Cudzoo Farm's Soap Giveaway

If you haven't already you should check out Cudzoo Farm's blog. It chronicles the antics of the goats, rabbits, cats, and dog on a Tennessee micro-farm. The farmer, Sarah, posts new photos and captions each day.

Now she's started "Freebie Fridays". Each Friday she has a soap give-away. Her soap is amazing. Made from her goats' milk, it's lightly scented, smooth, and creamy. I've been using it for years. (If you don't win a Friday Freebie, the soaps are available for purchase)

Here are some of the soaps from my last order.

Yes, that is a flying pig (ginger and bran).

Sleeping Nubian rosemary-mint soap.

I'd show you the spotted doe calendula soap I won last Friday (which was signed and numbered) but it's already in the shower :-)

In the Meantime...

Since Poppyseed is still so young (and it's my full time job to take care of him) we're not doing much to write about (after all, this is not a mommy blog). We mostly nurse and change diapers and snuggle and sleep. 

In the meantime I'm doing some blog spring cleaning: sprucing up the look (new masthead), fixing broken links (and making them all open in a separate page), adding some tabs, cleaning up old posts and adding pictures (pretty and also Pin-able), etc. Let me know if you discover any big problems, if your subscription is no longer working, or anything else goes weird. I'll try to check in periodically with links and articles you might like, the occasional picture, or a recipe until things are back to normal.

Here are some shots of the place after nearly a year of neglect!

mushrooms and sunflowers

Ruth Stout is Awesome

Lettuce growing in deep mulch in my garden.

11 years ago I read Ruth Stout's "No-Work Garden Book" and it changed my life (which is only a small exaggeration since gardening was 75% of my life). After reading that book I never tilled again (with two exceptions). I've been wanting to review her book for a while but I think this video might give you the idea. Basically she puts down a huge quantity of mulch which improves the soil, keeps weeds at bay, and prevents evaporation so she never weeds and never waters. I will say that growing in NY as she does is very different from growing in subtropical South Texas. Our weed pressure is tremendous for one thing. However, with some modifications, her method pretty much works for me: I pile up the mulch and sit back to watch things grow.

It never even occurred to me that a video of Ruth Stout existed and I'm so glad Sharon Astyk found one and posted it on one of her fantastic blogs.



Watch the video and check out one of Ruth Stout's books too. While you're at it take a look at Sharon Astyk's blogs Casaubon's Book and The Chatelaine's Keys (which in her words are all about "food, agriculture, energy issues and climate change") or one of her books. I've read and can recommend "Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation".

Roasting Vegetables For The Week

Since we pretty much eat seasonally, winter vegetables make up most of the vegetable portion of our diet this time of year (although soon we'll have summer veg as well!). Winter vegetables aren't just those that grow in the winter like turnips, broccoli, or kale but also those that store for the winter like pumpkins, potatoes, and sweet potatoes.

Poblanos and sweet potatoes ready for the oven

Roasting is our favorite way to prepare these vegetables. They get crispy on the outside, smooshy in the middle and in some cases, very, very sweet (holy moly! have you enjoyed the sweetness that is a roasted brussels sprout!?). We eat the veg plain on the plate and in an assortment of recipes including lasagna and enchiladas. For some reason, even though I roast vegetables almost daily for use in recipes, it didn't occur to me to do this in bulk once a week until I read this New York Times article about Tamar Adler's new cookbook An Everlasting Meal.

Here was my "ah-ha" moment:

The Non-Disposable, No Waste Life and Baby... Post Birth Update

So... after 9 months of being sick and 2 months recovering from surgery I now have a 10 week old baby boy. Hooray!

baby feet!

I got to thinking about the planning we did before Poppyseed was born regarding the stuff we need, the stuff we want, and the stuff we don't need (or want). Now that kiddo is 10 weeks old, I have some revisions to make, thoughts to contribute, and things to add.

Diapers, etc. My baby is a super pee-er. I know we have 35-40 diapers and for the first month we went through more than that each day. We could have used more diapers in the stash although our diaper pail (a bucket salvaged from the dissection lab at the high school) just barely holds every one we have. But, it would have been nice to not have to wash every single day. As it turns out, Mom, Dad and Grandma have different preferences (and success) when it comes to style of diaper. Good thing we have flats, contours, prefolds, and fitteds with both pins and snappies because otherwise one or two of us would not have been able to diaper the baby.

Giant Plants

I don't know if it's just me but plants seem to grow much, much bigger than their supposed size.

Take these for example:

The bushes in the foreground are one of the savories... winter or summer savory, I can't remember which. The tag on these lovely little bushes said "grows 1 1/2 - 2 feet high". Those bushes now stand 5 feet tall and growing.

Antelope Horns

Yesterday I noticed that this guy popped up in our back 40:

I believe this is some variety of Antelope Horns (Asclepias asperula), a Texas wild flower which I've only ever seen at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. I'm pretty excited that it's here.

In a good (not an insanely dry year) our volunteer wild flowers include Gauras, Black-eyed Susans, Coreopsis, Herbertia, Wild Onions, Rainlily, Passion Flower, White Snake Root, Toadflax, Anemone, Goldenrod, Lantana, Primrose, Aster, Silver Leaf Nightshade, and Blue Eyed Grass. Whew! Now that I list them, that's a lot of biodiversity! That doesn't even include all the trees, shrubs, and grasses that grow here. This year, because it's so dry I've only seen about half of those.