It's Easy Being Green

Do you ever get yourself from point A to point B using pedal power? If so, you may know this week marks Bike to Work Week, a part of the broader Bike Month sponsored by The League of American Bicyclists.

Whether biking to work or school, a run to the grocery store or just a fun ride on a local trail, biking not only saves time and money but also your health and the environment too. There are many benefits to leaving your gas guzzling car behind every once in awhile and exploring your community from a bicycle.

As part of Bike to Work week, I’m giving away two different books on bicycling to two different winners!

Bicycling A ReIntroduction is an awesome visual reference to help you choose, repair, maintain and operate a bicycle. The big visual reference book packs more than 125 pages of information on everything from why you should get on a bicycle, choosing the right bike and even how to fix a bicycle. This guide seems perfect for a person just looking at getting into bicycling and is a well-rounded guide that will lead you through all the do’s and don’ts with plenty of pictures too!

Complete Bike Maintenance: New and Expanded Edition is another fantastic, full-color reference guide focused on bicycle repair. Packed with giant photos, this book contains nearly 200 pages of detailed instructions on how to maintain and fix road, mountain and commuter bikes. From braking systems to gears and hubs, this reference guide seems better aimed at more advanced bicyclists who are interested in taking the time to fix and repair any issues with their bicycle themselves.

If you’d like to win one of these full color books on bicycling, post a comment below and tell me which book you’d like to win. Also let me know how often you bike and where you go!

Unfortunately in the Tri-State region there are no Bike to Work Week events listed or planned. The Evansville community doesn’t sport much in the way of bike lanes or even bike friendly streets which is a shame. I hope city leaders will one day decide to overhaul some of the city’s major thoroughfares and make them more accommodating to people on bikes. Out of 244 ranked communities, Evansville ranks 184th. Are you curious to know which communities are the most bike friendly? Check out the breakdown here.

The Evansville Trails Coalition is continuously fighting an uphill battle to construct and introduce more trails for outdoor recreation in the Evansville area. The group has already helped to spearhead a trail across the downtown riverfront which is super but more needs to be done. View local trails and efforts at the Evansville Trails Coalition website. In the meantime, check out the Bike to Work Commuter’s Booklet or Smart Cycling Brochure.

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We’ve done it again! We took a trip to the local Rural King yesterday and it was an adventure as always. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Rural King, it’s like the everything farm and ranch store but in classic old K-Mart style (at least the K-Mart from my childhood). The buildings and parking lots aren’t inviting or attractive. Trails of dropped popcorn (a fresh popped freebie you get as you walk in the door and a true treat while shopping) on the rough, uneven concrete floor shows you where your fellow shoppers have been.

Our mission was to pick up some Shoreklear to get rid of all the reeds choking our pond at the Half-Acre Homestead. Dodging corn kernels all the way, we found what we came for and a little bit more (of course). That’s the fun part about the Rural King: you never know what odds and ends you’re going to find that you can’t imagine living without. Pushing toward the back of the store we heard the seasonal cheeps of baby chickens coming from the stock tanks turned brooding pens.

We already have three ladies who inhabit our Backyard Bodega: Bertha, Bernice and Blue-Red. We picked up the three Auracanas last year with a friend and they’ve been happily laying their quintessential pastel-colored eggs ever since. Realizing chickens aren’t that difficult to care for, we couldn’t help ourselves when we saw the price of baby chicks was dropped down to just a buck each (minimum of 6 to buy). So we bought six more little pullets. Three are Rhode Island Reds and the other three are Silver Laced Wyandottes. We quickly divided a place for them in the Triple-B Bodega and these spring chicks seem to be interested in getting to know their bigger counterparts! With time ladies…with time.

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It’s been a wild spring around the Half-Acre Homestead. The weather has been nothing but weird with our lack of winter and early warm-up. Following the tornadoes we had to dodge in March, we’ve been struck by two hail storms recently. The hail pelted our plants that emerged from their winter slumber early but luckily didn’t leave too much damage behind.

Panic set in again at the Half-Acre Homestead this week as we got a late season Frost Warning issued for southwestern Indiana. Just a week before, our normally conservative agricultural extension agent had given the all-clear signal that people could go ahead and plant their precious seedlings and begin the gardening season.

Mother Nature had a different idea though when she ushered in some colder air from our good friends up north. We literally had just replanted a wave of rogue tomato seedlings and some rogue pumpkins that have sprouted up around the yard. To make it even worse, we planted them on the hillside out by our little pond which gets a considerable amount of frost compared to the protected confines of our square foot garden.

Luckily, with a 7 month old in the house, we have a stockpile of baby food jars in the garage. We never know when these might come in handy so we always keep a basket or two of them around. We were able to turn a basket full of baby food jars into an easy, DIY cloche that would protect our seedlings from two nights of frosty temps.

