Winterizing the Chicken Coop

Having an unconventional coop means coming up with unconventional solutions to taking care of my flock of chickens in cold weather.  I was hoping to make it more like a greenhouse for the winter, but my budget wouldn't allow me to purchase the plastic that I wanted to cover the coop with.  Instead I used a variety of tarps to do the job for now.  Chickens need a dry, draft free place in order to be warm enough, so I covered as much surface area as possible with tarps.  I know the tarps will only last me a season or two, so I am not as worried about them being damaged by the wind and the weather out here.  I used my largest tarp to cover the back of the laying house and the rear of the pen.

The chickens all roost on the boards in the pen at night, so I am trying to make it as comfortable as possible for them.  The top of the pen was already covered by a small sheet of visqueen plastic and a tarp to keep off the rain, so all I had to do was get a tarp to cover each side to the bottom.  I had left the front of the enclosure open, but now that I had a sheet of plastic from the greenhouse that I took down I was able to cover the pen more completely.

 I pinned one side of the sheet over the rooster pen and the far side of the hen pen.  I draped the rest of the sheet over and pinned the top over the door.  There is still a small gap at the top by the door, but I think allowing for some ventilation at the top allows any moisture trapped under the plastic to find it's way out.  The side that covers the door is weighted down with a few large rocks and I can move it back to allow them to have more fresh air during the day.  At night I pull the plastic sheeting across the open front and hold it in place with more rocks.

So far the set up seems to be working.  During the day it has been a very comfortable temperature inside the pen even when it's a bit chillier outside.  At night I think it traps enough of the chicken's body heat to keep it a few degrees warmer inside than out.  I am glad that I chose cold hardy breeds for my flock as they seem quite content in this set up and haven't acted the least disturbed by the change in the weather lately.

I don't plan on giving them any extra lighting and so far thier egg production seems unfazed by the shorter days we are having.  Hopefully they will keep it up through winter and next spring will hopefully be a good time to hatch out more chicks and grow my flock a little larger.

 

The roosters in the bachelor pad are benefiting from the extra protection as well.  While they don't have the most ideal set up, they are totally protected from the elements and get to share a bit a the warmth from the larger run that theirs is attatched to.  In the next few months I will be deciding which roosters make the cut for a breeding program and hope to reduce the number of roosters down to two that will be living with the hens full time.  By spring I am hoping to use this pen to brood my next batch of chicks.

Winding Down the Garden

Winter finally decided to show up last week and we had a nice little blustery cold front come through that brought temps in the low 20s to my garden.  I think that it is safe to say that only the very hardiest of the plants survived, though the next few days will probably reveal the extent of the damage.  I don't think the peas will produce anything this season, so they will go to feed the garden soil and the chickens who think the stems and leaves are delectable.

The brussel sprouts look pretty tired, but I think I might have some harvestable sprouts under the cover of leaves.

The cabbages have taken some damage as well, but I think that I will have four or five nice heads out of this bed.  Not bad considering that I already got a harvest of onions out of this same bed earlier this year.

The rest of the garden is pretty much done for and I am gradually trying to prepare each bed for winter.  This also means that it was time to take down the greenhouse that I had over the peppers and tomatoes.  It did a fair job keeping the tomatoes going and I just harvested the last of them this week, the night before the hard freezes.

 I will save the pvc pipes and the plastic for hoop houses this spring.  I know that there are a few more parsnips hiding in some of these beds, so I will have to dig them out as I go along. I also dismantled the cucumber trellis so I can mulch in this bed for winter.  There is still a fair amount of work to be done this season and I am trying to make good use of the weekends with nice weather to get it done.  I don't know how long the warm spells will last, but I am taking the hint that winter is well on its way, and it's gonna get chilly.  I hope I can get it all done before the snow hits down in this valley.

Using every last bit: Ham bone stock

Something that I try to be mindful of in my day to day life is using every last bit of everything that I can.  Today I made use of the ham bone left over from a ham that I baked last week.  I trimmed all the extra meat that I could and then put the bone in a large stock pot and covered it with water.  To the water I added fresh celery stalks, carrots, onions, garlic and a couple of bay leaves.  I brought it all to a boil then reduced it to a simmer and let it cook for hours on the back burner.  The aroma that filled my house today was amazing!

