Liveloula: Spring is in the air

Honesty (Judaspenning) our first flower in spring

Spring is in the air

Haha and I thought that I would write a weekly blog from this year on.
Well, there has to be room for improvement, no?
The wonderful weather we’ve had the last weeks is to blame for the delay.
Whenever the sun comes out, it feels likes spring instantly. It’s not just us that feel like that, the birds too started singing their spring songs, the big black bees and butterflies have come out, even the lizards are out again. Our first spring flower is the honesty and our plum tree shows big buds, ready to burst.

After the PDC, Steven made 8 cold frames (little greenhouse boxes on the ground with lids). We filled them up with pots with seeds and then dived into the garden tasks.
We’ve seeded different type of lettuces and cabbages, peas, beet roots, parsley, spinach, cilantro, leak, carrots, turnips, radishes and so on. Yay, I’m getting so excited with all these new and fresh plants for the coming season! In the fall we already prepared most of the beds of the vegetable gardens for this coming summer and now Steven is giving them a final clean up and fresh mulch and then next month we can start planting the plants that I’m now seeding in the cold frames.

We finished cleaning up the neighbours pear and apples orchards and have loads of material to start weaving beautiful fences. The one year old pear shoots are amazing for that, some are up to 3,5 m long! Besides the flexible long shoots, we’ve also dragged back tons and tons of various wood cuttings that our neighbours would otherwise have burned in their orchards. They are very happy not having to clean up their orchards and wasting time burning al the cuttings. We feel wealthy as hell. After processing we are well stocked on firewood for next year and we have been chipping loads of wood to mulch under our fruit trees.
Win, win, win.

We’re not only cleaning next doors, we’ve also caught the spring cleaning vibes and started to sort out and reorganize our kitchen, campervan, house and our storage rooms. This winter, mice discovered that we have all yummy things around: noodles, seeds (I have to find more mouse proof seed containers, my seed collection was severely eaten and trashed…), the rubber pipets from my pharmacy storage and as cherry on the pie, Steven caught a mouse inside the open spaghetti package that was inside one of our drawers! So we’ve declared war to the mice.
For a while now our creed has been, ”that we respect all life, but not all of it is welcome in our house”.

Contrary to this declaration of war is our new diet. We’ve seen the movie ‘Earthlings’ a couple of weeks ago and it made us think, again, about our food consumption and in particular the consumption of meat and dairy products. Seeing the horror in this industry and the damage it brings to our world, made us decide to not partake in it anymore. No more cows with broken legs in little cages for our milk, butter and yoghurt and no more sausages from ulcerated pigs that were never allowed to move in their cages and had their ears and tails clipped of as a baby without anesthesia.

How is it that we’ve come this far, that we tune out for these things that we actually all know.
Just because a piece of bacon tastes so good… !? It’s not that we won’t eat any animal products anymore. It’s a matter of finding a trustworthy source. If the animal has a good life, is treated well, we will have the dairy and eat meat once in a while.

Luckily spring has arrived and we have wild weeds in abundance, so for anybody concerned about our new diet, don’t worry, we’re grazing around the garden! Moooooohhh!
These wild weeds contain a good amount of vitamins, calcium, iron and most of them have detoxifying qualities which fits this time of year. It is for a good reason that our Christian fasting period, in as far as it is not predated by something pagan, is held during the end of winter, beginning of spring. Greece’s most famous spring ‘salad’: cooked dandelion rosettes garnished with olive oil, lemon juice and a little salt. Kali orexi!
And another one, ever made spinach pasta? Well, instead of spinach, stir fry some green tops from galium, chickweed, shepherds purse and nettles through your pasta, very yummy! Also, all of these you can eat raw in a salad.

Now the weather is changing we’re getting ready to welcome volunteers again. We’re expecting a couple soon and more people from April. A good reason to celebrate and make a campfire from all the broken wooden crates that Steven is getting rid of, during his spring cleaning rage! So, in general a good time to come and visit us, celebrating spring. Who’s first?

For people interested and ready to watch the movie 'Earthlings', let me know, I can send you the movie. If anyone has the sequel 'Unity'. I would really like to see this movie too.

Our coldframe park!

Competition with the honesty

Last time going down we decided to make a detour and enjoyed spring views in the valley next to Egio

More, more more

2 more coldframes!

Cilantro seeded in pots

Steven is the pot maker master and YES we had already weather like this (not established yet unfortunately, today I'm wearing 2 jumpers and I'm freezing)