New in the Garden Today - 6/8/13

Mostly stuff that I bought at the school plant sale that I have had sitting on my back deck for about a month. Oops-a-daisy!

Just planted -

Scarlet's bean tee pee, the structure of which was with some hazelnut bush/shrub prunings. Climbing up the side, soon to provide us with beans galore -
Blue Lake green beans - 2
Scarlet Runner Beans - 3

Elsewhere in the garden -

Garlic Chives - 1
Sea Holly - 2
Daylily - 1
Rosemary - 1
Rhubarb (Victoria) - 1
Lemon Balm - 1

Needs thinning and dividing -

Yukon Chief Sweet corn (2 beds worth, soon to be divided among 3 beds)
Cocozelle Zucchini (1 bed, soon to be 2)
Sugar beets (thinned)
Carrots (thinned)

Slowly but surely, it's coming along! :)

In other happy news - our Guinea hens are finally laying! Or at least one of them is. Bill noticed a couple of smallish, pointyish eggs scattered hither and yon, just outside the run where our beautiful but misunderstood rooster, Sir Roscoe Peckins used to live. The Guineas have had a major crush on Peck since the first day they arrived. Alas, their dreamboat left today for a happy new life at A Stones Throw Farm. Bon voyage, Pecky-poo, and - be nice.

And now for something completely different, for my last outdoorsy chore of the day, I am going to go and attempt to draw something magically beautiful on our new, coop chalkboard.

Scarlet says that we should write "Welcome to Boggy Hollow", but I think it might be nice to write a welcome note to our soon to arrive house guests. I guess we'll see who wins! ;)

April/May Crafting Totals

Dishcloths - 11 ($4/ea)
Baskets - 1 ($4/ea)
Re-milled, homemade lavender goats milk soap - 4 bars ($5/ea)
Key hook - 1 ($15/ea)
Coat hook - 1 ($18/ea)
Engraved silver spoon plant tags - 18 ($3/ea)

For a grand total of.... $155. Not bad, but still just barely half of what I'd hoped to knock out in 61 days. What can I say? The garden took every spare minute we had. Maybe when things settle down again after the early Fall harvests I'll finally get my soap-making, dishcloth-knitting, spoon-whackin' booty in gear?

Our Garden Grows

Today, between rain showers, I planted:

Tomatillos - 2
Tomatoes - 20 +/- (It was A LOT)
Sweet Basil - 7
Russian Red Kale - 6
Buttercrunch Lettuce - 6
Red (something?) Lettuce - 6

I also noticed that a few of the lettuces and kale that I planted from starts were bouncing back a bit - thank goodness. I feel like the mistake I made was to plant them on too sunny a day, near mid-day, and the poor little buggers just couldn't hang in there until the sun was low enough for me to give them a hearty watering. Hence the replacements/supplements that were shoehorned in today.

I also noticed today that some of my radishes are starting to pop up. Hooray for near-instant gratification!

Yesterday I planted a bed full of sunflowers - half Miriam Edibles and half Giant Greystripe. That makes 4 1/2 beds planted, 11 1/2 left to go. OY.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we'll get the bean teepee in (Scarlet runners and blue lakes), and possibly the cantaloupe as well.

Getting the Garden In - A Looooong Work in Progress

On Mother's Day weekend, we moved the (not terribly helpful) pigs back to their pen from the garden space. We'd moved them in there the week previous, hoping that they'd root up the grass in the garden space in a jiffy. One week later, a little bit of nothing had changed. So we powered on ahead. Bill & Olivia dropped the 18 raised bed frames in to place and attempted to smother the remaining grass within the bed spaces with a thick mulch of goat poopy straw.

The "garden mix" soil that we bought (1/3 topsoil, 2/3 mushroom compost) was delivered last Monday, and the laborious task of hauling it, one wheelbarrow at a time, from the front yard to the lower pasture, has been s-l-o-w. We've got four of our 3'x12' beds filled with soil, and just two of them planted. An underwhelming amount accomplished, yet I still managed to get a sunburn.