If an early season frost sneaks up on newly planted seedlings, turn a baby food jar into an easy DIY cloche to protect them.

After two nights of frost, we were able to lift the jars on Friday and found all the seedlings had survived. Safely tucked away in their jar, warmth and condensation helped them through the night. Well, most of them. Our Darling Daughter Everly thought the already dead raspberry cane out by the pond needed some extra help so she loaded it up with baby food jars.

While it wasn’t useful in protecting the long-departed raspberry cane, it made for a nice rustic art installation on the Half-Acre Homestead. We shall call it “Bottle Bush”. In the meantime, try to track down a friend, neighbor or relative who has a little one and get your hands on a basket of your own, easy, do-it-yourself garden cloches. Enjoy!

Everly's art installation out by the pond was created using a dead raspberry cane and several baby food jars. I think the effect is rather rustic, almost primitive.

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With some gentle prodding from Homestead Hottie, I finally ordered our seeds for the 2012 gardening season. Yes, it does seem a tad late to be ordering seeds but technically our average last frost date here in southwestern Indiana doesn’t hit until mid April. This year I’m pretty sure the last frost was back in early March!

Image courtesy Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Replacement seeds and of course some fun new ones were ordered through Baker Creek Heirlooms this year. We love all the wild new offerings that appear in the Burpee catalog and the others that stuff our mailbox each year. However, we really want to try and keep as many open-pollinated varieties as possible so we can save seed from year to year. We also want to avoid seed that is genetically modified or tainted with GMO genes. Luckily Baker Creek can fit both those requirements and host one of the largest collections of heirlooms from around the world.

Here is what we ordered for the spring and summer growing seasons (yes, there will be another order in the fall):

Tom Thumb Lettuce
Mignonette Bronze Lettuce
Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce
Merveille des Quatre Saisons Lettuce

Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce. Image courtesy Baker Creek Heirloom Seed

You can never be too sure what variety of lettuce you’re going to end up liking best so I always think its better to buy more than less in lettuce seed. The flavors and textures are so wide ranging so its better to try several different varieties at the same time. I’m really excited about the Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce. Dating back to the mid 1800’s, this French heirloom lettuce is a good grower in every season except freezing weather. I can’t wait to try the buttery leaves in our first homegrown salad of the year.

Di Firenze Fennel
Purple Podded Pole Bean
Red-Seeded Asparagus Bean
Garden Huckleberry

Purple Podded Pole Bean. Image courtesy Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

We have never grown fennel before so we’ll try our green thumbs with this licorice-scented bulb that is a favorite amongst Italian cooks. I can smell it already! The Purple Podded pole bean will replace a pole bean that didn’t do much around the Half-Acre Homestead last year while providing a pop of edible color that will not only look beautiful in the garden but provide some fun on our dinner plates too. While it’s not hard to get Everly to eat her green beans, purple pods should prove to be even more enticing.

Red-Seeded Asparagus Bean is an Asian “yard long” bean that is said to be both highly productive and beautiful. The very long pods grow to a freakish 24″ long but are said to be stringless and have small seeds. They’re said to be very resistant to heat, humidity and insects all while producing a bumper crop of tender and tasty pods. We can never have enough berries around the Half-Acre Homestead so we’re going to try our hand at Huckleberries.

Patisson Golden Marbre Scallop
Bennings Green Tint Scallop Squash
Bowling Red Okra
Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach
Polish Linguisa
Basil – Lime
Stowell’s Evergreen Sweet Corn

Bennings Green Tint Scalloped Squash. Image courtesy Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

We like pattypan or scallop type squash so we’ll finally add a green and yellow version to our garden this year. Bowling Red Okra will replace our current outage of red okra seeds. The burgundy colored stems, okra pods and tinted flowers are stunning in the vegetable garden or flower bed. We are continuously struggling with spinach from year to year. Perhaps its the variety of seeds we have but they never seem to grow right and are often sloooooowwww growing. Bloomsdale Long Standing is supposed to be heat resistant and a large leaf spinach. It sounds better so hopefully it will turn out that way. Polish Linguisa will round out our tomato collection as a sauce tomato. Lime basil just sounds flavorful enough to through on some chicken this summer and Stowell’s Evergreen Sweet Corn will be our protest against GMO corn this year.

Of course we have a whole box filled with seed still but I won’t bore you with all that. Undoubtedly you’ll get to see the results of that over the course of the summer. I was able to keep this seed order around $33, down from a first tally of $69. I slashed and burned my list because if I could spend $500 on a yearly seed order, I really would. Now its time to start saving my own seed and slash the seed bill even more.

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…we’d like to wish everyone a Very Hoppy Easter from all of us (four-legged, two-legged, furry and feathered) here at the Half-Acre Homestead!

