Farmer's reward

Once our garden is in full swing, we feel pretty stinking rich all the time. And why is that you wonder? Because every day is like eating at a fresh gourmet restaurant. A typical trip to the garden will yield all this, and more.

Everything I could hold: a half pound of green beans, two zucchini, four eggplant, two cucumbers and two peppers.

This year I smartened up about my herbs and overwintered some of them so they had a huge head start in the spring. Most of my overwintered herbs are the size of small hedges, so I hope to keep that up this year. I love being able to pluck some oregano, thyme or basil for whatever I'm cooking in the kitchen. The eggplant and cucumbers are ripening at a pace of 3-4 a day and we eat the cukes as fresh snacks they are so sweet.

Our tomatoes are only just beginning to ripen. These are an heirloom variety, Beam's yellow. They look like light bulbs and have a very sweet, mild flavor that makes them a good addition to everything from eggs to salsa. The pumpkin-shaped Brandywines are green on the vine, as are the Roma and cherry tomatoes. The carrot tops are tall and lush and since I didn't have the heart to properly thin them, I have been plucking baby carrots 2 to 4 inches deep from the rows each week to thin them out now (except now I get to eat them instead of just discarding the seedlings). We've come up with some great in season recipes this year that I'll share this week.

Baby fluff balls

Our fourth of July was special this year because we watched two chicks hatch. Words can't express the awe and cuteness of the experience, so we'll just share some pictures.

Farmer's breakfast

First it was strawberries and lettuces, now it's sugar snap peas, cucumbers, and the first eggplant and baby broccoli crowns.

"Sugar snap peas for breakfast?" you ask. Sure! And cucumbers too, although we juice them with a few apples and carrots for a refreshing healthy breakfast juice.

And of course, a bunch of eggs we collected yesterday.

With sauteed chives, garlic and baby broccoli. Mmmm. This is the richness of the gardener's breakfast. Of course, it also matters what we didn't eat.

Do you see the two little cracks on each of the eggs? We can't wait to meet our newest feathered family members. To me independence is all about having having secure, safe and sustainable food and energy (here's looking at almost 14 megawatt-hours of solar energy generated). Happy Independence Day!

Little farm miracle

Today we had a lot going on as usual but after our walk Savannah spotted something new while collecting eggs. Our broody hen was off her nest and two of the eggs were cracked. After a bit of searching we found something sticking out from our broody girl's breast.

Can you see the sweet not yet one-day-old baby chick peeking out from beneath her mama's feathers? Here's another close up just in case.

Welcome baby! We are eager to see the colors of this one as it grows since it is half Buff Orpington and half Rhode Island Red. But this wasn't our only surprise. Then we discovered a second baby that had fallen outside of the coop, it was running around frightened and cold. As soon as we caught her and she felt our warmth, she quieted and fell asleep. We decided to bring her in the house to raise her in the brooder.  That way we can be certain she will have food, water, warmth and will not fall out of the coop again. And, she'll imprint on us.

Even Aunt Megan got to hold our new baby fluff ball. But there was another surprise. William had been asking over and over for milk while I was preparing the brooder. When Kevin went to the fridge to get his milk, he heard peeping from inside the fridge! He brought out our bowl of freshly collected eggs and I quickly did the water test on them. Two of the eggs floated right to the top so we scooped them out. Aunt Megan heard the peeping from inside one of the eggs too. I made a little "nest" for the eggs inside the brooder where it was warmest and guess who wanted to snuggle with her sisters?

The first egg on the left already has a small crack in it from baby sister's egg tooth. Tomorrow we expect to have two baby fluff balls in our brooder and possibly a third if the last egg was also fertilized. For us, this is quite the miracle because our rooster Lucky (who is lucky to be alive in the first place) has half a brain and doesn't exactly know what he's doing when he mounts a chicken. We see very few fertilized eggs. Ever. So we thought our poor broody girl was nesting in vain. We left her alone though to do her thing with her clutch of eggs and now she's got one lovely chick to raise as her own and we have two or three to raise our way. Tonight or tomorrow we expect to see the miracle of hatching. And soon enough all the siblings will be together again, grazing the land with their mama and each other.

