In short, time to clear the decks to start things for a fall garden.

Even here, in Zone 3 to 4 (on the USDA map, it shows us as 5b; I hedge my bets and call it a 3 to a 4 given the topography), I’ve got a good 10-12 weeks before I give up the ghost on gardening. And with some judicious use of row covers and hardy crops, I can extend things past October as well. There is nothing like eating veggies from your garden on Thanksgiving Day.

Small digression: I just found this neato Interactive zip code-based USDA zone map here: zip code USDA map

Back to the matter at hand: Fall garden. The trick with a fall garden is to remember what you were growing in the early spring and repeat. Hot weather items like tomatoes and peppers are not something you can start in July and get anything out of by October – between the temperatures falling and the amount of sunlight falling, you are basically out of luck. But in terms of things like greens or cabbage family veggies, you are very much good to go:
Lettuces of all sorts
Mache
Kale
Mustard
Chinese cabbages/bok choy/ etc.
Peas
Chard
Just make sure that the bed is well watered when you sow the seeds and that you keep it well watered until the seeds sprout. And choose items with low ‘days to harvest’ dates.

In addition, you can still take a stab right now with items that need nice warm soil and with a bit of luck will be bearing as the end of the season arrives, such as beans.

If you have herbs growing in the garden and the plants are just going nuts, now is a great time to take cuttings and pot them up to bring them into the house for a window sill garden for the fall. Items like rosemary are sort of woody but if you use the new growth at the top and water it well, it should root for you. Additionally, items such as basil or mints are from the same family as coleus, which you can even root in a glass of water. What I’ll do with the basil above is to take a good 2-3″ cutting, dust it with a bit of rooting hormone and stick in some sterile medium in a nice shady place. Once it’s rooted, I’ll repot them up to take into my sun room for the fall and winter.

So, if you have an area in your garden that is past its best, needs to be weeded and cleared out or frankly just looks tired, here’s the drill for a fall garden:

Weed the garden thoroughly.

Using a garden fork, spade it over completely.

If you can get your hands on some compost, cover the area with several inches and spade that in as well.

Water thoroughly. And by that, I mean water it so that if you dug a hole several inches deep, the soil would be moist there. This will take a good bit of watering, trust me; this is not a ‘stand there with a drink in one hand and the hose in the other and when the drink is done, you are done.” If you have an oscillating sprinkler, set it on low in the evening, and leave it going for several hours.

Set your seeds in rows as thickly as you can – you will transplant them once they are up and have the second set of leaves.

If you are having hot, dry weather, tent the area loosely with newspapers or row cover or an old sheer curtain or something like that – this will keep the moisture close to the soil and will help prevent the soil from drying out. If the soil dries out, you will not get very good germination, if you get any at all. Sowing seeds at this time of the year is a little bit dicey – you really need to keep watering on a regular basis every evening or two unless you are getting regular rains (which no one is getting right now, so just take the time to do it – sit on the porch and watch the hummingbirds at the flowers and enjoy).

Seeds: If you ran through all your seeds this spring already, get thee to the local home/garden center, feed store, farm store or whatever and look for seeds. If you don’t see the display, ask the manager if it’s been put away and if there are any seeds left. You should be able to get some of this year’s seeds. They might not be at their best – they’ve been sitting out on the display since February or March – but if you keep the bed watered well, you should get some germination.

At the same time – and do this before you forget – you’ll thank me in the spring – go online to your usual sources. Whether it’s Parks or Burpee or Pine Tree Garden Seeds or whoever it is you usually use, check the site and see if they still have seeds available and order a whole list of lettuces, kales, cabbage family plants, Chinese cabbages, etc. Anything they list for early spring or fall planting. Order that NOW – and when it arrives, put the whole shebang, closed up, in a ziplock™ bag or a closed jar in your fridge. Now you have seeds to start with in the early spring. You will feel gloriously superior for being prepared.

Also – check sources for garlic bulbs and onion plants for growing. If you want to start garlic this fall, you will want to order early enough to catch the harvest (which is starting NOW) to have your bulbs ready to take apart to plant after your first frost. If they also have onion plants for planting in the fall (usually bunching onions work for this), get some of these and get them started this fall too – then you will have two good early starts for next year and you will have scallions to use and eat early in the spring.

