The Greenhouse is Ready!!

After hours and hours of hard work by Paul (and Jerry!), our new greenhouse is ready for action!! We've planted peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, melons, spaghetti squash, acorn squash, zucchini, summer squash, and some herbs. We can no longer use rain as an excuse for not gardening!

SNIP - our latest project

Well....we haven't just been sitting around on our butts for the past six months. Well....maybe there was some of that. But really, we've been hard at work on our most recent project.....YES....GROWING OUR VERY OWN ALIEN BABY!!!! Queue scary music.....

AAAAHHHHH!!! As if we thought becoming parents wasn't scary enough, we end up with SKELETOR-IN-UTERO!! Luckily, baby SNIP (Seager-Neel In Progress, thanks to Marin) seems to have at least some human features as you can see by the much more reassuring picture below.

Judging by our recent blogging history, be on the lookout for our next post sometime in April, after SNIP decides to venture out into the real world. Ah, who knows....maybe we'll get inspired and do an update or two before then! :)

Uh....Happy March!

Well....it looks like my blogging has slowed down a little lately, to say the least.  :)  But that doesn't mean we haven't been up to some fun adventures!  Paul bought some cross country skiis and even used them twice!  And because it is nearing spring, we have planted some seeds and they look like they just might survive the great drought of 2009.  (An embarassing episode in bad plant parenting).  Paul built the boxes for the soil blocks and designed and built a cold frame for when they are ready to venture outdoors.  I even helped a little.  And I got to use some power tools.  It reminded me of 7th grade shop.  I can't believe they used to let 12 year olds run band saws.  Do they still do that anywhere????  Crazy.  Anyway...we've got some more seed babies and cold frames on the way and we're all pretty much looking forward to spring break.  Kendal is bringing the wee one up to Seattle soon so we are all excited to get to spend more time with her and Edie.  Maybe I'll even have some pictures for the next blog post, whenever that may be.  :)

Holiday Fun

Here is our Christmas tree!  We chopped it down from our backyard!  And here are some of the award-winning entries of the First Annual Seager-Neel Sort-of Christmas Tree Giveaway Holiday Party!  

Jerry won Best Beverage with his delicious homebrew AND 

he won best appetizer with his homemade red pepper jelly and 

brie combo.  I don't have a picture of either, so I'll include a picture of Jerry's spectacular artichoke dip instead.  Man that guy can cook!!!  

James & Keri won Best Holiday Attire hands down!  James will say that he won, but we all know that it was the collective effort that brought home the gold.  Get a load of Keri's advent calendar outfit!!  Those kids are outta control!

Ahhh...

the idyllic sugar-frosted cabin in the woods complete with fish pond AND garden!!  Moon and Wes took 

home the coveted best gingerbread house award.  Nice work, team! 

My sour grinch martinis didn't win any awards, but look at that layering!!!  Forget teaching...bartending, here I come!!!  Just kidding.  ;)

THANKSGIVING!!

We got to host our second Thanksgiving this weekend - the first one in our new house. I'm so thankful for so many things. The first one is for having such a helpful husband!! Paul typed out a cooking schedule and copied all the recipes and started brining the Turkey on Monday. Then he made stuffing and pumpkin pie and gravy and vacuumed the house on Tuesday and Wednesday. The only thing we had to do on Thursday was mash some potatoes and roast some veggies! And cook everything according to the schedule! What fun!!

We had a smaller crowd than expected - Jacqueline, Becca & Andrew flew down to sunny San Diego, and Kendal & Edith Emily are still in LA - and even though we miss them all dearly, we've been having quite a good time playing our new games (Bananagrams, Dominion & Agricola), eating lots of tasty leftovers, cuddling with the kitties, doing sudoku, crosswords, &"homework", taking walks (okay, A walk), watching movies & decorating for Christmas!

As you can see, Robby's girlfriend, Elizabeth is quite good with the kitties! Pepper especially loves to be carried around inside Elizabeth's zip-up fleece. I don't have a picture, but it's kind of similar to Mojo's picture with Dad at dinner. Pretty darn cute!

Hooray for relaxing family holiday weekends!!!!!!!

