A Couple Winter Work Stories

Up until about 3 weeks ago when we had a week of sub-zero temps, our chickens were producing incredible quantities of eggs:  8-10 every day.  It's really quite amazing to have this product you spend real money for at the grocery store just keep coming and coming and coming with so little effort.  The chickens need food, water, shelter and to be cleaned up after and then dozens of eggs are there for the taking.  Remarkable provision that has been designed in to the world. 

At one point we had a subtle yet profound moment of connecting labor with produce.  We were grumbling about having to refill the chickens' water over and over until we realized that the water we provide is going in to the yokes and whites of the eggs we will be eating over the winter.  It's a "duh" moment in some ways, but also a small remarkable insight into how a farm works.

After the sub-zero week, the temperature has been much lower than previously.  The egg production has dropped off considerably:  now 2-3 eggs per day.  The chickens don't seem to like snow much;  they walk out into it to eat and drink the way a cat avoids getting its feet wet.  Also at one point when it was -10 degrees, a few of the chickens combs were frosted so that the tips got discolored and floppy.  It was unfortunate but the combs are healing and the chickens are still active and healthy.

Chickens are not sure about the snow...

Just SOME of the eggs we have.  Labeled with dates for storage.

As previously reported, one of the other elements of the homestead life we are working on is learning about and using natural and herbal remedies.  As part of this work we have made our first batch of tinctures.  Tinctures are super-concentrated doses of herbal extracts that are used to deliver potent medicinal properties quickly.  Tinctures may be, depending on the herb, taken by themselves (e.g., a few drops of Peppermint for an upset stomach) or may be mixed in order to target a group of symptoms (e.g. feverfew, valerian root and lavender for headaches).  On the relative scale of herbal potency, tinctures are more potent than infusions, which are themselves more potent than teas.   Tinctures are administered via dropper due to their strength and, though some herbs can be dropped directly onto the tongue, they are often added to hot water to dilute the taste and potency.  Tinctures of some herbs are so potent that care should be taken in making, administering and even handling them.

Tinctures are made by placing a quantity of herbs (dried or fresh depending on the herb) into a jar and adding a solvent.  In our case we used 80 proof vodka, although apple-cider vinegar can be used in order to avoid alcohol (though a tincture made from vinegar will not have as long of a shelf-life as one made from alcohol).  This mixture is then left to steep for 4-6 weeks in a sunny location, shaken daily.  As the pictures below illustrate, you then strain out the herbs in order to bottle the tincture.  Note that the remaining herb mush is so concentrated that you should take care, and do your homework, before placing them into a compost pit even if the herbs are organic (and you really should only make tinctures, or any herbal medicine, from organic herbs since you would be concentrating the pesticides from non-organic herbs and your tincture would then have little resemblance to medicine).  The herbal intensity and alcohol residue can kill the microbes in the compost.

Pouring and straining the steeped mixture

Squeezing out the tincture

Bottles should be either brown or cobalt glass to protect from sun damage

Tinctures are administered with a dropper.  Be sure to label well!

First Season Thoughts

It’s December: it is 20 degrees outside and the soil is frozen 2 inches down.  The first season of the homestead has come to an end.  In looking back on the first year it was over-all a successful year; especially for first-timers.  Our garden produced enough veggies to be used in multiple meals, our potatoes were prolific enough to provide dishes for months, our chicken meat will be available until at least the spring, and our hens are healthy and still laying a prodigious number of eggs.  It was a great achievement to serve our visiting family this October a meal completely grown on our property.  It wasn’t fancy but chard, potatoes and chicken is a hearty and super nutritious meal.

There are a few areas where we will be working to improve things next season.  As is always the case, learning comes with success and failure.  We’d like to mention a few of these areas.

