The Walden Effect: Homesteading Year 4. Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Giveaways

Everyone likes free stuff! Check out our plant and farm-related giveaways. Be sure to take note of ending dates --- most giveaways have ended.

Posts tagged giveaways:

Putting up the sail in a small sailboatCongratulations, Jessica and Bladerunner --- you are both giveaway winners!  Jessica won our most recent Egyptian onion giveaway, while Bladerunner won our previous giveawayDrop me an email with your mailing address and I'll put your goodies in the mail ASAP.

I get the feeling Bladerunner doesn't check our blog every day --- tsk, tsk --- and these onions need to get in the ground.  So, if I don't hear from Bladerunner by Thursday morning, I'll send all of the top bulbs to Jessica.  But don't despair --- the rest of your goodies will be waiting for you when you check in.

If anyone can think of a better way for me to get in touch with giveaway winners rather than hoping they'll read my announcement entry, I'd be glad to hear it.  I don't want them to have to leave their email addresses on the blog, and I also don't want to have to keep track of a slew of emails in my own inbox, so I'm a bit flummoxed about other solutions.  Perhaps you've seen a better method elsewhere in the blogosphere?

Quit your job and start to live with Microbusiness Independence.
Posted early Monday morning, August 30th, 2010 Tags: giveaways

Egyptian onions sprouting from dormant bottom bulbsSeveral people have asked me, "Do I have to pull up my Egyptian onions and replant them every year?"  I'm not surprised that they ask --- even though Egyptian onions are perennials, the tops die back for about a month at the peak of summer and the plants look a bit dead.  But as August draws to a close, new green shoots poke up from the bulbs, proving that the onions are still very much alive.

In the past, I've yanked out the bottom bulbs during the dormant month and replanted top bulbs in new beds.  But the bottom bulbs don't rot in the compost pile, so I ended up with a lot of onions.  This year, I'm letting the Egyptian onion beds alone to see if I can treat them like true perennials.  The only problem I foresee is overcrowding --- each bottom bulb has now split into several new bulbs.  Since I yank whole plants now and then to make Butternut Squash and Egyptian Onion Soup, hopefully this overcrowding won't be an issue.

As a final note, we sold all but about a hundred of our onions, and I saved the last ones for a quick giveaway.  Just leave a comment on this post before August 29 and I'll choose one lucky winner at random to receive the last of our onion top bulbs.

Our homemade chicken waterer makes backyard chickens as easy as no-work Egyptian onions.
Posted early Tuesday morning, August 24th, 2010 Tags: giveaways
Succession planting corn

Congratulations to Bladerunner, the winner of our most recent giveaway!  Bladerunner, drop me an email with your t-shirt size and we'll get your prizes out to you as soon as possible. 

Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word!  Don't despair if you didn't win --- we'll start up another giveaway before long.


Since this is a light post, I thought I'd throw in a photo I've been saving for a couple of weeks.  There's not really much to say about it, except that succession planting corn is the best way to sweeten dinners all summer long.  Sweet corn patch part two is about to hit the plate....

Our homemade chicken waterer is one of our giveaway prizes.
Posted early Monday morning, August 2nd, 2010 Tags: giveaways

Naughty Butternuts t-shirtOur blog clearly attracts the rabble --- people like me who open Mother Earth News and recoil, muttering, "But it's so mainstream!"  If an ordinary homesteading blog had offered t-shirts for sale, I suspect that people would have bought t-shirts.  But I should have known that if the Walden Effect tried to sell t-shirts, our readers would instead donate their own designs.

New t-shirts
Walden Effect Junkie put together this awesome image of Naughty Butternuts, and even built us a Zazzle store so that we could sell as many or as few t-shirts as we wanted without setting aside space in our miniscule trailer to stockpile inventory.  We followed her lead and made our own Walden Effect store so that you can browse all of our homesteading goodies in one place.

If there are any other think-outside-the-box types out there, I'd love it if you emailed me your own Walden Effect design.  We'll throw our favorites up on the Zazzle store and donate all of the proceeds to Mark's favorite charity --- Appalachian Community Fund.

