ORDERING SEEDS!

It's seed ordering time! What an ordeal! First the seed catalogs arrive and there's the fun of looking through them all and seeing all the pictures of all the wonderful, colorful, interesting, weird and new things. I hate the catalogs with no pictures! But they are of use when Greg starts comparing prices. Then you start marking everything that looks interesting, of course some particular seeds (Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce) are found in most catalogs, then there's those that are harder to find and only have one or two sources. Plus you have to go through your old seed and see if you think any of it's still good for this year, and do you have enough. That's where it starts to get "hairy"! O. K. now you've got to figure out who has the cheapest seeds, what's shipping going to cost. Is it really cheaper to get them from one source if you only need a couple of items plus the shipping, or from a more expensive source, but you are ordering more things from them because you can get bigger quantities of seed cheaper, but the new things you want to try you don't really want but a small amount of seed to see if you like it or how's it's going to do for you.....!!!! Who has organic seed, if that's what you want, who's seed is more reliable, etc.

As you can tell this is not my cup of tea! I have no problem looking through the catalogs and marking them all up and turning down the pages, but from there I turn it over to Greg! His engineering mind can handle all that detail stuff much better than mine! As we speak he's right dab smack in the middle of the mess! He's only got about thirty catalogs to wade through and make his choices from!

Some of the things we've decided upon so far are Purple Plum radishes, Nash green beans, Orient Express cucumbers, Simpson Elite lettuce, Queensland Blue winter squash, Kikuza squash, Jarrahdale pumpkin, Thelma Saunders squash, Galeux d' Eysines pumpkins, Buttercup Burgess, Guatemalan Blue, New Zealand Spinach, Australian Butter squash, Rouge Vif D'Etempes squash, Musquee de Provence, Triamble squash, Sunflower Collection, Cincinnati Market radish, Red Malibar Spinach, Galaxy of Stars gourd, Casius squash, Taybelle squash, Delica squash, Golden Impire Wax bean, Fordhood Lima bean, Batavian Escarole, Olympia pean, Cascadia Pea, Knucklehead pumpkin, Snow Sweet pea, Indigo Radicchio, Virtus Radicchio, Rhodes Endive, Concept lettuce, Magenta lettuce,Gremlin gourd, Imperial Start Artichoke, Super Red cabbage, Confection Kabocha, Cheddar Cauliflower, Aladdin pumpkin, Munchkin pumpkin and Lil Ironsides pumpkin.
As you can see there's not much lettuce or greens of any kind yet ordered, or beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, peppers, radishes, turnips, beets, onions, leeks,cucumbers, summer squash, herbs, potatoes, sweet potatoes, melons, etc..... Oh the fun of ordering seeds!!

BRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!! BRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!! It's cold out there and we have around 4"-5" of snow on the ground! Well it's the middle of winter and so I haven't had much to post about as far as farming goes. We've been getting seed catalogs in the mail, so we need to get on that and get those ordered. Greg has been making plans and accumulating parts to put together 3 caterpillar tunnels for this Spring. We are still selling at Columbia's winter market. We've been taking winter squash, sweet potatoes, dried apples, jams & jellies, eggs, and baked goods. We sold the last of our regular potatoes last week.

Greg & Lucas got the big hoop house cleaned out of the old tomato plants, stakes, plastic mulch and drip tape while Lucas was home for Christmas break. They put up the snow load braces so we don't have to worry too much about them caving under the weight of the snow. We got the little green house refurbished and the plants moved over from the big green house, and the big green house shut down, which is nice as the little one doesn't use as much propane. The propane barrel ran dry before we got the little one finished, so all the heaters in the big one shut off. Luckily we caught it and had it refilled (emergency weekend call), before it had been out too long and we lost plants!

My amaryllis that my grandmother passed on to me years ago that had come from her mother, is now blooming! It has 20 bloom stalks, 9 of which have 4 bloom, 6 with 3 blooms, and 3 with 2 bloom, 2 still to bloom, making a total o 60 blooms so far!!! That is what the picture is of! It usually blooms around Christmas and again in July!