Going yard

The outdoor spring projects continue unabated here at Monkey Central.  We have to get them done before it gets too hot and humid to be outside for very long.

This project was pretty minor after redoing the fence and the rail by the steps we redid last summer.  The lilac bush and the bird bath, our little friends Ozzy and Luli down the street call it a 'bird pool,' were already in place, so all we did was buy some landscaping stones and encircle them both in together.  Then I dug up what bit of lawn was left inside the new egg shaped enclosure and Sparky covered it over with straw, then cardboard, then we dumped three bags of topsoil over that.  In a few weeks she's going to plant herbs in there to replace the ones that died in the big cold snap we went through this past February.

The next project, digging up a row of monkey grass and extending the old rose garden out to the walkway in the back yard was a bit harder.

I dug out all the monkey grass, it came out in huge clumps, then I dug the top layer of regular grass up, and turned it over.  The grass used to cover an area about the size of our Scion XA.

 Once I got that dug up, turned over, and the bigger chunks busted up in to manageable clods, Sparky covered the area with cardboard and we tramped it down.  Then we whisked ourselves off to buy topsoil and compost/manure mix which she laid down while I recuperated from all my back breaking labors.

Then the rains came.  And the next day after the rains cleared out for a bit, Sparky realized we should have built the raised bed before she spread all the dirt out.  So we took some lumber had left from redoing the fence and the railing and we built a new raised bed.

Today the weather gods smiled upon us, thank you Thor!, and it was warm and sunny.  So I went and got some large pine bark nuggets and spread them around out newly built raised bed.  In a few weeks when the tomato and pepper plants are ready, Sparky is going to plant them in our new bed.

I like projects like this because they take up part of the lawn and less lawn means less I have to mow and more food we can grow.

Adventures in home ownership

First it was the replacing the stove. Then, after we escaped the tornadoes that hit our region, the next week a storm blew part of the huge maple tree on our neighbors lot on to part of our deck. After making arrangements to get that cleaned up, and I must add here that after having had a run in with the neighbor in question in the past, he could not have been nicer over all the tree clean up business, after mowing the lawn last Friday, I came in to find that one of the two water heaters that were here when we bought our current house had sprung a leak.

I called our plumber, and if you live near me and need a plumber I highly recommend the guy we use, and he came right out and fixed things. He could not however fix the water damaged carpeting that was in the basement.

We'd been threatening to rip that ugly ass carpet up from day one but we never could get motivated to do it. But having huge parts of it soaked with water did the trick. No amount of blotting would have saved that carpet and had we left it, it would have become a breeding ground for toxic mold. So Sunday morning we ripped it up.

We pulled it up and cut it into sections we could easily carry up the stairs and which would fit into the Sparky mobile. We pulled up the padding and we took out the strips of tack filled wood that they used to keep the edges down. This is the mound of carpet that is destined for our county dump:
And here's the basement floor without the carpet on it:
Giddy with joy after having gotten the carpet in the basement up and out, we decided to take the carpet on the steps up, it was the same awful pink/dusty rose color. We decided that if we didn't it would haunt us for the rest of our days. So up and out it went. Removing all the staples, carpet tacks, and tacking strips off the steps and the landing was a huge pain in the ass, actually it was a pain in my arm, knees, and back. It took us three days to get all of them out.

Next step is to scrape the basement floor, use a high powered concrete cleaner on it, paint it, and seal it. Hopefully, the fumes from the cleaner, the paint, and the sealer won't get us and neither will the labor involved.

During the dealing with all that the tree guys came Monday, after I had to call them and remind them that they agreed to come out that day, to cut the storm damaged tree off of our and our neighbor's property. They got to our place around 2PM and got to work. By 5:30 they had broken part of the wooden fence and snapped our cable, which put us out of watching any cable TV, using the phone, and kept us offline. Thankfully the tree is gone and Charter cable sent out a huffy little dude who got my cable hooked back up and all is well on that front, for the time being.

So dealing with all that shit has put me behind in my blogging, my Facebooking, and in finishing my current graphic novel. Once we get the floor done downstairs, maybe I can get back to some semblance of normal and I can finish Hip Deep, Mountain High by the middle of June.

On a happier note, I did manage to find time to make a batch of strawberry jam from locally grown strawberries.

Urban Homestead: My shining path to culinary freedom (Garden '11 update!)

In the main garden space our potatoes and strawberries are growing faster than the urban myths and legends about Osama Bin Laden's murder. Our asparagus hasn't popped back up yet, which leads to fear the worst for it. This weekend we'll plant the tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, and egg plant we started from seed.

In the smaller former rose garden we've got peas, spinach, Swiss chard, lettuce, onions, carrots, radishes, and two varieties of squash planted in those containers in front of it.

In the white containers I planted several varieties of peppers that include, Hungarian wax, Cherry bomb, Kung Pao, long red chili, and sweet red bell.

More updates to come about our urban homestead as more stuff grows! Stay tuned!

Preserving with Dr. Monkey (or Pickling my way on the shining path to culinary freedom here in my urban homestead)

Today's episode: pickled jalapenos with garlic.

I've been wanting to try pickling ever since I bought that food preservation book the other day, so when I noticed a local grocery store had big ol' fat jalapenos on sale for .99 a pound, I sprang into action. The recipe for pickling chili peppers in the book said it would make 4 pints of finished product, and I've learned the hard way it's always better to have more sterilized jars ready if and when you need them, I put 7 jars and lids in my water bath canner pot and filled it with water and left it to boil.