So, for the record, we have the peas, radishes, greens and beets in now. We also have a few strawberry plants in, but I hope to eventually fill a whole bed with them, so I'll need another good dozen to get the job done. Looks like I'll be hitting up the Farmers Market this weekend for the strawberries, basil and other starts which I didn't/couldn't start myself. The one year that Spring arrives on time and we're running late - d'oh!

Projects...

I'm back to knitting fairly regularly again, finally. Since the accident, I didn't often have either the energy or the dexterity to work with my hands, so easing back in to knitting has been slow, but nice.

I'm hoping to do another bazaar or two again this Christmas, so I'm working on building up a good and diverse inventory. Right now, I'm focusing on washcloths, since those were my best seller last year, followed by my bike helmet earmuffs. I'll be making heaps of both this time, so as not to run out again.

About 3/4 of my project yarns were gifted to me, so they cost me nada out of pocket, which means that if/when I'm able to sell what I make from them, it'll be mostly straight profit. Yay!

I did need some more kitchen cotton though, so I spent $30 on quite a bit of yarn at Michaels, which I have (so far) turned into 3 3/4 dishcloths which will, in theory, sell for $5 each. Here's hoping that I make enough to cover my expenses at least!

I also recently picked up a few clearance herbs at Bark & Garden, several of which look like they are prime for dividing. I spent $33 there, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to make a good chunk of that back selling live plants (started from these) at our farm stand in the future. Even if I don't (but I hope I do), I will have spent $2 each on some really interesting herbs that would cost at least that much for a cut bunch in the produce section of the grocery store.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Ramping Up for Spring!

It was a very productive 4-day weekend for us. Lots of downed trees cut and stacked, more goat fencing put in, chicken coops cleaned, 3 trays of veggies started and 42 eggs put in the incubator. And I am POOPED!

We also carved out a few hours this morning to go birding with our friends J & F for the Great Backyard Bird Count. We saw a whole mess of water birds, as we did this year's count at Capitol Lake. Our stats, per Liv's notes-

*Scoter - 1
*Seagulls (Glaucous Winged?) - 22
*Song Sparrow - 2
*Mallard Ducks - 8
*Bufflehead Ducks - 6
*American Crows - 19
*Grebe - 1
*Red-breasted Merganser - 1
*Belted Kingfisher - 1
*Robins - 9
*Gadwalls - 2
*Great Blue Heron - 1
*European Starlings - 5
*Greater Scaup - 1
*Lesser Scaup - 8

We also saw some Cormorants fly over, but couldn't i.d. the type against the bright sky. Livy girl was in bird nerd heaven!



It was a nice end to a crazy-busy 4 days. :)

The Year in Review

My musings on my first year as a Farm Chick, followed by some potentially boring farm statistics. ;)

Short and simple, this year has kicked our butts.

We bought this place just over a year ago now, and as much as I'd love to tell you that we have, through the sweat of our brow, transformed this place into a working little farm in that time, I'd be straight up lying my butt off. We have stumbled and struggled, battled issues of health, money, time, depression, bad weather, ignorance, exhaustion, and unyielding soil. We weren't starry-eyed enough to think that this would be a cake walk, but the ass-whooping handed to us has been a real eye-opener. We are barely keeping our heads above water right now, but there is hope that things will improve in the coming year.

For one thing, we've realized that we need some professional advice in how to best lay out our farm to maximize the sunlight, water and soil that is available to us. My new friend, Brighida, at DeVa Designs is undertaking the task of designing/plotting our yard, garden and pasture for us. What a relief to have someone who knows what they are doing to get us started moving in a designated direction toward our goal of a functional, sustainable and FUN farm!

In the category of minor triumphs, we have the goats. We've taken on dairy animals, and actually done reasonably well with it! The goats have been one heck of an adventure. They are so smart, and for the most part, loving, fun little critters to have around. AND you get milk from them! It's like a dog with benefits! ;) We have successfully bred and delivered mamas and babies, treated hoof-rot, ear infections and lice, and wrangled everything from love-struck bucks to ticked off mamas, all without getting gored or kicked in the face even once. I call that victory.