Zimmy in front of his solar panelsNew giveaway
Meanwhile, I've decided we're long overdue for a giveaway, and again Walden Effect Junkie came to the rescue.  She told me that the best way to reach more readers is to get our friends to tell their friends about us.  So, to enter our giveaway, just tell a friend about our blog and then leave a comment on this post letting me know how many friends you've told.  You can email your friends, tell them in person, leave a comment on their blog, or recommend that they become our friend on Facebook.  You'll be entered into our contest once for every friend you tell!  The contest ends at midnight on July 31, and one lucky U.S. winner will receive a Walden Effect welcome pack --- our petroglyph t-shirt, 100 Egyptian onion top-bulbs, a 3 pack DIY chicken waterer kit, and our microbusiness ebook.  (Visit our store for details.)

A thousand thanks to Walden Effect Junkie for her words of wisdom and beautiful artwork!  And thanks to Zimmy who emailed me this great photo of his petroglyph t-shirt hard at work on his own homestead.

Posted early Wednesday morning, July 28th, 2010 Tags: giveaways

Chicken on a mound of compostI'm afraid our chicken pasture contest is a bit of a wash.  As the weeds grow taller and taller and our pudgy chickens become slower and slower, it's becoming clear that there will be no scratching the earth bare at this rate.  Our Dark Cornish chickens don't seem to be as avid foragers as I'd hoped they'd be, although they do like picking through the huge mound of weeds I keep wheelbarrowing into their pasture.

Dark Cornish cockerelWhat you all probably care about the most is --- who wins?!  I've decided to name Bethany our grand prize winner since she picked the furthest away date which is closest to infinity.  Bethany, drop me an email with your address and your onions and flowers will be in the mail next week.

The more scientific among you may be asking --- what now?  I still want to have the chickens scratch up some of the earth to expedite grain planting, so we're going to subdivide their current pasture in hopes that a smaller enclosure will actually get scratched bare.  Given the proximity of butchering day, we may wait to build more pastures until next year, and will be rethinking our broiler experiment --- maybe we'd be better off having the slow, fat broilers in tractors and our perky layers achieving self sufficiency on pasture?  Stay tuned for future experimentation!

Our chicks drink copious, clean water from their homemade chicken waterer.
Posted early Friday morning, May 14th, 2010 Tags: giveaways

Dark Cornish chickSo you lost your bet on the Kentucky Derby?  Don't despair --- we're holding a betting contest you're much more likely to win!  And this one is chicken related --- aren't chickens better than horses?

If you're interested, you can read about our plans for creating several rotational pastures for our broilers, complete with food-bearing perennials.  We'll be rotating our chickens through future pastures every couple of weeks so that they don't demolish the vegetation, but we want them to scratch this first pasture up pretty good so that we can sow it with grains for their winter diet.  When will the ground become bare enough to plant in?

Chickens on pasture

Post your guestimate date in the comments, and whoever is closest will win bee balm and Egyptian onions.  Both plants are hardy perennials that need next to no care and either attract bees and hummingbirds (the bee balm) or feed you for ten months out of the year (the Egyptian onion.)

Chicken pastureFor the scientific minded among you, here's some more data to help you choose the very best date.  Our chicken pasture is about 800 square feet and holds 25 birds who will be six weeks old on Monday, May 3.  They've been eating at the pasture since April 23, and have already started to scratch their most traveled spots bare.  On the other hand, they have been concentrating their attention on less than half of the area so far and haven't really found the far corner yet.  I've been adding wheelbarrow loads of weeds every few days, and am feeding them about a gallon of food a day.  (They're hungry little birds!)  All of the photos in this entry were taken Friday and are relatively representative of the pasture at this moment.  It's built around a big wild cherry that is starting to leaf out, so the vegetation is weeds that do well in partial shade, not grass.

The fine print: The ground will be considered bare enough when I randomly decide it's bare enough.  Only one guess per person, please!