On the face of it, that sounds like something out of a ’say wha?” sort of experience. Doesn’t every place have a farmers market? Someplace?

No. Actually, not. And it’s not like one of those Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland pictures from the 30s where all the kids get together and gosh-darn, come up with the idea of putting on a show to raise money (for, choose one, the school, the town hall, some poor kid who needs to go to the hospital). It’s one thing for a single producer to pull a truck off the side of the road, put up signs in both directions and set up a display of tomatoes and melons. It’s an entirely different thing to develop a farmers market. And even if all the ‘i’s” are dotted, the paperwork is all filed correctly, etc. etc., the farmer’s market might still not succeed.

Here are a few items that are really and truly necessary to have a farmers market (success is another deal):

– A group of producers who are already growing what the local customers would buy AND who are not already over-drawn on other farmers markets in the reasonably close area. If your community doesn’t have one and the neighboring counties DO, there’s a reason for that. It might be that no producers in your county have the time to commit to a farmers market. Or, they might not be in the ‘direct to the consumer’ part of agriculture. Or, they might all be growing commodity items like soybeans, wheat, feedstocks. Or, they might already be going to the other farmers markets and do not have a family member or friendly person who will come out to the farm, pick up the freshly picked produce or the eggs or the dressed chickens or whatever it is, first thing on market day. Nor go to the market location, set up the canopy and the tables and the ice chests or whatever. Nor stay there for the whole market, promote the products, sell, make change, take customer names and emails, and the thousand other things that the individual vendor must do in order to make sure the customers come back next week. Participating in a farmers market takes a lot of person hours. Hours that are taken away from ..oh yes, the farm. For many producers, having a farm stand right at the end of their drive looks like a far better deal. So, question one is: Are there actual farmers (not folks who will go to the wholesalers and buy up yesterday’s green peppers and try to pawn them off as home grown) who are not already committed to a farmers market AND are interested?

– What does the ‘area need’ look like now? How close is the closest farmers market and how often does it operate? Once a week? Twice a week? Is it reachable by public transport? Who is the customer base? If you feel your community needs a farmers market or another farmers market, you have to look at that. We already had several farmers markets in our county at various times of the week, including one that operates downtown two days a week. However, the biggest market at that time operated all the way out at the western end of the county and due to location, had basically no parking and a vendor waiting list that was several years long. So we had access issues and we had vendors who were being shut out. The local cooperative extension was able to make the case that the area could use another farmers market, in an area more accessible, with more parking, and with public transport, one day a week, in a county park. This is now the largest farmers market in the county.

– Do you have an agency or organization that is willing to sponsor a market? This is mostly for organizational and physical location issues. Our local city economic development agency sponsors the downtown markets – they made arrangements to get the street shut to traffic; the park one is sponsored by the county parks department, the county cooperative extension, with an assist from the county public transport, which schedules bus runs into the park, right by the market, on market day. The agency or organization will also need to help the vendors organize themselves into a market group, write bylaws, set fees, define roles and so on. If vendors want to sell processed foods, such as baked goods, jams, jellies, salsa, etc. etc., depending on your state’s Health Department or Agriculture Department rules, the sponsors need to work with those state and local departments in order to get vendors certified, inspected if need be and so on. Again, this is not a Mickey and Judy “Let’s put on a show”.

– Is there a location with visibility and access? Our downtown farmers market has been moved several times over the years and every time it changed location, they lost vendors and customers. They finally moved it in a permanent sort of way several years ago and did lot of promotion and activities on market day to attract people from the 6 square block area. They put the market right next to the court house, on a non-busy little street, which basically was within a two block walk of all the major downtown employers. So, they concentrated the customer base. The county park market has a number of benefits: It’s in an open parking lot that is seen directly from the interstate. There is an exit and entrance right off the interstate right there. There is signage outside the park and inside the park advertising the market and the market developers do a fair amount of ‘activities-based’ promotion to get families to come to the market (bike helmet checks and giveaways, car seat checks, free cookbooks, and so on). The vendors at the park market love that location.

