Won Won Ranch

09/21/2020

The heavy smoke lifted, and fall was inarguably upon us. Fires are still raging across Oregon, and the risk of new fires is far from gone. The devastation to our region is chilling. Friends and family have been uprooted and forced to start over. This is the season of change...
We are enormously grateful to still be safe. We are also humbled and way more aware and respectful of the place we live. Seeing live flames from our driveway gave me a new kind of fear, and I intend to not get complacent.
To our community, I'd still like to offer whatever support I can give- whether it's sharing our resources or providing direction for other resources, nothing is too big or small to ask.
Again we are grateful. One of the thoughts in the heat of our threat was the potential devastation to our wildlife, but today they are safe as well ❣️🍂 🌾

09/05/2020

Our friends are continiously providing farm and garden education 💞

Seth and I have our first house yam in the garden this year! It started to flower over a week ago and the vines are starting to look sad, so I think we're close to harvest 😱

We actually have a new variety sprouting in our kitchen now- I had no idea about slips! Will be trying this next for sure!!

https://www.facebook.com/303709150220216/posts/695622181028909/

As promised, the written guide to growing a sweet potato as a houseplant to later plant in the garden.

Feel free to share with your friends!

08/26/2020

This is why we really put up our camera! We had been finding weird poops all over the drive and we needed to know what the heck 😂
We've seen this fox come through the property a couple times, and our neighbor did say it was probably the vixen that has litters here every year, but I was still floored seeing these videos 🤯 Seeing the one fox spit some curse words at the cat was neat enough, but then how eerie with all those glowing eyes in the background. Luckily I watched the video for the first time in the daylight 😂
We also knew about the skunk, who is bunking down in our neglected bunker. He's been named Adolf thanks to the random Hi**er photo left in our bunker from previous owners lol
In any case, seems like all everyone wants is some water! I'm perfectly happy with that, so long as they don't start getting too interested in the coop!
(Also, I have a huge affinity for foxes, and am overjoyed that they use our property as a throughway for their nightly goings-on ❤️🦊)

08/26/2020

Well this is a fairly hastily put together video primarily as a precursor for the next video! We've been putting up our motion sensor camera and capturing bits of fun here and there.
It's super neat to see the different animals in the day vs the night. Here in the day we have our own animals, plus some birds, pesky squirrels, and quite a few deer! And that's just what's been caught on camera in the last couple days, because there's definitely more!

08/20/2020

I've lived in rural Oregon all my almost 30 years and have never actually seen a rattlesnake in the wild. Just 30 minutes ago I felt like the dogs were barking in a weird way and checked for deer, but they were focused on the ground.
My first sighting of a rattlesnake and it was IN MY DOG YARD 😫 I hadn't even seen it yet, just heard that rattle and set to putting the dogs and Saytan (who had been very interested) inside. Seth chopped it with the hoe. It was small and young, so more dangerous.
I really really REALLY hate killing wildlife, but this was too scary. Everyone seems to be fine, no bites. Thank goodness even the dogs know the danger of that rattle 🙏❤️

08/07/2020

I'm now convinced that Easter Egger chickens are not named for their variably colored eggs; rather, they're astutely named for constantly making you search for their eggs in new locations 😤😂
Speaking of Easter related topics, Eostre was very interested in me being in the hay barn 👀 🤣

08/01/2020

Our garden has so many w**ds 😂 Anywhere there isn't a healthy, happy plant we're nurturing, there are w**ds- even our walkways! We have such a huge garden space that we're only using a small percentage of this year, and our time just isn't being spent on those w**ds 🤷‍♀️
I am, however, finding them really fascinating. While some w**ds really have no business being in my business (I'm looking at you, star thistle), there are some really neat w**ds out there. Some produce pretty flowers. Some attract bees, or even monarchs (🤞). Some w**ds smell amazing when you're crashing through them. Some w**ds are food, or medicine. I'm learning about them little by little, same as I'm learning about the animals (pleasant or pest) we have up here, too.
My app believes this particular w**d is in the same family as clover, but I can't quite find a picture that looks exactly like it! Most of them are shorter, pink puffs, but every so often I find a cluster of rainbows 😍🌈 ❣️
**ds

07/25/2020

Well we waited probably a full week before breaking into one of those jars of pickled beets 😅🤷‍♀️ Let me just say, we had little to expect from them, but 🤯🤯🤯 They were perfect!!! It'll take some self control not to blast through our remaining 6 jars 😂
When you have some perfect brine, you can't just chuck it down the sink 😭 I happened to be testing the instapot method for hard boiling eggs (it worked amazingly) and we had the idea to leave a couple in the beet juice for pickled eggs!
(Plus I couldn't resist using my T-Rex mold for a fun effect 😜💞🦖 🥚)
Not only did these have a really cool look with the pink and yellow, they're soo tasty 🤤🤤 I had 4 in the jar, and will probably replace them a couple times before I feel like the juice is depleted.

07/24/2020

Recipe time!
We've got an abundance of kale right now and need new ways to use it! Thank you Jeanie for this great recipe 💞 This salad is easy to whip up, and has versatility for personal preference or for what you already have on hand!
~Summer Kale Salad~
1 bunch of dinosaur kale (or whatever your preference is)
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/3 cup dried currants, cherries or cranberries
1/3 cup slivered almonds, sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, peanuts, etc
3/4 cup chopped apple, pear, pomegranate tails or firm fruit of your choice
Dressing*:
1/2 to whole lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tsp honey
Salt and pepper to taste
Remove stems from kale and chop
In a large bowl, add kale, parmesan, dried fruit, nuts and fresh fruit.
In a separate bowl, add lemon juice, olive oil, honey and whisk*
Pour the dressing over the kale goodness and toss.
This salad is a perfect leftover or make ahead as it holds well.
Enjoy!
*after whisking I like to soak the dried fruit in the dressing to plump it a bit. If this is the case then just bump up your dressing ingredients a bit since the fruit will absorb some of it
Won Won tip! Add a little crumbled goat cheese for an added depth of flavor! 🐐 (the goats loved the kale stems, too 😘)

07/17/2020

A couple more pictures of those beautiful rainbow beets!

07/15/2020

We're having an upswing in produce 🥰 Today we decided we'll have to check on eveything almost daily to reduce anything going to spoil, getting too big, etc.
On Sunday we harvested all our beets! It was a fun experience because we had completely forgotten that we planted a rainbow variety pack 🌈😂 From ground to cans was only a couple hours; it was so fulfilling to finally start storing food- even if we're starting small!
I got quite a few beet pictures, I'll be sharing a few more 😉❤️

07/08/2020

I've been fairly transparent about how random and unplanned our garden has been this year. The excitement to put green in the ground continues now as excitment that it's still there and flourishing! Our fence trumps the deer! Woop!
During our earlier mini hadvest, though, we stumbled upon this very unexpectedly! We knew we had one pole bean mixed with out bush beans, but we thought we had planted all "green bean" style varieties. Wrong! This bean was huge and ugly and didn't look edible. We dug into it and found gorgeous red seeds!
Then everything became obvious at once. I found the left over seeds, which definitely looked like dried these guys, and the name of the bean is Scarlet Emperor- not only referring to its flowers I see!
So we grew food regardless, just not what we thought we were getting! I guess this plant is also often ornamental, and it is gorgeous 😊