The other day on 5/16/12 I wrote a post about how we needed a larger capacity double oven for our cottage food business. Well, craigslist came through for us.

Now…I know the stoves to the left are not the prettiest stoves one could ever see, but what I like about them is that they are IDENTICAL!

I had been worried for a long time about how to get two identical yet every cheap stoves. It turns out that we’ll get two of these yellow babies for under $100.00.

Yes, less than $100 for both putrid yellow lovelies. LOL

The last thing in the world that I wanted was yellow appliances, and second to last was the coil electric stove top. We got both.

Since the ranges are ugly, but uniformly ugly, they will actually be a good fit for our kitchen. Strange right? I don’t like black appliances, nor do I like bisque or white, so yellow turned out to be a good alternative.

Each range is 30″ wide, giving me a total of eight burners and two full capacity ovens to work with. (that doesn’t include the glass stove top) Not too shabby!

We’ll be picking the ranges up tomorrow morning, and I hope to have Dom install them sometime in the next week or two.

Have you ever had that happen to you before? You needed something important, had an idea in your head of what that would be, and BAM! you get hit with an even more awesome offering? What I was thinking about was the paint job in my kitchen and how if we dismantled the double oven, I would need to repair the walls.

We had already spent hours upon hours repairing the walls in the kitchen when we took the top cabinets off the walls. I never thought our walls would ever look good again. But we did get them to finally look decent. The same was true for the double oven.

I came up with a solution for the nasty wall dilemma…cover it with bead board up to where we put shelves in.

I love creative solutions!

I found a photo of what I’m aiming for above the two ranges:

I love open shelf designs, and after I found the design to the right, I knew that was for us.

I have an ongoing battle in my brain about whether to keep the corbels and shelf the natural wood color, or to paint it white. I’ll know more clearly in a few days.

Since the shelf will be 12″ wide and 60″ long, it will require at least three corbels.

I also love the copper tubing used to create a place to hang utensils and fry pans, although we’ll probably go with a stainless steel rod instead.

When we take out the double oven, I’ll also lose my built in spice rack. At first I was saddened at the thought of it, and then I started looking for creative solutions to my spice storage problem.

When we have a cottage kitchen, it will be required by law to keep all baking goods for the business separate from our personal food supply. Since we’ll be purchasing all our herbs, spices, and baking goods in bulk, it will require larger space than just little shaker jars.

Pictured below, I found a great solution. Originally we were going to create a place to take shoes off in the foyer, but now we’ll be turning that area into our business pantry.

Even though we won’t be installing cabinets in the new area, I love the open spice rack shelving and acrylic drawers for storing bulk baking items.

We’ll probably do wire rack shelving in this area all the way up to the ceiling and down to the floor.

We need the space to accommodate all our baking pans, cookware, packaging materials, etc.

Its a good start.

We received word that all our paperwork for our company has been filed with the state, we now have a tax ID number and we should receive all our official documents within the next week.

At this time last year:

We had broccoli growing in our experimental tiny kitchen garden.

As part of our kitchen revamp, we need bigger double ovens. Even though our double ovens are original to the house, and I love them, they are too small for a cottage kitchen.

The ovens are also quirky. Maybe that’s why I love them. The top oven runs about 50 degrees hotter than its supposed to, which leaves us with almost exclusively using the bottom oven.

Beyond the quirky temperament, the size is just too small.

Each oven is 24″ x 24″. When baking bread, we can only do one loaf at a time. Not quite conducive to a busy cottage kitchen!

I’ve found a few ovens on craigslist, but the prices are usually too high for us to afford.

To get double ovens over 27″ (27″ is still on the small size for us) can cost a lot of money.

We may need to get two regular electric full size ovens and put them side by side where the double oven and stainless steel shelves are.

I don’t want to do that since it will mean pulling the double ovens and the wood casing off the walls, messing up my paint job from last year. Not only that, but I’ll loose my spice rack built in to the right side of the oven.

I know we’ll figure it out, and find something creative…I just don’t want to reconfigure the whole kitchen. We’ve worked so hard to get it where it is, but as I’ve said before, “Our kitchen is a work in progress.”

On another note, I thought it would be great to end each posting with “At this time last year”, to see where we were and how far we’ve come.

At this time last year:

Behind Simone, can you see how small our fruit trees were? They were all barely four feet tall and now they stand well over eight feet. One of our pear trees reached over twelve feet tall this year.