Permaculture chicken operations go hand in hand with our homemade chicken waterer --- it never spills or fills with poop, so your chickens are happier and healthier.
Posted early Sunday morning, May 2nd, 2010 Tags: giveaways

Daddy told me that it looks fishy for him to win the giveaway, and one of our regular readers agreed. :-)  So the daffodils will go to whoever of the following top five randomly selected commenters emails me their mailing address first:

Jerry from SoapBoxTech
Shannon (who got two votes from the random number generator!)
Vester
Heather
Everett


Among the folks whose blogs I read, several people have made a New Year's resolution to post at least three sentences every day on their blogs.  I, on the other hand, have a hard time limiting myself to two posts a day. :-)  I didn't want to "waste" an entry on this, so here's a quick note that's not an entry, really!  (See, no picture!!)

Posted Monday afternoon, January 4th, 2010 Tags: giveaways

Wineberry in the snowA few quick book-keeping notes for the new year....

First of all, thank you to everyone who posted comments this month to enter our daffodil giveaway!  I've really enjoyed hearing all of your feedback and getting to know you better.  The grand prize winner is my father --- I swear it was random! :-)  We had a really good month selling automatic chicken waterers, so there were only about 20 daffodil bulbs left to give away.  I'm tossing in some poppy seeds to round his flower bed out.  Stay tuned for another giveaway soon!

On another vaguely chicken-related topic, I'm posting a long series about chicken tractors on our chicken blog this month.  Some of the posts you've already seen over here while others are totally new.  My goal is to really think through all of the chicken tractor designs we've used in the past so that our next tractor will be awesome.  I hope my musings will also help other folks design a cheap and effective tractor and get those hens out of the mud.  You can subscribe to the RSS feed of that blog just like this one --- I look forward to seeing some of you over there!

Finally, I was going to post a review of the best non-fiction books I'd read in 2009 over here, but instead decided to finally set myself up a Goodreads account.  If I stick to it, I plan to post all of my fiction and non-fiction book ratings over there (although I'll keep posting lunchtime series over here.)  Feel free to friend me and share your own books!

And have a great 2010!

Posted early Saturday morning, January 2nd, 2010 Tags: giveaways

DaffodilTime for another daffodil giveaway!  I said it best last year:


Daffodils are a fact of life here at Wetknee Farm, one of the few remants of the previous owner who left decades before we arrived.  When we first came to the farm, we discovered that daffodils had spread out from the old homeplace to cover nearly an acre of good garden ground.  I gave away hundreds, sold hundreds, and ended up transplanted another thousand or so out of the way. 
Now the garden is once again encroaching on my daffodil patch --- time for a daffodil giveaway


I don't know quite how many daffodil bulbs we'll be giving away.  We've got a couple of hundred at the moment, but we're also giving them away with our Avian Aqua Miser orders.  So, whatever's left come January 1 will go to our lucky winner.

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on any post by December 31.  I'll throw your name in the hat (multiple times if you make multiple comments) then will contact the winner through the blog.  (Be sure to check back on January 1 to see if you won!)  That way you have an incentive to leave us lots of comments.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Check out our ebook about how to start a microbusiness.
Posted early Thursday morning, December 3rd, 2009 Tags: giveaways

Automatic chicken watererEvery week, Mark and I mail off dozens of chicken waterers.  They seem to disappear into the void, since we seldom hear back from any of our customers.  We especially miss not getting to see how our waterers fit into other folks' lives.

In hopes of dredging some photos out of that void, we're holding a photo contest over on our automatic chicken waterer site.  If you bought one of our waterers, or just made our own waterer, we hope you'll wander over there and email us your photos.  To sweeten the pot, we're giving away three ready to go waterers to one grand prize winner.  Good luck!

Posted early Friday morning, September 4th, 2009 Tags: giveaways

Egyptian onion top bulbCongratulations, Allie!  You are our new Egyptian Onion winner!!  Drop me an email with your mailing address and we'll pop your top bulbs in the mail.

For everyone who didn't win --- don't worry, those onions produce like crazy.  There will be more to give away next year, and I already know we have surplus snow pea seeds and daffodil bulbs to give away soon.  It was great to hear from you all!

