Quilt Wars!

I fell in love with this sea animal fabric!  I have since made three baby quilts with it and I will be working it in smaller amounts into another large quilt that I am working on.  The colors are so warm and yummy and they are soothing for me to work with.  Every time I look at the animals I choose a new favorite it seems.  FIrst was the octopus, and then the seals, and then the Narwhals and the Polar Bears.  I dont think there is a bad one in the bunch.

This is the Hoonah Quilt.  Made for the new baby of my people who live in Hoonah, Alaska now.  Hoonah is near Juneau, which is the Capital City of Alaska.

I was trying to make the pattern make a whirligig - which it did not end up doing but it is still a wonderful little boy quilt and is a very different pattern for me with the offset animal blocks (I usually like everything to be centered and even).   OCD anyone?

This is the second of the quilts I made - these are for my neices sons.  They are 2 years old and 4 months old.  I made them semi-matching - they are the same pattern just with different color fabrics to go with the sea animal fabric.

BAM seems to like his very well.  I made a quilt for the wedding of his parents and he had taken it as his own.  Every night he would go and get it to sleep with.  Quilt wars of sorts! So now he has his own quilt to use - no more quilt wars with Mama!

He is so happy to have it!

Here is the octopus block.  You can see why it is a favorite - although you can see that I missed quilting the other line across this block!  Oops!  I love how the orange and golds of the fabrics just work together with my favorite blues and greens.

 Here is the third of the sea animal quilts - the almost matching one from above.  This is a smaller version and I changed the star point and the sashing colors.

A little detail of the Killer Whale block - like I said all of the animals are wonderful and the pictures don't do them justice!

But these two do prevent the nightly quilt wars - we hope!  I have a wonderful memory of Rye and the quilt we got from my Grandmother (dads mom) for our wedding.  

He would come and get it every night and I would go get it every morning.  We did that for about a year and he finally came in and said "Momma!  This is MINE!!!"  and he marched out with it.  He was not short on quilts as Im sure you can imagine.  So the quilt war ended with him keeping the wedding quilt in his room.  He took very good care of it and I have it back now.  It is worn and needs the binding replaced, but it holds such special memories both of Rye and my Grandmother.  She is the one who taught me to quilt.  

SO if you have a quilt that you love and your child loves just as much - share it until they have their own, or just let them keep it.  You will not regret it.  Ever.

Blessed be.

Why Dont You STAY....

September is suicide prevention and awareness month and I know we have a lot of things to talk about but this week we are going to talk about HARD stuff again.  Awwweeeee Do we have to?  Yes. Talking about hard stuff is one of the ways to keep it from getting overwhelming and causing the feelings that make suicide seem like an option for people.  Teach people how to talk about hard stuff and be willing to help them do that.  Awwwweeeee - do we really have to?  Yes!

Any of you who have been reading my posts on the regular know some about my story.  My son passed away unexpectedly at the age of 23 from what the Coroner called "acute toxicity", which is basically a giant "F-You" from the universe because it means that some medications that he was taking killed him even though he had NO alcohol or illegal drugs in his system and the amounts of the prescriptions were not even close to overdose levels.  It has left us dazed an confused and with wounds so deep and painful that we are sure they will never heal.

You can read some of my posts about Rye and his passing at these links here and here.  There are a few others in between as well in between farming and quilting posts among other things!  Day to day life.

One of my new life motto's so to speak is "we put our feet on the floor and we march!"  But, sometimes we don't.  Sometimes it is all we can do to get upright for a few minutes at a time much less march, or go to work, or drive the car, or farm, or care about anything.  On our "dark days" we are all at risk.  When we are questioning whether what we do matters, and if anyone even cares about it (which I know you DO), and sometimes before I get out of bed in the morning, I have to think of a reason to stay - to stay with my people and here on the planet.  A reason to stay.  Almost always mine is Reed and Chad - family as a whole, and sometimes it is someone at the school - one of our special people who stay for their own reasons and sometimes that reason is me!

