Crafty Girl

I figured I would be sore from Friday’s workout, but I wasn’t really…or so I thought. This morning on the foam roller I realized my ass muscles were in one big knot. After some rolling the tension released and now my glutes are quite sore.

Saturday afternoon we put the little man in his mega-saucer in the shade and stacked up the wood Bill had cut and split during the week. We did about 3 face cords. If we get an outdoor wood furnace we will need quite a bit more to heat with wood exclusively. Bill cut up another 3 or 4 cord that needs to be split yet.

Saturday
2 hours stacking wood

Sunday
1 hour weeding garden
1 hour picking wild blueberries

This Morning
20 on the foam roller

Lunch
Bodyweight Warmup

Specific Warmup
Sumo Squat 8×40, 8×50
Assisted Chins 8×112lb assist, 8×100lbs assist

Workout
Sumo Squat 3×8x70
Eccentric Chins 6, 4, 4… on the 4s I added 4 assisted chins to each set

DB Stepups 3×8x20
Cable Lateral Raise 8×15, 6×15, 6×15

Last night for dinner we had chicken that Bill smoked in the smoker and we were supposed to have garlic scapes. We’ve never had garlic scapes before, but last fall we planted some Spanish Roja hardneck garlic and one of the features is these long stemmed flowers that you want to cut off to let the energy go to the bulb. They are edible and were described as a cross between garlic and asparagus. Lets just say we went without a vegetable with dinner last night. They would probably be delicious in a stir fry, but sautéed by them selves they pretty much tasted like raw garlic. I ate two and they made me kinda nauseous.

My son’s six month well baby visit is today so I’ll be leaving work early. For that reason I went to the gym early this morning. I got to work about a 1/2 hour early and will be working through my lunch hour.

Wednesday’s interval training didn’t seen as hard on the recumbent bike. The upright bikes in my gym are broken (can’t increase the resistance). So today I did bodyweight circuits instead. Also, I was kind of in a hurry cause I wanted to get to work early. Wow, they really kicked my ass! I really could have done another circuit, but like I said, I was in a hurry. Definitely more interesting than the bike!

Yesterday Morning
TT Ab work
10 minutes stretching

Yesterday Lunch
3 mile run

This Morning
Romanian Deadlift 8×55, 8×75, 3×8x90
DB Flat Bench Press 8×20, 8×25, 8×30, 8×35, 8×40…Let me explain here. I can bench more than I can comfortably lift up off the floor so I thought I’d use this Cybex Advance Bench thingy. It takes plates but moves (supposedly) like dumbells. I pretty much hated it. It felt like it forced me into a bad movement pattern. I won’t be using it again.

DB Row 3×8x36.25
Elevated Pushups 3×8 each side

Bodyweight Intervals
12 One arm kettlebell swings (R & L)
12 Bodyweight rows…knees bent
12 split squats (R & L)
12 Swiss ball crunches

Repeated 3 times with a one minute rest in between.

Saturday we took the little man over to his Grandmas for a couple of hours. The resulting crying fit indicates that we need to do this more often so he is not so freaked out when we leave him with someone.

Sunday I did some gardening. I put Sam in the stroller and weeded the garlic bed. I’ve totally neglected it this year and it shows. The resulting harvest may be less than optimal. Later in the afternoon I did the same thing in the back veggie garden. Again, we’re not giving it our all this year and it shows. Bill said yesterday that he thought some people couldn’t grow things. I told him bullshit. Some people just put more work into it than us. And really, that’s what it is. We’ve been slacking.

On the plus side, the strawberries are ripening. Yum. Bill ate all the ripe ones yesterday, but I’m gonna beat him out there tonight.

Saturday Morning
TT Core workout B

Lunch Today
Bodyweight Warmup

Specific Warmup
Lat pull down 8×50, 8×60
Sumo Squat 8×35, 8×45

Workout
Eccentric Chins 3×5 Assisted Chins 2×3
Sumo Squat 3×8x65 (Go heavier next time)

Cable Lateral Raise 3×8x10
DB Stepups 3×8x16.5

6 60/60 Intervals on the Elliptical 20 Min Total

Wednesday morning it got so cold it frosted here in Northern Michigan. I didn’t pay sufficient attention to the weather reports and we lost all our tomato plants again. I’m not replanting. At this point, I can buy a couple of bushels of tomatoes at the farm market and it will cost me less money. Now, if I had started the plants from seed, I wouldn’t be out so much money. But having a newborn kinda sucks up a lot of free time and we didn’t get to it this year.

OK, I might still plant a few. At least some cherry tomatoes for salads. Oh, and those fancy yellow pears, those are so good too!

The next day it reached 90 degrees. I guess that’s what they mean by extreme weather patterns. Needless to say, the dramatic temperature change resulted in some VERY high winds. The thunderstorm that came in was very powerful and we were with out power for 16 hours.

Bill was funny. He was getting all upset about how somebody needed to get the power fixed soon. Then he realized that he spends a significant amount of time an energy on being “prepared”. Prepared for emergencies, prepared for confrontation, etc. So instead of being upset he started planning what we could do to lessen the impact of the next power outage. One thing for sure, we need a water collection system to catch rain water. If we had lots of livestock we might have been SOL on the water front. We don’t right now, just chickens. But pretty soon we’re going to get calves again. We went and looked at them last Sunday and should get them any day.