Posted early Tuesday morning, August 4th, 2009 Tags: giveaways

Egyptian onion top bulbsOur Egyptian onions made a lot more top bulbs this summer than I'd expected.  I've given them to every family member who will take them, shipped them out with our automatic chicken waterers, and mailed some to my loyal readers.  But we still have a few hundred top bulbs left, and I'd like them to go in the ground soon.

So it's time for Egyptian onion giveaway number 3!  This time, I'm going to mail out a lot of bulbs --- maybe a hundred or more, depending on what's left in the box.  To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on any post by August 3.  I'll throw your name in the hat (multiple times if you make multiple comments) then will contact the winner through the blog.  (Be sure to check back on August 4 to see if you won!)  That way you have an incentive to leave us lots of comments.  I look forward to hearing from you!


For those of you unfamiliar with Egyptian onions, these are some of my favorite garden plants.  The onions are perennials, and while you can eat the small bulbs most people grow them for the greens --- my CSA customers unanimously told me that even people who don't like green onions like these greens.  Read more about our Egyptian Onions (and how you can get some free by ordering 3 Avian Aqua Misers) here.

Posted late Monday afternoon, July 27th, 2009 Tags: giveaways

Egyptian OnionsI asked Strider to pick out our Egyptian Onion giveaway winner.  I spread everyone's names out on the sofa, and he went straight for Mandi's name and started to eat her up.  Congratulations, Mandi (as long as Strider doesn't get you!)  Please drop me an email with your mailing address and your Egyptian onions will be on their way to you shortly.

To everyone who didn't win --- stay tuned.  I may do another Egyptian Onion giveaway soon as long as local friends don't clean me out.  Thanks for playing!

Posted early Wednesday morning, July 1st, 2009 Tags: giveaways

Egyptian Onion bulbIt's time for a long overdue giveaway!  Our Egyptian Onions have produced top bulbs, far more than we can use ourselves and give away to our friends.  So we've decided to give away twenty top bulbs to one lucky reader.

For those of you unfamiliar with Egyptian onions, these are some of my favorite garden plants.  The onions are perennials, and while you can eat the small bulbs most people grow them for the greens --- my CSA customers unanimously told me that even people who don't like green onions like these greens.

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on any post by June 30.  I'll throw your name in the hat (multiple times if you make multiple posts) then will contact the winner through the blog in July.  (Be sure to check back on July 1 to see if you won!)  That way you have an incentive to leave us lots of comments.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Read more about our Egyptian Onions (and how you can get some free by ordering 3 Avian Aqua Misers) here.

Posted early Sunday morning, June 21st, 2009 Tags: giveaways

I never heard from Michelle, the winner of our spring giveaway.  So I've drawn another name out of the hat --- Maggie!  I know where you live, so no need to email.  Your goodies will be winging their way toward you shortly.

Posted early Monday morning, April 20th, 2009 Tags: giveaways

On a bookkeeping note, Michelle is the winner of our spring giveaway!  Michelle, drop me an email with your mailing address and I'll put your goodies in the mail to you ASAP!  I really appreciated hearing all of your comments, and I hope you'll keep commenting even though the giveaway is over.

Posted late Monday afternoon, April 13th, 2009 Tags: giveaways

King CornIt's been a while, so --- time for a giveaway!  We're passing on the Letters from the Hive book and King Corn* DVD that Gaiam so kindly sent us to review.  (I try to keep our bookshelves pared down to the bare minimum, so if we're not going to read or watch something a second time, on it goes to a new home.)

We're trying out a new giveaway method because we like to hear from our readers and we don't hear from you all enough.  To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on any post by April 13.  I'll throw your name in the hat (multiple times if you make multiple posts) then contact the winner through the blog in April.  That way you have an incentive to leave us lots of comments. :-)  I look forward to hearing from you!

Edited to add: Mark's decided to throw in some daffodil bulbs and a chamomile plant to get your flower/herb garden started too!

