First off I want to thank the GRIT IT department for all the efforts they put into fixing GRIT blogging.  This community is a unique website community.  I know of no other website where all bloggers are welcome.  Forums are usually the avenue for members to express themselves.  GRIT has taken a different approach with open blogging.  It has inspired me in so many ways and information has abounded because of this expression.  I know it's a more difficult thing to manage for the website IT guys so thanks again for giving our lifeline back to the GRIT blogging community. 

Two weeks ago an invitation to be part of a yearly men's camp out gave me opportunity to spend three days deep in the woods with a great group of men.  They have been doing this annual trip for over a decade.  As you can see from this picture of the field kitchen, they have this camping down to a science.  All kinds of man food came from this kitchen.  Bacon, eggs, fried chicken, onion rings, biscuits and gravy, grilled steak, mashed potatoes (no instant), and many other things that men love to eat but really isn't to good for them.  It was a great time.

You might ask what do men do, other than eat, way out in the deep woods of Nebraska.  Well they shoot guns.  That's what.  I didn't bring any guns but here you can see me preparing to make coleslaw out of a head of cabbage.  The owner of the gun blurted out a bunch of statics about the gun but basically it was Russian sniper rifle.  Yeah, that got my adrenalin flowing for sure.  Rest assured that no animal life was lost .... well other than the cabbage head during the weekend activities.

Yeah, you can tell by the bulging belly that this was day three of man food.  Perhaps there's a reason to not eat like that every day.

This gun again has a bunch of statistical information to define it but it's strictly a defense weapon and you can see the 100 round magazine clip bulging from the bottom of the gun.  Guns are fun to shoot and I had a great time

Spring just didn't show up this year in Nebraska.  It's hard to believe that last week we were still having snow and even last night the temperature was a chilly 36 degrees but then in a couple days we will be sweltering in mid 90s.  Where did spring go?  It just didn't happen.  All next week will be highs of 80s and lows in the 60s.  I'm not complaining mind you but I feel that I've been robbed of my favorite season. 

Things are starting to progress in the garden.  Nothing has been planted yet.  My neighbor planted some potatoes, watermelon, and pumpkins but I suspect either the soil is too cold, wet, or both to be favorable for growth.  I've been working on other garden things.  The seedlings are still healthy and strong.  The transplanted tomatoes are doing well and perhaps I'll only have to buy a couple this year just to get early tomatoes for the table salads and, of course, the first bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.  To me it just isn't the start of home grown tomato season without the first BLT.

I've mostly been working on my fence panels.  What I thought would be nearing completion by now is no where near done.  The cold rainy spring has not been favorable to working and painting outside.

Here are the two completed panels from the previous post that are about to be set in place.  One thing I forgot to do when building these panels was to make sure they were square.  They are close but not exactly.  Oh, well, gardens are not supposed to perfect, are they?  The foot deep mulch that was spread on the land last fall is doing it's job.  Very few weeds are poking up through the now three inch deep layer of composting mulch.  One issue that I ran into while setting these panels up was digging the post holes.  I wanted to dig down three feet and put two bags of Quikcrete in each post hole to keep the fence panels from blowing over in wind.  However, at two feet I hit water.  After reaching a depth of three feet, a full foot of water stood in the bottom of the hole.  In went the post along with a bag of river rock, then two bags of Quikcrete to hold the post in place.  The only way that panel is going to fall over is if the post breaks off.

Here's the two panels set in place hopefully for many years to come.  Many folks in the neighborhood have commented on how great it looks.  I still can't believe that this is something I created.  Two more fence panels will complete this side of the 30 foot square area.  One panel will have the word "Garden" on it and the last one will have the flowers along the bottom and in the top right corner a big smiling sun.  You can see the pile of pallets in the back ground that will eventually become the other three sides of the fence which will not be painted.  I really wanted to have this fence nearing completion by now but both March and April were a bust for working outside or painting which requires the temperature to be above 50.