Day on the farm

There's much going on everyday now in the garden, so I need lots of helpers. While I garden after dinner, I keep everyone else occupied to keep them nearby and out of trouble. My water-obsessed boy loves to water the asparagus bed. (Our mantra: Water plants, not people!)

The sugar snap peas have already grown up to the third level of my trellis, and are begging me to add levels four and five.

My solution to never having to weed the garden - weed cloth used in mounded up rows with straw around the perimeter. I roll up the weed cloth in the fall and re-use it for 3-4 years.

We've already picked some fresh lettuces from the garden for our salads. Nothing beats tender fresh garden lettuces. This is a head of Ithaca.

 And an heirloom favorite from France, merveille des saisons.
 

My big girls helping out in the compost pile to turn the pile for me so it cooks more evenly. Thanks girls!

 Blueberries springing up on a bush that Kevin thought was dead. I guess my special compost mix and two years of TLC revived it. We used to get a few dozen blueberries from this bush, now there are hundreds and this is our smallest blueberry bush!

Savannah works her magic touch with the babies. Even the more high-strung Americaunas love her and jump into her lap in the evenings before bedtime when she's in the hammock. She can be found after dinner with two or more babies on her lap, nestling into her warmth and enjoying the snuggle.

Dirt and other miracles of nature

Every year I spend many back breaking hours adding composted horse manure, compost from our household, and composted chicken and wood manure to our garden. Today as I labored away, discouraged by the amount of clay and rock still in our garden, I wondered to myself, why I was doing this. I tilled in 100 pounds of sphagnum peat moss in one small row, meant to house carrots, while my boots got sucked down in the wet clay and my back ached from repeatedly lifting the dense clumps of dirt that clung to my pitchfork. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to see a great documentary this evening called, Dirt! The Movie, all about our relationship with the soil and its complicated diverse organisms that sustain us and all life on Earth. If you get the chance, I recommend this film, which grounded me and made the knots in my shoulder seem not quite so bad.

This week we had the opportunity to see all kinds of nature's curiosities such as the baby chipmunks running about, with their eyes still closed, completely unaware of our presence but somehow able to locate, open and eat nuts. How they can do this, when human infants are so helpless for so long, beats me. The chipmunk above was the size of a small mouse.

We were able to rescue this year-old red winged blackbird that had gotten tangled in a net. It had injured its wing trying to rip free of the netting so we housed it for the night so it could rest and watched it fly away the next morning, good as new. I learned first hand how formidable their beaks are and hope to never do battle with one.

Our lilacs, whose blossoms had remained pinched tightly shut until this week, seduced us with their intoxicating fragrance and we finally had to bring some clusters indoors to enjoy. The bees are drunk in love with the lilac bushes this week too, and I can't blame them. They're also busy pollinating our strawberries, which have begun to bear small green berries, teasing us with the promise of a bountiful crop sometime in June.

Spring chores

It seems that as soon as the ground thaws, there's a long list of chores needing attention around here. Fortunately, with good weather over the weekend, I could get some odd jobs done outside while the kids played ball, chased the chickens, and climbed trees. I was able to build two of the three raised cedar beds I wanted for the garden this year. We are trying out some new gardening techniques with the crops we've had difficulty with in the past years - mainly because of critters eating them. Mine are constructed from 1 x 4 cedar lumber in 8 foot lengths because it's cheapest to build them with these materials and because 8 ft is the maximum length I can fit in the car. These beds are 2 x 6 feet and 11" high so they are easily portable. I used a cedar 2 x 4 for the corner supports.

Of course, right after building these, I discovered another design that I fell in love with. The main difference is simply that this raised bed plan anticipates critter problems so it includes covering the bottom with hardware cloth to prevent moles from digging through the bottom and uses PVC tubing to create hoops to drape bird cloth over the top keeping out birds and many insects as well. You could alternate using bird cloth with frost cloth to extend the growing season as well. In the above photo, you can see I've installed the PVC piping in one of the raised beds already. Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way that you can't bend 1/2" PVC tubing across a 2-foot span - it's simply not flexible enough. So, I will be using traditional metal hoops for the cedar beds that fit inside the PVC instead.

