Rearranging the Chicken Living Situation

Now that the chicken flock has been drastically reduced in number I decided to move things around a bit.  I didn't butcher the two hens that came with the meat chickens and they were getting close to the age when they would beginning to lay, so I needed a place for them to do it.  I couldn't put them in with the older hens because the enclosure was too small for that many hens and the older hens would likely beat up the younger ones in such a small space.  At first I thought I would just move all the chickens into the large enclosure and put the laying house in with them.  Great idea, except that the five roosters that I had left had a field day for about ten minutes chasing the older girls around the enclosure and generally being jerks.  So I came up with another plan.

The smaller enclosure would now become the bachelor pad for all but one of the roosters (one lucky boy gets to live with the hens).  This worked for about a day, but one of the bachelor roosters was getting so beat up by the other three that I decided to put him in with the hens also, as long as he could behave himself - which so far he has.  The other three roosters still seem to be able to get along well enough so they get to stay together.  The nesting house was still needed for the hens, so I cut a hole in the back of the large enclosure and pushed the house up tight to the pen and opened the door to the inside.  It seems to be working out well, and one of the younger hens has already laid her first egg in the box with the older hens.

The other problem that I had to deal with was the open end of the small enclosure that was where the hen house attached to it.  Since the hen house wasn't there anymore I simply covered that end with some leftover chicken wire and held it in place with a pallet and pushed it up against the side of the   large enclosure.  I didn't want to wire off the end permanantly since this is my main way to access the inside of this run.  The bachelor pad is not a very large space for the roosters and they don't have a great roosting set up, but it is better than nothing and they still have shelter from the sun and the rain, so it will be a good temporary fix until the weather gets cooler.  I still have plans for butchering three or four more of the roosters, but for now they get a reprieve until I have some freezer space open up for them.  Then in the spring I will use the small enclosure as a brooder to raise the next batch of meat chickens.  Until then I will enjoy having lowered feed costs, and a few more eggs in the fridge.

Making Plans for Next Year's Garden

As the gardening season comes to a close here, my mind often wanders to what next years garden should look like.  This was my first year on this property and I have done a lot of work here to get this garden started.  Now that I have a good foundation for my garden I think I want to expand it a bit more to utilize more of the ground that I have.  There are areas where the chicken's hoop house stood this summer that have been thoroughly weeded and feritlized by the chickens this year, so they will make ideal garden plots for next year I hope.  I will probably keep the original thirteen beds, but may add a whole other section of five to eight more beds to fill out the yard.  I figure it will have less weeds if I turn it into garden, than if I just let the yard take over the area again.

There are some crops that I want to have more of like onions, since I don't think that this year's harvest will last me through December at the rate that I am using them up.  I may also plant a third bed of potatoes depending on how long this year's crop lasts me.  I was thinking about trying a couple of new crops like tomatillos and celery which might need their own bed to get a decent harvest.

I was toying with the idea of starting a market garden here.  I have been helping out at a friend's farm to try to get an idea of if that was something that I could manage.  After seeing all of the work invovled in her operation I am quite sure that I couldn't pull off something of that magnitude and still have a full time job.  However I do think I could do something on a much smaller scale, but I'm am still trying to figure out if it would make me enough money to be worth the trouble.  It would probably become a full time second job.   I figure it would be a way to start small and build up some clientele at the very least.  I would probably start with just a few varieties of some of the higher value crops like peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and maybe some herbs  If I did plant those crops for a market garden I would probably keep them in the long rows that were occupied by the corn and squash this year.  Of course I would then have to plan on starting many many seedlings indoors this winter and I'm not sure I have the space or the lighting for that, but that is something I could work on in the meantime.  It sure would be nice to have some dedicated shelving for starting garden plants.  I suppose I could also sell eggs at the farmer's market if I have a few more chickens.  I do have to keep in mind my costs in all of this though, since I can't afford to grow too much extra and not have it pay for itself.

Next year I also hope to expand the herb patch by adding in some more annual herbs like basil, cilantro, dill and chamomile.  I am hoping that most of the other herbs make it through the winter and will mulch them in heavily to help them survive.  The other half the bed where the herbs are growing has become a nice flower garden.  I hope those flowers reseed themselves next year with minimal help from me.  The biggest problem I have been fighting in this bed is the ragweed infestation, but if I can keep it pulled, then hopefully the flowers will take over and crowd out the weeds.  I like the large flower garden because it attracts all kinds of beneficial insects from honey bees and lady bugs to praying mantis.

