After Thanksgiving

We had a very nice Thanksgiving this year as our table was filled with a 22 lb turkey that was only $.49 a lb, home grown mashed potatoes (red bliss and yukon gold) that I just didn't do right and some parsely, scallion (1), and chives from the garden. We had a total of 11 relatives and friends over, including a former athlete of mine from Poland and another from Arizona. The sun room, with our new pellet stove, was noisy with good conversation and lots of warmth.

I have been busy building a new compost bin, using the wood from my raised beds from this past summer. I decided that I would go back to using my Pony tiller and doing long rows 4 feet wide. I moved one of my raised bed for strawberries over to an area that had weed-grass last summer and prepared that for transplanting early next spring. Another raised bed was put next to the strawberry bed and will be my dedicated herb garden. The final raised bed left over will be used for early 4th of July tomatoes, as I will attach hoops inside the frame and then put plastic over top.

I did not plant any winter rye this year, feeling that I had plenty of nutrients from the compost and horse manure. We have been having problems with deer as well, so the extra green was something I thought would just attract more of the deer. We have lots of woods very near us where the deer could live contently, but they seem to like my parsley and carrot tops. I fixed the parsley problem putting some small hoops up and using some netting over the hoops.

To hold the netting down, I use some bricks left over from when we did our walkways and the swimming pool area. The bricks work very nicely, as they are easy to remove, but hold down the netting quite well. I am planning on using bricks for the plastic covering over the other hoop frames in the spring when I plant peas, broccoli, and tomatoes. The photo below is of my cold frame that has some parsley and a few of the carrots (minus most of the tops) that managed to grow during our cold, wet summer months.

The next week or so will be busy as I continue tearing out a "playroom" (as the previous owner called it) down in the cellar. The cellar has no windows and with our large home we just don't need something like that. I am renting a dumpster and my daughter and I will be bringing stuff out of the basement for quite some time. It will be good to get rid of a lot of things that have been sitting down there (there are at least three different households of "stuff" down there that hasn't seen the light of day in at least seven years. If there is enough room in the dumpster, I will try and get some of my attic stuff out as well. Mostly, it will be lots of sheetrock, wood trim and a wall to wall rug for a room that is 12 x 20, so it will be quite extensive. Once the basement is cleaned out, I will move my workbench over to an area that has less traffic and try and keep the place as clean as possible.

Indoor track starts tomorrow (Monday) and I have 86 girls signed up for the high school track team. We will be quite young this year, as our top 6 athletes who were all state champions last year have graduated and are now running in college. I will still also coach the boys sprint group, so it will be lots of fun and probably lots of confusion as well.