Processing Produce with the Pipsqueaks ;)

A few weekends ago Bill & Jac & Andrew & Becca came to visit and we picked up some peaches at the market from our good friends (well, sort of....) from DeVine Gardens, and then we went apple-picking at Sm'apples (since we don't have any nice huge old apple trees in our yard yet). So we spent all day making applesauce and apple cake and dried apples and canned peaches. Andrew was a pro at the apple peeler. We spent some time hunting for Patches out and around the farm, but to no avail. We had a good time hanging out with the fam though. :)

Getting Ready for Winter

The bees are ruthlessly excommunicating the drones. Only so many bees can survive through the winter on the honey they've made so far. The chickens have access to unlimited water now that Paul expanded their pen to include the rain-runoff-catcher-tub-thing that the previous owners installed. We gave in and bought a psuedo-tractor. It's a walk-behind kind of thing, not a sit-upon kind of thing, but it still TEARS IT UP!! So far we have a tiller attachment and a flail mower attachment, whatever that is. We (Paul) planted onions and garlic in the east garden beds and red clover for a cover crop in our newest bed right next to the house. Paul planted some willow tree babies and tore down some overgrown blackberries too. He's been busy!

We almost had another visitation: hot-air-balloon style this time.

PJ's Patches is Jammin!

We harvested our first blackberries of the season last week. Paul triple-juiced three bowl-fulls of berries while I took an extended trip to the store for no-sugar pectin and now we are seven pints of tart but tasty blackberry jam richer! There's quite a few more berries out there, so come on over and pick with us if you can!

Bees on the Move

The bees have begun their Incredible Journey. At one foot each day (on the days we remember, anyway) they should make it to their new sunnier spot in about 3 months according to Paul's precise measurements (see below). We picked blackberries AND blueberries today. The blackberries were ours, and the blueberries were from the Koskela berry farm right around the corner from us. After running the blackberries through our juicer three times, we were left with some delicious blackberry sauce for jam and some tasty blackberry seeds for the chickens. Speaking of which.....apparently Rosie is a rooster. She's the second one from the left - the big one with the comb on her head and the big tailfeathers. Oops. I guess that means we'll be able to make chicken babies ourselves! (Well...not exactly ourselves, but you know what I mean!) Patches says hello from the farm! :)

Weekend Fun

Our relations from down south came up to visit us this weekend. We of course did the Ferndale farmer's market once again, and saw the great Ferndale Pioneer Days Parade (well...half of it anyway). Then we ventured out to the coolest park structure ever in Lynden, stopping to taste some delicious fruit (and hazelnut) wines at Samson Estates Winery. Back at the ranch, we said hello to our horse neighbors and our people neighbors - we got to meet their chickens and their cows AND take home some TASTY eggs. We played a few games, hula-ed some hoops, read some stories, and captured each-other's flags and then it was time to send the urbanites back home to the big city. UPDATE: We also had LOADS of fun playing with our rent-a-dog, Brindzi, over the weekend. In fact, we had SO MUCH FUN, that we didn't even think of taking any pictures of all the FUN we were having. All we have is this one of Brindzi and Patches looking longingly outside. Next weekend, we'll be sure to get some better pics of the pup!

Fun with Berries

The better part of this lovely misty dewy Friday morning was spent in attack-mode. It was me vs. the blackberries. And let me tell you....it was viscious. There are a few more old apple trees to save from the twisted tangle of those thorny branches, but I think I'm done for today. On a better berry note, check out the raspberries I picked today!! Unfortunately, I cannot say they come from our little patch of heaven (yet!). They come from Together Gardens, a no spray u-pick farm out in the county. Only $1.50/lb!! Thanks to Adam & Erin for introducing us and to Patricia for growing such amazing berries (and not spraying them with icky chemicals!!) We're trying to stock up for winter. So far we have 11 quarts of raspberries (should be 16 after today's batch), 6 quarts of strawberries, and 3 pints of strawberry jam in the freezer. I guess we'll see if it's enough!

Break it Down

Paul takes a break from the farm to try out his hula-hooping skills, thanks to a recent hula hoop acquistion courtesy of the great hula-hoop maker of Bellingham, none other than our very own Aubri. You too can join in the fun! Aubri says making your own hula hoop is easy, and FUN too!!

Hooray for Hula Hooping!! :)