Planting has sort of begun.  I have one bed that's in process of preparation for planting.  Since the turkeys like to scratch the seeds out of the ground and eat them, I have purchased some light garden fence four foot by 25 feet with 2inch by 4 inch squares in the fence.  This fence was laid out flat on the ground and pinned in place and then seeds will be planted in the fence squares.  Since the mulch is three inches deep a plug down to the dirt will be taken out of the mulch to expose the soil for planting.  My thought after seeing how deep the corn seed would have to be planted to hit the soil was to fill the hole with a good soil/compost mixture and then plant the seed in that.  It's all experimental but then that's what this garden is all about.

I have 21 Rugosa Rose bushes in route.  They are Maine sea coast hardy and will be planted between the rail fence and the pallet fence.  The catalog information tells me that they grow to be six foot tall and six foot wide in two year's time.  I'm planting them four feet apart so it should end up as a thick hedge.  After a couple years, propagation of more bushes will begin to eventually surround the entire garden area.  With a thick thorny hedge and first line garden defense and a better than four foot wooden fence as second defense, it should slow down the critters a bit.

A week ago was the Bear Creek Planting Festival in Mansfield, Missouri.  I've always wanted to go to one of their festivals for the experience of it.  This was a place way out in the sticks of Missouri about 30 miles from Springfield.  There was an interesting mix of people there.  Speakers in the main tent flowed all day long and was where I mostly spent my two days there.  Our own Hank Will GRIT editor in chief was a speaker there and talked about how to use animals on the homestead for many useful things.  He just couldn't pass up the opportunity to bring some gadgets with him.  (I mean that in a good way Hank).  He brought his pride and joy wheel horse with a seed planter and several shovel cultivator attachments.  I got my copy of "Plowing with Pigs" signed by both Hank and his wife, Karen.  It was good to see them both again.  I met Jere, owner of Bear Creek, and he signed my copy of his book, "The Heirloom Life Gardener".  I recommend both these books for the gardener's library.

Traveling is done for a while so now it's time to get back to work.  Until next time may your rains be gentle and just at the right times;  may the sunshine be warm on your face; and may your harvest abound. Have a great gardening season everyone.  

I know I've said it before but I really think that GRIT blogging is back this time.  I've noticed that there are a few blogs that I can't find but I truly believe that as new blog posts are sent to be posted the landing page will straighten itself out over time.  I worked in the technology field for 40 years.  It became a higher passion than gardening if you can believe that.  So I know it's not easy task to juggle changes on a Website as complex as the Ogden Publications website.  I personally have dealt with implementing improvement updates and know how supposedly unrelated areas would be affected by the changes.  My admiration goes out to the IT people of today. Long gone are the simple days of DOS.  For those of you that don't know what DOS is just be thankful that you don't and move on.

There's not much to report from the Urban Ranch or Terra Nova Gardens.  I have made a couple visits to Terra Nova Gardens but just to check on how it survived the winter.  The continued cold weather with rain, snow, and wind has prevented any garden preparation.  I have started my tomatoes and green peppers under the grow lights.  They are about a month behind schedule but the way the weather is acting this spring maybe that's a good thing.

I was in serious need of some kind of gardening.  Desperation will make a person do some reckless things.  I walked out to survey the garden beds at the Urban Ranch backyard and came upon two big healthy dandelions.  I couldn't help myself.  I harvested the dandelion greens and .... ate them.  They had a bitter but fresh garden taste.  So I can say that I ate my first greens fresh from the garden even though they weren't planted by me.  I just may have to revisit those dandelion roots for another harvest soon.  I am sooooo ready for Spring.

It does appear that the 697 bags of grass/leaf yard waste mixture that I dumped a foot deep on Terra Nova Gardens last fall are doing their job.  Only a few hardy weeds have struggled their way up through the heavy mulch.  I severed their roots with a shovel; pulled out the weeds; and dumped them on the compost heap.  The space between the garden and the road got a weed whack to keep it looking nice and the pathways in the fenced raised bed area got carpeted.

