Garden May 26

Today was planting day. It was sunny and  in the eighties, humid and hot. We got a few tomato varieties at the flea market on Sunday: Black Pear, Heat Wave and Costoluto Genovese. We also have Beefsteak. Jake got all the tomatoes planted along with the red and green peppers, onions, beets, green beans and cucumbers. Simplestead Baby helped tend to the garden, she threw dirt in the watering can while Daddy planted the peppers.

It doesn't look like much now, but soon this plot will be producing delicious food for our family.

Garden May 18

The garden is tilled and Jake spread the last of the rabbit compost that sat this winter. Our soil looks great! We are hoping all the efforts to build our soil will pay off this season. Our harsh winter spoiled any chance of volunteer tomato plants coming up so we purchased some plants at Elegant Farmer. We also bought our seeds this weekend and hope to plant this week. 

Planning and planting

Even though it was cold today, I still got outside with Simplestead Baby. We took a walk to the garden plot to see if it was tilled yet. It is not, but our bunny compost has decomposed into the soil which should give lots of nutrients to our plants. 

We hope to have a better yield than last year (if it ever warms up). We are also interested to see how many volunteer tomato plants come up this season. I want to try growing lettuce again, it failed past years but I am determined, we eat so much of it in summer and it would be nice to cross it off the grocery list. I want to keep the garden simple and plant  things we eat a lot of: tomatoes, beans, lettuce, peppers, zucchini and peas. Beets are a possibility as well. 

The Simplestead family will be spending lots of time at the plot this Summer. It is a peaceful place and we want Simplestead Baby to catch the gardening bug early. 

What are you planting this year?

Beachcomber

Meet Luna

Meet Luna, the newest addition to the Simplestead family. She is a 7 month old 95% German 5% French Angora and she is so so soft! I drove in a snowstorm to Madison in the dead of night to get her. The treacherous drive was worth it, Luna is so sweet and friendly. 

And her fur! Oh my, it is SOFT! I let her settle in a few days before shearing her but got right to it as soon as Luna was comfortable in her new home.

Luna is going to yield a lot of fiber each year, giving me plenty of prime angora to spin up.

Here is Luna's new haircut. She looks like a shorn sheep. Now onto spinning this amazing fiber. Stay tuned for angora yarn in the new Simplestead Etsy shop coming in April!

Hay There!

I think we finally solved our hay problem. The rabbits recited in our kitchen, they are full time house bunnies. Every day we provide them with the gracious amount of hay to round out their diet. The problem is most of it ends up on my floor, which would be fine if it was a barn, but this is my kitchen. Sweeping up this hay multiple times a day has been driving me nuts. 

We were recently at Tractor Supply and I came across a hay bag for horses in the tack section. Hmmm... I wondered if they  made these for rabbits. I found this cute Etsy shop RubyandEthel that makes colorful fabric hay bags for guinea pigs. Turns out they also work for Angoras, the amount of hay on my floor has decreased significantly.

I just ordered a third bag for our newest addition to the Simplestead, a German Angora from Urban Abode Angoras. We get her later this week. She will take our fiber production to the next level and will give us a new color to work with.

We hope our readers are doing well! We haven't blogged in awhile, the "farm" and Simplestead Baby have been keeping us busy, can you believe Simplestead Baby is one year old already?

Current Makings

Oh, how I love the Fall frenzy of making. The cold crisp air really gets me in the mood to make a bunch of cozy knitted items for the family and thanks to Ravelry, I have access to any pattern I could imagine.

I dabbled with felting to make Simplestead Baby a pair of warm snugly boots for winter.See Ravelry notes here. I am new to sock/shoe construction and to reading the patterns. After a few failed attempts and a few cuss words, I got the hang of it. The end result was not perfect but it didn't matter because the felting process concealed any mistakes in my knitting. The end result is perfect and will keep those little toes warm all Winter.

This infinity scarf knit from a handspun mohair wool blend yarn I scored from a local fiber farm is for ME. The sheen on this piece is amazing and the color is so complex. The fiber was a little itchy at first but after a little wear, the fibers relaxed a bit (or I tricked myself into dealing with the itch because I love this yarn sooo much). The scarf is long enough that I can wrap it around my neck three times for that super bulky cowl look.

I am also getting a little more confident in my knitting abilities. I just finished a project that required me to read a fairly complicated chart to create a beautiful cable pattern and I after an epic sweater fail (didn't do a test swatch to check my knitting gauge - rookie mistake), I am making a cozy pullover for the cold days ahead.