*The astute reader will notice that we never posted a review for King Corn.  We're at a bit of a loss because we didn't really like it, but some of our friends recommended it highly.  It takes quite an awesome movie to make it through my anti-documentary mentality, so don't
be turned off by my negative feedback here!

Posted at lunch time on Friday, March 13th, 2009 Tags: giveaways

tomatoThe winner of our indoors tomato plant giveaway is Linda from Texas.  Congratulations, Linda!  I hope your plant showers you with winter tomatoes. :-)



Posted late Sunday afternoon, January 11th, 2009 Tags: giveaways

TomatoIt's snowy and cold now as the flood waters begin to recede.  Time to perk us all up with a giveaway!  Daddy has made a cutting of his Red Cherry Flavorita F1 tomato, a hybrid variety very well suited for indoors life.  By the time our giveaway ends Saturday night, it should have some roots and be ready to be poked into a pot in its new home.

Growing tomatoes indoors in the winter is the holy grail for a lot of folks.  It's hard to leave behind the sweet, juiciness of real tomatoes when the summer sun fades.  But it's equally hard to keep winter tomatoes going since they require lots of sun.  This variety is much hardier, able to thrive under a growlight on a windowsill.  But be aware that like any tomato it will not set fruit if your temperatures fall below 50 F!  (That's probably not a problem for those of you who don't heat with wood. :-)

Anyhow, I'd love to hear from you all and perk me up on this cold winter's day!  Check out our giveaway guidelines and enter.  Thanks, Daddy, for taking a cutting for our winner!

Posted Wednesday afternoon, January 7th, 2009 Tags: giveaways

DIY Avian Aqua MiserFinally, the moment everyone's been waiting for --- time to select the winner of the Avian Aqua Miser Giveaway!  The winner is....Cara Blocker from Colorado!

We had 22 entries, which was an all-time high for us.  I wish I could send a free Avian Aqua Miser to everyone, but for those of you who didn't win and would still like to pamper your hens, you can buy chicken waterers, chicken nipples, or DIY chicken waterer kits over in our store. 

The photo to the left shows how you can make a waterer for your chickens out of any reused bottle using our do-it-yourself kit.  This is actually the way we originally envisioned the product working before we discovered that no one in our area recycles plastic and that we wanted the water reservoir to be bigger.

Thank you all for entering, and I'll look forward to hearing from those of you who make the plunge about how you like your Avian Aqua Miser!

Posted early Sunday morning, December 21st, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Avian Aqua Miser Please note: This giveaway ended in December, 2008.  Please go to our store if you'd like to buy a chicken waterer, chicken nipples, or do it yourself chicken waterer kit.

The day has finally come for us to announce and give away Mark's invention!  Introducing --- the Avian Aqua Miser!

Like most chicken owners, I used to moan and complain about the vagaries of watering hens in tractors.  Their waterers would tip and spill on uneven terrain and one of our hens died of heat exhaustion on a hot summer day as a result.  When the waterers didn't spill, it seemed like they got covered with poop within minutes of being refreshed --- ugh.

So Mark put on his thinking cap, and four or five incarnations later he's developed a product that I adore.  In our six hen tractor, half a gallon of water in our Avian Aqua Miser lasts for several days in cool weather and the hens seem to get a kick out of pecking at the nipple.  Clean, clear water for our chickens!

And time to share the joy with a giveaway!  Check out our usual giveaway guidelines (but note that this giveaway will end on Saturday, December 20 since I'm starting it so late in the week.)  In addition to an Avian Aqua Miser, we're going to throw in the e-books and video we developed to go along with it which are explained in our
store.  If you have chickens or think you want to get some, I highly recommend you enter this giveaway --- I can't live without our Avian Aqua Misers now!

Posted early Thursday morning, December 11th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Cushaw and catI'm ashamed by how lax I've been on giveaways over the last few weeks while finishing up my job.  To make up for lost time, I'm giving away masses of seeds --- enough to fill up your garden and your neighbor's too!