– Is there someone who is willing to put in all the work, usually as a volunteer (unless the sponsoring organization makes it part of that person’s job), to organize the market, collect fees, pay bills, police the situation, act as the face of the market, be the interface between the market, the vendors and state and local agencies and organize and put into play promotional activities, PR and so on? This is a huge issue for markets because vendors want their money to go into activities which put money into their pockets. They really would rather not have to pay for a market manager. Only in large cities or where the market is a ‘destination’ situation where vendors can charge premium prices for their goods and produce, do you find paid market managers. Being a volunteer market manager is a labor of love and burn out is a huge issue. If the market is on weekends, the manager not only has to do work during the week on the market but also has to be there for the market as well. There is a lot of turnover in market managers.

So, let’s say you feel your community could use a farmers market? My best suggestion at that point is to approach your county cooperative extension and ask to speak to the agricultural economic development specialist to talk about it.

(photo of farmers market courtesy of Corey Templeton)

Even when the water has been sitting out in a watering trough or water-er all day long and is the temperature of bath water, as long as they have access to it, livestock will drink it. And it will keep them alive. They might not like it; it might have slime on the bottom. But in 100 degree temperatures, it will keep them alive. The younger they are, the closer to birth they are, the more they need water and lots of it. And the greater the chances that if they don’t or if they don’t have access to it, they will not make it. The higher the temperatures go, the faster they will expire without water and access to it.

This past week, the temperatures up in our area were absolutely mind-blowing. High 90s every single day. The first day was a holiday and although we filled all the animals’ waterers full, we also took off to do ‘our own thing’ for the day, forgetting …that sometimes, things happen. The chicks in one of the pens tipped over the waterer. We did not get back until late in the day. You can guess the result, though we were lucky and only lost a dozen. These were not brand new chicks; these birds were 6 weeks old. But it did not matter. No access to water and within a few hours, overheating. For the rest of the week, our son was at home and every day, he went up a couple of times during the day to check on the animals, make sure they had plenty of water. No more losses.

Water – it’s what animals need. All the damn time.

(photo courtesy of oddobjects)

1 Can of low sodium beef broth
3-4 slices of sushi ginger (I had a jar of this in the fridge – I’ve also used this on top of fish when I’ve put it in to bake – really nice). If you have fresh ginger, I’m sure a couple of slices of that would work as well.
1/3 cup of light soy sauce
1/3 cup of cider vinegar
1/4 cup of honey or dark brown sugar

Put on high for one hour; then turn down to low for 6-8 hours. Remove from slow cooker and shred with two forks.
In the slow cooker, add half a bottle of ketchup and stir. Add back the shredded beef, stir up the meat and sauce to combine. Put on high for 20 minutes to heat through

Serve with crunchy sandwich rolls and cole slaw or Claremont Salad

Enjoy.

And well she should be. A sheep with overgrown hooves is a sheep in pain (think you in Jimmy Choos that are two sizes too small). It is also a sheep that very probably has developed disease in the hoof itself, another source of misery for the animal. The outside layer (think the fingernails on your hands) grows no matter what. If a sheep is in dry rocky country (like Rocky Mountain sheep territory), then that horny layer gets worn away and keeps in natural trim. If they are not, then that layer will just keep growing and will curve under and basically trap muck, manure, and goodness knows what else between it and the softer underside (see photo – the part of the hoof in the center is like the undersides of the tips of your fingers only a bit tougher). It becomes very painful for the sheep to walk. A sheep that can’t walk is a sheep that can’t graze. You will even see sheep with overgrown hooves on their knees – and what they are praying for is a shepherd to come along and trim up their hooves!

So, this weekend, because a) I needed something for the blog and b) I’m a real nut about keeping the hooves on sheep checked, the DH and The Boy and I went out, corralled the four lambs we are raising in the shed and checked and trimmed their hooves. As you can see from these photos, these guys are not in bad shape – we probably could have allowed them to go another several weeks or a month. But better to get them checked right now. As you can see from the photographs, a sheep’s hoof (like all other ruminants) has two toes, which are both rather teardrop shaped, with the nail layer at the outside wrapped around the more rubbery inner pad.

