Dirt Diva's Gardens (USA)

Up here there are east and west coast companies that have wool products made from very old designs and patterns.. This along with the traditional Hudson Bay type of products from history.. The west coast natives used to use dog hair from long extinct breed of dog until wool was available.. Some very nice products today, but with todays prices.. Young neighbor woman with breast cancer is originally from Newfoundland and knit us wool touqes as she recovered from various treatments.. Mine has a moose pattern in it..

My mother, aunt and her mother, Granny were all needle work crafters of all kinds.. They all worked on different or the same project, exchanged materials, patterns and such all there lives until they couldn't do the work anymore.. Last fall my red neck cousin sent me a quilt from aunt Darlenes stuff after she passed that my mother made in the early 1970s..

I have a rug my father brought me from the Middle East made from some type of raw goat or maybe alpaca hair and embroidered that is beautiful.
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I have a friend in Nebraska who raises hair sheep.. Several varieties of sheep, one being what he calls a Texas Dahl... Somehow finding there way across the Bearing Sea land bridge from Asia, middle east thousands of years ago and able to be traced back to biblical times.. He sells the ewes and lambs for fiber production and some of the rams to hunt clubs.. He already has standing offers for lambs that were just sired last month...

Most cultures have a history of plucked or shorn hair fiber hand crafts long before wool was available I think.. Like you said.. South America seems to have its own vast fiber craft history as much as anywhere..

Do politicians make good fertiliser?

Fertiliser plants in Europe are on/off line depending on the price of energy at any given time (it's an energy intensive industry). Australia had one large plant, it went out of business a few months ago... cuz the price of energy.

China is already keeping all theirs to themselves. Now this large plant goes up in USA? It's almost like someone is trying to create a critical shortage.

Roan Mountain, February 2022

Chuckle... Like the old saying... You can't eat politicians as they are too hard to clean...
Stands to reason they would take too long to compost to anything useable...
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You would think it too much a coincidence to be a contrived shortage... Although, factory fire, price of fuel, no more imported product.. All a seeming chain of domino effects that I'm sure someone will find a way to gouge a profit out of all these events..

And again.. The net looser will be the taxpayer, consumer at the grocery check out..
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Yes.. Nice pictures.. Much like our part of the bush.. Only we have 1 1/2 meter snow banks on the highway shoulders...

Then end of March has arrived here on the mountain with temperatures in the 60's during the day and the occasional overnight frost still but another two weeks until the average last frost date of April 15th. The peach trees are blooming as well as the plum and Nanking cherry trees. The Cornelian cherry just went out of bloom. Thus far no trees have leafed out but the buds are swelling. Early spring is here.




I have started some cabbage, broccoli, lettuce and bok choy in jugs and they will go into the beds in the next two weeks. I love winter sowing these in milk jugs. They produce such stocky and strong seedlings growing out in the cool environment outside. They grow slower but very strong.



Today we spent the day digging out the worm box and harvesting the worms and worm castings. 



The metal box has holes drilled in the bottom and covered with screen wire. Every spring we dig out the castings and run them through a sieve removing the worms and castings. Anything not going through the sieve is returned to the box for another year. Then the empty box is refilled completely to the top with fall leaves from last year and some of the worms added back for seeding the new bed.



The worm castings will be added to top soil and additional compost and used for growing spring seedlings. Anything left over will be used in the garden as a soil conditioner. Many make compost tea with worm castings also. I do not. 



At the end of the day I ended up with a 55 gallon drum and 6 five gallon buckets of worm castings. 



The worms that do not go back into the worm bed go into a worm bin and will be used throughout the spring and summer as fish bait for catfish to replenish the fish in my freezer. 

Tennessee has vast forests of oak and hickory trees. The ones on my property when the limbs are trimmed provide wood for my fireplace to warm my home. The hickory limbs I use for smoking meat in my smokehouse. The hickory nuts are edible and I also make a hickory syrup with nuts that are cracked and cooked down in water and sugar. The syrup is used to make a barbecue sauce that tastes of hickory. The fall leaves are shredded and feed the compost piles for the garden and also feed the spring worm bin for castings for the spring seedlings. Any trees we have removed from the property we have had milled into lumber and used for the hardwood floors in the house. Nothing goes to waste except the blooms that only feed my spring allergies. My elderly neighbor says they used to use the acorns to feed the pigs and the meat would taste of acorn and hickory nut. Hickory was a favorite for hoe and axe handles because it is so hard. 

The vegetable beds have garlic and onions already with green tops. The potatoes are also up. I have green peas, mustard greens, turnips, green onions, beets and carrots seedlings up also. All are cold tolerant here in my zone 6/7 gardens. 



When cleaning out my black currant bushes I was happy to discover lots of these praying mantis egg sacks pictured above. These insects are great to have in the garden as they eat so many of the bad insects in the garden. There will be hundreds to hatch out of each sack and I counted 7 sacks all together. They won't all survive but maybe enough to help keep my gardens pest free. 


 

DD... Friends in mid Kansas and near Omaha Nebraska are reporting crazy roll-a-coaster weather now.. At 70F one day, 0F that night, 30F the next day.. Saying plant pots so many times in and out of the house they are high millage now..

Up here the revolving rack of garden seeds at the mega grocery is looking kind of weary now.. Our problem here on the plateau in the bush is we still have 3' of snow in the garden.. I think we should be getting a bag of seed potatoes ASAP...

On the sunny hill side going down to the river bottom there is a hint of green grass showing through.. That means when it grows up a little more the deer will be on the highway.. Then later the bears will start coming out and be on the highway.. It can be dangerous driving at times..