These seeds are leftovers from last year or the year before (but all are young enough that they should germinate fine.)  I've got lots of winter squashes (Howden and Jack-o-lite and Baby Bear Pumpkins, unnamed and Royal and Table Queen Acorn Squashes, and Cushaw (a local variety pictured here)) which I'm giving away because after tasting them all Mark and I decided butternut is the best of the best and plan to only grow it next year.  Read about the other varieties and enter our giveaway!

Posted Saturday afternoon, November 29th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Brandywine tomatoCongratulations to David from Louisianna for winning our tomato seed giveaway!  For those of you who didn't win --- I'll probably give away another set of tomato seeds in a few weeks, so don't give up hope.  Happy eating!

Posted early Sunday morning, November 16th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Brandywine tomato (or something like that)Since I quit my job, we're trying to be even more frugal for a while.  So I'm going to stick to giveaway items which are cheaper to mail --- nix those paw paws and bring on the seeds!

This week's giveaway is a starter set of our favorite tomato varieties.  The winner will get a few seeds each of our favorite tommy-toes (Crazy, Yellow Pear, and Blondkopfchen), early fruiting slicers (Stupice and Early Pick), romas (Martino's, Italian San Rodorta, Russian Roma, and Yellow Roma), and normal slicers (Ken's red, Dagma's perfection, San Francisco Fog, a tomato that is labelled as a Brandywine but isn't the right shape (but is our 2007 taste test winner!), and an unlabelled Green Zebra type.)
2007 tomato tasting

I know that many of you think it's difficult to start tomatoes from seed, but I've found that there's no need to mess with indoors starting, grow lights, and transplanting to graduated pots.  Instead, start your tomatoes in a cold frame like this lettuce bed about a month before your frost free date, ignore them for a few weeks, then transplant them to your garden beds.  It's easy and fun --- and you get to try amazingly delicious heirloom varieties like the ones I'll be sending you!

As usual, check out our giveaway guidelines and enter!

Posted Tuesday afternoon, November 11th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Steuben grapesCongratulations to Dennis from Florida for winning three grapevines!

We met Dennis through our blog last month, and were thrilled to learn that he and his wife would soon be moving up to our area to become our neighbors. 

Thank you to everyone who entered.  Stay tuned for another giveaway soon --- probably paw paw trees!





Posted Sunday evening, November 9th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Steuben grapesDid you ever want to start a vineyard?  I don't particularly want a vineyard, but I do want fruit of any and all sorts coming out my ears.  At $6 and up per plant, a vinyard doesn't really fit into our budget, though.  Luckily, there's a cheaper option.

Early this spring, one of Mark's friends gave us some vines he'd pruned out of his vineyard.  I did some reading and learned that grapes are easy to root from hardwood cuttings like these --- just cut dormant vines into pieces with four buds per piece in early spring, soak the cuttings in water for three days, poke them into the ground about a foot apart so that three of the buds are underground, and wait a while. 
Click here to read more (including a giveaway!)

Posted early Monday morning, November 3rd, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Wildcrafted pearsFirst, before I forget --- congratulations to Jill from Knoxville, the winner of our easy flower giveaway!  And thanks to everyone who entered too --- I always love to hear from you!  Now back to your regularly scheduled navel-gazing....

Lucy and I walked up the holler this morning to check out an old homestead just across the property line.  I'm terribly nosy and couldn't help myself from investigating the results of my neighbor's clearing operation up there --- he told me he was going to be opening up a bit of land to attract deer for his son (who hunts.)

True to his word, he'd rooted up a bunch of blackberries and sown grass over perhaps a half acre or acre.  As Lucy and I headed home, our curiosity satisfied, we nearly tripped over a  big pear at our feet.  My memory --- dubious at the best of times --- finally kicked into gear and reminded me that I'd seen a fruit tree blooming up here by the homestead this spring and had meant to come back and check on it.  Then I'd forgotten, of course.

Most of the pears had already fallen, but shaking the tree dislodged five more which thudded to the ground around us.  (I remembered, almost too late, that it's not such a bright idea to look up while shaking a fruit tree.)  The pears were sweet and gritty --- the old-fashioned kind you find growing around old homsteads in our area, pears which will mellow in the root cellar over the course of a few months into true ripeness.  I like them hard, though, so chomped my way through one, giving Lucy the core.