To check and trim hooves, you need two things for sure, plus one which is nice to have but we never seem to use it.
Absolutely necessary: Hoof clippers (or a hoof knife – hoof clippers seem to give you more control in terms of how much you trim off – and it’s also less likely that you will cut yourself on the upstroke). And, a bottle of disinfectant. We use plain label 10% provodine iodine solution.

The nice thing to have is called a ‘hoof plane’ and looks like a small, 6” wood workers plane with a cheese grater bottom. These work really well if the hooves are really dry and hard – if you can’t trim them easily, you can literally plane them down. You can also use these to get the proper angle on the hoof – you will want the bottom of the hoof at the end to be parallel to the growth lines that you can see around the nail portion of thehoof on the outside; you are not trying to give the goat a set of wedges to walk on (that’s tough on the rest of their legs) .

Some other things to have around as ‘just in case’ – A bucket of hot water with a little bleach/soap in it (if the sheep’s hooves are really mucky – it helps to have something cleaner so that you can see what is going on before you start to trim), paper towels, duct tape, a couple of clean sanitary napkins (in case you trim off too much and the hoof is bleeding, disinfect the hoof area, put on half a sanitary napkin over the bottom of the hoof and wrap with duct tape, forming a boot. If it doesn’t fall off on its own in a day, take it off) and ground or powdered lime. If you have a lot of muck around and the entrances to the barn area are wet, put down a lot of lime (the floor should look actually white). First, it will absorb a lot of the moisture and firm up the ground, which is better for their hooves, and second, it is also a great protector for the animals when it’s on the floor of the barn. Of course, cleaning up the barn floors is your first line of defense in this.

OK – how much should you trim off? Well, the doctor from Cornell was pretty Draconian – as I recall, she shocked the entire room with her answer of “Keep cutting until the hoof starts to bleed – then you know you’ve gotten everything.” Well, if the animal has ‘hoof rot’ or ‘foot scald’ (which are infections caused by the interaction of several anaerobic bacteria and more information can be found hoof rot ), the animal is already miserable and lame. In order to really treat the animal, you have to get beyond the mess to good solid material in order to give the sheep or goat a shot at healing up. If the hooves are not too overgrown, a simple cleaning out of any manure or dirt (especially between the toes) and trimming up with a little squirt of disinfectant if you get too far in should really be enough. One way to become familiar and comfortable doing this, frankly, is to get involved with your local 4H sheep or goat group or find a small sheep raiser, and learn how to do it properly and get some practice. Part of the trick is getting the sheep on his or her rear end (then they are sort of helpless and you can work on them without too much struggle), but learning how to be brave with the clippers is important too.

So, let’s go back to the photograph at the top. What’s going on with this hoof? As you can see, there is not a lot of muck packed in between the toes (actually the DH had already checked that area; if there had been anything, he’d have cleaned that out). If there is stuff in the slot between the toes, you want to get that out because it puts horizontal pressure between the toes. Not good. There is a little bit of overgrowth on one side of one of the toes; the other sides just need a little bit of a trim. The pad areas in the back are pretty good; they just need a little bit of trimming also. This is a very simple job – and actually is the sort of trimming chore that a shepherd wants to see because it means that the general health of the hoof is good.

Things to look for that mean trouble (besides sheep that are limping) and you have to really trim hooves to heal them up:
1) Really funky odor. I realize that faced with manure on the hoof, you’d think – how funky does she mean? If the animal has a bacterial infection in the hoof, it’s an entirely different smell.
2) Mushiness in either the nail area or the inner layer.
3) Cracks in the nail wall
4) The rubbery inner pad should go all the way across and the nail layer should lay right against it. If there are any pockets between (you’ll be able to tell because there will be dirt there), dunk the hoof in water so that you can see things more clearly and clean any pockets out and trim the nail layer down to them to open them up. The hoof will grow down properly. Pockets promote infections – open them up.
5) Anything that looks like it has pus or other material coming out of it, or is draining.
6) Anything that impedes your view of the inside rubbery layer of the hoof – that’s overgrowth and it’s got to go.