Planning and organization:  For our first year we did pretty well identifying crops and varieties to grow, but some basic improvements will help a lot.  For one, some of our crops were just planted in the wrong season.  For example, the broccoli actually grew well but we planted it in mid –June, which meant it was maturing in the hottest part of the summer.  This made it unbelievably bitter, because broccoli is a cool weather veggie.  So, next time we’ll plant at appropriate times.  Also we didn’t space our crops very well in some cases.  All our lettuce came in at the same time so we had way more than we could eat and much of our lettuce crop went to the chickens once it was past its prime. With our climate we can grow multiple crops of lettuce, so timing again is important.  Finally, due to disorganization (laziness) some of the crops were not kept track of for future planning purposes. For example, we didn’t note which potatoes varieties we planted.  So for next year we don’t know which varieties did really well and which did not.  Obviously this is an easy fix but well worth making.  It’s the little things that make a difference.

Starting seeds:  This is one area we will really need to work on. This past spring we goofed on just about every aspect of starting.  First, we started our seeds too early so the seedlings were too mature when it was still cold out and could not be safety transferred outside.  Second, we struggled to find a good place to start the plants.  Our 100-year-old farm house does not have big sunny windows and it can get quite cool inside in the spring, which didn't help.  Finally we used cheapo soil which actively killed many of our seedlings.  This next spring we will be starting at appropriate times and are hoping to build a few cold-frames to help direct the warm sun on to the seedlings even when the temps are cool. As we found with the watermelon, starting properly is a big deal in Idaho where we have a relatively short growing season and wide day/night temperature swings.

Water:  As mentioned previously this past summer was literally the hottest summer ever in southwest Idaho.  So water was a huge deal.  Although we did pretty well with a combination of our water well and irrigation water, our water application was done simply with a hose.  This obviously worked OK but two big negatives presented themselves.  First was that the water falling from a height, even with low pressure, compacted the soil in our double-dug beds, partially negating both the work of digging and the function of the loose soil.  The other obvious negative was someone had to be there to water.  We are very much looking in to a simple drip system for next year.  These systems have many advantages.  They are inexpensive to set up, easy to operate (even automatically), most function on very low water pressure (~5 psi), they provide water directly to the root base and are up to 90% efficient in delivering water instead of wasting it do to evaporation and runoff.

Harvesting:  A surprisingly difficult aspect of growing is knowing when to harvest.  Reading books makes it seem that everyone has their own mysterious formula for knowing when to harvest certain plants.  For us this season it was basically trial and error.  "The tomato was red, so pick it" kind of thing.  This worked out over-all pretty well.  We did learn that okra needs to be harvested at a certain time or it's hard and fibrous.  We are not sure if we harvested the onions and garlic at the right time because they were small and have all gone moldy after just a few months.  The potatoes were done well however;  they were pretty large and healthy.  Harvesting again comes down to timing and when the planning and starting (see above) is done properly the proper harvest time should be more easy to discern. 

As the winter progresses we will continue to update on keeping chickens and bees over winter.  That will present their own challenges.  Also as we begin planning next year we'll keep the blog up-to-date with our goals, ideas and aspirations.

Herbalism

      As we work towards a closer connection with the land, we are learning about incorporating more herbs into our diet, not only for culinary purposes but also medicinal ones. I am taking a Clinical Master Herbalist course and everyday learn more about the vast array of herbs available for common ailments and the various ways to prepare them. Currently, 30+ herbs are in our herb pantry for infusions, teas and decoctions. Our back porch is lined with tinctures soaking in the sun.

Some of our favorite simple teas/infusions:

Sleep helper:
1 part chamomile flowers
1 part peppermint leaf
2 parts passion flower

Awake and at 'em:
1 part ginger root
1 part cinnamon bark (chopped)

Potatoes!

Well, it goes without saying, but we planted quite a few potatoes here in Idaho.  We planted a couple of varieties but in a fit of disorganization we have no idea what they were or how to identify them!  Since they did indeed grow differently that was a mistake, but we'll try again.

We were pretty interested in how the potatoes would grow principally because we tried two different growing techniques we had heard about. First was we dug down pretty shallowly and then mounded dirt up over the green plant as it grew.  Since potatoes need loose soil to form the actual potato this is advantageous for the plant-at least as long as some green leaves are above the soil.  The second method was to dig down substantially deeper to plant the potatoes and then mound dirt up less high as it grew.  Of the two, the second method was by far better. We got healthier plants, more potatoes and it was much less work, both to cultivate and to harvest. Even though we got our "money's worth" in the number of potatoes, both methods are very high-labor and time-consuming, so we want to try a few other things next year to get production vs. labor to a more reasonable ratio.