I love the idea of wildcrafting, but I like the taste of most cultivated fruits better.  Hunting down abandoned fruit trees by old homsteads is the best of both worlds!

Posted late Sunday morning, November 2nd, 2008 Tags: giveaways
Flower giveaway

In the last week, the world has turned gray --- time to start visualizing summer flowers!  For this week's giveaway, I've put together a packet of each of our easiest annual flowers --- Mexican sunflowers, marigolds, pink and white cosmos, zinnias, and fennel.  To plant them in the spring, just rake the soil a bit and toss the seeds on the ground, then ignore them until the beautiful blooms start attracting butterflies and beneficial insects.  (It's best to put the fennel, Mexican sunflowers, and cosmos where you want them to stay since they'll self-seed from year to year.)

So, same drill as always. 
Email me your name, email address, general location, and how you heard about this giveaway by Saturday night and we'll put your name in the hat.  The lucky winner will be announced on Sunday, and on Monday we'll mail out your flower seeds.  We promise not to do anything with your contact information except email you if you're the winner.  Good luck!

Posted Wednesday afternoon, October 29th, 2008 Tags: giveaways
Egyptian onionsCongratulations to Sherilyn in California for winning our Egyptian Onion giveaway!  I'm always intrigued to hear about other people's gardens, so was thrilled that Sherilyn gave me a rundown on her urban homestead:

We're here in So. Cal., land of earthquakes, wild fires and horrible train wrecks ~ we've survived them all. I have a small garden where I used to have the lawn. I plan to expand it and only buying edibles to plant in my front yard from now on. We also have snuck some ducklings on our property hoping for eggs in the spring.


I'm inspired by Sherilyn's hard work at rooting out the environmental catastrophe which is the American lawn!  Stay tuned for another giveaway soon....

Posted Sunday afternoon, October 26th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Praying mantis on an onionI know I promised you all flowers for the next giveaway.  But...I lied.

Well, actually, I realized that I had some spare Egyptian onion sets, and that they would have to go in the ground very soon if anyone was going to use them.  It seemed a shame to waste them, so this week's giveaway is 10 Egyptian onion sets --- the bottom bulbs rather than the top bulbs (which means they should bear a lot more greens a lot faster.)

For those of you unfamiliar with Egyptian onions, these are some of my favorite garden plants.  The onions are perennials, and while you can eat the small bulbs most people grow them for the greens --- my CSA customers unanimously told me that even people who don't like green onions like these greens.  If you play your cards right, you can have green onions just about all year, and after the first year the onions will produce little bulbs at the top of the plant, each of which can be planted and will turn into a new onion.  Soon you'll have starts to give away to your friends!

Egyptian onionEgyptian onions are the base of one of our favorite recipes --- Butternut Squash and Egyptian Onion Soup.  I cut them up with parsley to go in the world's best egg salad (which I need to add to the recipe page once I do some measuring.)  They're also a great addition to a winter salad --- basically, you can't go wrong with Egyptian Onions. 

So, same drill as always. 
Email me your name, email address, general location, and how you heard about this giveaway by Saturday night and we'll put your name in the hat.  The lucky winner will be announced on Sunday, and on Monday we'll mail out your onions.  Good luck!

Posted Monday evening, October 20th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

I almost forgot to pull a name out of the hat for our strawberry giveaway!  The lucky winner is ---

Allyson Green

Congratulations, Allyson! 

We only had six entries this time --- Mark tells me that not everyone likes strawberries, which astounds me. :-)  Anyway, I'll put together a package of assorted easy flower seeds soon for our next giveaway, which should draw all of you flower lovers back to the fold.  Thanks to everyone who entered!

Posted late Saturday evening, October 18th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

Honeoye StrawberriesI was thrilled by the number of you who dropped your name in the hat for last week's daffodil giveway!  Mark thought I should add a note before this week's giveaway, though --- just in case you're worried, we don't sell your contact information, and actually don't use it for anything except for emailing you if you're the winner.