Early Morning Sunrise

I am blessed to live in an area where the weather is often beautiful and today was no exception.  It was a warm night with a full moon and I was awake early enough to catch an awesome sunrise.  The underbellies of the clouds were dark red as they moved across the sky towards the rising sun.

Across the sky I caught the setting full moon in the early dawn light.

A little while later I caught a nice view of the far hills behind my house as the sun lit them up.

Looking back at the rising sun, the clouds underwent a rainbow change from the deep reds, to lighter pinks and finally a golden sheen before they faded into regular daylight clouds.

My favorite shot of this beautiful sunrise however was accented by an awesome filter that highlights the depths of all the clouds.

First Anniversary!

Just wanted to mention that it has been a full year since I started writing this blog and I hope you have enjoyed what I have shared with you so far.  I created this blog to inspire people to enjoy the good things in life, good food, good scenery and lots of fresh air.

The garden posts are some of my favorite things to write about and they are also a way for me to record how well my garden does from year to year.  I hope that the food preservation posts are inspiring as well.  I think canning my own food adds to my sense of security about that types of things that I put into my body.  I also think that fresh preserved foods taste better than anything that I could buy from a store.

I love sharing my adventures hiking in the local scenery.  I am so blessed to live in such a beautiful place that it just feels right to share pictures of the places I go around here.  I hope to share many more different places in the next year of this adventure.

I know that the fiber craft related posts are few and far between, but I am proud to post updates of my projects as I finish them.  There should be plenty more of those coming in the next few months as I will have more time indoors to work on them.  I have a few up and coming projects that will be shared soon!

I would like to try to keep this blog interesting for any who read it, so any suggestions as to what you want to see more of would be appreciated.  Here is to a fabulous first year!

Frost Harvest

We have had our first real hard frost so I had to go through and salvage what I could from the garden, which actually was quite a lot.  Inside the greenhouse there was plenty of frost damage on the outer parts of the plants, but most of the plants seemed to have survived.  The peppers took the chill a lot harder than the tomatoes, and many of them were mostly dead, so I went ahead and picked all that I could off the dead plants.


A few in the middle still seemed to be hanging on, so I left them to ripen for a few more days.  The tomatoes had a good number of ripened fruit so I picked all that I could and left the rest to ripen on the vines.  The lower portions of the plants still looked healthy and only the outermost leaves were damaged, so I figured they would be just fine.

The cucumbers weren't kept under cover and I am happy to report that the cucumber harvest has come to an end.  The plants were completely dead, but the fruits themselves didn't seem damaged, so I picked every last one that I could find.  I will probably keep these for fresh eating over then next few weeks.

The final big harvest was quite impressive to me.  I am happy to add many more peppers to the freezer.  Most of the tomatoes will go to the freezer for sauce, but I will keep snacking on them here and there as long as they are fresh on the table.  The cucumbers will make up some of my salads until they start to go bad and then the remainder will feed the chickens.

The end of the season is always a mixture of sadness and relief.  I am glad that I won't have to pickle any more cucumbers this year, but I am sad the season has come to a close.  At least the workload in the garden will be reduced and I can focus on preparing the garden for next year.  I will clear out the finished beds and add a layer of mulch to the top.  Now is the time to plant garlic for next year, so I will have to spend some time preparing that bed in the next few weeks.  I still have some beds happily growing my frost tolerant veggies like cabbage, brussel sprouts, peas, and spinach.  Luckily those beds need very little input from me until harvest time, so I will let them do their thing for a while longer yet.

Racking the Plum Wine

It has been over a month since I started the latest batch of wine here. The first stage of fermentation was over in only ten days, and ever since then, the wine has been happily bubbling away in the glass carboy I transfered it into.  In the beginning, the fermentation took place at a furious pace, the bubbles rising to the top and lifting the airlock every few seconds.  In the last couple of weeks, the bubbles have stopped as far as I could tell, so it was time to add the last of the sugar and rack the wine again.

As you can see, the wine is a beautiful shade of magenta and is nearly clear.  The sediment from all of the yeast has sunk to the bottom and that is what I am clearing out by racking the wine.  First I boiled some water to help sterilize the bucket that I would be mixing the additional sugar in.  Once the bucket was clean I added the sugar and then started siphoning the wine into the bucket, mixing it as it filled.  Once the carboy was empty I rinsed it out very well and also did a round of boiling water to sterilize it again.  Then I transfered the wine back into the carboy where it will undergo another round of fermentation.  I don't expect it to ferment too much more, since I think the alcohol content is already fairly high.  Once it clears again it will be ready to be bottled which should be in about one month or so.  I took a little taste after transfering it and it was so delicious!  It is on the sweet side, but some of that should go away as it finishes fermenting.  I can't wait to taste the finished product and neither can my friends.  I made a small batch of this last year and it wasn't nearly enough to go around.  This year should make up for that since I should have about 30 bottles out of this batch.  Not bad for a $60 investment in fresh plums, sugar and yeast.