I decided to adapt this hoop method to the strawberry fountain, which our chickens and the crows like to get into once the strawberries appear. I can't wait to fill the new raised beds with soil and compost and get started but we're not yet past our last frost date. At the moment I have the greenhouse filled with baby seedlings waiting to be transplanted. With the hoops over the tops of the new raised beds, I'm considering trying to keep them covered with frost cloth to protect them from frost and transplanting early, we'll see how brave I get. (The greenhouse is also filled with fluffy baby Buff Orpington chicks!)

After all the rain from last week, the ground was perfectly soft and soggy for digging holes for planting new blueberry bushes and raspberries this weekend. I set one new blueberry plant in digging a much larger hole and layering soil, straw, and chicken manure compost in the bottom of it. I always separate the root bundle and splay it out to help encourage the roots to grow deeper. I also planted three Heritage raspberry plants to expand our patch and replace some of the canes that didn't make it from last year. One of my favorite things about summer is taking the children to the garden to have their snack. They love picking the fresh raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries for themselves. They pop cherry tomatoes in their mouths like candies and wonder why tomatoes from the store don't taste like these. They eat all the sugar snap peas so that they never make it to the house. This year, I'm expanding our sugar snap pea patch by four fold so some will surely make it to the house, I hope.

Farmer genius

There's a certain kind of genius that only experienced farmers possess. That genius has come from years of making mistakes, back-breaking work, and age; age that makes you work smarter because your body can no longer work harder.

After doing much research on chicken waterers, I discovered a chicken farmer who makes his own waterers and feeders for about 10 bucks each. They keep the water clean and full for about two weeks for a flock our size. So, I couldn't resist, I had to make my own because anything that makes my life easier, is a blessing.

First I tipped my 5-gallon bucket upside down in the pan to mark the height of the side of the pan on the bucket. Then I turned it back over to drill 3/8" holes below this line (when turned over).  I filled it up, tapped on the lid,  and turned it over set outdoors for a few hours to be certain there was no leaking before introducing it to the coop. The girls are thrilled with their new watering system! Placed on a cinder block, they can't kick up their bedding into the water.

The feed bucket has 1 1/4" holes drilled around the base of the bucket (again below the side of the pan). I also drilled three 1/4" holes in the bucket and using screws, washers and nuts, bolted them together so it wouldn't tip or get pushed to the side. As the girls eat, their feed refills itself. I only wish I had done this sooner!

Play dough dreams of spring

Even though I expect more snow and ice, it feels like we've made it through the worst of winter and that the promise of spring is close at hand. During the winter, we don't clean the chicken coop like we do throughout the rest of the year. Instead, I add a weekly layer of sweet clean hay, golden straw or pine shavings to build up the organic mass in the coop. Besides keeping the chickens warmer, it creates excellent compost come spring time and to my nose smells sweet, pungent, and earthy, not unpleasant. I actually look forward to this gardening smell on my daily visits to the chicken coop to check on the girls. Our matriarch, Scarlet, has the first few white feathers peeking through on top of her auburn head, a testament to all the hawks and dogs she's dodged. All the chickens are more grateful of receiving pats and food scraps in winter to keep their days more interesting.

In the house our worms are hard at work creating their own compost. In the spring as they start to multiply, I plan to scoop handfuls of red wigglers into the raised beds to help ensure the success of those crops. The soil they live in smells rich and loamy and Savannah can't help but open the lids and dig around inside.

We're growing our fourth batch of bulbs indoors; this time crocuses, spring's smallest but bravest and earliest bloomers. Seeing the delicate green buds everyday does wonders when there are snowbanks outside taller than I am. And to stave off the winter blues, we've been making play dough, something made pliable by the warmth of our hands and wanting to be stretched and molded into whatever we can imagine it to be.

Busy at play with a batch of homemade play dough. I use the oilcloth to spare my table from the rough housing.

 

Alligators and little girls.

Elephant-bat.

The play dough recipe that really works:

In a large bowl combine 1 1/2 cups water, and 3 Tb vegetable oil, (food coloring, if desired), (vanilla or other scented oil, if desired).

Add to it 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cups salt, 3 Tb cream of tartar and stir until the lumps are gone.

Bake in a  9x9 or 9x13 glass pan at 350 degrees for 7 to 10 minutes.