But the potatoes are great:  very tasty and easy to store.  Along with the 7-8 eggs we are getting every day from our chickens, if we needed to, we could easy survive on just what we have grown ourselves.  Pretty cool.

Just some of the spuds.  Many have already been eaten and some are still in the ground.

Later Fall Update

Since our last post fall has been progressing along.  The trees are changing color, the fields around us have been harvested of their corn, barley and sugar beets, and the weather has turned a bit wetter too.  One of the peculiarities of our location in Idaho is that at this time of year we get pretty remarkable temperature swings, leading to stress for our late season plants.  In the daytime we might be up in the mid-60s with warm sun but at night the temps will fall below freezing.  For awhile the warmth of the sun was still winning out but now it has turned and the chill is penetrating.

Our first sad casualty was our watermelon plant we wrote about previously.  It was going strong, with good-sized fruit that were growing everyday.  The plant did have to prioritize those fruit so the other little baby melons shriveled on the vine.  It all looked great and then this happened:

The cardboard with foil was an attempt to warm the melons sitting on top.

It is amazing how the frost really did burn the leaves.  Once the plant was clearly kaput we decided to harvest the melons since the plant would not be providing any more nutrients to the fruit.  Apparently it is not easy to ripen watermelons off the vine, but we are going to do our best.  The results will be posted soon.

Our crimson sweet watermelons

As with the watermelons the other plants in the garden have been suffering with the frost.  Our tomatoes are down for the season and it looks like our potatoes as well. However, the potatoes are looking good to harvest at this late point in the season.  We'll post about that too soon.

Frosted potatoes before harvest

All this is a good lesson in the importance of starting the plants inside in the spring.  Both the tomatoes and the watermelons were pretty short season varieties and they still ran out of time.  Maybe another two weeks of warmer weather and we would have had a huge harvest of tomatoes and good-sized watermelons.  Next year we will buy those few more weeks by doing the starting and transplanting right.

Early Fall Update

As everyone has noticed from our entries, this has been an eventful summer.  We have learned a great deal (and will continue to as fall harvest progresses in to winter).  We've had some ups and downs, challenges and successes.  Both of our making and of the natural kind.  For example, this summer has been quite literally the hottest summer ever recorded in southwest Idaho.  We're in a "severe" drought and have experienced more than twice as many days over 100 degrees this summer as normal.  So we first want to acknowledge a small victory.  All summer we've been rehabilitating our back field, getting ready eventually for new planting and maybe livestock.  It was dry and dead from the heat and had an infestation of the horrid goathead weed (http://www.goatheads.com).  After a great deal of diligence pulling weeds, using spot sprays of herbicide and watering like crazy, our back field is fairly green and healthy.  It might not look like a golf course but it's a positive start, especially considering all the adverse conditions.

For now, it will be a dog play area. 

On the produce front, we are continuing to get okra, grapes and blackberries but at a reduced rate.  Our most exciting development is that we have a very productive watermelon plant that has more than a half-dozen little watermelons in progress.  Much earlier this summer we had planted a lot of watermelon seeds, planting in hills about 6 ft. apart.  None seemed to take, but lo, about 4 weeks ago this weird plant came up. We decided to let it grow to see what it did.  To our great surprise, it was one of our long-lost watermelons.  Not sure exactly what happened, but we are glad it came through.  Now, though, the trick is to get the melons ripened before it gets too cool for them.  It will be a close race, this week we might have lows in the 40s, but hopefully with some help we can get some ripe melons.

It's such a cute little thing. We'll be putting something under it soon.

Even smaller, with lots of buds around.

