p i g t a l e s

h a p p y NEW YEAR!

2011-12-31T20:58:00.001-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

springy

2011-05-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

S P R I N G

Late bloomers

2011-04-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

I just read through my last 'pigtales' post (from APRIL 3, 2010...ages ago!) and realized how late the flowers are blooming this year. April 3, 2010, the forsythia and daffodils had already bloomed. However, this year our forsythia has JUST (April 24, 2011) turned yellow. How very interesting. This year winter was a lot longer than usual... hmmm. Growth is certainly happening!! YAY! I love the spring/summer months best. xoxo

2010-04-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

Today April 3rd, I noticed that the forsythia and daffodils had bloomed. Earlier this morning I had walked by them and they were still just green, no yellow. Well, by the end of the day I could have picked a bouquet of yellow flowers. Stunning! I love seeing the growth. Today it was 82 degrees, what a glorious day. I went driving with M and it felt so nice to have the windows down and cruising through the breeze. In no time I will be digging my teeth into a ripe ruby strawberry. Happy SPRING & APRIL!

xoxo

love

2010-02-15T12:15:00.000-08:00

Just sayin'... spring would be NICE right about... NOW! :)
Got to plan the garden...
happy valentines day

spring?

2010-01-11T08:46:00.001-08:00

spring soon? please?

happy 2010

2009-08-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

wow - once again I'm shocked to see the seasons changing so quickly. this past summer there has been some glorious growth in our garden. we have enjoyed an endless amount of fragrant basil, ridiculously juicy and sweet baby tomatoes, kale, lettuce, zinnias, cosmos, my buzzing bee garden, raspberries, blueberries (we picked loads of blueberries at a local farm and froze them for the winter), strawberries (same as the blueberries - only we picked 200lbs of the ruby red fruit) and lots of yummy peaches. and now it is the perfect time of year for those crisp autumn apples!
hope your summer was lovely!

bee garden in the early stage - it looks a LOT better now :)

STRAWBERRIES STRAWBERRIES STRAWBERRIES STRAWBERRIES STRAWBERRIES

fresh

2009-06-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

glorious

2009-06-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

stunning peonies and beach roses (in multiple hues) have bloomed in our garden.

flower power

2009-05-09T15:19:00.001-07:00

2009-04-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Yes, yes - YES it has been a long time since my last post. Nothing very exciting happened in the garden during the winter, seeing as the the ground was frozen. But now that the snow has melted and the plants are growing there is life (a lot of green)!

The crocuses came and went (lovely reminder that spring was here) and now the forthisia is in full bloom along with the gorgeous daffodils.

After the terrible ice storm (early December '08) we have TONS of debris and leaves to rack and pick up.

Today we planted a few raspberry bushes, yummy! Soon we will plant our flowers and vegetables. I've decided to plant a small garden for our bees. Bees pollinate our plants making our flowers and veggies so much stronger. We need to help the bees by providing them with plants that they love such as:

a. white boltonia
b. jupiter's beard
c. zagreb tickseed
d. catmint
e. shasta daisy
f. michaelmas daisy
g. siberian iris
h. snowdrop
i. blue jacket hyacinth
j. lily-flowered tulip
k. fortissimo daffodil

go and get your hands dirty - plant!

happy spring! happy almost may day! happy almost summer! and happy almost STRAWBERRY season!!
xoxo

End of the bloom

2008-10-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

I am quite amazed at the amount of growth and life we had in our garden this year. Most of the flowers began blooming in

late June - early July. It is now October 26th and today I picked the last colorful flower in our garden. Our flowers were beautiful, healthy and most of the plants survived a frost last week.

Pig Tale Girls are filling out a new form for a new grant from the Youth Venture group. We hope to be one of the 15 selected groups to be rewarded a 10,000 grant to pursue our ventures. We want to expand our garden into a berry farm.

In late August we planted 5 rows of blueberry plants, 5 rows of raspberry plants and 4 plum trees.

Soon we will lay out our garden plans for next spring!

yum

2008-09-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

Following this post I shall post many pictures of our garden, veggies, and fruit that we grew and picked this year.

Enjoy snaps of strawberries, blueberries, zinnias... and more!

Flowers and Seeds...

2008-07-10T06:03:00.000-07:00

We have a new split-rail fence. Along our fence we planted grape vines and peonies. Last weekend we planted about thirty brilliantly colored, charming, glorious flowers along the fence. The flowers are listed in the order they were planted in.

