And we thought Summer would never come!

There are plum and pear trees planted. The garden is sprouting beans, peas, greens, tomatoes and peppers. Everything is in order for the best summer yet!

I finished the final rain barrel installation this morning and I am glad to say that, after a nice heavy day of rain, I've got about 220 gallons of rainwater waiting for me to use it.

I've begun work on the chicken coop. I will post some progress images soon. The main garden bed has been prepped and I've planted some popcorn as well as kale and other greens there as well.

I've got Nasturtium flowers growing on my edges and I even got my hands on a moon flower to help the local bats this year.

This is going to be a banner season!

It's finally time to plant

Just a quick update, as it is about 2:30 in the morning. I planted the first round of seedlings tonight. I had a Hydrofarm brand seed starting kit left over from last year and one of the principles in permaculture is "produce no waste". So instead of chucking the thing, I choose to make use of it. I put in 18 spanish onions seeds, 10 roma tomatoes, 14 Rutgers tomatoes, 18 brussel sprouts, 16 straight 8 cucumbers and 5 strawberries.

I picked a few of these based on length of time to maturity and the rest I just randomly selected. Tomatoes tend to survive transplanting better when they are large. I also found out a new method to plant my tomatoes this year, which may lead to larger yield. It is called "trench planting" and you can read more about it here. Basically, you lay the seedling flat into a trench to get a better root structure from the plant. I can't wait to try it out.

I have made significant progress in the way of chickens as well. I have the area where the coop/greenhouse will be placed leveled and prepped. I also dug the holes for the cement footings of the coop and I'm now ready to mix some concrete and get the posts anchored. I haven't gotten very far on the framework yet, but I'm still holding out hope to have the project done by the end of May.

My next step on the gardens is to get all 3 beds prepped when we have some warm weather. I was offered 2 plots at the GNG and I have my 102 sq ft holding in my back yard. I still have some work to do with the expansion behind the house, but it should be relatively simple considering I won't be building any new raised beds, but will be transferring the ones already built to the additional spaces. The beds at the GNG seem to be in relatively decent shape and I was able to get 2 next to each other. My only issue there is that my bed spaces run north and south of each other so I won't be building any trellises for pole beans or peas.

I realize now that I still have some seeds to purchase: peas, comfrey, herbs for the spiral...etc. I guess I better get on that. I got my potatoes in the mail a few days ago and realized I could have just gone and bought a 5 lb. bag at the grocer's. At least these are certified organic and I know that they haven't been riddled with pesticides and weed killers.

I will be sure to post a couple of pictures of the coop footings and other things as I go. I also hope to do a tutorial on both composting and double-digging garden beds in the near future on this blog. I might even venture into video this summer, who knows?!

New projects!

I have new pictures of the garden to add to the Picasa albums, but in the meantime I'll post a new project which I will soon be undertaking!

 Since the new child has been here, I've been attempting to keep everything maintained, but I'm getting to a point now where I can actually begin new things. I finished one of my lettuce boxes yesterday. I also drove a staple directly into my hand accidentally...yup.

My next small project (now that I have a router table) is going to be a shelf that also holds my bicycle. Here is the picture:

From Home Projects

This thing looks AWESOME. I'm still not sure how I am going to mount it so that it doesn't end up tearing half my wall down, but after I decide on a good anchoring system and an efficient place to mount it, I'm going to own one of these!

The garden turned out pretty good. I have a lot of work to do at the end of the season to prepare for next year, but for now things are really working out well.

We also bought a share of a CSA this season. The first drop off was today. Mostly just greens and a couple of beets, but this summer is going to rock with all the food I plan on making. 

My garden has already yielded a handful of pea pods and about 8 radishes. There are at least a dozen cucumbers already growing and about the same amount of roma tomatoes also on the vines. This should be a pretty decent year as long as the rains keep coming in the next few weeks. 

On a final note, I got the picture albums organized now so that it is easier to find all of the different projects and postings. More to come very soon!

Part Two: Going Vegan? Already One? There's an App for That!

So I downloaded some vegan-friendly iPhone apps recently. Technology being the friend that it is to us, I thought, "If my iPhone can function as a phone, computer and camera, why not take it a step further and let it help me pick my food choices?"

I narrowed my selections down to 16 from the 170 results I recieved when typing "vegan" into the App Store search bar. Part One of this series describes my criteria. Of the 16 I downloaded, I paid for 7 of them with a total bill coming to $14.77 after tax. This brought up a very valid question about how tax can be charged to a digital purchase, but I won't digress into that now.

For each app I will give a brief description as well as my thoughts about the nature of the program. I am also providing, as a reference only, the star rating each recieved from users in the App Store.