Okay, in the photo above are two Granny Smith apples and one Elephant Heart plum. Below, I’ll show what the trees look like today.

Gina was painting a tree that now graces our garden.

Remember the first photo of Simone with the watering can? This is what the trees behind her look like as of this morning…you can use the white well tube as the marker in both photos:

Here is a shot of the Granny Smith apples and plum tree:

Mother’s Day was an amazing treat. On the menu for the day were a few overindulgent things. In the morning, my incredibly sexy husband made me duck eggs, poached in heavy cream and butter (pictured above).

Next, was the long all day process of cooking. I’ve been taking a very different approach to cooking, which for me, has been far more productive and pleasurable.

I’ve been following most of Thomas Keller’s recipes, and what his disciplines have done for me is to enjoy the process more than I ever have, take the time to be precise about time and temperature, prepare ahead of time those things that can be chilled, refrigerated or even frozen days before an actual meal.

Now, that may seem long and drawn out, but it isn’t. I made the stock for the French onion soup (my own recipe) two weeks in advance, and froze it. One week in advance, I made the large amount of caramelized onions that are essential in french onion soup and then froze it too. Three days before the soup was needed, I simply put the frozen stock into the fridge to thaw until needed.

We had a lot of things going on that day:

• French onion soup simmering throughout the day
• Foie gras au Torchon (made over a four day process)
• Pot roast brined in fresh herbs, salt and peppercorns (prepared over three days)
• Roasted acorn squash
• Smashed potatoes
• brown gravy
• Devil’s food cake made from scratch (absolutely to die for)

I was going to make brioche also for a few of the different dishes, but we no longer have a stand mixer. We’ll be ordering a Viking 7 qt Stand Mixer next month, but in the meantime, we just need to be creative. A few months ago, I kept reading about how the kitchen aid is no longer made by Hobart, and the motor of the kitchen aids are burning out prematurely. I didn’t want to burn out the motor of the kitchen aid on loan to us, so after talking with an urban homesteader who bakes more than anyone I’ve ever known, I asked her about her Viking Stand Mixer. She couldn’t get enough of it.

Even though I’m not crazy about the shape of the Viking, I do like that its a work horse. The only color I’d get however, is the stainless color.

I ordered foie gras a few weeks ago, and about 5 days ago it arrived. Foie gras is an enlarged fatty goose liver, that when prepared properly is an amazing, buttery, and almost too indulgent food.

I was on the fence about foie gras for a long time…okay, I vowed I’d never eat it due to the process of gavage, which to me looked painful and inhumane. I’ve since come to change my mind after having ducks myself.

There are advocates against foie gras that want to claim that the animals are tortured, mistreated, dirty and that their throats and gullets are splitting open due to the long tube inserted into the duck or goose throat to feed them. After seeing this one facility that anti-foie gras demonstrators use trick people into not trying it, I realized that I was deceived by celebrities and others on the anti-foie campaign.

In the side bar to the right, you’ll see a small square banner that says “Save the Foie.” I support small artisan farmers, especially foie gras farmers. I signed the petition against the ban that will put artisan foie gras farmers in California out of business this summer if no one speaks up.

I’m the last person to get political, but as far as foie gras is concerned, I’ll get political. If the foie industry in the United States begins to collapse (there are only three farms that produce foie gras in the United States), so will other small artisan farmers, like the farmer in Michigan who raises some amazing pigs for artisan charcuterie. If small operational artisan farmers continue to be bullied, it sets a precedent for other small farmers to also be bullied. I can’t have that…can you? This is America isn’t it?

Ducks and geese that are raised on artisan farms here in the United States, are humanely raised, fed three times a day and only spend the last four weeks to six weeks of their lives in the 24 sq ft pen, where they come into close contact with the person feeding them throughout the day.

Even though ducks are force fed with a long tube, I can tell you honestly that they aren’t being harmed. Here is a video about how the animals are fed and treated.

The whole day was beautiful with almost all my children here with me. The only one missing was Shoshie.

In the photo to the right, behind Noah is part of the revamp of our kitchen.

We had a small detour/bump in the road as far as having a commercial kitchen. We’ll have to move very slow in getting a commercial kitchen installed, and the large bread oven built.

Since New Mexico does have Cottage food laws, we’ll be converting all the possible space in the 400 sq ft area of kitchen/dining room, into a space with equipment, larger double ovens, and other things needed to make the area conducive to running our business from home.

Sorry, but I can’t do the challenge this week. Something is wrong with my hands which makes it difficult to type.