At the end of the day I turned off the heat and let everything cool for a few hours.  Before I went to bed, I put the stock in the fridge to cool even more overight.  The next day, I strained the chilled stock into a bowl then returned it to the now clean stock pot to be simmered for a few more hours to concentrate it a little bit more.  After it cooled down again, I transfered the stock into freezer bags for long term storage.  I had a total of 12 cups of stock when it was all said and done.

The scraps left over from the stock, including the ham bone went to the chickens.  They happily gobbled up every last bit and picked the bone clean.  I think they were some very happy chickens today!  They left me seven eggs instead of the usual three or four!

Another Christmas Hat Delivered

I have happily been able to finish another hat for a friend that wanted to give one to her daughter as a gift.  She requested the softest yarn that I could find and asked that I made it blue and white to match her daughter's winter jacket.

I think this one turned out great!  I like how mixing the colors makes a unique pattern when I crochet them together.  I hope that it fits well! Those ear flaps should keep her nice and warm this winter and I hope that she gets plenty of chances to wear it!

Planting Garlic

The fall season is well underway, and though most of the garden is winding down, I still have one crop left to plant this year: Garlic!  We have had a few frosts though the weather has been warm this week, so I thought the time was perfect for getting another crop of garlic into the ground.

The first step in the process was preparing the bed for another crop.  This bed has been busy this year and has grown a crop of peas this spring, and a crop of turnips and beets in late summer.  Now that those crops are out of the bed I needed to amend the soil a bit before I planted my garlic.  I didn't have much in the way of compost that I could add, but I did sprinkle a layer of ashes from my fire pit (from burning loads of ragweed) and a layer of composting grass clippings that I had.  I am hoping the grass clippings break down a bit over the winter and add some organic matter to this soil which is largely hard clay and river rocks.

This is the bed after I pulled the beets.  I did my best to break up the large clumps of soil and removed any large rocks that I came across.  After turning the soil over, the bed was ready for planting.

I raked out any left over weeds and large clumps of soil, then raked it as smooth as I could.  I added a third drip line to the bed and then started laying out the garlic cloves in a grid across the bed.  I think I was able to get a clove every six inches or so and ended up planting 105 cloves total of three different varieties.  I don't know what the varieties are called, but there is a red soft neck, a red hard neck and a white hard neck.  The red hard neck is a new variety this year that I got at the local farmer's market to round out my bed.  

After all the cloves were properly planted I turned on the water to make sure that the drip irrigation was working well for this bed.  I am glad that I checked because two of the lines for this bed barely dripped at all, so I fixed them by poking new holes every few inches with a thumb tack.  Now I know that this bed will be well watered.

The last step was to mulch the bed.  Again I used a bunch of composting grass clippings to cover the bed because that is what I had on hand.  The grass clippings will keep the moisture in the bed and protect the newly planted garlic from extreme temperatures.

In the spring I will help the garlic shoots poke through the thick mulch, but will leave it on the bed so that it helps to reduce the number of weeds that want to grow in this bed.  I hope that next summer's garlic crop is big and healthy.  I am trying to give it the best head start that I can.

Crocheted Christmas Gifts

This is a good time of year for me to work on my crochet projects.  The sun is setting earlier and I can't do much work outside in the dark, so I have been spending my spare time crocheting hats.  A friend of mine at work ordered a couple of hats for Chistmas gifts for her kids.  She told me which colors she wanted in the hats and I went and found the right color yarn from the local craft store and got to work.

I am really happy with how they turned out.  They will be nice and warm since they are so thick, and the colors work well together.  I think they will make the perfect Christmas present for a couple of girls that love to ski.

Digging Up the Parsnips

Parsnips were one of those crops that I tucked in here and there in some of the garden beds.  When I planted the squash bed I added a handful of parsnips seeds in the empty spaces between the hills.  I figured they would have enough time to grow under the cover of the squash crop without interfering since they have a low growth habit and deep tap roots.  I wanted to plant parsnips mostly because of their long tap root.  My soil is heavy clay and I was hoping that the roots would help break up the soil a little bit.  They are a useful crop and they will make a nice addition to winter soups and stews.  I didn't plant a lot of them, but they are scattered throughout the garden, so I hope to get a decent amount by the time I have dug them all.