This is my list of the best apps in order from most to least useful:

1. Vegan YumYum Mobile (3.5 stars) - Obviously the fact that this app is linked to a very successful blog helps its chances of being useful. I found many of the recipes to be very appealing and the instructions are not complicated. One of the things I hate about vegan cookbooks is that some vegan cooks, especially the ones in hip Californian cities, tend to use unusual and sometimes strange ingredients that I am not always able to find, even in Ferndale. Vegan YumYum seems to have several recipes that use the normal kitchen items to make awesome food, like Pumpkin Whoopie Pies!
2. Happy Cow (5 stars) - A very close second (almost a tie for 1st) is the Happy Cow app. This website has always been helpful, but the app is even better. You can search using several different filters: zip code, GPS location, or address. Or you can search for vegan, vegetarian, or veg-friendly. It uses Google maps integrated into the app to display the results of your search and, as a result, you can select a restaurant or business and get address and phone number info as well as map location in the maps app so you can get directions. A great companion to the site.
3. 21-Day Vegan Kickstart (3.5 stars) -  This is a great vegan guide for day-to-day meals. Some of the recipes get a bit reused, but for the most part there are plenty of options and they are mostly simple recipes. After the first time you open the app, it begins the dietary program. You can't skip ahead to future meals, but you can see the progress you've already made. I am excited to try out the vegan rice pudding and the "facon bacon" looks good too. This app's primary purpose is lost to me but the recipes will be an excellent addition to my library of cookbooks.

A couple of other apps that I liked were Veg Quotes (5 stars), an inspirational app that provides famous quotes about an animal-product-free existence; Vegan Xpress (3.5 stars), a vegan shopping and menu guide; and Veggie Phrases (3.5 stars), a travel guide that translates phrases into different languages for eating vegan in different countries.

I also liked the Whole Foods recipe app (3.5 stars), despite the fact that it occasionally crashed and it seems like a marketing tool for the chain.

In the conclusion to this series, I will provide my rating for the worst three apps I tested. Stay tuned!

Part One: Going Vegan? Already One? There's an App for That!

First I will lay out the back story and the rules for this idea. To avoid making this post too long, I am splitting this experiment into several parts. I recently posted a blog entry about vegan Halloween candy and received many comments. A commenter mentioned that they would like to see a blog entry about the app that tells a person what is and isn't vegan. So I took the challenge and got on my iPhone.

I should warn anyone who hasn't already done this that just typing the word "vegan" into the search bar in the app store gets you 170 results. Many of the apps that come up after typing "vegan" are not even relevant to the subject, but isn't that true of many things you search for in the app store?

My rules were simple. I only looked at apps that seemed the most useful at a glance. I would gloss the description or base my decision solely off the title. I did not look at ratings or the number of stars an app received since I would be rating them myself. I went down the list until I got to a place where very few of the apps had anything to do with my intended goal.

Orcish Librarian was the first app that hinted I'd gone too far. As soon as I saw the title Animal Kill Counter, I quit looking.

Here are a couple of statistics and factoids that I found in my search:

• Ten of the first 25 apps are vegan/vegetarian recipe apps.
• Five of the first 25 apps are vegan/vegetarian restaurant finders.
• PETA has an app that pushes their ridiculous agenda right to your iPhone every day!
• There are three apps under the vegan search that run $9.99. The most I paid was $3.99 for Food Additives 2, one of the apps I was originally looking for.
• One of my favorite vegan cookbooks is for sale in its entirety for only $7.99.

My next installment will have my top rated apps and the final chapter of the trilogy will have the apps I found to be most useless or insulting to me as a vegan.

A new direction...

  I haven't done very well keeping up with this blog since the Summer ended. Hell, I didn't do that great of a job while the Summer was still here! I intend on rectifying this issue.

  Since I cannot garden in Michigan during the next 7 months, I will be updating with good and bad vegan recipes that I will be attempting during the Holidays as well as the rest of the Winter. I'm not set up to can anything quite yet, but I have been doing a bit of baking and even more cooking lately. I also started blogging for the Ferndale Patch website and my latest blog there dealt mainly with veganism and technology. I will post the three part series here following this update.

  I recently tried a new recipe from Vegan Yum Yum that turned out great! They were vegan pumpkin whoopie pies and, while I normally am skeptical of new vegan recipes, these were a breeze and they turned out exactly how they should have, delicious!

  I am adding the blog link to my favorites in the side bar, so go to the source for the recipe. Just know that I fully endorse it! Here is a picture of how mine came out:

From Food I Made

  I also uploaded a few other pictures of food I've recently made to the Food I Made album. I will include a recipe of my own soon!