Remove from dish, when cool enough and knead. Store in a plastic lidded container or bag to keep it fresh for many weeks.

Worm houses

Last night I read about a farming family and one of the many things they do to promote soil health is vermicomposting. I've considered getting worms many times before but kept putting it off until my littlest rascal is older. Today though, something clicked and I ordered my worms and we constructed our worm houses. As is often the case, it turned out to be a family affair.

Savannah learned how to use an electric drill with the impressive 1/2" drill bit. We drilled holes on the bottoms of two 12 gallon containers for aeration and drainage of any excess water. Excess water will be caught in a second container below, that is intact.

Ever wonder what happens to all those manuscripts I write and work on? If they are lucky enough to get printed, they end up shredded and in the spring get added to my compost pile. Kind of neat that my work feeds my garden too.

The paper will act as bedding for the red wigglers, a tiny but voracious worm, that will occupy their new digs when they arrive on Tuesday. The paper is kept moist for them and a bit of organic soil and food scraps are added daily.

My help gets a little exuberant with the worm bedding! At least there's an indoor gardening project we can do in the dead of winter that's fun.

I think William is pretty proud of his indoor farming project!

Here's one of the double set of bins (we made two sets of worm houses); the whole bin sits on the bottom, the bin with the 1/2" holes drilled into the bottom sits on top of it. There are also holes at the top for air circulation right beneath the lid. Eventually, we will place a third bin with holes drilled in it over this one for two weeks when it's time to use the worm castings. The worms crawl up through the holes in the bottom of the floor to the new food available in the top bin. Our worm houses were constructed with information from this website and our 2,000 red wiggler worms were ordered on sale here, a Pennsylvania company.

We made two sets of wiggler homes, and plan to house about a thousand in each. The first vericomposter is affectionately named the "Vermestate" and the second is the "Wormcome Inn". We're not the only ones who named their worm houses, right? Bring on the castings! I can't wait to use them in the garden.

Gratitude

November is a month of gratitude for me for a number of reasons, so I am always sad to see it go. For four years now I have participated in Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month, and each year that I pull a novel out of thin air (working on it only after my work is done and the children are in bed), I'm surprised and thankful. Thankful because I'm doing something I love and have a carrot and stick to make me do it.

November is also the month that we spend more time indoors together. There's less to do outdoors. The garden doesn't need tending anymore and has been tilled back into itself to feed itself for another year. The fruits have been mulched and fed with a rich layer of compost and the chickens are quieter now and appreciate our company more and food scraps with fewer grubs and bugs to eat.

Lucky, our handsome one-eyed rooster.

November is the month that comfort foods start appearing on the dinner table; warm and creamy squash dishes, vegetable casseroles, roasted chickens, hearty potatoes and root vegetables, soups, and sweet apple crisps and warm puddings. We begin to open the jars of jams we set aside in summer, blueberry jam from our neighbors' blueberries, strawberry from the orchard down the road, cranberry grape jam for turkey and chicken dinners. A homemade pie crust can be filled with anything in November; a savory quiche, a pumpkin pie, a chicken vegetable stew, sweet potatoes, cinnamon apples with crumble topping, or vegetables and cheese.

The wood stove cranks out enough heat to keep two stories of our house very warm and suddenly we're wearing T-shirts again. With the shorter days, we spend more time at home inside the house as a family, tickling, giggling, talking, snuggling, reading books, and rascaling (that's an actual word in our vocabulary).

Savannah reads William his favorite book, Each Peach Pear Plum, on the sofa in pajammies (another Sara word) before bedtime.

We also prepare for the Christmas holiday by beginning our annual decluttering. We pick up our stuff and ask it when we last used it, whether it makes our lives easier or more beautiful, whether it or the space it occupies is more important to us. Space that can be used for practicing Taekwondo, for dancing to the Backyardigans theme song for the 10,000th time, for entertaining guests, now that we're indoors so much, or for chasing, or tickling, or driving toy cars around.

William making art at the easel.

November is a great time to begin star gazing again. My favorite constellations are prominent in the early night sky and Venus always shines brightly. There are meteor showers and they start early enough that the kids can see them before bedtime, just in time to wish on a star. Yes, November is among my favorite months, so I am always sad to see it go, but grateful that we experienced all it had to offer.