Our chickens have continued to be a source of enjoyment and great food for us. We moved into this house with four layers and nine baby bantams. The bantams have all gone, and have since been replaced with another 19 hens and 5 roosters, all standard size. Bantams are evil. I won't make that mistake again.

We presently get anywhere from 1-5 eggs per day, with an increasing number of the eggs coming from our Americauna pullets, who are just beginning to lay the cutest little baby blue eggs you've ever seen. :) If every hennie did her bit, all on the same day without fail, we'd be getting nearly two dozen eggs per day/fourteen dozen per week. Someday, someday.

Our eggs have a very loyal following among our friends and Bill's co-workers. The girls are in charge of collecting, ledgering, cleaning and packaging the eggs, as well as extolling the virtues of a free range organic egg to anyone and everyone who will listen. We fetch $4 a dozen for our beauties, and our eggy "income" is finally almost enough to cover our feed expenses. It will get there, especially once the army of Australorps start laying, but for now, half of the benefit of having the chickens is just getting to sit and watch them do their thing. I dare say that I enjoy them even more than the goats at times, and have come to see that they too have very individual personalities. When I need to clear my head, I take a lawn chair and a glass (or bottle) of wine out to the chicken yard and sit under the canopy of my sequoia tree and watch my chickies graze and dust bathe. It is my answer to watching fish in an aquarium, plus wine. ;)

Our garden this year was a flop-a-roo. I thought that I'd go ahead and plant straight into the ground, as opposed to using raised beds, as we had in the past. I was fooled by the gorgeous color and texture of the soil. Epic fail! A soil testing kit later revealed to us that we have too little nitrogen and too much something else that I can't remember. Remediation and supplementation are what's called for, and the quickest way to reach that end is to literally build up the soil with raised beds and compost. Alas, our compost was not yet ready when planting season finally arrived this year, so I tried to supplement with some organic bat guano liquid fertilizer, worm tea and a little top dressing of bunny and goat poo. It all helped to some degree, but the garden overall just didn't perform. I'd had visions of running my own CSA. In reality, our garden didn't even provide enough food for our little family of four, let alone enough to share or put up. This is seriously the first year that I can remember ever having to buy a zucchini in peak season. :(

If there is an upside at all to our garden woes, it is that we actually have had some success with a crop that has failed us miserably every year before - pumpkins. Why the pumpkins are going ape but the zukes aren't is a complete mystery to me, but I'll take it anyway. We may not have much to eat this Fall, but our jack-o-lanterns will rock your socks, baby!

Between the shortcomings in the garden and being kept insanely busy by critters, children and attempting to maintain a social life, we've also fallen short on the amount of foraging and fishing that we normally do. We've managed to grab up and sock away a few crab and flounder, and I found a new love of stinging nettles that will definitely have me grabbing up more of them next year, but I'm waaaay behind on my berry picking. Canning season is bearing down upon me, and I don't really have anything to can. Such a bummer. I will count as a triumph my making two different kinds of cheese, feta and chevre, from my own goats' milk. We have a gallon and a half of goat milk in the fridge right now that will soon (with a little luck) be transforming into a farmhouse cheddar. It will need to age for at least six months, so that's putting food up too, even if in a different way that we've done before.

Turning back to the wins as far as foraging, I did manage to forage a lot of my animal food this year. Fir tree branches, blackberry brambles, miscellaneous weeds from the yard and scotch broom were all gobbled up gratefully by bunnies and goats. At least somebody is getting some fresh food for free!

We've slowed down on our beer, cider and wine making this past year, but are hoping to get that going again soon. I presently have a few gallons of rhubarb wine working, and hope to try some hawthorn flower and maybe make some more cherry wine before they go out of season. Sooooo much to do in such a small time frame!

