the ground, the squirrels and other critters come for dinner. While I do like squirrels, I don’t want them eating my seeds. We had tarped our planned flower rows and that did a great job on getting rid of most of the weeds. There are still remnants of the straw we mistakenly used as mulch on both my calendula and our garlic rows. I fear we will be dealing with that for years to come. It is strange how often we are reminded that one decision made can have such a strong and lasting impact years later. Even in gardening.

My seeds grew well and it soon was time to get them in the ground. Over the years we had learned that planting was best done in the evening if possible. That was so your new seedlings do not have to take on a full day of sun and heat right from the start. So I had to get this planting done after work and of course it was a blistering hot night when Ron and I headed out to Tiny House Farm. Ron came with as he did not want me out there by myself. And he always has projects of his own to putter with. On May 24th, I took my first set of seedlings out with me and got to work. Divided the first row into 8 blocks, one for each of new varieties and the last for the mammoth variety. I really want to try getting those huge sunflowers to grow. The ones that people buy and hang on their doors as a fabulous decoration or set out for the squirrels to enjoy. I had a packet of those seeds from a few years ago, but do you think I could find it when it came to planting time? Of course not. So they would have to wait for my second batch of seedlings.

It was so hot out there. The day’s heat had baked into the ground. I had to get Ron’s umbrella out of the shed in desperate attempt to provide some shade for myself. Foolishly I did not bother to get out the kneeler too. And my knees paid the price later that night. 2.5 hours I worked digging out holes in the bone dry and rock infested soil to planting my seedlings. Watering them was another project. We still have not come up with a plan for getting water from our stream up to our field. In the past we have used our water tank to fill up pitchers and walk up and down the rows watering as we go. That takes some serious time. The first night, Ron filled two of our white 5 gallon buckets with water and hand carried them to my rows. Informing me when he got there that he wasn’t going to do that again. I got the last of the plants into the ground, watered each of them and covered them all with insect cloth. That was in the hope that nothing would saunter by and nibble on my new babies. Do woodchucks eat sunflowers?

We repeated this process the next night but Ron came up with a better idea for the watering process. He went back to the 4 wheeler and bringing our water tank up to the field to fill the water buckets. Work smarter, not harder. But this is still seriously hard work and he is now on a mission to solve our watering situation. I again left the insect cover over the entire row to give the seedlings just that little bit of protection.

While the cloth did help keep my seedlings safe from critters, it was no match for the rain we got. Even though we could see they were growing, our new plants were being held down by the weight of soaking wet cloth. So I made the decision to take it off. That was on June 1st.

There days later and something had themselves a very good meal of my sunflowers. Crushing sadness. And anger. And determination that this was not going to happen again. Problem is that we have too many suspects out on THF. Rabbits, deer, birds, chipmunks, and woodchucks all live out there. While we could never stop all of them, we could make a good start by fencing in the sunflowers. We used the fencing that was previously used on our garlic beds and a few of our T posts. The problem was that our length of fence was shorter than my sunflower bed. So we started at the back end of row where I had the mammoth variety planted. Those had not been touched so either the snacker did not care for them or they were full by the time they made their way that far up the row. I ended up with a row about 3 feet shorter than I started with.

But at least they should be safe from marauders. With our plan being to sell sunflowers to our restaurant customers, we needed to plant more rows of flowers. More work was needed and a larger fence too. I started more seeds at home and then got busy with the massive job of weeding.

Once I had yanked most of the weeds out, I got Jo working to break up the soil for me. And we needed to move the rocks around. They tend to get in the way when planting anything. Ron has plans for us to get out our dirt sifter come fall and tackle those rows; getting most of the larger rocks out of our way. But that is a project and story for another time.

The weekend of June 19th the three of us set out to get the fence up. We had 4 pieces of fencing to use and scrounged up more T posts. Whatever we ended up with, that was going to be our flower garden. Overall, things went smoothly once Ron and I stopped arguing about our plan. As we worked, it dawned on us that we needed a way to get into the bed. Unhooking the fence from post and re-hooking it was going to get old very fast. But luckily we have lots of cinder blocks laying about the farm.

Three stacked outside the fence, and three more inside and we had our way in and out. I have already lost count of the number of times I have used them so far this year. Every time I am at the farm, I have weeding to do. So much weeding. Both in this flower bed and in my calendula rows. I count my blessings though as these particular weeds are pretty easy to ID and yank.