I realize that there is a good bit of the ‘ick’ factor in this discussion – don’t let this put you off from raising sheep or goats if you want to. Once you get the hang of this, it goes quite quickly to do it and it’s something that you can put on the calendar and take care of on a regular basis. Along with keeping the barn floors dry (use that lime) and the barnyard firm (ditto), hoof trimming will keep your sheep on their feet and out in the pasture transforming grass into wool and lamb.

Which is what you want, right?

If one of those babies steps on your foot, you will NOT be wearing Manolos again. Trust me; I know.

But there are many aspects of raising sheep, goats and cattle that are the same, so … just pick one and learn to care for them really really well and you’ve got the whole class licked. Ruminants – it’s what’s for dinner. There are two areas where, if you learn to get them right, you’ve got 90% of ruminant health licked (in a good way): the digestive system and the hooves. I’ll do this in two parts, the first being the digestive system.

If you want to know why swine, which do have a ‘cloven hoof’ (one of the requirements of animals considered Kosher in Judaism) are NOT Kosher, it’s this: They aren’t ruminants. They are monogastrics. They have a digestive system..just..like..ours. Shorter. Straighter. But the same: mouth – esophagus – single stomach – intestine – out.

But ruminants. Boy, THAT class of mammals has the elegant design solution on digestion. They can live on practically anything made out of cellulose because they are basically (at least in the body cavity) one giant series of different digestive solutions. What can’t be taken care of in one place will get taken care of in another one of the other ‘stomachs’ (in a true ruminant, there are four). If what they’ve got isn’t fully digested, then they have the ability to cough it back up to the beginning (think of it as a digestive infinite “do-loop”), chew it up again, swallow it again, and send it someplace else, with a different set of bacteria and enzymes and it will be dealt with there (oh, yeah..that’s why chewing something over and thinking about it is referred to ‘ruminating’). For more scientific details of how this all works, go here.

That’s the major, defining difference between mammals such as swine and human beings and ruminants. We actually can’t extract a whole lot of stuff out of cellulosic materials. There are certain vegetative things we can get some good out of: fruits and veggies, and what we’re getting out of them are water, vitamins, minerals and from items such as beans, incomplete proteins. But grass? Bark from trees (that’s catnip to goats, which is why the Middle East is as dry as it is – all that goat grazing killed off most of the trees)? Nuthin. And as a matter of fact, when human beings have been forced to eat that sort of material due to famines, they die.

But ruminants? With the very elegant features and occupants of their digestive systems, they can eat grass (or leaves, or bark or young ends of branches of trees), and transform it into everything they need: protein, carbs, vitamins, the lot.

And what this means, more than anything else, is that while as a group they need a good pasture of mixed plants, grasses, wildflowers, etc., ruminants do not need fancy feeds. As a matter of fact, the simpler the food, the better. It also means that there are things that ruminants do…not…need and frankly are not good for them, the major item being sugars in the feeds, such as beet pulp or molasses. When feed mixers put that sort of thing in ruminant feeds, it is more to placate the owners. The animals don’t need it and frankly, it puts the bacteria et al. in the systems on their own little versions of steroids. They go crazy, generate a huge amount of gas, which causes a lot of pain for the animals. That’s called bloat.

Another item in feeds (or in pastures for that matter) that ruminants do not need is a lot of protein. Even in the depth of winter..even while pregnant, ruminants do not need to be fed things like soy protein. Hay with a lot of alfalfa in it can give them a lot of stress as well. Remember: The bacteria in the gut of ruminants makes protein. The animals themselves don’t need to be fed protein.

Another item to watch for in feeds (or in salt mixes or salt blocks) is copper. This accumulates in the liver for sheep and will kill them. So, if you live in a hard water area and have copper pipes running up to your barn – do not be surprised if you have issues with your sheep and your vet tells you that they have copper poisoning.

So, back to the digestive system. In a ruminant looks like this:
Very different from us.