Finally, our chickens are "bearing fruit".  After about 18 weeks since we got them, we took about half our chickens to a local processor for slaughtering and packaging.  It was an interesting experience, unlike anything we have done before, choosing which bird would live and which would die. Some went in to the "safe" coop, some went in to the "dead" coop. Since chickens fall in to a stupor at dark, which makes them very easy to handle, we loaded up 21 birds and went to the processor early one morning.  Later that day we went back and got our chicken, ready to prepare and eat.  Our largest bird is a bit over 3 lbs.  We have eaten some already, BBQed, and have been happy with everything.  It's a completely healthy meat, organic and free-range, and we have a new appreciation for meat, having had a sort of "relationship" with our chicken before hand. 

Professionally processed and vacuum packed

Our remaining chickens were carefully chosen to maximize egg production.  We kept two compatible roosters for flock sustainability and one small rooster for us to slaughter, in order to have that experience when we see fit. The remaining birds (about 15) are buff, red and white sexlink hens for laying.  And quite perfectly we have gotten our first eggs!  Even though the chickens can be extremely annoying to deal with (they are so stupid), everything has so far worked out exactly as we planned. 

Three smallish brown eggs, probably from the red hens

The joy of produce

There are many obstacles on a farm between desire and consumption. The drama of our corn, strawberries and beans have given us new appreciation for these food items, but not much for our bellies. So the wonder of having bushes full of raspberries and blackberries and vines over-flowing with grapes comes as a great relief from the struggle and the heat. Our blackberry bushes, planted and loved by those who came before us, are producing very well this year and have provided us with hand-fulls of sweet treats and blackberry juice for our kefir. They have also provided me with my first opportunity to tie my apron on and jump into the world of canning. I made my first experimental batch of jam last week, not really following a recipe (I probably should have since it was my first attempt) but more adding what I thought I should to make my ideal jam. The jam was met with such rave reviews by my hungry husband, that today I went back to the bushes and got some more to try again. When I had about a gallon of blackberries, I set to work.

We had some nice, plump show-offs as well as tasty, little modest ones.

After the berries had been cleaned and lightly washed they met the heat.

The masher - it's not just for potatoes anymore! At this stage I added the honey from my hard-working bees.

How pretty the jam is in its little jar! Homemade jam with our homegrown blackberries and with honey from our own beehive. What a treat!

Harvest Update

Well, it's been another month.  Things have been rocking along pretty well here.  Over all we've had some good successes and some, well, not quite successes.

The okra harvest has been great.  The few pictured last time are a good representative sample of what we have gotten this summer.  So far we have harvested enough for two sizable dishes (fried okra, of course) and it looks like we'll get a third before the weather turns cooler. 

Our corn was a disappointment. It just got fried by the hot, dry summer-despite persistent watering. We planted a little bit more this August, just to see if that does better as the weather turns. Also disappointing was our green beans.  Earlier this summer they were strong plants.  They were green, tall and were not letting any weeds near them.  But the very high temps and a bloom of grasshoppers did them in.  Too bad.

One fun surprise has been our grapes.  There are a few plants scattered over the property and they bore fruit without any real help from us.  As you can see we have a few varieties.  The big green and red ones are really just like supermarket grapes:  essentially seedless and quite tasty.  The little dark ones have tons of seeds; so much so they are hard to eat.  But they taste just like Welch's Grape juice.  We're going to think what to do with them.  Jelly is a good choice-which would be another first for us.

Lastly are our carrots.  And they look funny.  Lots of little spindly things.  A few that look like "real" carrots.  Our planting technique was probably to blame here.  The seeds were way too close together, and so few of them had any chance to grow large, or even get beyond stunted.  Also the weather was a factor too, but mostly "operator error."  One interesting feature to watch is how our double dug beds impacts carrot growth.  As you can see some are extremely long and wiry.  Is that a consequence of the bed depth or our less than ideal growing conditions?  At least we have quantity, if not quality.

Three varieties of grapes

Carrot freak show.

Carrot power

Just a Little Produce

Here's a few things we harvested this morning.  Some okra, lots of garlic, a big onion and some pathetic malformed carrots.  Yay!

Well, at least we can keep vampires away!

First Honey Harvest

As a prior post covered, we have had our bees since late April.  Since then the goal has been building up the hive and keeping them all happy.  Since they are a new hive we have been feeding them sugar water regularly:  for the first few months every three days and now every week.  As the hive grows stronger the bees can fend for themselves more and more.