I need to go to the rheumatologist. 

Poor little seedlings. Poor, POOR, little seedlings…you never stood a chance.

I planted you, fed you, watered you, cared for you and looked over you since the day you woke up and now look at you.

You’ve been beaten up by the wind and now I fear the worst for you.

You did great when I put you outside under the shade and protection of the trees. It seemed that you were ready to transplant in just a few short days. But alas, your lives were cut short by the ravishing wind.

When the wind first started, I thought it would end quickly, but as it dessicated your tender little bodies, I knew there was nothing I could do. It was too late to take you in and shelter you from the storm.

I know I could blame myself, but I can’t. The high desert is a tricky place to grow. I took my chances and now I need to start over.

“I should’ve, could’ve and somehow” seem a mute point, for if I were to plant you, would I dig you up from your garden bed to protect you?

These are the perils of gardening in the high desert my sweet little seedlings. Rest in Peace.

I know I’ll be able to save a few seedlings, but not all of them. The tomatoes were hit the hardest. It wasn’t the cold that made them shrivel up like a prune, it was the wind that sucked the life out of them.

All I can do is baby them for awhile, and start over with new crops directly seeded.

We do have an extended growing season, but the sun, regardless of how cool it is outside is strong enough to burn new plants…even after hardening off, the wind- unforgiving.

For this reason alone, we haven’t pinned any hopes of making money off our crops. Starting over will mean waiting even longer for the fruits.

Not only were our seedlings decimated, but also our fruit trees. The wind had to be over 50 mph to make the fruit separate from the branches. Our apricot tree dropped all the fruit, save one. The peach trees lost a few and as far as I can tell, the pear trees still have their fruit.

We’re not done with the wind storms. Sometimes there are warnings, and other times they just come up upon us and ravish our garden and its children.

I am a bit disheartened, but I refuse to give up by sticking my head between my legs and kissing my ass good-bye.

Any seedling that has stood its ground during the wind storm will be planted.

On another note, the wind storm also has its affects on us and our home. Sand from the storm gets into every orifice, nook and cranny. It coats everything in the home in a layer of dust.

I chose to keep the windows and doors open during the storm because of a burnt bean incident that left our house smelling nasty. Candles kind of helped, but getting fresh air blasted into the house was the best way to rid it of the charred burnt bean smell.

Not too long ago I was cooking beans in an enamel cast iron dutch oven. As usual I left the beans on the stove to cook over night. Well, this time the beans burned in the night and by morning the whole house was saturated in a thick cloud of burnt bean smoke.

It got into everything! Clothing, shoes, hair, skin…EVERYTHING.

I’ll take sand in the house coating everything over the smell of burnt beans. Odors are hard to get rid of, but grit from outside sand is easy to clean.

For the most part the smell is gone…now comes the fun part of cleaning it all up.

I sometimes feel that our projects are never ending. There is so much to do here and not enough time, man power, energy or will. It’s easy to get caught up in all that needs to be done, and so forget that we are mere humans.

Anyone that works outside in the high desert knows the affects the intense sun can have on us. Being at a higher elevation, doing hard labor is draining and dehydrating.

If you’ve seen the classic funny movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, well, I’m referring to the scene where Clark has to cross the desert to find help for his family after a car accident.

We’re not in an accident, but tired and thirsty, and the growing season is just under way!

Over six hours were spent sheet mulching the garden beds yesterday, and I can tell you that today…I’m dreading going outside.

There are only a few beds left to lay, and another project will be complete, but then I think of all that still needs to be done:

• Weeding (insane weeds abound here)
• Lots of planting
• The pond
• The duck house
• The main chicken coop
• A Chicken tractor
• Finish repairing the greenhouse
• Build a business website
• Design our new logo
• Interior projects
• More tree planting
• Attempting a mass cutting project from our trees and other perennials to propagate more trees

And its only May. I feel crazy sometimes.

Until Dom gets all the water lines laid in the different gardens, it takes me about two hours to water. I’ve had to break up the watering schedule into different days since I can’t be outside watering everything each day. There are trees that are still becoming established and I need to water them each week and other things that I direct seeded that are just coming up.

My biggest issues is with the red ants. They display some of the most greedy tendencies I have ever witnessed. LOL

Yes, red ants are greedy, hoarding, ambitious little creatures who only take for themselves. Have you any idea how much seed I directly planted outside? Each day I go outside, I find seed being hauled away by these red devils!