Saturday we put most of the garden in. We planted
20 tomato plants of varying types
16 jalapeños
2 purple bell peppers
2 rows of beans (wax beans, green beans, and an heirloom variety called Black Valentine)
1 hill of watermelon (3 plants)
3 hills of pumpkins (Snack Jack hull-less variety)
12 cabbages (9 green, 3 red)
Of course, I didn’t check the weather. Luckily, Bill’s dad called and told us that it was supposed to get down to 25 that night. Bill covered everything up in the early evening but it look like we still lost about 30% of the tomatoes. We did put the garden in about 2 weeks early, but it has been so warm!

Last year we planted a lot more variety of things, but less of each. For instance, we only planted 9 tomato plants which didn’t really produce enough at any one time to make a canner full of tomatoes. The cauliflower never produced and while the broccoli did, it took up a lot of space for what amounted to one meal of broccoli for each plant. This year I would have liked to plant some brussels sprouts, but we didn’t get around to starting anything from seed (due to having a new baby) and the none of the nurseries had any this year. I hope the pumpkins produce. They have quite a long growing season and I would have normally started them indoors, but I’m crossing my fingers because they do OK in colder weather.

We planted a spicy lettuce mix, a sweet lettuce mix and some basil Tuesday evening. I finally got the pumkin seeds and will be starting them indoors this weekend. We buy a huge box of spring mix every week, so this should be a nice money saver.

Now I just need one of those salad spinners to wash everything. Last year I rinsed the greens several times, but we still ended up with sand in our food a couple of times.

So, last year, as I mentioned, we had to break the sod for the garden. We put all that sod in the compost pile. Um, not such a good idea. We had two huge piles, but the sod and dirt really slowed down the compost action. You would think that dirt would be good for compost. Evidently not. The piles did reduce in size so Bill put everything in one big pile. Now we need to start a new one with all the kitchen scraps we saved over the winter and the chicken litter.

Today I order the only seeds I’m planning on ordering this year. And they’re a hybrid. Not only that, I think they are manufactured by Monsanto. I ordered Snack Jack Pumpkin Seeds. We eat a ton of pumpkin seeds and the Snack Jack makes hulless seeds. There are a couple of heirloom varieties of hulless pumpkin seeds, but every supplier I checked was out of stock or wasn’t carrying them this year. I really hate Monsanto. Now I’m beating myself up for ordering the seeds. Damn you Fedco for telling me you weren’t going to have any Lady Godiva seeds this year, then getting them in but selling them out before I got some.

The garlic we planted last fall is sprouting. We planted Inchelium Red, a softneck, from bulbs we saved from the summer harvest and Spanish Roja, a hardneck that we bought from The Garlic Store. We got the Inchelium Red from them too, just two years ago. Good company! We’ve been eating the Inchelium Red over the winter and it’s really tasty. It’s not red though.

We also planted some plain old garlic from the grocery store.

Last year we hand dug our garden plot because I read that a rototiller would compact the subsoil. We broke the sod and dug 9 3′x15′ beds. This year we took the easy route and borrowed a rototiller. Wow. What took about 20 hours last year took about 3 with the tiller. We have a lot less time now a days so I’m not going to beat myself up over this. The fact that we are even putting in a vegetable garden is enough.

So, we inspected the asparagus patch and the strawberry patch we planted last year and things. The strawberry plants look fine. I can’t say the same for the asparagus. Hopefully we didn’t destroy it through mismanagement.

I think we’ll plant some fancy lettuces and spinach this week. Yumo.

We’re planning our first BIG garden this year and intend to start everything from seed. To that end I’ve purchased seeds! I bought from Seeds of Change and Seed Savers. Seeds of Change was out of stock on a lot of items. Guess I should have ordered earlier, but up here the last frost date is at the end of May. Of course with the exceptionally mild winter we’ve had it might be quite a bit earlier this year.

Here’s what we’ve ordered so far:

Bean, Cherokee Trail of Tears
Bean, Empress
Broccoli, Nutri-Bud
Broccoli, Waltham
Brussel Sprout, Long Island Improved
Cabbage, Red Drumhead
Cauliflower, Early Snowball
Cucumber, Northern Pickling
Flower, Grandiflora Mixture Sweet Pea
Herb, Basil, Genovese Sweet
Herb, Chives
Herb, Cilantro
Herb, Cumin
Herb, Dill, Mammoth
Herbs, Chamomile, German
Leek, Winter Giant
Onion, Newburg
Pea, Snow, Sugar Pod
Pepper, King of the North
Popcorn, Tom Thumb
Potato, Red Gold
Swiss Chard, Rhubarb Chard
Tomato, Amish Paste
Tomato, Cherry Roma
Turnip, Purple Top White Globe
Watermelon, Small Shining Light

I still need to get carrots, lettuces, more greens and peppers. I also plan on getting some asparagus crowns (I think that’s what they are called). I think I might get those from Johnny’s Selected Seed.