This is what I have been waiting for. Signs of life from the actual flowers. There are a massive amount of leaves on every stem but we chose to grow single stem varieties. So one flower on each stem. Which is why I have been starting more seeds after I plant the seedlings. Succession planting is the way to go. There is so much to learn about growing sunflowers. Not only the variety, but the spacing between plants. Closer together gets you smaller flowers. Which, going against common sense, is better. Smaller more compact blossoms work better in arrangements. Do you use weed cloth or not? YES, use weed cloth. And yes to fencing if you can. But then you have harvesting questions. The goal is to have the flowers fully open just when customer needs them. So you cut them ahead of time and let them sit in water. But timing is a bit tricky and another learned process. We will know better next year. Because, yes we are growing sunflowers again next year. I am already working on our 2022 order. Even though we have not yet sold a single flower. Which is the biggest issue we have. How do you decide what to charge for your product? The large grocery store prices are a starting point, but really, they can afford to sell for less than $1 a flower only because they buy in such massive quantities. And bring them in from Colombia and Ecuador. And they are not selling the more specialized varieties we are. So we have to decide how much to charge. Enough to make a profit for THF while keeping the price low enough for customer’s to agree to pay it. A delicate balancing game. One that all small business owners have to play. One that is not fun at all.

I started and planted more and more sunflower seedlings over the weeks. And it turns out that planting in well watered soil is much easier. So next year, I will make sure my planting beds are thoroughly watered before I get started. I used our garlic dibbler to make the holes and it worked a treat. And it turns out doing extreme weeding is also very good at preparing your planting bed too. As I toiled in the hot sun and yanked out the weeds, that was loosening up the soil. Which then made it easier for me to plant our sunflowers. I won’t have to deal with weeds as much next year as we are going to use weed cloth with burned in holes. That will be a huge project but will mean less work for me in the long run. Another upcoming project and story.

This was my goal for the year. Bright and happy sunflowers growing in our field. It is still early in our season and I will have better photos later. Next year I will have a different planting schedule and layout. Before this fall we will make the final decision on which type of flowers and how many of each we will grow and I will get them started sooner in 2022. Everything is a learning process and this will be no exception. THF keeps us busy, gets us out of the house, meeting new people, learning all the time and gives us lots of exercise. All in all, not a bad thing.

Calendula Woes

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You would think that as calendula infused oils are the base of my soap, lotion bars, lip balm and cream that I would be very invested in the rows of flowers Tiny House Farm is growing. This year, not so much.

Behind all those weeds is my calendula. My poor, neglected calendula. We had covered the rows with a tarp to kill off the weeds and that part worked out great. When it came time to sow the calendula seeds, I had to wait for the right forecast. The rain we had in this area was hit and miss over the summer. I waited for a clear day with two days of upcoming rain. Sadly, the Weather Channel let me down. We pulled the tarp off and I scattered the seeds and then no rain. For a week. I took a quick look at my rows during every farm trip, but the plants were slow to grow and soon the weeds took over. And the real neglect started.

I could tell myself that I was busy working on the farm books and the masks and daily life, but I simply did not get out to the farm. Except when I went along with Ron to work with the shiitake logs. Which turned out to be a bad thing for me. While moving logs from the soaking tank into the wagon, I tripped on a root, fell forward and hit the wagon rail with the log I was holding. Lost my grip and the damn thing landed , cut side down, full force on the right foot. Good lord, the pain. But I managed to hold it together and we got all the logs moved and the two of us out to the road. I spent the next week or so walking gingerly around the house and trying to get my foot into a comfortable position for sleeping. It was painful putting on shoes and my work boots were the worst. But no long term damage, so I was lucky.

Here are our lovely yellow calendula flowers. Trapped and hidden by the straw and other assorted weeds. If I was going to salvage any of it, I needed to get started. Weeding, really does not make me happy.

But now there was no choice. I simply had to work on this. If I am going to have any calendula blossoms to dry and seeds to save for next year, the weeds had to go. So when Ron headed out to THF on a bright September Sunday for mushroom log soaking and I went out to weed. It got hot quickly so I swiped Ron’s work umbrella and kept working. My goal was to get one row done. Remember these rows are 60 feet long and 4 feet wide. No easy task. By 330 I was just about done with one row and was exhausted. Tomorrow was another day.