Anyway, that about sums up our year here in the Hollow. We've learned a lot, and look forward to putting much of what we've learned into practice in the coming year. We haven't really established goals for the year just yet, as we're too busy running around to ever stop and contemplate what lies around the next bend. But we will get it together, and we will keep pecking away at all of it until we either fall down or fly. Wish us luck and strong backs, we're going to need them. ;)

Edit: My darling husband pointed out to me that I failed to mention all of the infrastructure changes that we (mainly he) were able to knock out this last year - a new 8x12, 4-run chicken coop; 3 goat pens; a tilled and deer-fenced 25x85' garden and a hand-built goat stanchion/milk stand. No too shabby for a couple of noobs. ;)


Goats Bought - 7
Goats Sold - 4
Goats Born - 7
Goats Died - 1 (Fritzen's stillborn doeling)
Current Goat Count - 9

Starting # of Chickens - 13 (4 "big girls" and 9 bantam pullets/roos)
Chickens Bought - 35?
Chickens Given to us - 3
Chickens Sold/Given away/Harvested - 5 (Scout, Sunny, Snowflake, Harold & Mr. J, all evil roos)
Chickens Died (illness, injury, predation) - Hens - 5, Roos - 3, Chicks - 8? (that number seems a little low)
Current Chicken Count - 28 (5 roos, 23 hens/pullets)
These numbers don't seem like they jive quite right, but my memory is a little fuzzy, so it's only a general count.

Starting # of Rabbits - 2 (Both supposedly female - NOT)
Rabbits Bought - 0
Rabbits Born - About 25
Rabbits Sold/Given Away - 4
Rabbits Died (illness, injury, cold weather) - About 20 :(
Current Rabbit Count - 3 (one doe, one buck and one neutered male)

Memorial Day Weekend Project Mania

Our family has really knocked a lot of projects out this weekend! We've built, planted, mowed, bushwhacked, pruned and so on, almost non-stop during the daylight hours since Friday night. I guess that this better-late-than-never spring of ours has finally snapped our farming spirit awake. :)

Bill is thisclose to finishing the new coop and runs. Scarlet and I chipped in where we could, but the coop has been Bill's baby from day one, and I'm glad (and I KNOW he's glad) to see it up and running. The girls are going to paint the coop eventually, red or white, we're thinking, with the back side of the coop (the side facing the street) painted in chalkboard paint so that we can have the girls write up what we have for sale on any given day. Won't that be cute?

Today Scarlet and I put the rest of our peas and carrots in the garden, and sowed one row of French Breakfast radishes. I'll sow another in a few days or a week, so that we have a slight reprieve between waves of ripe radishes. They'll be mostly for the bunnies anyway, so it'd actually be pretty hard to grow too many of them, the way they're eating these days, but I've also seen a few recipes for roasted balsamic radishes that have me intrigued, so I might end up eating a few myself.

The last few things that I need to shimmy into the garden are beets, beans, corn, sunflowers and basil. The wax beans, pole beans and corn are germinating and getting a head start indoors on the seedling heat mat and under the grow lights, while the radishes and peas temporarily occupy their eventual space in the garden. I'm running out of room quickly! I'm debating putting some of the giant greystripe sunflowers in the flower bed, even though we're growing them for food. The little buggers throw a lot of shade when they're big though, so I have to consider carefully where they will work best. Hmmm...

Later today I'm going to plant a tray each of beans and corn to start indoors under the grow light. I sure hope that they transplant well, as I can't remember every having bought either of them as starts in the past. Another garden gamble. ;)

Spring, she has finally Sprung!

And about darned time too! It's only 4 weeks until the official start of summer, and we're only just now having multiple rain-free, even sunny days in a row. The weather here is weirder and more unpredictable every year, which plays hell with my mental faculties and my planting schedule.

Thus far, I've only put a few of my hardier plants out - the peas, potatoes, raspberries & rhubarb are all in, to be followed shortly by pretty much everything else this coming week. Bill and I have made peace with the fact that we won't be getting the "big" garden in this year like we had hoped, as we're running quite late, and are already overwhelmed by a never ending project list. That seems to be our story at every turn - two steps behind and projects popping up double time. UHG.

I'm not going to let the dream of the big garden and it's cobbled paths and deer fences die, I'm just going to have to send it to the back of the line for now. We bit off a lot with this farm, and for the sake of our family's collective blood pressure, we're going to have to let a few things go for a while.