One of the other aspects to this is that there are a lot of things that can totally unbalance the system and make the animal very very sick. As mentioned before, too much protein or sugar in the feed or pasturage can cause bloat. If the animal gets a bacterial infection, this can cause all sorts of havoc. Once, years ago, we had two rams, one of which got an infection that totally wiped out his ‘normal flora’. The only reason we found out of about it was that we came into the barn one morning and found the other ram holding him up against the wall like an old drunk. He’d gone completely blind and had no sense of taste or smell. We could not tempt him with any food of any sort. We could put it into his mouth and he’d just push it out with his tongue. The problem: since it’s the bacteria in the gut that synthesize the B vitamins for the sheep, any bacterial infection that kills off the ones you want, destroys the ability of the animal to make its own B Vitamins – and that is what caused the blindness and lack of smell and taste. We had to give him huge amounts of antibiotics and B-vitamin shots for days and then repopulate his gut with horse syringes full of unflavored yoghurt (our other option would have been to pass a stomach tube to one of the other sheep and then transfer some of that animal’s gut contents into the stomach of the sick ram. But I digress: the therapy worked). So, remember – a healthy digestive system is your best weapon in keeping your sheep happy and healthy as well.

Next episode: Hooves: no, we are not talking mani-pedi’s here.

(ruminant digestive system courtesy of: Colorado State Sheep photo courtesy of gari.baldi)

It’s been a little bit tough to put together content here because so much of what I do requires two hands but I’ve got something today because the two hands (well, technically the four hands since it is The Boy and the DH who did it; I just stood there and documented it) were provided by others.

This year, we’ve expanded our livestock raising again. In addition to the chickens, we’ve got turkey poults and we have three lambs out in the pasture (we’re supposed to be getting another one, but I’ll believe it when the little bugger shows up). Now, we are not new to raising sheep. Until 2002, we had between 10 and 15 breeding ewes and raised lambs for the Easter market. Why we got out of that is a story for another time but this is a little bit different: the lambs were bought young from another breeder and we are only keeping them through the fall, when they will, as we say coyly around here, “go down the road”. They are also being raised strictly on pasture, so we are avoiding the costs (both literal, environmental and healthwise) from feeding them commercial feeds.

Now, I have to admit that one of our issues here at Chez Siberia in the past for livestock is that our pastures were not really tiptop. Part of that has to do with the quality of the topsoil (thin, rocky, lots of clay), the lay of the land itself (sloping and wet in spots), and the fact that we really did not know what we were doing. We used permanent fencing set up into paddocks and probably should have rotated them through more often. But we didn’t. So the sheep (as is their wont) nibbled the grass right down to the rocks and by August, we’d have to start feeding hay (they’ll do that; that is why they say that a sheep’s life is really only limited to how long they keep their teeth). But we’ve been reseeding and judiciously mowing and things look pretty good. If we get some decent rain across the summer, the pastures might hold out through the fall. If not, we’ll just have to go down our road to buy hay.

The other change is that we have gone with ‘electro-netting’, a type of movable fencing that gives real flexibility in terms of setting up a paddock area for the sheep, and moving them to new grass as you need it. That’s the photo at the top. We bought two sets so that we could set up a new area while the sheep are in their current area and then just open one side to get them on the new grass. Here is how it works:

The fencing comes in a roll with the fence posts installed right in it. The fence runs off a solar charger, which is attached to a ground rod (you’ll have to get both of those at your local farm supply place) and to the fence with wires. Solar chargers come with on/off switches so that you can get things set up and just turn it on. You will also want to get the charger before you put up the fence because it will take several days of sunshine to get the unit all charged up to run the fence. In the photo, you see that all the fence posts are yellow except for one. The white fence post is the one at the very end of the roll and you grab that one first and stick that into the ground at the start of the new run (you’ll want to do this basically right next to the area you are currently using for livestock and then you unroll the rest of the fencing.

You literally just stick the fence posts (which have a metal core by the way) into the ground as you go, leaving a little bit of slack.

At the corners, you will use a cord and a spike to put some strain on the fencing (like with putting up a tent) and that will straighten out the fence and make it tight.

Then, you turn off the fence at the solar charger, roll a bit back to create an opening, walk behind the animals and they will naturally move in front of you and go to the new grass. Genius.