Labor Day actually, and I had the day off. So while I yanked more weeds, Ron harvested and cleaned shiitakes. It was a good day for working outside. It was windy and while I lost count of the number of times I had to chase down my hat, it was easier to work

One row and part of a second have been de-weeded. So many weeds. There was straw, dandelions, thistles and several different types of vine weeds. It wrapped itself around everything. Sometimes that came in handy by letting me grab hold of the vine and pulled out a big chunk of weeds. Also discovered we had Chinese lanterns growing in the mix too. They brought back memories of my grandmother’s house in Herkimer, NY. She had Chinese lanterns in her yard for years. Not sure if I will let them stay though. They can easily overwhelm an area. And I want and need my calendula to be the focus of this side of our field. There will be no harvesting for me if I cannot even get to the plants.

I asked Ron to brush hog the ends of each row and the far right row for me. There was no calendula growing there and I wanted to see what I just how much more I needed to get done. There was no weeding done during the week. This is the type of job that needs to start early in the morning if you have any hope of making headway. I conned our Jo into coming out with me the next Saturday and her help made a huge difference. Lessons learned – I really should have gotten the straw pulled out while it was still green. Once it was fully dried, the seeds flew everywhere when yanked. I foresee more straw in my future.

My poor calendula patch. Most of the weeds are gone but it looks very sad and forlorn. The last thing I did was sweep between the rows. Getting the last of the weeds and, hopefully most of the weed seeds further away from the planted rows. Then I took flags and marked the bare patches where I needed to make sure seeds are scattered next spring.

I then started with the deadheading process. For those not in the know, this is the term for snipping off the actual blossom. Doing this results in more flowers growing and allows me to dry those picked for later use in my products. I also harvested seeds that I will cast around the next spring. Left most of them to fall where they may. Ron wants me to lay down weed cloth and grow the plants in nice neat rows. That is not for me. I much prefer the happenstance of nature. If only I could get that result without the weeds.

Collecting the seeds is easy enough. Once they have fully dried on plant, they fall off into your hand when you tug on them. I store them in paper bags for next year. Drying the calendula flowers is a bit more complicated. You can gently pull the petals off each flower before laying them onto your drying rack. Or dry the whole flower, trying to set them upside down in the process. Either way, your fingers are going to get sticky in the process. I did a combination of both and have decided that removing the petals before drying is the better way. More work up front, but the petals dry more evenly. And once they are dry, the only thing you have to do is collect them all for storage in a large glass jar.

As usual, I made it more difficult for myself. My set of drying racks was in shed at THF and I had just left them alone to dry. As the weather got colder, I needed to bring the dried calendula back to our house. Was not sure if colder temps would effect it at all, but I was not going to take the chance. I didn’t think the logistics through and failed to bring a container for it, so I had to collapse the whole rack and bring it home as is. The dried petals had to be pulled off and transferred to a smaller tray covered with mesh. Needed to be sure everything was fully dry. In the process, I managed to dump a good chunk of the petals on the floor. I didn’t take a photo of that as it was just too depressing. Carefully picked it all up, petal by petal and let them sit for another week before I put all of it in a jar for long term storage. Or start infusing olive oil with it. If I do things right next year, I will have even more calendula to work with. The long term goal is to have enough to dry and then sell to others. That is going to be a lot of calendula. What I harvested this year doesn’t even fill a quart sized canning jar and is just over 1/2 an ounce by weight. I may have to plan holding a calendula harvesting event next year.

That which we left behind

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The year is almost over and we are now looking back to see how we did in 2019. What did we do right and what missed the mark. There is a lot to talk over. We made quite a few changes and additions to Tiny House Farm, but there were more than a few things that got left behind.

My calendula was ignored this year and we paid the price. It started with the huge mistake we made by sowing our seeds and then covering them with straw for protection.

This was what we had in fall 2018, more straw than calendula. It was a sad and sorry site. But I really did not have time to fret about it, or even worse, time to weed the rows. The shiitakes had to come first. And of course, Ron and I spent a good deal of time working on our micro greens. They are a very “hands on” crop to grow.

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This is June 2019 and you can barely make out our garlic growing next to my bed of weeds. The bright yellow blossoms of the calendula cannot be seen at all.

