For Sale

The Helpful Gnome is breaking into sales this season. We anticipate selling at the market next year, but this year we planted extra to sell a bit out of the house. We're selling potatoes, catnip, and lemon basil. It's all organic and grown from organic seeds. Lemon basil, for those who have not tried it, is a very potent scented, flat leaf basil that smells like basil and lemon pepper.

The basil and catnip are dried. They are sold in $1 pouches, with a Gnome label. Here are pictures of the pouches:



For potatoes, currently, we have both All Blue and Sangre. All Blues have a dark blue/purple skin and light blue flesh. They retain color when cooked, so you can make purple mashed potatoes, purple french fries, etc. The Blues have a rougher skin with some brown, like a russet. It's not dirt, it's just the nature of the skin. The Sangre's have a thin, rosy pink skin and white flesh.

We're selling the potatoes for $5 a sack, which is approximately $2 a pound.






If you are interested in purchasing basil, catnip, or potatoes, email the Gnome at helpfulgnome.gmail.com

Potatoes and garden

So much to update I'm going to break this down into several posts in order to make them more organized. This post is for our garden, which is doing very well! We have corn that is most likely ready to eat (we're trying it tomorrow), a baby eggplant, very productive pepper plants (purple jalapenos, red chilies and sweet bananas will be pictured), and lots and lots of potatoes. We will be selling potatoes this season. Details on that will be emerging later.

Harvest #1

Blue potatoes, roasted and mashed. Green beans. Cucumbers. Making first batch of pickles this weekend.

Dia had surgery

Poor Dia already had surgery. We took her for a well visit to meet the vet and the vet aspirated these lumps on her head that we had been told were ingrown hairs. Well, the liquid pulled from the lumps was not a clear or even a pus but a dark brown sludge. It looked like dirty oil. The vet also noted the skin was lumpy and abnormal looking. She thinks best case scenario it's an old wound (maybe a bite) that got infected and wasn't treated. Worse case, of course, is some kind of tumor. We had it removed the next day. Poor Dia.



We also discovered she had an eye infection in both eyes (rather obvious, as her eyes were blood red and had green discharge), and tape worms and hook worms.

As you can imagine, we're pretty pissed she was so neglected at a so-called "rescue".

She's been treated for the tape worm already, but we have to wait another two weeks to treat the hookworms. We also have to hold her down every twelve hours and smear goo in her eyes, which is particularly awesome when she's wet and we're in our work clothes.

In other news, we're working on getting the garden planted. Today we went to the Farmer's Market and bought starts. We planted lettuce, spinach, peas, beans, cucumbers, yellow cherry tomatoes, big pink tomatoes, better boy tomatoes, yellow peppers, red peppers, sweet bananas, chili peppers, corn, zucchini, eggplant, red potatoes, blue potatoes, and russet potatoes. We also bought some cool looking flowers to plant in the front.


Last weekend Roger finished the pallet compost bin.

Rain barrels and compost bin

We spent all weekend outside again today. I dug trenches for the potatoes, which will probably be arriving this week. I thought I was going to die. Unfortunately, we don't have a mechanical piece of equipment that will dig trenches and create mounds
of dirt.


Roger built a compost bin out of pallets.



We also put a rain barrel under one of the gutters. In order to do this, we had to take a saw and cut the gutter and route it into the barrel. There is an overflow tube so when the water reaches the top of the barrel it was run out of the barrel and into the gutter underground. And yes, Roger is polishing it. He cleans everything.



I had to put a netting over the top of the chickens... they are starting to try to fly out. Unfortunately, they're going to have to stay in the pool for another week. It's too cold and they're too young to go into the barn yet, even with the heat lamp. They're getting so big so fast! They're inhaling food... I can't keep the food containers full!


Roger also got on top of the barn and cleaned out the gutters. They've been overflowing when it rains, and holy cow now we know why. I would have taken a picture, but it's just a giant mound of black sludge, and you can use your imagination for that one.

Bushhogging, tilling, and straw

We hired a guy to come out and bushhog the field. After bushhogging the field, we were left with a field full of straw. We had a moment of brilliancy when we realized that we could use the straw as a deep litter method with the chickens and to mulch potatoes. So we began to rake the straw onto a tarp and haul it into the barn.


Over the weekend we also began the tilling project. We first put the tiller together, which was a huge undertaking. The we began tilling the first plot. We're going to have two plots; the typical garden plot and a plot for potatoes. The old guy watching me till is Bill our neighbor. He likes to come out and watch us work.