I met another colorful character of the neighborhood at Terra Nova Gardens.  His name was Chad.  He stopped to talk about how he had grown hot peppers for over 20 years.  He proceeded to tell me that he had developed a pepper that had four times the heat of a regular hot pepper and got special privileges to make hot sauce for all the prisoners.  Yeah, prisoners caught my attention.  I just let him continue to talk and he explained that back in 1956 he was a Hell's Angel and got sent to prison for murder.  His sentence ended up being several 20 year terms which normally would mean life in prison but the judge allowed him to serve them at the same time.  Hell's Angel Chad ended up serving 36 years in prison because of .... well some altercations along the way.  He ended his five year parole just last year.  

Bobcat Larry continues to stop by almost every time I'm at the garden.  For those that don't know him, he has been very helpful from the very beginning with the clearing of the land and digging out the spring.

I don't think I've ever told you about shotgun Annie either.  There's an old lady .... well she looks old but I really don't know just how old she is.  She drives an old junk car; has the sweetest missing teeth smile; has shoulder length scraggly hair; and loves to talk about her garden.  She stops by every so often to tell of her neighborhood adventures.  She lives in probably the roughest part of town where angels fear to go.  Yeah, that's about five blocks away from Terra Nova Gardens.  One day we got into a discussion about her bad neighborhood and she said that she always has a loaded shotgun on the kitchen table and if anyone tries to get through the door they would be meetin' up with a load of buck shot.  Her house pet is mean junk yard dog that will kill anything that moves on her property.

Least you think that the neighborhood is filled with scary people, I will tell you that there are many more quite ordinary people that live there.  It's a very interesting mix of folks and I think I love talking with them about as much as I love gardening there.  It appears that most of them just want some one to listen to them tell their life story.  If they can't stop and talk which is not very often, they will most definitely honk and wave while driving past the garden.

There's another donation to the garden project.  If you look close in this picture you will see the frame work for a patio covering.  The top used to have a canvas cover to keep the sun off the folks under the covering.  Since the canvas all ripped, the neighbors decided to replace it with a new one and asked if I could use it at Terra Nova Gardens.  Duh, of course I can.   I plan on putting it over the picnic table and covering the top with pallet boards.  Maybe it will get painted or maybe not.  The rustic look might be a good thing. 

The real flower story for the Urban ranch has been the Daffodils.  They have weathered three snow storms, a hail storm, wind, and freezing temperatures only to look as beautiful as ever.  You just have to admire the toughness of Daffodils.

I guess that's it for this time.  May the GRIT blogs live long and prosper.

(big exhale breath) The GRIT blog is finally back.  After the first couple days I had withdrawal set in.  After a couple more days it was difficult to catch my breath, and life support was emanant if something didn't happen soon.  The word came down that the blog was fixed just in time before slipping into a coma.  Now you know that I'm just kidding, but I did miss the daily blog reading from all the great GRIT bloggers.  

Another taste of Spring. The temperature was up in the 60s.  The snow from Monday is all but gone.  It was so great to be outside in only a short sleeve shirt.  However, the threat of more snow in a couple days certainly will put a damper on any garden plans if indeed it does snow.  This year is so much more like what Nebraska weather is supposed to be.  Many were spoiled with the weather last year and were hopeful that it would continue to be warm and nice.  It isn't supposed to be warm and nice during the winter and transition months.

Yea, temperature is above 50 so let the painting begin.  It's really a nice day with little wind to cause any issues.  So a double coat of primer on the back of the panel and after a couple hours of drying, a flip over for the final coat of green paint on the front side of the panel.

As I've stated in previous posts my artistic talents are zip, nada, nil, zero.  So I'm bravely going where I've never been before.  With a clean slate before me, the graffiti painting begins.  The first up to be painted is the black stems for the flowers along the bottom of the panel.

