Day 21: You say To-mah-to
21 Oct 2011 4 Comments
in 31 Days, Farm Fresh Foods, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
Now Kansas isn’t unique for being a place that one can grow a vegetable garden, but this city girl certainly wasn’t doing it in Los Angeles. Sure we had some fruit trees growing up, but up until the last few years I’ve never tilled the ground, planted seeds, watered and cared for the plants and picked a harvest.
This year was our first in the house with the enormous vegetable plot. We planted maybe a third of the plot with a variety of vegetables. We had mixed success: the lettuce thrived, but tasted terrible; the broccoli grew in September but was plagued with bugs; the peppers (save SPICY jalapenos) failed to grow; the cucumbers thrived for a few weeks and then died in the summer heat; and the tomato plants produced fairly late in the season. We just had our first frost this week, and I was forced to pick TONS of tomatoes before they were ready. I’m going to experiment with green tomato sauces and salsas later on this winter and we’re going to try and plant earlier and smarter next year.
For now, I’ll just be a little amazed that I can grow my own food and enjoy it.
Day 19: Little lambs eat ivy.
19 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in 31 Days, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
Growing up a city girl, I didn’t have a lot of occasion to see real live farm animals. Sure I went to a pre-school that had a few chickens, and I knew what the animals looked like, but until I moved to the Midwest I really didn’t have occasion to get up close and personal with them.
Of course my hobbies lead me to another set of animals, those with coats I can spin and knit! Take for example the alpaca at Wildcat Hollow:
Or perhaps the little lamb I met at The Harveyville Project:
And a special treat for today, a little video.
Photos taken July 2011 and April 2009.
Day 7: Farmland
07 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in 31 Days, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
One of the things that continues to surprise my West-coast mind is how in Kansas, just a few miles outside the city, long stretches of beautiful farmland are the norm. There is also a large part of Kansas that is wild, but it’s the farmland I find simply charming. Wes loves taking long rambling drives and just looking at farms and barns. He is particularly fascinated by abandoned structures and we’re always pulling over to take photographs.
The other thing I always notice is how blue the sky is. Maybe it’s the California smog that’s getting to me, or living among the high-rises, but there is so much beautiful blue sky here.
Photo taken in 2009 on one of our drives outside of Manhattan, Kansas.
Day 6: Bar-B-Q
06 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in 31 Days, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
You can’t live in Kansas City very long without hearing how it is THE place for Bar-B-Q! It’s also one of those things you want to avoid discussing at parties, just like politics and religion, because everyone in Kansas City has their own favorite BBQ and the competition is fierce.
There’s Arthur Bryant’s (where the claim to fame is the special orange BBQ sauce), Jack Stack (which boasts hickory-fired brick ovens and premium cuts of meat), Gates (where the ordering style is informal and it’s all about the meat), Oklahoma Joe’s (which boasts the “best sauce on the planet”), and BB’s Lawnside BBQ (where BBQ meets the blues) plus a variety of other smaller restaurants. There’s also the Kansas City Barbeque Society and the World Series of Barbecue at the American Royal.
Which is to say, Bar-B-Q is SERIOUS BIZNESS in Kansas City. SRS BZNS.
I confess (and risk public flogging) that Wes and I actually don’t care as much for the smoked meat KC style, and prefer the southern style spicy-sweet sauce and sweet corn muffins of Famous Dave’s which is actually a national chain.
Of course, if we’re looking to celebrate the KC heritage the place we really like is Snead’s which has been cooking up Bar-B-Q its original brick oven since 1956. But beyond the smoked meats, there are heart stopping favorites like fried okra and sweet potato fries.
Uh-oh…when’s lunch?
Photo taken October 2011, Snead’s Bar-B-Q, Belton, Missouri since 1956.
Day 3: Moo.
03 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in 31 Days, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
It wouldn’t be Kansas if there weren’t farmland, and it wouldn’t be farmland if there weren’t cows! This photo was taken a few years ago, when Kansas was new to me. While there are cows in California (just drive on up the I-5) I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite so close to them before. Mom regarded me with a bit of caution, but baby was all kinds of curious.
Just don’t ask me about the day I drove up the highway next to a truck full of pigs!
Photo taken April, 2008 near Tuttle Creek Lake.
Day 1: Me too! Me too!
01 Oct 2011 2 Comments
in 31 Days, A Picture's Worth 1000 Words, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
Several days ago my friend Kippiann told me about the 31 Days of Change project. I’ve been wracking my brain for the last few days for a way that I could play. Sure I could showcase my creative endeavors, but I sort of do that enough already. I toyed with the idea of doing 31 days of things I’m thankful for (given that the fall and Thanksgiving are around the corner), but it just didn’t feel right. Then I thought about the things I’ve been trying to do lately: take pictures, enjoy the beautiful weather outdoors, watch the fall colors and I had it. My 31 day challenge.