I have never liked the "suicide prevention" or "out of the darkness" motto's.  They make people cringe and shy away from our needs and do not allow us to get the help we need.  If you think "out of the darkness" is a way to grab attention and bring awareness, you are wrong and I think maybe those people who came up with that motto have never been in the dark place, drowning and can't come up for air.  Treading water for all you are worth and losing the battle, tired of fighting it.

Recently, the local youth homeless solution group MYHouse, came up with a different motto for this month:  STAY, Discover what you were made for.  They held a "STAY Day" on the 19th of September (yesterday).  It was a day of asking people to stay on the planet with us.  Find your reasons to STAY.    What makes you a STAY member? What were you made for?  Great questions.  Anyone with a "bucket list" can say that they have a list of things to STAY for - maybe one of the things on those lists are what they were made for.

They also premiered a song by a local Hip Hop artist Justin Pendergrass who is also a STAY member.  Give it a listen here  Justin Pendergrass - STAY (2018)  The voices you hear are actual homeless youth and their reasons why they STAY.  It's an incredible message and one I am so happy to share.  He is an incredible young man. Doing incredible things for his community and giving others lots of reasons to STAY.

I haven't discovered "what I was made for" but I'm going to STAY, for now and see if I can figure it out.   I have a list of things to do, and I have some goals set for myself and my family.  Those are a few reasons. Tomorrow I will once again put my feet on the floor and march.  I will keep finding reasons to STAY and trying. Again and again.  What were you made for?  STAY. 

Blessed be.

When Green Beans arent Green - or are they?

I am a lover of all things that will grow in my spaces here at Wicked Raven Farm.  I have to bring in a lot of my soil as we have such poor soil here due to the Millers Reach Fire of 1996.  You can read about it here.  It makes it really hard to grow anything and so I use a variety of systems to do my growing.  It also makes it hard to rotate crops well but I do my best.  This year I wanted to grow a lot of green beans - I love green beans.  They are my favorite vegetable I think - close race with potatoes, but you get the point.  They are good!  I usually grow them in the greenhouse with the tomatoes, but that really is a limited space and doesn't allow for growing bushels of beans.

So this year I grew them in the cold frame.  The squash went into raised mobile containers so I could move them in and out of the greenhouse - because of the wonky, cold spring we had this year it required a warmer nighttime area for the squash to keep them alive and they had been in the cold frame for two years already.  Time for a change.

This year I grew three different kinds of beans but I have fallen in love with one in particular and I will grow it every year from now on!  The types I grew were Blue Lake Bush bean, Hidatsa Shield beans, and Royal Burgundy Bush beans.  The ones I fell in love with are the Royal Burgundy.

Not withstanding that all of the seeds from this variety came up , they are beautiful!  The plants are bright green with purple blossoms, and they produce a ton of beans on each plant.  We have 16 feet of growing space that is about 2 feet deep in the cold frame and we have already had three meals from these beautiful beans and there are more on.  Don't get me wrong, the others are tasty too but these are divine!  And they are so easy care.  Forgot to water?   Burgundy Beans don't care!  Rain for days?  Burgundy Beans don't care!  They just want to grow!

Look at those beauties!  Dark purple, almost black to start with and they are delicious raw or cooked!  Raw, they have a wonderful nutty bean flavor, and are crisp but not stringy.  When you cook them.......

THEY TURN GREEN!  Once the heat hits them they turn green!  They cook up wonderfully, you have to really over cook these for them to become limp and slimy - nobody likes that - and they are flavorful too.  

They cook into a bright green that is the same color as the bean plants.  Its like a cool edible science project!  I have no idea why they do that - Ill research it but... we have done these up with bacon in the pan (above photo, just fry some diced bacon, and when its almost crispy throw those beans in and cook them to your preferred doneness), we have cooked them lightly and put in pasta dish, and we have pickled them with some of the old dill pickle juice.  So far those have stayed purple.  This particular packet came from Ed Hume seeds and are available at my local grocery, but you can get them here at the Ed Hume site.   I give these two thumbs up and I highly recommend that you put these on your "must grow" list for next season!  Happy Harvesting and eating!