Things that have been put on hold or scratched altogether- turkeys :(, meat chickens, cheese making, doing something with the bog, the big garden, keeping bees.

The things that are still on - expanding the egg-laying flock (done!), getting goats (done!), milking goats (stalled :\), building a big new coop (almost done!), putting in additional orchard trees (in progress), squeaking in a small kitchen garden (this weekend), & fixing the pasture fences (God knows when, but it HAS to be done.)

Not to mention our wine & beer making, canning & preserving, fishing, foraging, etc. We always have a full plate!

At least the weather is on our side now. If this no rain thing holds for another two weeks or so, I think that the bottomland might finally dry out. No more wiping out in the mud with an armful of hay - imagine it! ;)

New Digs

The baby chicks have made the move to their brand spankin' new big kid coop! And of course, today is the day that my camera decided to die, so I don't have any pictures to share of my happy chickens enjoying my husband's fine craftsmanship. :(

Billy worked his hiney off on that coop, and though there is still work to be done yet before it is officially complete, it's up and it's chock full of peepers tonight. Thank God, because the funk and dust/dander that those little buggers generate in a day is astounding, and was yucking the hot tub room up BAD. Now I get the joy of decontaminating the room of it's current smell - eau de chicken butt. The glamor never ends.

For the Record, week of 3/26-4/1/11

Since for some reason writing it down here is easier than plugging it into my farm journal -

Foraged this past week-
*1 lb, 4 oz stinging nettles
*Approx 2 cups of dandelion petals

The critters-
*Averaging 3 eggs per day
*Epic amounts of critter poo everywhere I look. Oy.
*Peanut the Silver Spangled Hamburg chick died.
*Bought three Barred Rock chicks to replace our lost chickies.
*Started adding Hilton Herbs Daily Hen Health Poultry Compound to the chickens' water. They seem to be digging it so far!
*Listed baby bunnies for sale on Craigslist, only one has been spoken for so far.
*Listed Spike & Archie for sale on Craigslist, have had zero inquiries about them. :(

Grown/Growing-
*Started 6 "Cinderella" pumpkin seeds on Monday, 5/6 have sprouted so far.
*Started a flat (12 seeds) of "Homemade Pickles" cucumbers today
*Pole Beans, peas, nasturtiums, cilantro & arugula are all growing well. Beans & Peas need to be re-potted and hardened off ASAP. I hope to get them planted out by next weekend at the latest.

Projects-
*Working on two knitted blankets off and on.
*Bill plans to have the new coop ready (enough) to move the little chicks into by the end of this weekend. YAY! I'd forgotten exactly how bad baby chicken poop smells. I remember now.
*Critter pen/cage cleanings all around this weekend. Bleh!
*Bottle last year's dandelion wine.
*Go nettle & dandy picking, time permitting.

BHF ~ Photo of the Day 3/25/11

The new coop, in progress. Keep chipping away at it, Farmer Bill, those babies chickies are growing fast!

BHF ~ Photo of the Day 3/14/11

The new coop, she rises! Thank you for all of your hard work in the rain, Bill, Mom & Dad!

Ramblin' On

I know that there aren't too many of you out there reading this blog, and frankly, I can't blame you. Nine times out of ten I'm talking about a diseased critter or discussing the pooping or reproductive habits of my animals. Thanks for hanging in there through the gore!

It is my journal when I'm too tired, distracted or otherwise malingering to write things down in my actual farm & garden journal. Important stuff like critter birth dates, medications administered, egg production highs and lows; stuff I'd regret not making a note of sooner or later.

And while I realize that this might not be the most entertaining content, I hope that you all will still hang in there with me through my dream-farm building, and all of the stumbling and cursing along the way. This Spring is going to be a DOOZY. Our order of 25 baby chicks is due here next week and we've yet to build the new coop or even a makeshift brooder for them. Those 25 are just the egg chickens, by the way. We'll probably order our fryers & broilers in April.