Meat Chicken Update: The Big Day

The day had finally come nearly twenty weeks after these cute little fluff balls arrived.  This day was what had been planned from the very beginning.  I started out with an order of 25 chicks of the special heavy assorted package from cackle hatchery.  They were straight run at a discount price, so I was counting on getting a bunch of roosters and I was not dissapointed.

They shipped me a total of 28 chicks, all of whom survived the trip and began their life here in a back room in a makeshift brooder.  They grew quickly and I think I moved them outside after just 3 weeks since they were getting too crowded in the space I had indoors for them.  They spent the following weeks growing and exploring in their hoophouse shelter that I kept close to the house.  I think that some of the roosters started crowing when they were only eight weeks old, so they soon had to be moved away from the house a bit, so I could get some sleep.  As the weeks passed they grew into a beautiful group of chickens.

Once they were about 14 to 16 weeks old, they really started acting like roosters.  Out of the 28 original chicks, 26 of them turned out to be roosters.  At first the spats between them were short and almost comical, but as the weeks wore on they got rougher with eachother, and really rough with the hens.  Most evenings became a hysteria of squawking and flapping as the roosters took turns tormenting the two hens that they had grown with.  At about 16 weeks, we took our first rooster.  I was trying to thin out the chickens that were being the meanest since I didn't want that trait in any of my future flock if I could help it.  I choose one that I had repeatedly caught being harsh with the hens.  In the following weeks, I took two more roosters that were also being harsh to the hens and I noticed a pattern.  It seemed as though the Buff Orpingtons had formed a gang and spent their time terrorizing the rest of the flock.  There was always food being knocked over and water buckets being dumped multiple times a day from the ruckus they caused.  The Rhode Island Reds had developed a quirk of crowing early and crowing frequently also adding to the noise coming from the hoophouse.  I decided it was time to drastically reduce the flock to hopefully bring some peace to my garden again.  The bigger of the chickens were easily over five pounds, so I figured that I would get decent carcasses from most of the roosters.  So here at nearly 20 weeks old they are finally a size that I would be willing to harvest.

We took seventeen roosters out of the flock that day and since we were new at this, the process was slow and there was a learning curve.  We were on about the tenth rooster by the time we got a rhythm going in the process.  I had a great friend that lent me a chicken plucker, so the most time consuming part of the process was sped up immensly, for which I may be forever grateful.  Even with this help the first stage of processing the birds took us at least three hours from start to finish.  We knew that we had limited hours of daylight, so we killed the birds, plucked them, and removed the heads and feet and set them in a cooler on ice where they could chill until we had time to finish cleaning them.  We decided that we needed a serious break after the first stage, so as the sun started to sink below the horizon, we stopped for a good dinner.

Once we got back, we started on stage two of the process - gutting, and parting them out.  This was by far the most underestimated event of the evening.  I was happy that we were able to do it in the comfort of the kitchen, but again, being inexperienced at processing made the whole thing take a very long time.  I think my greatest struggle was to gut them properly and cleanly.  Parting them up was a much quicker process because I have cut up many whole chickens from the grocery store, so I knew what I was doing for that chore.  The gutting part became easier after about three or four chickens, but the whole process took two of us about seven hours to clean seventeen chickns.  Near the end we were getting exhausted, so we left four of them gutted, but whole for roasting.  All of the other parted up chickens went into ziploc bags that were labeled and then put into the chest freezer.  I saved the backs, necks, liver, kidney, heart, and gizzards to make stock with.  All told I put seventy pounds of meat into my freezer that day.  Each chicken averaged out to a little over four pounds which is pretty comparable to the size of bird you would get at the store.

Over all I am pretty pleased with the outcome of the whole experiment.  I think in the future I will raise smaller batches of chicks to make the work and the feeding costs more manageable.  I was on a pretty tight budget for most of the summer so smaller feed bills next time around would be nice.  I averaged out the cost of raising this group of chickens and it comes out to about $11-$12 per bird.  Considering the cost of an organic bird from the store, I think I came out a little bit ahead.  If I could get to a place to allow more foraging for the birds I think I could cut the feed costs down even further, making it even cheaper for me to raise my own chickens for meat. 