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As you round out your seed orders for the 2012 vegetable garden, have you considered adding any heirloom vegetables or fruits to your shopping list? This year we are making the push to dive even deeper into heirlooms and I encourage every gardener and homesteader to do the same.

Heirlooms are open-pollinated varieties of plants that are often 60 or more years old. Most date back 100 years or more. Heirlooms are the truest plants, often showcasing eyestopping individuality and some of the finest flavors you can get in a fruit or vegetable. Aside from sticking it to large agri-business based seed companies who deal in hybrid or Genitically Modified seeds, heirloom seed can be saved and replanted year after year. You can read more about it here.

If you’d like to learn more about heirloom gardening, you should pick up a copy of a brand new book on the subject. The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables: The 100 Easiest-to-Grow, Tastiest Vegetables for Your Garden by Marie Iannotti.

If the 250 pages of scintillating photographs of heirlooms don’t have your taste buds watering and your green thumb twitching, I’m not sure what will. Iannotti gracefully shares her 100 favorite heirlooms, treasures that should be kept under lock and key. She also shares the wonderful stories that round out the unique history of each featured heirloom.

Don’t let the title fool you either. This book should also be a prize for any gardener with more advanced skills. I give it two green thumbs up!

Now you can win a copy of the book along with a spectacular heirloom garden prize pack including 35 packets of heirloom seeds and a bareroot tree! Click the link to head to Timber Press and enter The Heirloom Garden Giveaway

What’s your favorite heirloom fruit or vegetable to grow?

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Looking back to last Friday here at the Half-Acre Homestead, it’s nice to actually let last week go. If you didn’t catch the news, it was a hellish week for most Midwesterners as we were ravaged by scores of deadly tornadoes during two ferocious storms.

This was the first rotating funnel cloud I saw as it moved over Huntingburg and Jasper. This funnel would go on to touch down in Henryville, Indiana causing devastation and death. March 2, 2012

We were jolted out of bed at 5:30am last Wednesday when the tornado sirens went off. A tornado was reported on the ground in nearby Harrisburg, Illinois 60-miles to our southwest and tracking our direction. The last time significant damage reports preceded a weather alert for us was a major wake-up call.

Last year, the Half-Acre Homestead was hit with a wall of straight line winds in excess of 80 miles per hour. It toppled a large cinder block barn up the road from us and ripped the roof from two other pretty substantial buildings in our area. That came after the storm blew out windows in a community 30 miles to our west. So, needless to say, we don’t ever not take the warnings seriously.

Within about a minute, Homestead Hottie and I had both girls rounded up with pillows and blankets in hand. A supporting cast of characters like Everly’s teddy bears and Thomas the Tank engines also made their way downstairs and into the “storm shelter” of our lower level bath tub. Talina jokes that she can tell how much each of the girls is growing by how much less comfortable it gets to have all three of them sheltered in the tub for an extended period of time. Wednesday’s tornado was on a direct track for the homestead but veered south and tracked along the Ohio River, hitting the town of Newburgh.

We got a break on Thursday only to have to deal with more of Mother Nature’s insanity on Friday. There was no TGIF throughout the Midwest and South as forecasters warned of a deadly outbreak of tornadoes. Waking up Friday morning, I could already tell the atmosphere was at its boiling point. I just had a feeling deep in my gut that something bad was going to happen, especially when I can see ominous thunderheads building at dawn’s first light.

I headed to work, a 40 minute commute from the homestead, and watched the radar with each new update. As soon as tornadoes touched down in Missouri, I knew it was time to go. With super-cell storms racing across the plains at 60 miles per hour, severe weather can be on your doorstep before you even know it. By the time I hit the road home, a funnel cloud was confirmed over the top of the homestead. Our airport just down the highway had evacuated the control tower and was sheltering passengers and staff in the baggage claim. A couple of frantic calls to the house while I was on the road proved my girls were either in the bath tub holding a mattress securely over their head or that my house was gone.

This was the last rotating wall cloud to pass through our area on March 2, 2012. It dropped golf-ball sized hail just north of the Half-Acre Homestead

I drove under two rotating funnel clouds on the way home and pulled into the Half-Acre Homestead driveway just in time to be pelted with pea-sized hail. I joined my little family hanging out in the downstairs bathroom and munched pretzels until the all-clear call was given. We were spared once again while communities further to our east took direct and devastating hits. Looking at the scenes of destruction so close to home is just horrifying.

Homestead Hottie and I are both weather nuts. We watch the radar constantly and enjoy blustery, stormy nights. We feed our severe weather kicks deep in the summer by watching one of our favorite shows: Storm Chasers. We hope, one day, to maybe go on a tornado chasing expedition. By all indications this is going to be one long, rough and particularly deadly tornado season. Hopefully this week we can get some peace and quiet from the weather department so jangled nerves can be mended and communities can try to pick up the pieces wherever they may have been blown to.

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