  This handful of parsnips is just a part of the total harvest I hope to get this year.  I should still have a couple hiding amongst the peppers and possibly a few in the broccoli bed as well.

Canning Tomato Sauce

The tomato harvest this year has been slow in coming, but as it has trickled in I have been putting the ripest of them into the freezer, filling multiple gallon bags along the way.  I didn't have enough time to can any of them this summer because I was plenty busy preserving other produce from the garden.  The other reason I have been freezing them, aside from keeping them as fresh as possible, is to make them easier to skin for the sauce.  I have tried boiling them to skin them in the past, but it is so much simpler just to peel the skins off as they thaw.  Much nicer than burning my fingers trying to peel hot tomatoes.


So I began with four gallon bags of whole tomatoes.  I use all of my varieties of tomatoes for sauce including the cherry tomatoes since I have far too many to eat them all fresh and they all add thier own delicious flavor to the sauce.  I washed the frozen tomatoes and then removed any stems and trimmed off any bad spots.  All of the tomatoes went into my biggest pot and then I added a little water to start the cooking process.  As they warmed, I pulled them out one by one and peeled their skins off, then returned them to the pot.  Eventually they started to simmer and I let them cook down for a few hours before moving on to the next step.

After all the tomatoes had become mostly liquid they took a turn going through my food mill.  I didn't want all the seeds in my sauce and this is how I removed as many as I could as well as any skins or tough parts that I may have missed.  The seeds and skins that were left all went to the chickens who happily ate every last crumb.  The sauce was returned to the pot where I let it simmer most of the day to become thicker.  I like a fairly thick sauce, but I didn't want to make paste, so I cooked it down until it was reduced by half and stuck to the spoon a bit as I poured it off.

When the sauce was getting closed to the desired consistancy I started to prepare the jars and canner for the final stage.  I made sure that they were boiled for at least ten minutes before I started to transfer the sauce to the jars.  Each jar got a tablespoon of lemon juice and then was filled with sauce.  I left a half inch of head space in each jar, then wiped the rims and secured the lids and returned them to the boiling water.  I let them boil for forty-five minutes, then rest for five, then the jars went onto the counter to seal and cool for several hours.  After all that work, the four gallons of fresh frozen tomatoes cooked down to only eight pints of sauce.  I added them to the other six pints I made a few weeks ago.  It isn't a ton of sauce but I should have enough for a few tomato based dishes over the winter.

Pulling Beets

In early spring I planted my first crop of peas in this bed.  When those were finished I pulled all the plants and removed the trellis, then planted a second crop in the bed.  I had decided to plant a row of turnips and a row of beets to help round out my winter vegetable stores.  I am not a huge fan of beets, but I know someone who is, so I thought I'd add a little color to my garden for them.  The turnips were ready for harvest first, so I pulled the largest of them every few days until I had them all.  Removing the turnips allowed the slower growing beets to now thrive with the extra sunshine.  Finally they were mostly finished growing and I decided to harvest them all at once so that I could prepare the bed for the final crop of the season: garlic.

I wound up with a good handful of colorful beets as I had planted a variety in this one row.  There were golden beets, deep red beets, white beets, and a handful of small candy cane striped beets.  What a beautiful assortment!

Autumn Sunrise Hat and Scarf

I finally had the chance to work on some of the yarn that I made this spring and am happy to report that I have finished making the hat and scarf that I intended to make with it.  I used the merino wool that I dyed with red and yellow dyes to make an array of sunset colors. Here it is as freshly dyed roving:

 The roving then spun up into two nice skeins that looked like this:

I used part of one for the hat, and the leftovers, plus another full skein for the scarf.  I think they turned out great!

I am so glad to be done with another project so that I can move on to newer projects.  I have a couple of hats that have been ordered for the holiday season, so I will get to work on those as soon as I can.  Once I am done with that, I will probably start working on another color scheme for another matching hat and scarf.