In the future I will be using my incubator to hatch out the next rounds of chicks.  I didn't put all the roosters in the freezer, but currently have five of them that I will rotate in with the girls to make sure that I have some good genetic diversity in my flock.   I know that they will be "mutt" chickens, but I am going to select for large birds with friendly personalities.  All of the breeds that I have right now are hardy to my region and are all dual purpose breeds, so I hope to breed a flock of good sized meat birds that lay plenty of eggs.  

Greenhouse is Keeping it Hot

I am really happy with my makeshift greenhouse for the tomatoes and peppers.  I know it doesn't keep it that much warmer than the cold air outside overnight, but during the day it becomes a tropical rainforest in there and the plants are loving it!  The extra heat during the day is really helping the tomatoes and pepper ripen at a time when they should be starting to die back.  I have already had a light frost here that luckily didn't kill them, but now that they are covered, I hope to keep them going for at least a few more weeks.  How well they do will just depend on the weather.

 

The tomatoes are nearly six feet tall in some places and are loaded with unripe fruits.  I would really love to still be eating garden fresh tomatoes into November and might try different methods of heating the greenhouse to keep the plants going longer.

The peppers perked up with the extra heat too, though their harvest isn't looking nearly as bountiful.  If I'm lucky I might put a few more quarts of them in the freezer, but that will probably be all that I will get.  Next year I should probably start my seeds sooner since they need such a long growing season to fully ripen.

Making Soap

Making soap has become a little side hobby of mine over the years.  A friend of mine gave me a crash coarse in making soap a few year ago, so now a few times a year I make a couple batches for myself.  I have really dry and sensitive skin, so I make a point to use ingredients that are soothing to the skin.  My favorite recipe uses aloe, cucumbers, chamomile tea and oatmeal to enhance the soothing nature of the soap.  I have found that my skin has had far fewer problems in the years since I starting making and using my homemade soap.

I start the process by making the "water" portion of the soap.  First I make a small pot of chamomile tea and while it cools, I measure out the aloe and the cucumber for the batch of soap.  Everything used to make the soap is measured in ounces and I do my best to record the amounts used so I can repeat the recipe when I want to.  I puree the aloe and cucumber in a blender and then add the chamomile tea until I reach the desired amount.

After that I carefully measure out the lye and add it to the water mixture slowly.  Lye is very caustic, so I make sure that I am wearing protective clothing, gloves and goggles when I am handling this mixture.  Adding the lye to the water causes an exothermic reaction and the mixture gets very hot, very quickly - over 180 degrees in seconds, so I cool it in an ice bath to bring the temperature down to 125 degrees.

Meanwhile, I measure out and melt the fats I will be using in my soap.  I use a mixture of beef tallow, palm oil and coconut oil in my soap.  I have used other oils, but I like the firmness of the bar that I get from this combination.

Once the fats get close to the mixing temperature of 125 degrees, I turn off the heat and slowly add the lye mixture to the fats and begin to mix them together using a stick blender.

It takes some time, but the mixture eventually thickens as saponification begins to occur.  Once it reaches trace I add in the ground oatmeal and mix it a little bit longer.  After everything seems well blended I pour the soap into my mould.

Here it rests for 24 hours until it is firm.  Then I remove the soap from the mould and cut it into bars and line them up on the counter to cure.  The curing process takes two to six weeks to complete.

This much soap would easily last me over a year, but I like to give some away during the holidays so I will most likely make a few more batches before the year is over.  

Making soap is a fairly simple project and only takes a little time to make a large quantity of soap.  It is also an inexpensive project if you have all the equipment that you need.  I have a box of supplies dedicated to making soap that includes everything I need, like the mixing pot, the thermometer, the stick blender and other utensils. My only costs for making soap now are the oils and other ingredients, though I get the cucumber and aloe for free out of my garden.  I usually order my oils from a soap making supplier online since I can buy small batch quantities for a decent price with little hassle.  This batch of soap cost me less than $15 for 24 3-4oz bars of soap.  Not a bad price to pay, and I know exactly what went into making this soap - no added chemicals, fragrances or dyes.  This soap is just soap and it doesn't dry out my skin like so many soaps that I have tried in the past.  I have to say that I have been so happy with the results, that I haven't used store bought soap in over five years.