~ Delphinium- Glass Blue

~ Honey Suckle- Orange

~ Blue Hill Sage- Salvia Blue

~ Oenothera- 'Yellow River Sundrops'

~ Veronica- Purpleicious

~ Veronica- Pink

~ Artemisia- Silver Mound

~ Laura Summer Phlox- Purple

~ Coreopsis- Early Sunrise- Yellow

~ Bee Balm- 'Coral Reef' Pink

~ May Night Sage- Salvia- Purple

~ Sedum- 'Autumn Joy' Live Forever Hybrids, Pink/Red

~ Oenothera- 'Yellow River Sundrops'

~ Laura Summer Phlox- Purple

~ Sedum- 'Autumn Joy' Live Forever Hybrids, Pink/Red

~ Salvia- Purple

~ Tequila Sunrise Tickseed - Yellow

~ Tall Garden Phlox- Blue Paradise

~ Phlox- Red Magic

~ Blue Hill Sage- Salvia Blue

~ Honey Suckle- Orange

~ Honey Suckle- Yellow

~ Digitalis Purpurea- Foxglove- all four of these Foxglove plants are multi colored.

~ Digitalis Purpurea- Foxglove

~ In a row we planted- 9, Hydrangea- Blushing Bride

In our main flower garden... our first Aster bloomed yesterday! It is pink with a wild

Doctor Seuss stem.

Last year when we had the pigs during the summer, a local farm gave away all of their ''old''

produce. We fed it to the pigs who adored it. But this year... we now have at least four huge zucchini plants, five tomato plants and a few pepper plants. All because of the seeds from the veggies the pigs ate. I now know why farmers try and get ride of zucchini!

Growing

2008-06-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

Our plants before they were planted in the soft soil.

Youth Venture

2008-06-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received a phone call from Youth Venture. There is a summer program for all Youth Venture kids to go to in Washington D.C.

" Youth Venture is excited to announce the first-ever national Youth Venture Summit. The Summit will be an exciting and enlightening leadership experience, gathering young change makers from throughout the nation for three days of skill-building, peer exchange, and fun! "

This sounds quite interesting and I may go.

Our garden has sprung into sheer beauty. Each day I find our plants to be even more beautiful then the day before. My mom and I have picked 107 lb (so far... more to come!) of ruby red strawberries.

And it all began...

2008-06-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

In the cold winter of 2007 my sister, my parents and I decided that we ought to get a few pigs and let them roam around our large grassy field. By letting them dig and eat freely they would till our whole field, so when spring 2008 would come we would have a lovely field dug and fertilized at our ease and the pigs delight. This would be a very efficient, gas-saving-no- tractor-needed way of preparing your field for the spring.

My mom received a letter explaining that any teens with a business idea could write up a business plan and present it to a committee of Youth Venture , a foundation helping teens to begin a sustainable business. My sister and a few friends who were also interested in our idea at the time, named our group Pig Tales. I wrote up a very intriguing and interesting speech with a bit of help from my mom, and presented it to the committee. We were granted $1,000 to begin our pig fun.

That spring we sketched designs of the pig house and formed a plan. We built the pig house with lots of help from our dad in early spring. The pig house had four doors so it would be easy, during the year, to switch the pigs from one part of the field to an other, without moving the whole house. We would simply open a different door. We put up an electric fence to keep the pigs in the field. Pigs are very sweet and gentle animals. They are known for getting out of their pen and wandering around neighborhoods looking for... food!

We bought five little pigs in early June.

During the summer a local and very kind farm donated all of the ''aged'' vegetables from their farm stand. The vegetables looked brand new and quite delicious... especially to our ALWAYS hungry pigs. Along with the vegetables, grass and roots from our field and lots of compost from our house, we also fed them a small amount of grain... they spilled most of the grain out of the bucket we fed them in and after a while we ended up simply feeding them on the ground... hey! they are pigs after all. Also they were always thirsty. We got a free bath tub and loaded it with water so they would always have a drink.

They loved mud. We would let the garden hose run for a few minutes on really hot summer days giving them a warm mud bath, which they adored. Also they ran after each other making funny grunting noises. When we walked down to them each morning they would run in circles with glee and follow us along the fence; they knew food was on it's way.

During the summer it was fun to have the pigs. Once winter came it got quite tricky. Our hose froze from the cold of winter and so we had to carry buckets full of water down to the pigs, which was straining on the arm.

Our dear five pigs were scheduled to go to market in late November. A local farmer agreed to drive the pigs down to the slaughter house. He arrived and inspected the pigs remarking that our pigs were not fat enough! For two more months the growing piggy's played in the snow. It was mid January now and it was colder then ever. The pigs would be taken down to the slaughter house in four days. It was a sunny morning and I was preparing eggs for breakfast when my dad frantically ran into the house telling me to get outside... one of the pigs was walking up the drive way towards our house. All day we shoved and moaned at the pigs trying desperately to get them back in their pen. They were no longer afraid of the fence, and strong enough to knock it down. And all day they stayed put never leaving our property. The rest of the day we made a little wood framed box, and that kept them in until the sad day they left us.

We had a list of customers who were eager to get a hold of fresh grass fed pork. Everyone raved over the juicy meat, even the butcher said these were some of the best pigs he had seen in a while.

It is now June 2008 and we have a beautiful garden planted.