Ok, well lets back up a step.  Before the stem is painted the actual flower was drawn.  With the center point located for the flower and using one cut out petal, a marker was used to mark each petal around the center point.  Four such flowers will be across the bottom of the panel.

Here's what it looks like after one day of painting. The black outlines around the petals and the black center will be painted after the yellow flowers dry.  A lighter color of green will be used for grass across the bottom with longer blades of green plant material growing up from the grass.  Above the flowers part of the name, which is Terra, will be written on this panel.  This will be the most difficult of the graphics for me to do.  I don't just want block letters but a font called AR DECODE.  It's a fancy type of script lettering.
  

The cabbage and broccoli seedlings had another outing for about fours hours today.  I may have set them back a little.  I turned on the fan to stimulate strength in the stems.  Then the flu invaded my body and I was down for a day.  With the fan on and a neglected day of watering the soil dried out pretty dry.  After misting and bottom watering two quarts of water three hours apart, the soil pots were rehydrated.  It's hard to believe that only three days ago the tulips were buried under about 18 inched of snow.  They were buried that deep because the snow from the poor man's patio was piled there from the snow blower.  They don't seem much worse for wear.  

So that's it for this week.  Have a great week of gardening and being outside.  Yeah, I just love Spring, don't you?  

March came in with bitter cold temperatures and indeed high winds of 40 MPH plus.  I know you folks in Kansas think that just a gentle breeze but here in Nebraska that's a hefty wind.  With a high of 29 degrees that day, the wind chill was brutal. I awoke again this morning to howling winds and snow covered the ground.  The temperatures will be 31 for the high today and slowly warming with a high 57 on Thursday.  All this is typical March weather for Nebraska and I wouldn't have it any other way.  It just makes Spring that much more enjoyable when it does actually arrive. 

I have managed even with the typical March roaring lion weather to work on my fence panels. This was one of the nice warm 50 something days. I now have 30 feet built.  That's one side of the 30 foot square area that I'm building a fence around.  This is just one panel of that side.  The very next day it started raining and then last night snow.  It puts a kibosh on any progress on that project for awhile.
 

Yea, the first day above 50 degrees came three days ago and made it a good time to begin the painting.  The primer is Kilz exterior primer.  I knew the wood in pallets would be really dry but it looks like one gallon of primer will cover just one eight foot panel.  Of course that's both sides and a double coat.  My free fence panels just got expensive.  I decided that I would paint a background color of grass green before painting the name of the gardens, Terra Nova Gardens across the top of the fence and paint grass blades across the bottom of the panels with a lighter color green. At twenty dollars a gallon it will take $80 to buy just the primer for one side of the fence.  The green paint is about $30 a gallon but hopefully after sealing up the wood with primer, it won't take so much of the green and green only needs to be on the front side of the panels.
 

Here's my little shamrock babies.  I took them outside in the 50 degree temperatures for a couple hours to let them enjoy the fresh air.  There's a couple tulips coming up in the background in the very grassy flower bed.  I really need to do spring cleanup of all my flower beds.  I lost track of which side is broccoli and which side is cabbage.  They all look exactly alike at this stage.  They are still looking really healthy.  I just might actually produce some cabbage and broccoli.  That would be a first for me.  If the cabbage does well, it will be made into sour kraut.  That's another first.  If the broccoli does good it will be frozen for Bradley to eat during the summer. This year is filled with first time things. 

So things are shut down here at the Urban Ranch due to the snow and freezing temperatures.  I hope all is well with all the GRIT bloggers.  Be of good cheer cause Spring is near.  Actually the official date for Spring is only 9 days away and there's only 74 days of school left for my grandson, Bradley. Then things will get very interesting.   

Are there any interesting things happening in your part of the world?  Have a great day thinking about or working in the garden. 

