{"id":10873,"date":"2025-03-24T14:05:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T18:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=10873"},"modified":"2025-03-24T14:05:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T18:05:59","slug":"well-things-are-looking-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2025\/03\/24\/well-things-are-looking-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, things are looking up"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m finally somewhat used to my new computer (although I still can’t use the current photo program; I’m used to the old Picasa 3, which I can’t currently download as it has been replaced). I’m back to printing labels for our seed business, copying orders, and doing Backwoods Home<\/em> and Self-Reliance<\/em> stuff.<\/p>\n

Yesterday\/last night, we had our first bout of freezing rain, which turned to snow, leaving half an inch of ice on everything and snow on the top. I’m glad the snow came. That six inches covered the ice pretty well so I’m not teetering and tottering when I’m out doing chores. I have friends in different areas around here that have fallen as they didn’t get as much snow to cover that dratted ice. However, today the sun’s out and it is warming up fast. Hooray! We need the moisture, but I don’t want to risk a fall. My knees are finally starting to improve. (Do I dare say that out loud?) I don’t want any setbacks. Yes, I have slip-on ice cleats, but I leave those for when it’s awful out as they’re hard for me to get on with limited knee bending.<\/p>\n

While it was snowing, I got busy and canned up a wonderful batch of ham. We had some for dinner too. Yum! Now we have lots of dinner material in the pantry for another time.<\/p>\n

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On a snowy, icy day, I canned up some wonderful ham.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve noticed a funny thing with seeds. I planted a dozen Oda purple sweet pepper seeds in Jiffy Pellets and only had four come up. I replanted several more, from the same pack, in ProMix, in a small container and in five days, they’re popping up like popcorn. Same seeds, same heat, same moisture. The other peppers are already getting their third set of leaves in the peat pellets. Why? Who the heck knows! Weird. So, folks, if you have this or that variety of seeds that refuse to come up, don’t immediately think “bad seeds,” maybe just bad vibes?<\/p>\n

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Our friends, Dara, Mike, and Sherri save our lives by packing seeds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This week I’m starting my first tomatoes. As we have about 121 varieties, it does take longer than most folks’ planting. And I’m slower at it, I think. They, too, are going in the peat pellets as it’s faster and easier to separate varieties and label them. I loved Lisa Nourse’s article on soil blocks in the recent BHM<\/em> issue. Maybe next year I’ll give those a try, at least for some of our crops. Holy cow, I just wrote down the bean varieties we’ll be growing this year. There are a lot <\/em>of them! A few new ones customers have sent us and, of course, plenty of our old favorite stand-by’s like Iroquois and Crawford. I can’t wait to get in the garden. But first, let’s wait until the ice and snow has melted, huh?<\/p>\n

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I promised a photo of our new heifer. This is Jitterbug.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

— Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m finally somewhat used to my new computer (although I still can’t use the current photo program; I’m used to the old Picasa 3, which I can’t currently download as it has been replaced). I’m back to printing labels for our seed business, copying orders, and doing Backwoods Home and Self-Reliance stuff. Yesterday\/last night, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,10,12,13,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10877,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873\/revisions\/10877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}