One minor issue we had was ants getting into the hive.  This was easily solved by putting the feet of the hive into old coffee cans filled with canola oil.

This time we only harvested a relatively small amount of honey.  Primarily, we just wanted to try it while the bees have plenty of time to make more honey before winter.  But since we were in the hive, we took the opportunity to do a little comb maintenance which required some comb to be removed in order to help the rest of the comb be straight.  As the bees collect more nectar they have a tendency to quickly build comb to store it, and that can mean they get a bit lazy with keeping the comb straight.  Cross-combing of the honey combs can be bad because it makes the whole hive structure get out of whack.  A bee keeper needs to straighten out any areas of comb that may start to impact the adjacent comb on the next top-bar over. So, as we harvested honey, we were able to do some comb maintenance as well.

This being our first time harvesting, we were a little messy.  Everything got sticky, a few stings happened to the unsuited-up help and some bees died - drowned in the honey at the bottom of the bowl. We learned a few lessons, certainty, so the next time will be cleaner, quicker and less traumatic to the bees. 

Removing the honey combs from the hive

Harvesting the comb

Next mash up the comb to liberate the honey from the wax cells

Pour the mush onto cheese cloth to let the honey drain out from the wax through the cloth

Honey!  About 2 cups.

Chickens-outside!

As a prior post noted, we are raising chickens.  After nearly a month inside as chicks they are, blessedly, outside in their own large run.  We decided to go with some pre-fab coops that we ordered online and then assembled once they got to us because we concluded that it was just more cost effective than converting a large building that we have on the property in to a coop.  Plus we wanted to utilize the large yard you see the run in.  That amount of grass is not useful to us and was just eating up valuable water.  So we constructed a run with two chicken wire fences:  a tall outer perimeter and a shorter area that has the coops in it.  It was fairly cheap; although pounding the posts was not the easiest thing.   No foxes or coyotes have gotten in, but we may have had a few losses from hawks, but adding a top would be too elaborate at this point.  Plus, they'll grow and that threat will diminish.

The whole chicken run.

The double fence set up

Inside the coop

One of our cats "guarding" the chickens

Some Produce

As the summer wears on, different veggies and fruits become ripe and are ready for harvest.  One new experience for us starting out (which is of course obvious when you think about it) is that everything of the same kind more or less comes ripe at the same time.  What to do with it?

Case in point, lettuce.  It's one of those plants with tiny seeds that can be easily over planted and has a bigger reputation for being yummy than it actually is.  By that we mean, even if you are a fan of salads (which we are) there is only so much lettuce you can eat in a 3-4 week period.  And unfortunately lettuce is virtually impossible to preserve:  you can't freeze it, drying it makes little sense, and, unlike spinach, it can't be cooked. So eating like a cow is really the only option.  We ended up with way too much.  Even after trying to eat it quickly and store it in the refrigerator, much of it went to the chickens, which is too bad but better than just rotting.

Preparing lettuce for the fridge.  This is a fraction of what we grew.

 The next item that came ripe in a big way were the green onions.  Fortunately, these are far easier to preserve.  We have frozen them (pre-cut) and dried them out using our convection oven.  That works quite well, but does make the house smell like onions for a while.  Of course green onions last a while in the fridge in a plastic bag:

Preparing onions for preserving

 Finally, our raspberry bushes have been quite productive. We have basically done nothing to care for the plants, not even water them.  They'll do well for a good pruning this fall, and the raspberries keep coming.

Already frozen, ready for ice cream.

Updates

Here are some updates on previous things we have discussed around the farm.

The cherry, apple and pear trees are doing very well. They are full of nice green leaves and should start putting out fruit next month. The addition of bees should strengthen our fruit crop considerably this year. A sickly cherry tree had to be chopped down this month in order to conserve the resource of water, it will be replaced next year to help it get established while we still have healthy and producing ones around.

So much green! We have already started to enjoy some of our produce and are fighting rabbits, birds, etc. for them!