I’m having a little war with them right now, and I’m determined to win (whine). All day long they take and give nothing except false hope and expectation of a great growing season. Then, nothing grows and I’m mystified for awhile. It finally dawned on me that these little buggers are stealing what we have and storing it away like some stingy old man.

Red ants are an agricultural nightmare! I will say one thing in the defense of ants, if there were ever a time when the world lacked seeds to grow food, just dig a little into the ant’s massive stores and collections, and you will eat like a king.

Today was an extremely long day. The sun has been intense, the labor intense, the weeding intense…geez! I’m exhausted.

While Noah watched Simone for us, Dom, Gina and I went to work sheet mulching. Okay, well, mostly it was Gina and Dom, since I was circulating from watering trees and seedlings, to weeding and also helping them with the garden beds.

As of today, eight long garden beds have been laid.

Tomorrow we have a lot to plant:

• 8 new crab apple trees for the chicken pasture
• 2 Sea Buckthorn
• 2 Elderberry
• 2 Lilac
• Lots and lots of huckleberries

We’ll also be setting out a bunch of tomato plants to harden off on the front porch. The nice thing about the front porch is that the sun is blazing on it for a few hours before the sun sets, which warms the bricks and then gently radiates heat through the night.

Below is what’s left of our compost:

The compost heap originally extended all the way out beyond the tarps onto the gravel. We’re trying to be sparing with the compost since we still have a lot more to plant.

Plant Something:

• Fennel
• Dill

Harvest Something: 55 eggs

Preserve Something: froze beef bone broth for use at a later date.

Waste Not: Fed the chickens egg shells and raw kitchen scraps

Want Not: Ordered 30 bales of straw to complete our garden beds and also for animal bedding

Eat the Food: Taco salad, fettuccine Alfredo (homemade alfredo sauce), lots of chicken, egg salad, pizza and hot wings.

Build Community Food Systems:

We officially formed our business as a Limited Liability Company and filed for our business licenses. We’ll be selling our eggs and other products very soon! The name of our company is Luna Hill LLC

Next is building our business website…its very exciting.

Skill Up: I’m currently learning how to build an e-commerce website. We also learned to make a new kick ass laundry detergent.

Organize: Dom and I have organized our new work schedules to include Friday-Saturday for the Sabbath. It’s something that we’ve been wanting to do for a long time now. His new schedule will allow him to be home every weekend, off from work at 2:30 Monday through Friday. We will also be organizing the produce we grow to donate 20% to food shelters and the needy.

A few days ago the sheet mulching process began in the northwest quadrant of the land. Sheet mulching is simply laying layers of organic materials which in the end builds a raised bed without the use of wood or a lot of compost/soil. Over time, the straw breaks down and the beds shrink, but not before turning the garden bed into black gold.

Sheet mulching is also known as lasagna gardening. No digging or double digging is necessary. The process is a bit time consuming but worth it. Each new growing season just add more compost and straw before planting. The reason it’s so time consuming is all the water that must be applied to the straw. Sheet mulching keeps moisture in the beds as well as keeping the temperature internally cool. In the high desert, I can’t tell you how quickly things dry out here.

Today we were able to get all the manure laid, which marks the area of each bed. All together in this quadrant, we have 860 square feet of growing space. I didn’t count all the walking paths in between though.

We ordered 30 bales of straw which should make all the raised beds over 6 inches high. I didn’t include the square feet of  three butterfly gardens that will also be located in that area, simply because they won’t be producing food…okay, well it will produce food for butterflies, bees and humming birds, but you get the point right?

When we get all the beds laid this weekend, I’ll post more photos.

Not too long ago after posting photos of our celery seedlings, a conversation was struck about growing celery.

A friend online told me of how I could grow celery from the stump of the discarded bottoms.

Intrigued by the amazing possibilities, I researched some links she gave me and last week started our own celery.

The photo to the left I took today. Its one week old and look at all that celery growing up.

I left my celery bottoms a little longer than others that are regrowing celery, and next I’ll be experimenting with shorter bottoms.

Half of the base is submerged in water, and when the celery has roots, you can plant it out in the garden.

How cool is that…right?!

Over this last week, the celery hasn’t been in direct sunlight, but instead just sat in the window.

I have two more packs of celery that I’ll be rooting also. If you’d like to try growing celery, I suggest you buy organic celery. Conventional grown celery has an insane amount of chemicals and pesticides in it.

Here are are a few more photos from the bottoms, and hopefully you’ll be able to see some of the new roots forming.