Farm Girl Freak's Penny Pinching Garden

Okay, I am a penny pincher - always have been and always will be.

I do not like to spend money nor do I like to shop for extravagant things.  Not that there is anything wrong with people who do shop and spend money, it's just not something I enjoy doing.

When it came time to plant my garden this year, I wanted raised beds. Because over the past five years, planting directly into our clay-laden soil produced water-logged results for most of our vegetable plants.  This year will be different, I kept telling myself and I got the hubs to agree to make some planter boxes for a raised bed garden.

Now, if you want brand new wooden planter boxes or use four-by-four landscape timbers, it costs quite a bit. But, I wanted plastic frames.  I actually found a company that makes them ... for hundreds of dollars each.  The tightwad in me could not fathom that kind of money on something that was just going to get dirt thrown in it.

After relenting and comprising on the wooden version of a planter box, the price tag on ten frames would have been a mortgage payment ... back to square one.

While perusing some old white vinyl fencing that we had stacked in the barn, my husband came up with a brilliant idea. From that brainstorm, we went about building a scaled down model of a planter box made out of the white vinyl fence posts.  We thought it looked good and was sturdy enough, so we filled it with topsoil.

Then we got on a roll and made six regular-sized planter frames and then a double height frame for root vegetables.

This was the end result:

It has been a few weeks since we planted and we have had some torrential rains during that time. But, the plants are surviving and thriving in the raised beds.  Come to find out it only takes a few inches of soil above the flood plain to keep a plant from drowning. The corn plants really have taken off being in raised beds:

What's in your garden this year?  Do you have raised beds or a normal garden?  Do you re-purpose things on your farm?  Tell me all about it.

New Release Today - I.T. Geek to Farm Girl Freak

Well, the wait is over.  Today my latest book has been released for purchase on Amazon.

I.T. Geek to Farm Girl Freak: Leaving High Tech for Greener Pastures is a collection of personal essays from the view of an I.T. Geek who leaves Corporate America and decides to live on a 15-acre "fixer-upper" farmstead. 

These non-fiction tales are from actual events on the farm. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry.  But, all of them will leave you entertained.

 
Description:

S.A. Molteni has spent over thirty years in the Information Technology field working for various Fortune 500 companies.

During those years, she and her husband had always dreamed of living on a farm once they became retired from the rat race. Once the author's father unexpectedly passes away and her husband moves over three thousand miles to live in another state, her life becomes subject to a complete overhaul to weed out what is working and what is not in her day to day existence.

In the midst of dealing with an elderly, newly widowed mother and in-laws who also have health challenges, she leaves Corporate America to find greener pastures on a "fixer upper" fifteen acre farm located on a long dirt road in a rural part of northern Florida.

This collection of essays follows the author in her sometimes humorous transition from "I.T. Geek to Farm Girl Freak" and depicts the lessons that are learned along the way once farm animals become a large part of her life.

Two Steaks?

The hubs and I get home from our errands this morning and I start putting away the items we purchased while he goes to check on the barn and the animals.  I tell him I will be out to help him in a few minutes.

"No problem, take your time," he says.

I think I have time to use the potty and change out of my going-to-town clothes (which all of you fellow women farmers know are different than your on-the-farm-clothes), so I go to the bathroom then change.

Of course, I get distracted with emptying the garbage can in the bathroom and start rearranging things in the medicine closet.  You know, because I am taking my time ...

While in the bathroom for only a few minutes, I hear my husband come into the house and shout up the stairs to me.

He yells, "I have two steaks in my hands and I need your help, so don't dwaddle!"

Then I hear the kitchen door slam.

I wonder what the heck he is doing with the two steaks that we had planned to eat for dinner. But, figured something is not quite right about the way he said it, so I hurry and run down the stairs, getting dressed along the way.

I swing open the kitchen door that leads to the back patio to find my husband, not with two steaks in his hands, but two snakes in his hands!

A little background on this ... The garter snake that we had "relocated" last week apparently came back and brought his friend with him.  Both the snakes were found in the nest box of the duck cage, eating the duck eggs (again).  They had already eaten two of the four eggs that were in the nest (evidenced by the two egg-shaped bulges in both of their bellies). Each of them had an egg in their mouth as well and hubby took those eggs from them.  Needless to say, they were not happy campers.

Since hubby had one snake in each hand (holding them at the base of their necks to avoid getting bit), I gathered up a couple of cloth bags to put the snakes in. Instead of giving them to our neighbor like we did last week, we got in the truck and drove down a few miles to a vacant area of planted pines and released them.

On the way back home, I told him that I thought he had said steaks (not snakes) and I wondered why he was preparing the steaks for lunch instead of dinner.  He laughed and said he would grill up some snake to go with the steak if those two garter snakes come back and eat the duck eggs again.

I hope the two snakes find a new home ...

Farm Girl Freak's Crock-pot BBQ Beef

 Ingredients:

• 1 roast (3 to 4 pounds) cut into large chunks
• 24 oz. container of BBQ sauce (your choice)
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 2 Tablespoons of  Worcestershire sauce
• 2 Tablespoons of Dijon style mustard
• 1 Teaspoon onion powder
• 2 Teaspoons garlic powder
• Black pepper to taste
• A pinch of red pepper flakes (optional) 
• Hamburger buns

Directions:

1. Place meat chunks in a large crock-pot. 
2. Combine all of the other ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
3. Pour mixture over the meat chunks in the crock-pot.
4. Cook on low for 7 - 8 hours or on high for 3 - 6 hours until the meat easily breaks apart.  
5. Remove the meat when fully cooked and shred with two forks. 
6. Add it back to the sauce in the crock-pot and cook on high for an additional 30 minutes. 
7. Serve on hamburger buns. Enjoy!