There’s alot going on here at The RiverRest this spring. We’ve been busy getting the garden ready, preparing the soil and starting transplants. It seems like every year it gets bigger.

We had to find ways to keep the chickens out of the garden. All of the Bamboo that Charley and Tony cut and hauled here really came in handy. We used it to build a fence around the main garden and the Potato Patch. So Far So Good. We’ll be publishing our stick fence building experiences as soon as we get around to writing it. In the meantime, here’s some photos of our new bamboo fences.

Last year we built a primitive stick fence around the new Strawberry Patch. We used sticks, limbs and twigs from the woods. It lasted the Winter but was in need of some repairs so we decided to try something new with the bamboo.

Probably the most exciting thing to happen is with the chickens. Red, one of our hens, went broody. She started sitting on a few eggs so we jumped at the chance to let her hatch them.

I’ve got many things I want to tell you all about. Like about how our dog Pearl has become an egg retriever, making Dandelion Jelly and what to do with KnotWeed. So, please bear with me. I’ll get around tuit, soon, I promise!

©2009 Susan Hoke

Someone posted this question on a forum I visit. I started thinking of some of the things we do here on the River Rest that keeps trash out of the landfill.

The 3 R’s. REDUCE – REUSE – RECYCLE.

Reduce,reuse,recycle

Our county has a pretty good recycle program. They take the usual; newspaper,plastics,aluminum,glass and cardboard. They also take used motor oil and car batteries. We utilize this program as much as we can. The little things add up.
We not only recycle, we REUSE.
[Read more →]

Yesterday was my birthday, I rose early and ventured to my favorite trout stream and spent the morning basking in the beauty of the wilderness. I caught, and released many fish. I returned home in the early afternoon to find another egg in the hen house, that made three. So I decided to fix myself a birthday feast.

[Read more →]

Pickles Fermenting in Crock

Basement

07/22/08

Leave for 2 Weeks

08/05/08

Then Can

This is the note I wrote to myself & placed on the refrigerator. Yesterday I canned them. Fermenting makes a milder, tastier pickle than just canning with water,vinegar & spices.

Here’s how you do it [Read more →]

A dear friend of ours planted a butterfly garden outside her kitchen window. The flowers bloomed and the butterflies were her delight. She told everyone about her beautiful garden and the abundance of wonderful butterflies that it attracted. It was refreshing to see someone, who in her sixties, get so excited about something so simple.

One day my mother stopped by to pay our friend a visit. Immediately she noticed that the butterfly garden was gone, destroyed, she said it looked as if a tornado had touched down and left the flowers strewn about in heaps all over the ground. [Read more →]