There's not been much garden oriented work happening at the Urban Ranch this month. We had a battle against scabies over most of the month.  No pictures of that.  It was two weeks of horrific itching and house cleansing.  Anything with material had to be either sanitized or isolated for a week.  Scabies are little mites that burrow into the skin, lay eggs, the eggs hatch, feed on skin cells, and lay more eggs.  We battled through two house cleansing and two prescription cream procedures.  I think we are done with that plague.  We don't know where it came from and certainly wished it hadn't visited our house.  Bradley and I were covered from just below neck to the tips of our toes.  If you ever hear the word scabies .... run.  They can live on fabric for up to two days and is highly contagious.  When I visited my doctor, I pulled off my shirt and he stepped back a couple steps; made a comment about how itchy it looked; said he would call in a prescription for it; and scooted out the door.  You know it's bad when a doctor doesn't want to be near you. 

We got blasted with Storm "Q".  Well, we got about 9 inches at most.  However you know it's bad when the snow plow that plows the street can't make it up the hill past my house.  He did get the street plowed by coming up a shorter hill on the other side of my house and plowing down the longer hill.  Since I live on a street that has a T intersection on either end and most times the only traffic is those that live on the block long street, snow plowing our street is on the bottom of the list.  It's usually at least three days before the plow comes by.  The issue is not being able to leave the house but always getting back up the hill to the house on the return.  Storm Rocky gave us a whopping .01 of an inch of moisture.  Ha, we can scrape more off the windshield on any given morning than that.  That brings my area up to .87 of an inch for the month which is almost up to the average of .91.  March will be the key.  Our average moisture for March is two inches.  Hopefully, we can keep our averages up this year. 

Bradley finally got his wish for snow.  He and a friend of his spent two hours whizzing down the school yard hill.  His grade school has one of he best hills for sledding in the city.  Every snow attracts kids from all around.  Bradley had some one to sled with other than Grandpa.  I got to watch them slide down the hill for two hours from the comfort of my truck.  Yea!! 

The ariel fort built for Bradley and neighborhood friends is starting to loose it's attraction.  This year a zip line will be added to the fort.  It won't start at the top of the fort this year.  The kids are only four foot tall so maybe about four or four and a half foot from the ground will be a good place to start.  It will have to be strong enough to carry my rotund self down the line.  That way I'll know that a kid of about 1/3 of that weight will hardly be a challenge for the line.  It will zip diagonal across the yard and be about 50 feet of sheer child adrenaline rush and end in a three foot high dirt pile. 

I started some Cabbage and Broccoli seeds at the seed starting station.  I have special sun spectrum florescent bulbs that are on 12 hours a day and a seed starting heat pad under the planted seeds.  After three days, as you can see, Cabbage is up.  It's supposed to take seven days to germinate.  Now I have to find something to put these cabbage plants in as the Broccoli has not germinated yet.  They are supposed to take from 14 to 21 days to germinate.  Right now I have them under the same saran wrap cover but that will have to change today.  Misting at least twice a day will be the routine from now on.  I sure hope the weather warms up or I might be in trouble with these plants.  I'm hoping to make some kraut this year and maybe some fermented pickles.  I have many gallon glass jars that would be great for that.  Yes indeed the gardening season has begun.  Yea!!  It won't be long before we all will be outside digging in the dirt again. 

It's that time of the year when girl scouts are selling cookies.  Today was spent helping a friend haul girl scout cookies. She is the cookie manager for her troop.  We hauled 218 cases of cookies from the district distributor to her garage.  That's 2616 boxes of cookies.  What a load.  You might think that's really allot but this is for one week.  She said that next week will be more.  Then there's two more weeks after that.  So I probably be called upon again to haul cookies the next three weeks.   

So how have you been spending your winter February days?  Do you have big plans for Spring?  Tell me about what exciting projects you have on the todo list.  In the mean time, I'll just right here sippin' on a cup of coffee waiting to hear from ya.  See ya next time. 