Like our ever-growing assortment of critters, our family's little ones tend to be born in Spring, so this is the time of year that I often refer to as "birthday season". One after another, straight 'til the end of May. Keeey-rayzy.

So it's bunnies, goats, chicks and rapidly growing children every which way I look. And snow. WHERE WERE YOU AT CHRISTMAS, SNOW? Seriously, if this endless Winter doesn't clear out soon, we're going to drop dead of exhaustion and go broke at the same time. All of this cold means lots of extra calories, feedings and general care for our critters, which translates to us slogging food, chipping frozen water troughs and running to the feed store constantly. I think that we have just about maxed out what we can handle on a hands-on level without introducing technology or outside help to the equation. It's exhausting, but fun, and at the end of the mud-caked rainbow waits a pot of gold goat cheese.

This Week's Chore Checklist

Goats-

*Finish stanchion (check! Thanks, Bill)

*Build another new goat pen (double check)

*Try milking Blue

*Soak Chardy's left foot

*Ivermectin (wormer/lice/flea treatment) shots all around, except for the tiny ones

*Forage for evergreen branches to feed goats (Done - brought home almost as much roadside trash as we did branches, but I feel like I did a good deed, and Livy helped.)

Chickens-

*Start new chicken coop (Started on 2/21)

*Set up brooder in anticipation of baby chicks' arrival (Due March 7th)

Bunnies-

*Clean hutch

*Empty poo bin into compost

Parakeets-

*Clean cage

House/Yard-

*Sweep/de-clutter porch

*Start veggie seedlings in hot tub room

*Haul up and stack firewood

*Rearrange Liv's room

All this in addition to dishes and laundry and the rest of the usual stuff. I find that making a list helps purge all of the swirling don't forget's and what was I supposed to do's? from my overwhelmed noodle. Then again, looking at a list like that can be rather daunting, so I'm making the girls pitch in a little more than usual to hustle us through this pre-Spring push. I've bribed them with a possible trip to Great Wolf Lodge (an indoor water park), depending on how well we all work together and get these chores knocked out.

Alright, now I just need to heave my tushie off of this couch and get crackin'. Bleh!

Farm Goals for 2011

Holy cow did we ever sign ourselves up for a headache when we decided to embark on this build-a-farm-from scratch adventure! We bought a great house in the perfect location for us, however, this place was in no way ready to roll as a working farm. There is no existing garden, nor any barn or garage for storage. There are a few fences in place, though they are old and sagging and no longer much of a deterrent to critters who wish to go out or come in. It needs work - lots of it, and urgently.

And so, our 2011 has a whole lot of projects lined up, all of them in the ASAP category, as Spring is now only 10 1/2 weeks away, Thank God!

Here's what our to-do list looks like -

*Build a new, 3-4x larger chicken coop with multiple runs.
*Turn over/establish the garden, including building some raised beds
*Deer fence around the garden
*Fix the fencing in the back pasture - this one is a DOOZY
*Build a new goat yard and an additional goat shelter for the does & kids
*Expand our laying flock and establish a meat flock. (chickens)
*Read, research and learn everything under the sun about dairy goats and the art of home cheesemaking.

In the we really need to do this, but it's not the end of the world if we don't category-

*Prune dozens of rosebushes and fruit trees which have been ignored for nearly a decade.
*Possibly buy or build a new shed/outbuilding for storing animal feed and farm equipment.
*Explore the possibility of raising turkeys.

In the probably not this year category-

*Turn the hot tub room (complete with broken hot tub!) into my (Chelle's) studio. It has great southern light and is already plumbed for a sink. We really just need to rip out the gnarly old hot tub and put flooring in it's place, and install a sink and 220v outlet for my pottery wheel & kiln. It'll be my space - MINE! :)

*Have a powder room built upstairs for the girls.

Of course in addition to all of the projecty-stuff we have the everyday stuff that we are going to try to keep up with - wine making, home brewing, knitting, writing, foraging, fishing, etc. We're going to be busy bees this coming year! I know that it is going to be exhausting, but the rewards are so great and so satisfying that we're going to give it all we've got to make this vision of our farm a reality. Here we go!