Some People Skip Out

Just thought I toss this out there for you, Dear Reader this morning's coffee cup holder. Not that we are so hooked on our brand names here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens but I do like a good cuppa coffee and Dirt likes a nice ride.


Speaking of nice rides.... I ought to keep track of how many times the motersickle goes out and how many times Lanny happens to be on the back of it. I'm thinkin' I'm gettin' the short end of the ride history.

Today Dirt and his little buddy, Anna, are off to The 2010 Northwest Aviation Conference & Trade Show down at the Puyallup Fairgrounds.

Meanwhile Bet and I will be busy workin', well Bet is, while I take a few pictures and tell you what we're going to do today!


It is a beautiful day for a ride down to the big valley. It would be perfect if it wasn't quite so cold. The clear air brings lots of cold with it and that can make for an uncomfortable morning ride.
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But Anna doesn't look like she cares. It could be the fourteen layers of clothes that her dad made her put on. Think Ralphie's little brother in A Christmas Story.




I thought I'd give you a straight shot of where my Hothouse and Market Shed are going to go. And tell you a bit about my plans. Basically Fluffy's standing in the middle of the glazing. Well his snout is pressed up against it anyway.


We are hoping that we can run the Hothouse primarily passively and so we are doing a "solar" type greenhouse, think "leanto" green house. The glazing (clear material) will face south-southeast to catch the early morning sun so that the interior can begin to recapture the days heat early on.


The backside, north side or what it will "lean" on will be the Market Shed. In the Market Shed there will be a wood stove and maybe even our old electric furnace for back up and vents and fans that connect the two air spaces when necessary. All in effort to bring certain things into propagation earlier and with less energy expenditure.


Plant life that likes to get a head start "inside" but doesn't need temps in the seventies and low eighties will be propagated in the Coldhouses. Unheated hoop houses, and cold frames. Much like my onions are doing right now and my lettuces and cabbage family will be doing soon also.


They, the lettuce and cabbage family, didn't really need to wait, except that I ran out of space and time and the onions are a bit more crucial as they need to make a certain size before the day length changes and they begin to swell making their bulb out of number of "rings" that they were able to put on.


Lettuce and mostly the cabbage family do just fine in this colder weather but they don't do a heck of a lot of growing, mostly settling in so that when growing time does hit they are rip roarin' ready to go.

Wait, I got off track of what this post was about. Well besides the fact that Bet and I are the resident slaves today and others are off goofin'. I was wanting to just tell you about the greenhouse plans.

This would be looking lengthwise down the front of the Hothouse. Once all the stumps are removed and as they clear the spot for the building I am hoping that they will begin a nice long berm here between the driveway and the Hothouse.

The design calls for a three foot knee wall that we won't be glazing because I will be using benches for my starts not the ground (a bit of a look to the future when things might not bend so well, like my body for instance).

It would be nice to have the berm for extra insulation and I also plan on having it be a new asparagus bed. I used to have asparagus. It has been a long long time since my asparagus bed became a back lawn.

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Anyway, that is what I've got goin' in my brain for Dirt to build for me next month, all while lambing too. Not sure if he plans on just getting a dozer in here and do the work himself or have a operator do it faster and more efficiently. Sometimes it pays to have things done. Likewise with framing out and building my building, but then there is the flip side of the dwindling stack of money we didn't have to start with.

Well it is warm outside now and duty calls. Out to move some roses that are in the way of some future-future building plans and plant some of my things that have been in holding for a while. Ohhh that means I have to decide where things will permanently live....

Toodle lou Dear Reader. I'll be back in when I am exhausted but hopefully not to exhausted to catch up on my reading about all of your adventures. The last couple of days I keep getting thrown off track. What else is new eh?

Sometimes it isn't me personally that gets thrown off the work wagon but other family members, like Anna and Bet with a couple of non-resident bummer lambs to try and revive to no avail yesterday. But someone gets thrown and everyone seems to get thrown.

But no worries, what gets done gets done and the rest, well heck Dear Reader, that's what God made tomorrows for.