Three little chicken coops all in a row. Chicken wire will be put up around the posts so that three areas will be created: the middle area where all of the chicken coops sit, an area to the left and an area to the right. This will allow us to utilize the sun that each side of the field gets for the most appropriate season as well as to allow the soil and grass a break from the destruction the chickens will wreak.

Speaking of chickens - here they are at about 3 weeks old. They are getting bigger and smellier everyday. We hope to have them outside full-time in about 3 weeks, at which time they will be very ready for the change and we will have probably already lost our minds.

We've got chicks-a lot of 'em!

Getting chickens for eggs and meat is a major goal for our first-year homestead since those products offer the best sources of protein we can produce relatively easily and cheaply on our property.  When compared to a cow, chickens are very low maintenance, and they are readily sustainable if you let some eggs hatch out.  Eggs are a great food source that chickens produce in abundance, so that is where our emphasis will be.  We do plan to slaughter some of our birds for meat on occasion.  Mostly these will be roosters when we have an over-abundance (you really only need 1-2 to fertilize a good size flock of chickens), but when our layers start to get old they will become dinner. 

We will address slaughtering when we cross that bridge, but for now we can say that we chose what chicks to get in order to best serve our desire for a good number of eggs (layers), meat on our table (broilers), and sustainability of the flock (brooders).  We will see how it works out, but here is the run down of our chicks:

5 Buff Orpington-pullets (females)

5 Partridge Rock-straight run (males and females, depending on what hatches at the hatchery)

3 Rhode Island Red-pullets

3 Sagitta-pullets

1 Sex Link-cockerel (rooster)

5 Sex Link-pullets

3 White Plymouth Rock-pullets

The hatchery also "threw in" a few extras; no doubt cockerels they did not need.

The pictures below show how we are caring for them as they grow.  As things go, the tub, heat lamp (keep 'em at around 90 deg.), bedding, feeder/fount and chick starter feed was not a huge investment. The same cannot necessarily be said for our permanent coops, but they will be an entry when we finish them!

Under the read heat lamp.  The stock tub works really well.

The chicks' true colors.

Bee Day

      After a long wait, the honey bees are here. We drove about 2 1/2 hours to pick up our bee package and then installed them in the top bar hive we brought back from Texas. They are amazingly interesting to watch. I think the jacket and hood are unnecessary, because I know they don't want to sting me - we'll see how much it actually gets used.

Dumping the bees into their new home

Using the bee brush to help them into the cavity so that they won't be crushed by the top bars

Putting the top bars back in place

Putting the lid back on the hive

Bees settling in and eating their sugar water. Package of bees is to the side so that stragglers can fly out and join the hive..

Successes, Failures & Progress

Mulched beds for strawberries with some compost added

The time is (slowly) arriving for us to begin planting, both our started seeds and our direct planted crops. Being where we are in Idaho, we have to contend with uncooperative weather, so at times it seems like a bit of a gamble to get plants in the ground.  But come what may, we are endeavoring to make the garden work.

Our first transplants were peas and corn, and they did not fare well. First off, corn is not normally a transplant, but we wanted to use just a few of our seed kernels to try it.  For a while the started corn did pretty well but the temperature swings I think eventually got the better of them (in the course of their 2 weeks in the ground we had 75 degree and 25 degree days, plus high winds).  The peas had it rough to begin with.  In their starting cups indoors they thrived; springing up to large plants but unfortunately they became root-bound too quickly, before it was safe to plan them outside. Adding to the root binding the temps outside (which they were not adequately hardened against) they were kaput within a week.  So, in the end these pioneers (guinea pigs?) got raked into the soil, becoming food for those who follow.

Attempt 2 were strawberries.  We have two varieties, Ft. Laramie and All-stars.  They came from the seed company as pre-sprouted dry root bundles.  It was a matter of wetting them to separate the roots and planting.  This time we put mulch down on top of the seedlings after planting. So far they are doing quite well, despite the weather.

Finally, just yesterday we planted onion and garlic. This time we prepared the beds with compost.  After that, we planted, watered and finally put mulch down. There's not really much else we can do for them-so our hopes are high!

Much more to come!