With that out of the way, let's move on to this week's giveway --- strawberry sets!  Email me your name, email address, general location, and how you heard about this giveaway by Friday night and we'll put your name in the hat.  The lucky winner will be announced on Saturday, and on Monday we'll mail you 50 strawberry sets, enough to start a wonderful home strawberry operation.  Unfortunately, we can't send plants out of the U.S. (though I've been reading the stats about the people who visit our site and am excited to see so many international visitors.  Now I know where Moldova is! :-) )

Jewel strawberriesI won't know for sure the proportions I have of each variety until I dig them, but I'll include Honeoye Strawberries (the absolutely most delicious strawberry you'll ever taste), Jewel Strawberries (my CSA customers told me this was the most delicious strawberry they'd ever tasted, but that's only because I kept the Honeoyes for myself), and a few Ozark Beauty Strawberries.  Honeoye are early June strawberries, Jewel are later but still spring-bearing, and Ozark Beauties are ever-bearing.  The picture of the berries above is stolen off the internet because my strawberries very seldom even made it into the house.  (Poor Mark needs to learn to wake up earlier if he wants to get any strawberries....)

Although many people plant strawberries in the spring, fall planting has definite advantages as long as you get the plants out before your frost and give them a little care during the winter.  If they get well established this winter, you can eat the strawberries next spring rather than having to go through a heart-wrenching season of picking off blooms so that your strawberries will grow roots rather than set a few berries and then keel over.  Read more about planting fall strawberries...

Posted at lunch time on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 Tags: giveaways

I would like to thank everyone who entered our free raffle for 50 Daffodil bulbs. 

The lucky winner is Holly Dukes. I shot a 15 second video of the drawing you can see here.actual bloom

We still have some bulbs left and are willing to part with them while supplies last. You can get 20 shipped to you for 15 dollars, or for the more value minded out there we are offering 40 for 25 dollars. Go to our Native Plant website for more information.

Daffodil bulbs multiply very nicey when given the right conditions, and they keep popping up every year. They are deer and rodent resistant because all parts of the plant contain alkaloid chemicals that are very bitter and can be toxic if eaten.

Make sure to check back later in the week for another contest involving strawberry starts.

Posted Monday evening, October 6th, 2008 Tags: giveaways
Daffodil flowerWhile wheel-barrowing a load of cushaws into the house yesterday, I remembered a fall chore I'd completely forgotten --- digging daffodils.  Daffodils are a fact of life here at Wetknee Farm, one of the few remants of the previous owner who left decades before we arrived.  When we first came to the farm, we discovered that daffodils had spread out from the old homeplace to cover nearly an acre of good garden ground.  I gave away hundreds, sold hundreds, and ended up transplanted another thousand or so out of the way. 

Now the garden is once again encroaching on my daffodil patch --- time for a daffodil giveaway!  Drop me an email by clicking on the "Ask a Question" link at the top of the page by Sunday night, and on Monday morning Mark and I will draw a name out of the hat to be the lucky winner of 50 daffodil bulbs.  Be sure to mention the daffodils, your email address, where you live, and how you heard about us in your email. Be aware that we can't send the bulbs out of the U.S.

The picture below shows 20 of the bulbs --- as you can see, they are all sizes.  To read more about them (or buy some if you lose the giveaway), visit our native plants website.  Thanks for playing, and good luck!

Daffodil bulbs
Posted mid-morning Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 Tags: giveaways


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CHICKEN WATERER

Just saw your watering system today. Two weeks ago when I bought baby chicks I got a pet rodent watering hanging bottle. The chicks don't even know how to drink out of a dish(which was always a catastrophy of spilled water and wet bedding. Will really consider this for our layers.

Comment by SHIRLEY DUNN late Saturday night, June 28th, 2009
comment 2
Chickens seem to need the smaller nipples to really be able to drink. It took Mark a lot of experimentation to get it right! We're still thrilled by the waterers sitting in our tractors.
Comment by anna Sunday evening, June 28th, 2009



Homemade chicken waterer

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