Electro-web fencing can be found in several different conformations in terms of the holes in the web. There are set ups for poultry (with little holes in the lower part and larger holes toward the top), for gardens to keep out rabbits, and for larger livestock also.

How safe is electro-web fencing? Well, like all electric fencing, the deterrent effect (either from inside or outside) is all based on the size of the kick from the charger. The fences are all rated and labeled in terms of their electric power. All electric fences should be regarded with a great deal of care and respect; I certainly would not allow kids to be around it without an knowledgeable adult present.

Anyone in our area who had already put out tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants, and not with protection, woke up this morning with damaged plants. There are all sorts of clever protective devices, most of which revolve around the strategy of encompassing the plant with a double wall of plastic filled with water. Most gardeners are not so prepared and tend to try to use the “throw something over” which mostly does not work against this sort of onslaught – wind, combined with freezing temperatures and moisture tends to create so much damage that even if the pant survives, it’s set back so badly that all your early work is lost.

But I’m not talking about that here.

Look at these photos taken at 2:00 p.m. This is the remains of my “get things started early under glass” bed. We took off the glass when it got horribly hot several weeks ago. So, these plants were fully exposed to the wind, rain, sleet, snow, and subfreezing temperatures yesterday and last night. Take a good close look. Damaged? No.

What is in there? My favorite early spring friends:
– anything in the cabbage family – in this case, several different sorts of kale, cabbages, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.
– winter and spring lettuces
– anything from the beet family – including rainbow chard and beets (those are the seedlings with the red stems)
– carrots
– spinach

The ones I transplanted and put under row cover are in even better shape, but these photos should inspire you for this fall and next spring. These babies are tough and hardy and a way to get fresh veggies on the table long before anything else is available. If you haven’t gotten seeds, look for them now or send away for the and then save some in a zipped up plastic bag for the fall and spring.

First – there is nothing wrong with doing a riff on something they already like. It takes a pretty sophisticated palate to like fish such as haddock or cod right out of the chute. “Mildly flavored’ doesn’t even begin to describe the way kids feel about it in its unadorned state; that’s why breaded, deep fried fish is so popular with kids (Mickey D’s has built an entire industry around those sandwiches): that breading and the grease from the deep frying give kids a stronger taste that they recognize and accept easily. But there are other tastes that kids recognize and that you can use to your advantage with fish that is frankly bland:

Italian Food: If your kids like anything with tomato sauce and cheese on it, don’t be afraid to bake fish such as haddock and cod with the same treatment. Or, if you want to go completely sophisticated, chop up veggies and tomatoes, add the appropriate spices (basil and oregano for Italian; cilantro, garlic and chili for Mexican) and bake in a 350 degree oven until done and if there is cheese, it’s all bubbly.

Chinese Food. If your kids like Chinese or Asian of any sort, tonight’s recipe is for you. Frankly, it’s an idea I cribbed from the fish display at my local Wegmans where they’d taken strips of fish filet and stuffed it and baked it. Now, I certainly don’t have crab meat laying around the fridge at Chez Siberia, but I had some other stuff and my son raved about this so much, he asked for seconds and then tonight asked for me to make it again, a sure sign that it’s a keeper.

Chinese Mushroom-stuffed Fish
Ingredients:
Fish: filets of totally bland tasting white fish such as haddock or cod, cut into 1” thick strips, with no skin.
Filling:
Mushrooms – whatever you’ve got, chopped really fine. 3-4 ounces of mushrooms chopped fine will fill up 6-8 of these little fish donuts.
Ginger – I used sushi ginger from the jar, but grated fresh ginger will do as well – see the photo for the relative size of the piles of ginger and mushrooms you will need.
Binder – I used Thai peanut sauce, but whatever Asian sauce, Asian salad dressing or whatever will do – use enough so that the mushrooms and ginger will stick together.
Mix all the filling ingredients together.

Grease a baking sheet and taking the strips of fish, make circles with them on the baking pan. Fill with the mushroom filling and bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or until done (don’t let the fish get dry).

Serve with Chinese stir fried veggies and either rice or noodles.