In August I forced myself to find time to harvest what I could of the flowers. I had actually started gathering the seeds and ended up with a good supply of those. The flowers beckoned me and this is what I collected. I thought I would have time to get more over the next few days, but I did not advise Ron of my future plans.

He, knowing we needed to knock the weeds down before winter hit, mowed everything down. Now that he is retired, he has more time to spend on the farm. We are definitely going to work on our communication. I cannot have him slaughtering my flowers again next year.

Our elderberries were also ignored for the most part this year.

I hope the birds and deer on Tiny House Farm enjoyed the bounty this year. Next year, shiitakes be damned, I will get my share first. I managed to harvest about 10 pounds. A sad amount compared to last year when I was struggling to find space in my freezer to stash bags and bags of berries. I think I will have to set a reminder in my calendar so I don’t let the time get away from me. Though we do not yet have a plan to make and sell yummy elderberry jelly; letting the birds get all the berries is not a good thing. I can foresee a netting system in the near future. It will be a good trial run for our future rows of juneberries.

I was particularly annoyed at the deer as I noticed more and more of the brackens missing. I was thinking that Ron’s cousins needed to get busy getting rid of them. Then it dawned on me. Those apparently chewed off branches; I had been harvesting our elderberries.

Our lavender also was forgotten for most of the season. The three of us had worked hard getting it pruned in early spring and filling in new plants were the older ones had died. Then one Saturday we noticed some missing plants. And I found

a dozen plants pulled out of the ground. I set them into a plastic lid and poured in water. Getting them back in the ground would have to wait a bit. The shiitakes again were most important. But we did want to know just what had pulled them out. We set up a game camera on the edge of the field. The lousy weather prevented us from getting a good shot, but we got the proof needed. We have a foggy video of the actual crime. The blasted crows just walked around and yanked the lavender plants out. I don’t know why, but maybe they were hoping for fresh bugs from our digging? We replanted and this time put one of our marking flags with each plant. Hoping that it would keep the crows away. It seemed to have done the trick as no more plants were yanked out.

In mid-August I went out and harvested some of the lavender. I know, I know. I should be doing this earlier in the year. By the time I got out there most of the flowers had opened and you are supposed to get them before that happens. We hate to cut them too soon though. The bees really love the flowers and we enjoy watching them move through our field. Ron especially likes seeing the bumblebees. This even after he discovered that these bees do actually sting.

I laid it all on a drying rack and waited for Mother Nature to do it her thing. We bought this rack system a few years ago just for this purpose. It was very easy to set up and didn’t take up too much room. It is longer than I thought it would be so we will have to hang it up on a higher beam next year. We just slapped it up this time and the bottom rack was just inches off the floor. It did the trick though. I ended up with a quart jar full of dried lavender. And a small bowl of dried calendula. I took this with me to the MV Garlic Fest so folks could see, touch and smell it. Most people enjoy having the chance to actually see or hold the special ingredients in your products.

Obviously things have to change if we are going to see any benefit from our “other than shiitakes” products. This might include my gathering a few friends for a weeding (great fun) party and then later for harvesting events. If I promise there will be no rock picking, I am sure I can count on at least one friend. And she knows who she is.

Ginny’s been busy

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Learning all sorts of new things.  It is not as easy as saying; Hey I am going to make and sell natural skin care products. The number of decisions that have to be made are mindboggling. The how-to info is out there and that is the easy part. Well, easy enough once you decide what type of products you want to make. No matter what you want to make, there is a basic recipe for each item. Oils, butters, and wax are the baseline ingredients and the process is great, fun science; but there is a lot more involved. First you have to decide what kind oil you want to use. Each oil adds something different to your product. Then you have to decide if you want to try Infusing your oil choice with any number of herbs. That takes time. A month at least, though you can do this in just a few hours using a crockpot or double boiler. I prefer using the slow method and have my jars lined up alongside our wood stove.