Fall Garden Beds

After I harvested my onions and potatoes, I had a few empty beds that I wanted to plant some quick growing crops in.  In one of the beds I planted peas and they are cruising along nicely.  Only a few weeks after they went into the soil, they sprouted and grew enough to need a trellis.  I normally put up the trellis before I plant, but at that time, I didn't have enough of the right kind of fence, or the supports to hold it up.  I was since given a free section of old chicken wire fence and decided to use that to make the trellis for the peas.  I still didn't have good supports to hold it up, but I cobbled some out of rebar, 2x4's and baling twine.  I had to be careful as I set it up so I didn't damage any of the young pea seedlings, but I managed to squeeze it down the middle of the row with little harm to the plants.  A few days later the peas have found the trellis and have reached out their tendrils to pull themselves up.  I hope it stays warm long enough to get a little crop out of this patch.  I didn't get much out of my spring peas and they are one of my favorite things to eat!

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The other bed that I planted was simply a salad bed with a variety of lettuce and spinach.  Those crops can tolerate a bit of cold and I will probably cover them with a little hoop house in a few weeks to keep them going into winter.  It sure will be nice to harvest salad greens in the cold of winter if I can make this work.

Most people think of fall as the time for the garden to be winding down, but with a little foresight, you can still squeeze a few more crops out of the soil if you plan it right.  I think I planted the peas about three or four weeks ago, and the lettuce two or three weeks ago.  With the cold season on it's way I won't have to worry about the lettuce or spincah bolting from the heat.  I also made sure to choose frost tolerant crops to extend the garden season as much as possible.  I know they won't survive the deep freezes of winter, but the garden can feed me a little while longer yet.

Bountiful Fall Harvests

The solstice has come and gone and the garden is slowing down, but that's not to say it's finished yet.  I am harvesting less often, but when I do go out to pick vegetables, I still get good quantities of most things.

Take these cucumbers for example.  I have only harvested about four times in the last two weeks and each harvest is about this size.  Right now I have two gallon bags full of cucumbers waiting to be pickled in the fridge.

The tomatoes have finally started ripening now that they have the heat and humidity of the greenhouse to help them along.  I hope to get a few more harvests like this one so I can make plenty of tomato sauce this winter.

The peppers are finally starting to change color too, but they are very slow to fully ripen.  I only picked a handful of them this last harvest, hoping to leave some of the bigger ones to change color more.

The Jalepenos on the other hand have just gone to town.  I have had plenty of those in the past few weeks and am going to try turing this harvest into poppers for the freezer.  I have already made plenty of salsa, so I needed to come up with another way to preserve this harvest.  Should make for some good snacking this winter!

There are other things that I am still harvesting here and there like yellow squash and greenbeans, but I am barely getting enough of those to fill out the dinner menu.  I will probably keep trying to eat those fresh while I can, since I am not harvesting enough to make preserving them worth my while.  The winter squash should be ready soon and I will have plenty of those to eat this winter.  I am looking forward to hardier meals as the weather cools down.  I think I will have plenty of variety to choose from thanks to my lovely productive garden!

Constructing A Temporary Greenhouse

The season is rapidly cooling here and nights have been dipping down into the thirties here in the past few weeks.  There was frost on my car just a couple nights ago, though I got lucky and didn't get much damage in the garden.  It was my wake up call to get some protection over my warm weather crops like the tomatoes and the peppers.  Those two crops were very slow to get going this year, and I was hoping for bigger harvests off of them before the year was through.  To help them out I decided that I needed to cobble together a greenhouse to help protect them from the cooler nights as well as boost thier heat during the day.

I started by pounding some two foot legnths of rebar into the ground outlining the bottom of the greenhouse.  I was happy that I planted the tomatoes and the peppers in adjacent beds because it meant that I could build the greenhouse around both the beds and still have a walking path down the middle.  Once I had the rebar where I wanted them, I slid the pvc pipes over the ends and bent them towards the center where I connected some of the ends with T connectors.  The center pole was connected with a cross connector and the end poles were secured to the T-posts that were doing double duty supporting the tomato trellis.  The framework was further secured with some recycled baling twine.  Once the framework was finished, I covered the frame with a pair of clear plastic painters tarps.  The sides were weighed down with rocks and the plastic was secured to the frame with some clamps.  The ends were rolled up and weighed down with rocks as well, but I rolled the ends in a way that made them able to be left a little open to ventilate during the heat of the day.  I just need to unroll the ends a little bit to close it up for the evenings.

Now that I have this greenhouse in place I will be able to enjoy a little longer growing season for my tomatoes and peppers.  Perhaps I will be able to can many jars of tomato sauce yet!