For more strongly flavored fish, I saw another really clever trick at the same store: This will work with fish that comes in steaks. Cut into big chunks, marinate in spiedie sauce (if you can find it in your area – it will be in the same area as the salad dressings and the bbq sauces) or some sort of bbq sauce such as Mexican. Put on skewers with veggies and grill. Serve with a salad, pasta or if you want to go totally ‘old school’, Italian bread for a fish spiedie sandwich. We had these once and they were fantastic – got a big thumbs up from everyone at the table.

Such is the tale at Chez Siberia. Earlier this spring, I hauled out the garden fork, the shovel and the hoe, only to find that only one of them was in one piece. Since the hoe is put together differently, I’m doing this post on the garden fork and will handle the hoe as a separate issue. Basically, the garden fork itself (that is, the metal tines, the collar, etc.) is in great shape, so it is worth putting a new handle on it.

First task (and the one that actually took the longest) was finding a handle that would actually fit this garden fork, which the DH and I bought from Smith and Hawken sometime in their early days, in the early 80s, when they were concentrating on garden tools and had not yet gotten into the ‘we sell lifestyle’ thing. The old S&H actually no longer exists; the brand is now licensed to Target (and I think readers can figure out what that means in terms of where things are going to manufactured). But at this time, S&H had their garden tools manufactured in the UK by the worthily famous Bulldog Tools. Solid forged steel, with a solid wood D-handle, as you can see from the broken off bit in the photo above. I tried everywhere I could think of to find the same sort of handle in the right size; no luck. I finally found a D-handle replacement at our local feed store. It is not a perfect fit, as you can see from the process photos, but it was a good deal cheaper than replacing the entire garden fork with an equivalent quality (if I were able to find it in the US) and puts the tool back to work again.

As you can see from this photo, the original wooden handle was held on with a rivet, which for those of us who are not familiar, is a nail-shaped piece of metal with a mushroom shaped top at one end and a slightly hollowed out end at the other. The way riveting works in general is that you put the the rivet through a hole holding two things together, flip the business over onto a hard surface and give the hollow end a couple of good hard smacks with a hammer. The hollow end will flatten out over the hole and hole the rivet into the two pieces. Voila!

To take care of this garden fork, we will need:
1) The DH – I don’t have a workbench with a bench-vice to hold things in place while I work with them, so this is a two person job.
2) A big nail and a hammer.
3) A drill of some sort with a bit that matches the hole in the metal part of the fork that the original rivet was in.
4) A handle that comes with another rivet.
5) A stone (not a wood) chisel.

Step one: Get the old rivet and the rest of the old handle out of the business end of the garden fork.
Brace the metal part on a work surface where you will be able to get the area with the rivet out into the open.

Step two: Taking the nail, put that over the non-mushroom-y end of the rivet and keep hammering it until it comes out the other side. It will probably be rusty; there will undoubtedly be left over wood handle in there. if you’ve got a bit of oil (3-in-1, olive, old auto lubricants, whatever), put a bit of that around the rivet and that will help it come out.

Step three: Turn the metal part of fork over until you see the seam in the collar which attached the handle to the pointy bits of the fork. It will be partially opened by the original handle. Taking your chisel and hammer (make sure the fork is secured with a bench vice or another person), put the chisel into the seam and give it a couple of good ‘clouts’ (as my mom used to say) with the hammer; this will loosen the rest of the handle and you can shake or pull it out.

Step four: Putting the new handle in. Take off the rivet which will probably be attached with tape or a little plastic bag to the handle. Look at the shape of the collar (it will be either straight or have a slight curve). Look at your handle and the bottom of the handle should have the same sort of curve as the collar. Slide the handle into the collar. Holding the two things together, slam the metal part of the fork on top of the collar – do it on something soft like grass, an old towel, etc.

Step five: Taking your electric drill with a bit ‘chucked in’ that matches the size of the hole in the collar, secure the fork and drill through the hole in the collar and the wood handle to the other side.

Step six: Take the rivet and put it in. Flip it over on a hard surface, making sure that the mushroom-y part of the rivet is flat against that. Take your hammer and pound down on the slightly hollowed out end of the rivet which should be facing you.

Done.