Little Bit Every Day

We only have a small garden this year. Eventually, we'd like to have the time and energy to plant more things and have a bigger harvest. But at the moment, small is good because it also means the harvest is small and manageable.

So every morning after I've let the chickens out and fed them, I have a walk around our little garden area and see what's ready to be picked.

Here's a recent sample: strawberries, asparagus, blackberries. I usually eat the strawberries for breakfast. The asparagus I collect for a few days until there's enough for a meal. And the blackberries get rinsed and put in the freezer.

BioPod

Lest you think everything we do here is a success, using the BioPod grub maker has really been a challenge this year.

After it's initial success, it's been difficult to get things going again this year. Once it warmed up I had hoped the grubs would return and I could just carry on. But when I added food scraps, the tub would get disturbed by an animal. I suspect it was our dog smelling the food and getting into it, but I can't be sure. The lid is tied down and brick on top to weigh it down. But that didn't seem to matter.

So I thought I'd clean it out and have a fresh start. I dumped all the composted scraps into our compost bin. I washed all the pieces and put a new base down. Then started adding the usual food scraps.

Day after day, I'd find that the tub had been disturbed and all the food scraps would be gone. Once the lid was pried open.

So, I'm giving this a rest for awhile.

Scorpion

It happened the day the guy came to cut hay. I was going in and out the front door to watch him from the porch and wasn't paying too much attention. I was looking where I was walking (remember the snakes?) and wasn't looking at the door.

My first thought was that the door knob had shocked me somehow. Then when I looked closer there was a scorpion crawling on the inside of the door. Just under the latch plate.

Thankfully the sting wasn't too strong but I certainly felt it. Like a pin prick or a bee sting. I quickly put a few drops of full strength lavender essential oil on it, and rubbed it in good. Then I wrapped an ice pack around my hand for the next hour or two. I'm not sure which helped more but the combination prevented my hand from swelling.