And I had to get myself more organized too. Every jar needs a label and date. The only oil you can easily identify is coconut. And this only after it cools down and started to solidify again. I have calendula infused olive, coconut and sunflower oil. Lavender olive oil which I did use in making a batch of lavender soap. One jar of comfrey infused olive oil to try using in salves. And calendula infused coconut oil. Lots of things to play with. Ron added to the mix by having a friend at work who raises goats. Which is why we are making goat’s milk calendula soap.
And then there is the stuff you have to buy. You can find some of it in the grocery store and maybe can find something to use as a mold in your house, but there is so much out there now that you can be overwhelmed by the choices. I decided to go with simple loaf molds as I wanted to make bar soap. But even with that, I still have to decide what type/style of mold and what size. You also need molds or tins for lip balms, lotion bars and salves. You have to find sources for your supplies. Beeswax and lye are not easily found on store shelves. Ron found a guy on Ebay selling 8 pounds of beeswax for a good price and ordered it for me. It came in big chunks which were not going to be easy to work with.  So I melted it down, filtering through cheesecloth and poured it into smaller molds. Time consuming but it made it much easier for later projects.

So, you have made the soap and then have more decisions. How are you going to cut it into neat bars and where will you store it during the curing time? Which is at least 4 weeks. The longer your soap cures, the better. And you have to plan accordingly. This is not something you can decide on December 1st that you want to make soap as Christmas presents.
Ron made an executive decision and decided that I needed a fancy shmancy soap cutter, and I have to admit that it really does a great job. But I don’t feel the same happiness using it as I did with the cutter my friend Josi made me. With my longer loaf molds, I end up with 10 even slices. A good number to work with. As to the curing process, that issue was solved when Ron came home with two metal shelf sets. I combined all the shelves to make one unit, so now I have shelves to hold my soaps, lotion bars and assorted supplies. Time for a happy dance.

Another issue any soap maker has is keeping tracking of when the soap was sliced so you will know when it can be used. All of my soaps are the same so I cannot ID each batch by just looks. I stumbled across a suggestion of putting small stickers on one bar from each batch and have a list with sticker color and date. A simple solution to my problem is keeping a spread sheet with weekly weights of each bar.
Now you have your cured soap or lotion bars and you need to make yet another decision. How to package and label it. Again, the choices are endless. Ron pulled on his graphic designer hat and came up with a great design. We are going to have the same basic label for all of our products;  just changing it as needed. He also found a terrific company to make the stick-on labels for us. We highly recommend you check out Stickermule for any label needs. With our soap, we not only have a wrap-around label but we actually wrap the bar itself. It looks a bit more put together and will protect the soap from any bashing about.
All of this has been a real adventure for me as there is so much to learn. And it has been re-enforced that you really do need to read your recipe or directions. And pay attention. Last week I tackled lip balm. Ron wanted to get the labels ordered, but I told him to wait until I had done a couple of runs at it. So, I divided my recipe in half and got everything melted together. Then I discovered that the tubes I was planning to use for this batch did not fit properly with the tube tray I bought. They were longer and thinner. I did not want to use the tubes that came with the tray. They hold the same amount by weight, but they look under filled. Not a good selling point. Once the balm had hardened, I pulled one out to try. Major disaster. The thing was rock hard and I could not figure out why.  More oil was the obvious solution, but how did I get the recipe so wrong?  Driving to work the next day it hit me. I had misread the beeswax conversion from tablespoons to ounces and had doubled the amount needed. Glad I figured it out, but annoying nonetheless.
The second batch was much better, but I still need to figure out the best way to use the tray I have.

I already have a good recipe for lotion bars and those are something you can quickly whip together.  Bonus being they are ready to go within a few hours. The issue I have with those are getting the weight right.  Each bar needs to weigh at least 1.5 ounces.  I am using 12 individual molds and it is annoyingly difficult to put each one on my scale and then pour the hot mixture in to in.  Moving the just filled molds without spilling is tricky.  After I have made a few more dozen, I should have a solid routine down pat.

The most luxurious product I make is a calendula body cream.  It is also my problem child.  Because it is made with water it does not have the shelf life of items made with oils.  I have to add a preservative and then make it shortly before I am going sell it.  But people who have tried it, really like it.

We are really looking forward to seeing how well these products sell at the events we attend this year. Ron is still focused on the shiitakes, but having something non perishable to sell too could be a major game changer.  It is going to be a fun year.

Here I am using something I had around the house with my soap making.  Goat’s milk soap will darken if you keep it warm longer so I put the molds in a box and cover with a towel.  Murphy loves helping me out by adding her warmth to the process.   Who says cats can’t be helpful?