Whoa, the GRIT blogging community really has been active so far this year.  All the information shared has been a plethora of knowledge for homesteaders.  It's the homesteader university of websites.  Not only can information be found on how to grow vegetables, fruit trees, animals, or birds but also recipes for how to preserve or eat them.  I am very humbled by being allowed to participate in such a prolific information rich blogging community.  I am always awed by the caliber of folks that hang out here.  May this environments live on for ever.  Thank you so much fellow bloggers for keeping the information flowing.
Finally, the storage room wall is finished.  Well, except for just a small section of drywall.  I bought a broken piece from Menard's that will cover that section and a couple on the back side as well.  I probably should give it a good coat of paint but that will be for another day .... or year.  The room is fully functional and totally closed in.  The question now is have I truly created a cold room like I wanted.

The thermometer was set just outside the door of the storage room to get a reading for comparison.  This is what I keep my house at for the winter months.  It keeps me from paying out allot of money to the utility companies.  So lets see if my 50 degree temperatures have become a reality as I have been hoping for.
Yea, indeed it has hit my goal.  I'm not sure about how cool it will be in the summer but for winter storage, I believe this will be great.  Now all things are in place for a great gardening year.  The seed starting station yearns to begin life for seeds, Terra Nova Gardens waits for spring planting, empty jars are waiting to be filled with harvest, and the store room is waiting to be filled.  The year 2013 should be a remarkable year for the Urban Ranch and Terra Nova Gardens. 
More free pallets and more fence panels.  This is the bones of a 7 1/2 foot fence panel.  I've learned to put the end slats on first and fill in the rest of the panel with loose fit slats.  When the entire panel is covered and there's a couple inches left, tiny crevasses can be spaced between the slats to use up the small space.  I also learned that screws will spilt the wood and nails won't.  I now have about 20 feet of fence panels with 70 more to go.  This may become a long term project.  After completing the panels a want to give them a coat of paint to help preserve them just a bit.  Now being that these panels will be part of a fence in the inner city they beg for graffiti, don't you think.  My plan is to graffiti them first in hopes that the gangs will stay way.  What do you think I should put on the fence.  The fence facing the street will be 30 feet long so the canvas is large.  I would guess something to do with gardening.

I have given much thought to my spring at Terra Nova Gardens.  My plan has now changed from a open water pond idea to another idea.  Since the ten foot stand pipe was buried with only three feet sticking out of the ground, it will be used for a hand farm water pump.  Seven feet of water inside a six inch pipe equates to about 30 gallons of water.  I don't think there will ever be a time when I would want to hand pump more than that.  What the recovery time to fill the pipe back up is, I don't know but I would guess it wouldn't be more than a day.

The plan for garden watering has changed to digging out a pit about five foot square and three feet deep.  Then four of the blue barrels you have seen in other pictures on this blog will be buried in the ground with the tops just above the ground water level which is nearly to the surface.  Holes around the bottom of the barrels will let the water seep into the barrels and fill them with water.  I have come up with an idea to pump the water out of the barrels at the same time.  It will give me a 200 gallon supply to pump up to the barrels up on the bank.  After the barrels are in place then crushed rock will be back filled around the barrels.  Since there are ribs on the barrels, it should keep the barrels securely in place.

The seed starting station will be fired up and be trying to sprout broccoli in about another week.  I've read it's a bit difficult to sprout the broccoli seeds and come up with healthy plants in a home environment.  So I'll give it try because my grandson could eat broccoli every meal if you would let him.  It would definitely be of great benefit if I could grow a few plants to throw in the freezer and maybe make it to the fall planting.  We are planning on planting allot of sweet corn this year and a few rows of popcorn.  Both are high on the list of grandson's tastes.

Nebraska Phil is slumbering a few more days before his big outing to attempt to find his shadow and determine if winter is over or not.  I'll have to keep a record to see just how accurate his predictions are.  The famous Punxsutawney Phil of Pennsylvania is only 39 percent right.  That's not a very good record.  I guess if someone dragged me out of deep sleep and made me come up with a prediction, I wouldn't be real accurate either. 

That's about all that's going on at the Urban Ranch for this time.  Time to kick back, read some garden books, and sip on that coffee.