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.