Next I washed and laid out my peppers:

I like the heat from jalapenos but I'm not crazy about heat that overwhelms everything else, so I de-seeded and I cut out most of the ribs from the peppers. Then I sliced them lengthwise:
Next up I peeled and sliced about 8 medium sized cloves of garlic:
My jars had been in the sterilizing water bath for about 25 minutes so I put my pickling solution on to boil. This solution is three cups of distilled white vinegar, two cups water, 2 tablespoons of sugar, two tablespoons of salt (and I used canning and pickling salt which I bought last year to use in my canned tomatoes and my homemade canned tomato sauce).
When the pickling solution (aka brine) came to a boil I took it off the burner. I then took my jars and lids out of the boiling water bath and I filled up as many jars with pepper and garlic slices as I could. Then I ladled the brine over them making sure that the contents of each jar was covered by the brine. Then I put lids on the jars and I tightened them and put them back into the water bath for fifteen minutes. When that fifteen minutes was up I let them sit for five more minutes in the water after I took the pot off the burner.

And here's what my finished product looks like:
As you can see I only got three jars out of two pounds of peppers. I could have gotten more if I had not de-seeded the peppers I guess. But the recipe does say to pack whatever you're pickling tightly into your jars and to then pour the brine in.

Next time I do this I'll cut de-seed the peppers but I won't cut them in to the long thin strips, I'll cut them into rings. I'll also use three or four pounds of peppers, or perhaps more, and I'll adjust the brine solution accordingly. Actually what I'll do is I'll double the brine solution and cut up about eight to nine pounds of peppers.

The book says to let whatever you pickle stay in the sealed jar for at least two weeks, so in a few weeks I'll open a jar and let you know what these peppers taste like.

Urban Homestead Gardens 2011: Our Shining Path to Culinary Freedom

We had a real break in the weather here at Monkey Central and we've taken full advantage of it. It's been sunny and in the low 70's/mid 60's for about a week now and after a longish cold winter we've been out getting things ready for spring and we've (well Sparky mostly has) been getting our urban homestead gardens all set up and ready to grow.

One of the first things we did was put our rain barrels back outside. This is rain barrel number one, it's our third year with barrels and the new one out front should help immensely. We won't have to lug buckets of water around front anymore, yay! We're hoping the fish we put inside all of them will keep down the mosquitoes, but four out of five of the ones up front passed on already. They're only .13 cents each so if we have to buy more, it won't break the bank.

Composter number 2 is out and working. It's about half full of leaves and vegetable matter food scraps.
Composter #1 is composting away. I dug out a good sized chunk of rich black dirt from this composter a few weeks ago and we added it to the soil in the main garden. As you can see, our leaf bin is full of nice wet decaying leaves just waiting to be added to our composters.

Sparky has already begun planting in the former rose garden. She put peas in this past Sunday and she erected her pea trellises too. She also planted some frost tolerant veggies to the right of the peas. She's planted carrots, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and onions. If the cold does come back, and it might, this is spring after all, and kills the lettuce and spinach, it no problem because it's so early we can just replant.

In the main urban homestead garden, as you can see, we did away with most of the raised beds we made last year. We decided to go with a raised mound system for the most part. We'd seen how well it worked in a community garden a few blocks from us so we decided to try it here. We'll plant potatoes, peppers, broccoli, egg plants, some herbs, and more in those mounded rows.
We kept the raised strawberry bed, and as you can tell the strawberries are going gangbusters already. In the other raised bed we kept we have some asparagus growing, this is it's second year, so hopefully next year we can actually harvest some!
Sparky's urban homestead herb garden next to the back of the house looks a little sparse, that chives, sage, and thyme growing in there now, but soon it will be busting forth with rich green basil, tarragon, lemon grass, and more.

This year we decided to give the plants we start inside some assistance so we got a regular florescent shop light to hang over the little pots. It's just a regular shop light with a regular bulb in it and we hung it on the baker's rack we use to start plants on:
We've got two varieties of tomatoes, broccoli, egg plant, and sun flowers started. And after a little over a week of concentrated light on the three trays of seeds, we've already got a slew of growth!
The seeds really respond to the 16 to 18 hours a day of light and they've taken off. Of course planting them in seed starter mixture and keeping them moist helps a bunch too.

More urban homestead updates coming as soon as we get more stuff in the ground!

Urban Homestead

In honor of the people who are fighting against the nonsensical assholes in Pasadena who seem to think that they own random words in the English language, I have decided to name all the gardens here at Monkey Central, which include the area that we refer to as 'the former rose garden', the main garden, Sparky's herb garden, and the area that will hopefully begin to sprout morel mushrooms, Urban Homestead.

Further more, I insist that should you write about our gardens that you call them Urban Homestead too. When speaking of them aloud, you must refer to them as Urban Homestead as well.

If we are to find a path to food freedom that grows the future, a better future that is free of pesticides, insecticides, and idiots who try to bully and browbeat others into not using common words in combination, then we must be allowed to name our gardens whatever we want.

I have been taking advantage of the warmer weather and doing some prep work and getting Urban Homestead ready for the growing season and I look forward to sharing with you all that we raise this year on our urban homestead. Stay tuned for more updates on Urban Homestead!