Before I moved to Kansas I had an idea of what I might find here. Not surprisingly, influenced by the Wizard of Oz, I thought Kansas would be flat and grey and boring. But it isn’t – it’s beautiful and green and vibrant. So I’m going to give you 31 days of photos of Kansas. Some are stereotypical, many aren’t. Some were taken over the last few years, some are taken now with my new camera as we enjoy the outdoors.
So welcome to 31 days of Kansas!
Photo shot: October 17, 2010. The Arboretum, Overland Park, Kansas
My green thumb.
27 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Farm Fresh Foods, Finding my Green Thumb, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
It’s amazing how life takes twists and turns that you never expect. If you ask anyone I was going to live, love and die in Los Angeles. I could never have foreseen moving to the Midwest with my sweetie, much less loving it here. I don’t know if we’ll stay forever, but then again I keep threatening that I’m never going to move house again.
One of the many things I never saw myself doing was starting a garden. Now don’t get me wrong – I have no use for flower beds and I still abhor getting dirty. But there’s something about growing my own food in the ground that tempts me. Tempts me enough that we planted part of the enormous raised bed that the previous occupants of our house left us.
It is to my great joy and frustration that our yarn is exceedingly fertile. Vegetables = good. Endless weeds and plants that I have to hoe/weed/pull/curse at? Less so.
But then there’s the lettuce:
And the beans:
And the cucumber invasion:
(and there you can see the part of the bed we didn’t plant that I’m still fighting with!)
And even though we started a little late, I’m hoping for tomatoes:
And maybe one day a strawberry patch:
I can’t take credit for it, but I’m super excited about our blackberries!
Now if only I could do something about the “artist” formerly known as the chicken yard:
(for reference, we tilled the chicken yard about 8 weeks ago – what you see is ONLY 8 weeks of growing!)
Thumper
28 May 2011 2 Comments
in Funny, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
Many of you know me well enough to know that I’m not really a pet person. That actually might be an understatement. A better statement might be that animals terrify me. We never had pets as children, save goldfish. When Wes and I met, we pretty much agreed that neither of us wanted the responsibility of a pet. We decided we weren’t even going to be swayed by our future children’s pleas for cute cuddly things. I bet you can see where this is going.
Tonight when I got home, Wes was standing out in the tallish grass by the small creek on our property. We haven’t been able to mow that area that well since it has been pretty wet and muddy in the recent spring weather. Apparently when he got home he took a perusal of the creek to see what was still too soggy to mow. He stopped when his foot landed less than 12 inches away from a baby rabbit. One that looked like this:
Yeah. He called me over, and we took a few photos of the little fella who was entirely too scared to move. Wes told me that mom had probably run off to draw whatever prey might have been out there away from the baby and would probably be back. We oohed and aahed a bit more and then headed into the house for dinner.
Except a few hours later I was still thinking about that baby rabbit. And about all the dogs and raccoons and possums and other things that troll around out here in the night time. And how little that baby was. So here I am spinning away on the spinning wheel and I say something like “you think that baby rabbit is ok?” Yeah. Uh-huh. Next thing I know I’m online looking up information about rescuing wild rabbits.
As it turns out our little guy was probably about 4-6 weeks old, old enough to live fairly independently from mom. It’s hard to tell based on the pictures, and he is pretty little, but he’s probably palm sized. His eyes and ears are open and he’s fairly alert. After consulting the Oracle (Google), we got a box with a towel, some dandelion greens (boy do we have enough of those!) and headed out. Poor little dude was still there.
This is where the story takes a twist. We both decided that we would take him in for the night, and look for a rehab shelter or for more permanent lodging tomorrow. But as Wes tried to grab him, he hopped off, through the creek, up the other bank and into the grass. Five hours in the same spot in the grass and then off he went. So of course I’m relieved, and a little wistful.
If you haven’t already, you can now have a good laugh at my expense. Vaya con dios little Thumper!
Burn
17 Apr 2011 1 Comment
in A Picture's Worth 1000 Words, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal
Living in the “country” is an experience unlike any other I have had in my life. For approximately 31 years of my life I was definitely a city girl. And in the city (or at least in a city like Los Angeles), you never do things like set a pile of brush on fire in your yard. Because within the city, and especially when it’s dry, you’re liable to set the whole neighborhood on fire.
So it always throws me for a loop when I see someone set a pile of brush on fire in their yard here.
Guess what we did tonight?
Buh-bye branches from the last windstorm and dried okra and tomato plants.
Please note the strategic hose placement.
What happens when you’re not looking…
16 Oct 2010 1 Comment
in Farm Fresh Foods, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal, Uncategorized
Corn grows in your chicken yarn (or the area formerly know as the chicken yard):
